Disciplines:
(Note: this essay is aimed at folks who have more a more than beginners level of understanding of trauma and healing. As such it will not provide basic definitions or information on introductory concepts like PTSD, re-traumatization, nervous system fragmentation, etc.)
Further to the question, “Can there be safety in a collective healing process?” I have thoughts about what Naomi Klein has called “weaponizing trauma”, in reference to Israeli and Zionist efforts to maintain Nazi Holocaust atrocities as fresh wounds for Jewish people eight decades after the end of the Second World War. This is done, of course, to allow Israel to play victim when it has actually been an aggressive, oppressive, and genocidal settler colonial power in the region since 1948.
In a time when we are becoming more aware of the relationships between unhealed trauma and conflict, there is confusion, some of it intentionally seeded, about what healing is and how it happens.
In her article, Klein meticulously explains how the Israeli state and Zionist-promoting organizations fund, sponsor and create experiential opportunities for Jews and others around the world to not just bear horrified witness to the Holocaust but to intentionally inflict a level of vicarious trauma that fragments the nervous system almost as much as the actual experience. Over the years, this intentional infliction of vicarious trauma has kept people stuck in a state that prevents them from thinking rationally, healing intergenerational wounds, or activating compassion for anyone perceived as antisemitic. This is done through an endless array of simulated experiences curated by museums, art projects, fictional films, documentaries, and more. There are whole tours devoted to inflicting vicarious trauma.
In the sources referenced below, Klein and Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician respected for his work and research on healing trauma, do a good job of analyzing Zionism’s role in wounding and re-wounding Jews around the world, as well as in creating the false narrative that being Jewish and being Israeli are interchangeable identities. Experts on trauma note that inculcating Jews to maintain the identity of victimhood encourages a hypervigilance to anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli sentiments because they are equated with antisemitism. Hence, no matter what Israel does it is the victim. Regardless of whether hatred is directed against Israeli atrocities or Jewish people it is antisemitic.
This 2-part essay is not about restating the insightful revelations of Klein, Gabor and others about how Israel has weaponized trauma but to consider the question implied in the title: where is the line between healing and re-traumatization and what can BIPOC folks learn from observing how Westerners and the world’s elite not only turn a blind eye but fund, supply, and provide diplomatic cover to a genocide. Then how do we apply our lessons to exploring lateral violence within our communities while ensuring genocides are not further expanded to our peoples.
