Ezra Ben-Shalom
Editor, jewishstate.com

16-3-2005

If we open our eyes and confront the psychological profile of Jewish sympathizers with Arab terrorists - sympathizers whose mental state is common to the great majority of Jewish anti-Zionists - we may learn how to help these people snap out of their pseudo-identity and recover their original personality and ability to reason. Indeed, it is vital to the future of the Jewish State that these people have control of their minds, and not surrender them to the people who want to kill them. We need to respond to the condition of these disoriented people, which results from a defense mechanism called Identification with the Aggressor (IA). IA buries a traumatized captive's original personality under a new persona, a facsimile of that of the captor. We have to learn everything about IA to assist in the liberation of the minds of our affected siblings, friends, artists, university professors, and politicians. Furthermore, we will expose them and ourselves to further traumatizing experiences if we do not know how to encourage them back to their true identity.

In a context of terror, IA relates to the old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." However, that ancient axiom fails to make an important distinction: as a deceptive tactic, a feigned emotional attachment to the captor may put him off guard and allow the captive to overcome him; but if the captive actually bonds with him, the captive loses his personality, his goal of physical liberation, logical thought, and all of his previous ideas about grand strategy.

With the overt support of covert Jew-haters around the world, Arab extremists have traumatized Israeli Jews and endeavored to take their future hostage. We must help Israelis with IA as we would aid any captive with IA.

Before reviewing historical cases of IA, examples of IA in different settings, methods of encouraging people with IA to recover their identity and capacity for critical thought, and the implications of IA for the policy of the Jewish State, we should note that almost anyone risks submerging his personality under the identity of his captor if the following conditions exist:

a) Perceived threat to survival and the belief that one's captor is willing to act on that threat;

b) The captive's perception of small kindnesses from the captor within a context of terror;

c) Isolation from perspectives other than those of the captor;

d) Perceived inability to escape.

(Louis Jolyon West and Paul R. Martin. "Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults." 1994.)

A more detailed explanation of these conditions may clarify several important points:

a) The captive's perception that his life is in danger comes from the captor's history of violence and his threats and stated intentions. The captive may have received torture or observed torture. The captor frequently abuses or threatens the captive's loved ones to intensify the captive's trauma.

b) The captive searches desperately for signs of compassion and sees evidence of this in actions where the captor is merely improving his position of power. For example, the captive may interpret an ambiguous gesture as an indication of a "soft side", even though the captor is preparing to deliver more torture.

The captor sometimes offers sad stories about his early years as an excuse for his past treatment of the captive. If the latter accepts and repeats these stories, he ensures the continuation of the abuse, but he receives small kindnesses as a momentary consolation. Of course, the captor never really believes that his tales of hardship explain his actions, and he certainly does not talk about them during his violent outbursts.

c) A person with IA has closed his mind to all points of view, save one: that which follows from an obsession to avoid "trouble". Trouble is any action or event that might upset the captor. The captive views people that want to help, such as family members and friends, as trouble-makers; after all, he knows that the captor knows that they will challenge his mental domination.

d) The perceived inability to escape plays a vital role in the development of IA. Because the captive's mind judges that there is no other way of hiding, it makes a final effort by burying its original personality under an imitation of the captor's persona.

These four conditions exist in a variety of settings, as we shall see below.

Sadly, the story of the profoundly disoriented captive is perhaps the most common tale in human history. It goes back to the dawn of time. When the Children of Israel had followed Moses to the shore of the Red Sea, and then saw Pharaoh's chariots charging them from behind, they did not steel themselves for combat with their enemy. Instead, they took the Pharaoh for granted and identified Moses as the real trouble-maker, addressing him with harsh words: "Is not this the word that we spoke unto thee in Egypt, saying: Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it were better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness" (Exodus 14:8). Indeed, Moses would have to liberate the minds, as well as the bodies, of the Children of Israel.

Modern history provides many examples of traumatized Jews who felt helpless and sought strength through an abandonment of their identity in favor of the identity of their abusive host populations. Although many Jews refused to debase themselves by chasing after acceptance, this activity intensified during the so-called Jewish Emancipation in the nineteenth century, when Europeans expected Jews to abandon their annoying "particularisms" in exchange for more equitable laws. Gabriel Riesser, the most prominent Jewish spokesman for emancipation in the German states, declared at the revolutionary National Assembly of 1848 in Frankfurt, "If you will grant emancipation with one hand, and with the other the realization of the beautiful dream about the political unification of Germany, I would take the second hand unhesitatingly, because I am convinced that a unified Germany will also include emancipation." In retrospect, we can see how IA shut down rational thought in many European Jews and prepared them for extermination.

During the Shoah, some concentration camp detainees decorated their striped rags with discarded insignia from the uniforms of their SS guards, which clearly resulted from IA. Likewise, there were hundreds of cases where European Jews gave up the opportunity to die fighting, even after they had proof of their impending murder, simply because that would mean giving up all hope for a shed of decency in their captors.

Other examples of IA include various hostage situations in Europe and Iraq. Most famously, two fugitives seized control of one of Stockholm's largest banks on 23 August 1973. Three women and one man were taken hostage and held in a bank vault for six days with dynamite strapped to their bodies. Their captors threatened their lives but also showed them a suggestion of kindness. To the amazement of the press, all of the hostages resisted the government's efforts to rescue them and aggressively defended their captors. Several months after their rescue, the former hostages still had warm feelings for their captors. One of the women even fell in love with her former captor and chastised the Swedish prime minister for not understanding the criminal's perspective. Another term for IA, "Stockholm Syndrome", was invented because of this incident.

Additional hostage crises have confirmed this propensity to sympathize with the captor. For example, in 1975, South Moluccan terrorists seized a Dutch train and threatened to kill commuters if their homeland in Malaysia was not given independence. During a thirteen-day standoff, the terrorists executed two of their captives. Nevertheless, some of the surviving hostages developed strong emotional bonds with their captors as well as ludicrous suspicions about the police officers trying to rescue them.

More recently, Arab terrorists in Iraq kidnapped two Italian aid workers named Simona in September 2004. Several weeks into the women's ordeal, the Italian government paid a ransom for their release, thereby saving their lives but providing a strong motivation for future kidnappings. Upon their return to Italy, rather than process their trauma in a safe environment to recover their old selves, the women immediately addressed the news media. They spoke well of their captors and of their forced Koranic studies.

And then, on 4 March, American soldiers accidentally fired at Italian special agents driving through Baghdad before sunrise, killing one Nicola Calipari and injuring two others. The Italians were escorting Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist who had just been freed through another ransom payment, to the airport.

Sgrena's boyfriend, Pier Scolari, told the press that his girlfriend's captors had warned her before her release that the Americans would try to kill her because of the "knowledge" that she had acquired during her captivity. Scolari presented this as proof that the American soldiers had deliberately fired on the car. Of course Scolari believes what the Arab terrorists say; clearly, he has assumed their identity even though he was only vicariously traumatized.

President of the Italian Council Silvio Berlusconi apparently believes that the Italian people have already caved in and adopted the viewpoint of their jihadist tormentors. At least he seems to be pandering to such a crowd of pseudo-personalities. After the death of Nicola Calipari, he announced that, "Someone must take his responsibilities," as if that someone were a mystery, as if the terrorists were not the reason for the Italians' presence on Baghdad's streets in the middle of the night and also the reason for the Americans' trigger-happiness. Roberto Calderoli, the Italian Minister of Reforms, went further, accusing the Americans of ambushing the vehicle. Evidently, some politicians promote IA in a cynical move to increase their fame.

The above cases of hostages with IA are especially instructive as we seek to understand the mental state of Jewish apologists for jihad. In truth, we have long used the language of captors and captives when speaking about Arab extremists and Jews without realizing all of the implications that this relationship entails. On 6 March, Prime Minister Sharon used this language in a statement to the press: "As long as we make progress because of temporary calm, we are held hostage by the [terrorist] groups, which will destroy the process as they did in 2003." This sentence suggests that IA has firmly established itself as an actor in the formation of the grand strategy of the Jewish State. Only IA can explain why Sharon used the word "progress" to describe relations with an aggressor committed to disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda and sworn to the destruction of the Jewish State. Furthermore, for those who have not lost their original personality, no "process" capable of bringing peace exists, save Israel's internal struggle for psychological liberation and the concurrent fight to encourage mental, moral, and democratic growth in the next generation of Arabs and of the European nations that support Arab extremists.

But captives and captors exist outside of classic hostage situations involving banks or Islamists. For instance, a girl who suffers through severe parental abuse can react in the same way as the hostages examined above. This example presents an interesting parallel with Jewish apologists for jihad: that so many Jewish "intellectuals" who were traumatized in Europe brought with them to Israel their inability to reason facilitated the adaptation of IA to the Israeli context, just as abused women often go from abusive parents to an abusive boyfriend.

Truly, Israel's universities are centers of jihadist thought, as many recent books and articles have argued. In particular, Yoram Hazony's The Jewish State shows how the most prominent "intellectuals" and "artists" in Israel are part of a tradition that started in Europe with traumatized Jews who had renounced their identity.

To learn how to deprogram Jewish apologists for Arab terrorists, that is, to learn how to encourage them to recover their original identity and capacity for rational thought, perhaps the totalist cult provides the most instructive case. Totalist cult leaders employ various methods to subdue their followers, such as fear, extreme stress and fatigue, a mirage of camaraderie or of sensual fulfillment, repetition of verses with no meaning other than circular false-logic, and group pressure to stay in the cult. With these devices, they create the four conditions for IA described above. Then they proceed with the burying of the original personality under a thick new pseudo-identity.

In the 1960's and 70's, cults experienced rapid growth in the United States. Families watched impotently as their sons and daughters became the mental prisoners of cruel and manipulative cult leaders. Eventually, however, a concerned parent and active community member named Ted Patrick decided to fight back after his own son was nearly taken off by the so-called Children of God. Patrick went to the communal place of this cult, seeking to find out how they dominate the minds of their victims. A short time after his arrival, he was shocked to observe that he was losing his grip on reality.

Patrick escaped from the Children of God and went on to make history with his pioneering work in deprogramming. Working with the families of cultists, he tricked or forced hundreds of these brainwashees into situations where they could not escape a conversation with him. As long as the trap had worked, Patrick enabled them to snap out of their pseudo-identity with little difficulty; that is, they rediscovered themselves in an incredible re-birth and began to use their atrophied ability to reason.

So what were Patrick's methods? He wrote: "When you deprogram people, you force them to think. The only thing I do is shoot them challenging questions. I hit them with things that they haven't been programmed to respond to. I know what the cults do and how they do it, so I shoot them the right questions; and they get frustrated when they can't answer. They think they have the answer. They've been given answers to everything. But I keep them off balance and this forces them to begin questioning, to open their minds. When the mind gets to a certain point, they can see through all the lies that they've been programmed to believe. They realize that they've been duped and they come out of it. Their minds start working again." Patrick's works of liberation should be celebrated in song and through emulation.

In fact, hundreds of deprogrammers, who often prefer the title "exit-counselor", have followed in Patrick's footsteps. Like Patrick, they use convincing, clear, and well-supported information to challenge the circular false-logic of the cultist. They ask him hard-hitting questions to inject some sense of reason into his awareness. Importantly, they tell him the truth about his cult's methods of recruitment and make him reflect on his own history with the cult.

This last point is where we have failed in our efforts to help Jewish anti-Zionists. We present the truth about the Jewish State and we even ask incisive questions, but we do not always penetrate their pseudo-identity because we do not explain IA to them. We need to convey the facts about IA as we relate the real story of the eternal Jewish Homeland.

Jewish anti-Zionists need to learn about examples of the syndrome in different settings and historical contexts, as well as its four requisite conditions. This information encourages the enchained true personality to break out of the enveloping pseudo-identity.

The deprogrammer should use examples to illustrate how someone gets the syndrome. He can describe the experiences of third parties or use personal stories if he has overcome IA himself. He might provide a video and information about someone with IA, such as an abused woman or a hostage. These stories serve as the basis for several tough questions to encourage the emergence of rational thought: "Does this person appear to be 'abnormal', or is she a normal person who just happened to be deceived? What was her motivation for identifying with her captor? Why did she finally get out of the abusive relationship?"

Many of us think that we can accomplish something by getting angry and frustrated before Jewish anti-Zionists. For example, FrontPageMagazine.com recently published an article deploring Israel's anti-Zionist professors and closing with the ridiculous wish, "May they destroy only themselves." (Kantor, Myles. "Israel's Enemies Within". 7 February 2005.) However, we do not deprogram these people by getting red in the face. Anger only wastes our energy.

The acknowledgement of IA has various implications for the policy of the Jewish State. First of all, the state and its citizens should recognize the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of thought. We do not have to leave people in mental bondage in deference to freedom of speech. Rather, we must accept our duty to encourage their psychological liberation by all necessary means. Thus, there is no justification for anti-Zionist professors in Israeli universities.

Furthermore, the identification of the syndrome affecting anti-Zionist Jews throws new light on the problem of non-Jewish Israeli anti-Zionists. Let us imagine, for example, that our own brother has undergone traumatic experiences and he now has a pseudo-personality and seeks to burn down the family house. Of course we do not cast him out; we restrain him until we can get him to snap out of it. We must not allow him to conspire in the kitchen with someone from the neighborhood that wants to exterminate the family -- the very neighbor that helped traumatize him. That type of neighbor needs to go home or go to prison, and our brother has to go directly back into his deprogramming session.

Indeed, only those citizens who accept the Jewish State should be welcome to stay. Every non-Jewish Israeli who does accept the Jewish State should continue to enjoy full rights and a good chance of becoming wealthy. A high standard of living for non-Jewish Israelis insures their demographic stability and thus their compatibility with the character of the Jewish Homeland.

Let us prevent further traumatizing experiences by helping our brothers and sisters throw off their pseudo-identities. To fight Identification with the Aggressor, we need to learn about it and probe its weaknesses. We also have to share our knowledge with the entire nation to unite everyone in our struggle.

If you would like to share your experiences deprogramming anti-Zionist Jews, please write to Ezra Ben-Shalom. jewish@jewishstate.com