Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. January 17, 2024 | |
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What Psychology Tells Us About the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict |
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been intractable for decades. Aside from disputes over territorial lines and Palestinian statehood, recent essays have looked to psychological research to explain what has locked Israelis and Palestinians in such a long cycle of violence.
In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Jessica Stern and Bessel van der Kolk noted that trauma can harden collective identity and produce demands for retribution, featuring "righteous rage" and a "compulsion to punish indiscriminately," while noting the role of victimhood: "Every perpetrator of terrorism sees himself as a victim," they wrote. In a Guardian review of Jonathan Glover's new book "Israelis and Palestinians: From the Cycle of Violence to the Conversation of Mankind," Gabrielle Rifkind notes that the book begins with George Orwell's observation on the Spanish Civil War: "Everybody believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side without ever examining the evidence." This, Rifkind muses, "could have been written today, amid bipolar thinking and pressure to take sides, where people's identification with the facts can reflect their political predilections." At New Lines Magazine, Culture Editor Lydia Wilson recently pointed out: "Extreme states of belonging to a single group have enabled the most extreme violence seen throughout history and around the world, from suicide bombings to kamikaze attacks during times of war."
Picking up the conversation in an essay for CNN Opinion, cognitive scientist and political-violence expert Nafees Hamid identifies trends and psychological mechanisms that seem to be at play among Israelis and Palestinians.
For one, Hamid warns against the danger of intense affinity with an in-group coupled with hostility toward an out-group. He also warns against "competitive victimhood," which entails a contest over who has suffered more and who deserves the world's sympathy. Due to the generational accumulation of "collective trauma" among both Israelis and Palestinians, current events—like the Oct. 7 massacres and Israel's military campaign in Gaza—can cause both groups to re-experience the past traumas of the Holocaust and the mass displacements of 1948, heightening senses of victimhood in the present. When certain issues, like the holiness of land, are deemed sacred, they take on "such moral importance that they transcend the material concerns of everyday life," Hamid writes. In one academic study, researchers found that when hypothetical international interlocutors offered hypothetical material incentives for an Israeli–Palestinian peace deal—like the promise of economic aid or the threat of sanctions—those material offers backfired among participants who were deemed "moral absolutists" about particular issues like conceding land.
Luckily, Hamid writes, psychological research indicates a path forward—not a solution to the conflict, but an indication of what can help future peace negotiations succeed. Simply "(a)cknowledging each other's traumas reduces competitive victimhood and increases willingness to compromise on contentious issues," Hamid writes, citing experimental surveys conducted by researchers at Tel Aviv University. "Those elements of dialogue are important for opening the door to discussion of any particular peace plan," regardless of that plan's specifics. |
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Does Iran Really Control the 'Axis of Resistance'? |
The so-called "Axis of Resistance"—a network of Iran-backed militias and terrorist groups across the Middle East, from Hamas and Hezbollah to Yemen's Houthis—has attracted newfound concern as the shadow war between Israel and Iran heats up with assassinations beyond Israel's borders and as the US and UK militaries strike Houthi targets in Yemen over the group's obstruction of Red Sea shipping.
The "axis" has been revitalized since Hamas's Oct. 7 massacres, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr write in a Foreign Affairs essay, as "(t)he war in Gaza has given the network its greatest opportunity so far to unleash a military and communications assault on the West." As for how the "axis" works and who's in control, Bajoghli and Nasr suggest that for the US, Israel, and their allies, dealing with this network of Iran-backed proxies isn't as simple as dealing with Iran itself, as the groups are motivated and tied together by something broader than Iranian support. "Tehran is not the puppet master, and the axis's coherence and regional role reflects far more than Iran's dictates," Bajoghli and Nasr write. "Instead, the axis is bound together by a shared hatred of U.S. and Israeli 'colonialism.' Hezbollah believes that Washington and Tel Aviv are meddling in Lebanon, and Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraq's Shia militias believe the same to be true in their territories. As (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah has put it, the disparate groups are unified by the reality that, be they Lebanese, Palestinians, or Yemenis, they face the same issues and the same enemy. This means that what happens in one territory is directly relevant to the others. … The axis's members believe that they are all fighting the same war against Israel and, indirectly, the United States. That means that neither U.S. warnings nor U.S. attacks will force the axis to stand down. Unless the guns in Gaza fall silent, the pressure on its population is relieved, and a credible path to Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination is plotted, the United States will not be able to extricate itself from a dangerous escalatory spiral." |
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Trump's Campaign Has the World in Suspense |
Former US President Donald Trump's 2024 White House bid has frozen the Republican Party's internal policy debates, as the Global Briefing noted yesterday. It has also frozen geopolitics, in a way.
As many commentators have noted, a Trump return to the White House would bring major consequences for countries around the world. It would be bad news for longstanding US allies, whom Trump seems to detest as alleged free-riders, the Financial Times' Martin Wolf wrote in November; it could be very bad for Ukraine and NATO, The Atlantic's David Frum wrote this week.
At Foreign Affairs, Graham Allison writes that countries around the world are operating in a state of suspense. Making a historical analogy, Allison recalls that during the US Federal Reserve chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, some investors used the term "Fed put"—a "put," in finance, being a contract that allows one to sell at a certain price in the future—to encapsulate the notion that no matter how bad things got in the US economy and markets, Greenspan's Fed would put a floor under the losses. Today, Allison writes, world "(l)eaders are now beginning to wake up to the fact that a year from now … Trump could actually be returning to the White House. Accordingly, some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the 'Trump put'—delaying choices in the expectation that they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them. Others, by contrast, are beginning to search for what might be called a 'Trump hedge'—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly." |
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Witchcraft and the Cup of Nations |
As Africa begins its continent-wide Cup of Nations soccer tournament, former Football Association of Zambia General Secretary Ponga Liwewe writes in a New Lines Magazine essay of the intersection of soccer and folk religion in Africa, since the sport rose in popularity across the continent via European imperialists' mining towns. More specifically, Liwewe looks at witchcraft.
Liwewe writes: "For as long as soccer has been played in Africa, the specter of witchcraft has hung over the game. Nchimunya Mweetwa, a former Zambian international player, recalls that as early as high school, it was established that certain teams practiced the dark arts. 'I first encountered the use of juju at this time. The school team had a witch doctor, which we were made to believe would win us matches,' he told New Lines. … Perhaps the most dramatic incident in African international soccer occurred at the semifinal of the 2002 Africa Cup in Mali. A World Cup legend, the famous Cameroonian former goalkeeper and assistant coach at the time, Thomas Nkono, was assaulted in full view of thousands of fans in the stadium and the world's leading sports journalists. He had stepped onto the field hours before kickoff and, as he made his way toward the goal area, was stopped and beaten up by Malian policemen who believed he was attempting to place some form of juju in the goal area. Nkono was dragged off the pitch in handcuffs, his hands raised above his head in defiance, showing the world's cameras his ignominious fate." |
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