Compartmentalizing the Israel-Gaza War
Looking at psychology and war again, specifically the hardening positions on the Israel and Gaza war.
Pro-Palestinian activists gathered outside of Joe Biden’s recent $25 million fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall in New Your City, demanding an immediate ceasefire in the current Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza. More than 30,000 Palestinians have died in the war so far, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, though Israeli officials assert that more than 10,000 of the deceased have been Hamas fighters. That still leaves a lot of women, children and grandfathers who have perished.
The suffering has been on both sides: more than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and 100+ hostages are still being detained by Hamas and its supporters inside Gaza. Additionally, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting since last October.
The point of this newsletter is not to analyze the war, its causes, antecedents or possible solutions. It is to note that the two sides seem to never acknowledge any legitimacy or even cogency to the other side’s point of view. Is this just partisan rhetoric and politics at play, or do people sympathetic either to the Palestinians or the Israelis really not see the suffering on the other side, a kind of compartmentalized thinking, which is “a psychological defense mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are separated or isolated from each other in the mind?” I want to consider this possibility – many people can’t see the other side’s trauma, fears, losses, dilemma or legitimate interests at all, certainly not in the heat of battle, in the middle of the storm, because they’ve compartmentalized their thinking.
I follow very few blogs and newsletters, but my favorite comes from a professor emeritus at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, who has more than 75,000 followers – not bad, and it’s certainly more than I have. He’s a self-avowed old Lefty and Vietnam War protester from his youth, but at times he seems oblivious to the suffering to the Palestinians in Gaza in the present conflict. He, like others who are highly sympathetic to Israel’s dilemma when faced with an implacable enemy that wants everything (“from the river to the sea,” which means all of Israel, and whose founding charter directly repeats most of Adolph Hitler’s calumnies against the Jews), does not seem to accept the need for a humanitarian ceasefire to save the civilian population in Gaza, even without an immediate hostage release. He, like many others who support Israel, do note that no country would allow the kind of attack visited upon Israel on October 7 without the strongest possible reaction. But, still, thousands more civilians in Gaza are at risk of dying soon. What about them?
Supporters of the other side, either of Hamas directly or more ambiguously of the Palestinian resistance, also have compartmentalized their thinking. I’ve read about many pro-Palestinian and “ceasefire now” protests in America, the UK and Europe, and I have yet to see any that have acknowledged the pain, trauma, and alarm the October 7 attack created in Israel (not counting mainstream media outlets that have chosen to be balanced, or op-eds that are relatively even-handed, but the protests reported on are not balanced).
Here's further evidence that suggests I may be right about compartmentalization. Look at how activists on either side of this divide react when they see a story that is clearly sympathetic to one side or the other. (But how could any article or report that accurately depicts extreme suffering not elicit sympathy?) Invariably, the accusation is that the journalist or media outlet is biased – to the side depicted as suffering, whichever side it is. Both sides in this conflict are suffering! I believe it’s the above-mentioned compartmentalized thinking that may be behind the reactions and responses of so many people who have come out for one side or the other in this ongoing tragedy.