Terror and Despair Robert Lanning Jewish Currents 56(5) Sept.-Oct. 2002
ALTHOUGH one can find little overt support for the suicide bombings in this second intifada, progressive people still accept the struggle for self-determination among the Palestinians as a legitimate one. There is much wrong with the Israeli state's approach to the co-existence of the two peoples and many reasons to support the Palestinian cause. But in doing so we must continually be aware of the language we use because its meanings potentially go far beyond the immediacy of a supporting statement.
The evident deterioration in some responses to terror is a case in point. For most people, these killings generate grief, anger, and concern, while others seem to acquiesce to any measure taken by Hamas and similar organizations, justifying their support by citing despair as a motivation for terror. These responses do not simply convey an emotion, but rally others to support a particular goal or solution.
Cherie Blair, the wife of the British Prime Minister, is perhaps the most recent public figure to attribute despair to suicide bombers. But of greater concern are similar responses found recently in progressive Jewish publications. For example, in distinguishing Palestinian terrorism from Israeli state violence, Lev Grinberg suggests in Tikkun (May/June, 2002) that terrorist acts "are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future." Ronnee Jaeger, writing in a recent issue of the Canadian Jewish Outlook (May/June, 2002), prefers to see suicide bombers as "nationalist guerrilla fighters using the means available to them" while Lukin Robinson argues in the same venue that "resistance is the resistance of desperation." In the same issue, the editors include two readers' letters supporting the notion that "despair creates bombings."
The contradictions of imputing despair to terrorist acts are such that they seem to creep unnoticed into the arguments of those who promote the idea. Grinberg follows the comment noted above with a reference to suicide terror as immoral, something that should be "unequivocally condemned.. . and their perpetrators sent to jail." Murder should be addressed through the law, but if the despair is real should it be addressed through some more helpful means?
Despair may be a term of frustration in this seemingly intractable conflict, but it appears also to be a term of political convenience that is ill-thought and runs counter to important traditions in Jewish and other communities. To make a claim for despair in this case tacitly affirms the view that suicide bombings are the only way out of the current dilemma, and that the level of repression of everyday life is so deep that meaningful solutions, if tried at all, either have failed or will fail. The result, however unintended, effectively legitimizes terror as an expression of individual despair.
One motivation to offer material and moral support is the shame we feel when we become aware of other people's suffering. We ask ourselves, Why didn't I know of this before? or What could I have done? Jews know well this sense of shame. Primo Levi saw it on the faces of Russian soldiers liberating the camps. It is the shame "the just man experiences at another man's crime," he wrote in The Reawakening, "the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist," and that the just man's "will for good should have proved too weak or null and should not have availed in defence." People who are conscious of difficulties faced by others do not want to be in a position of wilful ignorance or apathy, especially when they are already aware of the deeds of injustice. But this is a moral position everyone should hold.
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WHAT is wrong with this use of despair? It is true that despair is often coupled with hope in a way that suggests one becomes the means of realizing the other. To "talk about despair," Camus wrote, "is to conquer it." Somehow the awareness of desperate conditions will bring about the seeds of hope. Maybe so. Certainly despair brings to one's attention the absence of hope, but it does not in itself generate hope. The danger is that despair is too easily diffused among those whose social circumstances or personal attitudes provide an inviting threshold, if not an open door.
Despair seems to have more of a personal than social meaning and has thereby acquired a kind of privilege upon which others can have little effect except to advise or comfort. Despairing individuals are those who feel they have no means of making their situation better; they seem to be lost or to have become alienated from the meanings that should sustain their connection to a community. We already know too well how political leaders in Germany exploited claims of despair and pessimism which were then absorbed as a convenient system of beliefs by the greatest
proportion of the ordinary population. Georg Lukács called this a "mass emotion" and showed how it encouraged the development of irrational analyses of social problems - fascism - and set the stage for equally irrational solutions - war and the Holocaust.
Thus, among Jewish people there is more than sufficient experience with politically motivated claims of despair, as well as with conditions that bring about a genuine sense of loss and alienation. Jewish writers, psychoanalysts and others have generally not been satisfied to accept despair without drawing attention to the need to bring the person out of it, and not simply to make him or her feel better. It is not that such personal feelings are unacceptable; it's not about having a more "manly character" to mask emotion with bravado. Rather, it is because despair is seen first of
all through its causes in real social life, and then as a condition that is debilitating to both the individual and the community. Although it is possible to overstate the power of will to make one's life better, the emphasis of therapists such as Viktor Frankl was on individuals taking the responsibility to find adequate meanings with which to renew and improve their place as communal beings, within and beyond their own community. Similarly, it is not possible to consider Martin Buber's concept of the self without recognizing that connections with others, drawing from their experiences and needs, are the essential basis for developing an ethical sense of self.
IN other words, it has been necessary not only to address the causes of despair but to remove any legitimation for sustaining it because it can be as devastating to the community as it can be to an individual. "Despair is worse than disease," says Dov, one of the resistance leaders in Levi's novel, If Not Now, When? Working and fighting are "two defences against despair.. . but they're not always enough. There is also a third, which is telling one another lies. . . ." Perhaps these "lies" are meant to generate hope for the future, but the emphasis is better placed on the actions taken to
prevent despair from becoming as much of an internalized enemy as the Nazis were an external one. It is the collective or communal response to such conditions - working, fighting and more - that Jewish activists have taken since at least the end of the 19th century. It is that history (among other things) and its continuing power to make change that is put at risk by the attribution of despair to terror.
The history of Jewish culture in its secular or religious form includes a rather constant rebuke of the fatalistic acceptance of unjust or immoral conditions. Much of the religious tradition is about questioning, investigating, debating life's conditions and choices, even when these are said to be the will of God. Recognizing the capacity to make sense of alternatives and their consequences is implied in the original Commandments. In other words, even the weight of
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religious tradition is not meant to submerge the forward-looking orientation to alter circumstances that are barriers to a decent existence.
THE messianic tradition, especially in the way it has been drawn into secular struggles for social justice, was premised on an imperative to think and act into the future. Efforts to establish trade unions, to fight for socialism and civil rights, were directed toward solutions that were communal and universalistic, not to address Jewish problems alone or to a single instance of inequality. This tradition has been about finding solutions in this time, in this place, not waiting for some uncertain or ill-defined future that might accommodate more readily the demands of social justice. Perhaps this is why Erich Fromm thought that the kind of hope he called "hoping for time" was insufficient; he felt it was passive, anticipating change, but later, not now, always later.
Accepting despair as a motive for terror - especially among Jewish commentators - is to make a positive case for isolated individual, non-communal (even anti-communal) action. This kind of sentiment degrades the belief that finding meaning in suffering or joy is ultimately about social problems as much as it is about the individual.
In fact, we are on more solid ethical ground to actively promote a mass, nonviolent struggle of Palestinians and those who support them - Jews included - against the conditions created by Israeli occupation and the settlements. It builds on traditions of struggle (successful or incomplete), forms of organization and commitment that are a visible part of Jewish history. I am not suggesting that Jewish historical struggles should serve as a kind of paternalistic model for Palestinians; they too have a community and a history from which to draw, inspiration and lessons for the present dilemma.
The depth of the problem of supporting despair as a legitimate motive is illustrated, finally, by one of the reader's letters to Outlook (May/June, 2002). Helen Gilbert suggests that only Native Americans and African-Americans may be "able to visualize how certain death might seem a necessary choice against unendurable oppression." This sentiment actually impugns the historical struggles of these people. It implies that they, too, would have been justified in the use of suicide bombings. It degrades their efforts and those outside their communities who fought with them, by failing to note that peaceful co-existence and non-threatening integration were and are as much in the forefront of their struggles as the end of inequality and discrimination.
Those who impute despair to suicide bombers insult the memory of people who have died riding a bus to school or having dinner. Such commentaries do a disservice to those engaged in long-term struggles for social justice everywhere, and to the traditions and victories that have sustained them. We would all be well-served if the attribution of despair was expunged from the lexicon of criticism of the conflict in Israel and Palestine.