WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 7: Children and Sacrifice

In Video Part 7 Itamar talks about how his father urged him to fight with the Israeli army in Lebanon, as being safer than going to prison for refusing to fight. Bassam talks about how easy it would be to avenge his daughter’s death by killing Israelis. But his other children would then be fatherless with no-one to guide them.

They both talk about the horror of living with the stain of blood on their hands. Jessica Benjamin describes how Itamar is not able to dissociate killing from loving. Jessica introduces the notion of ‘transgression’ against national or revolutionary collective narratives, which honour and reward sacrificing oneself or ones children through killing or dying.

Learning Objectives:

• To learn from our two protagonists that being sent to die, or to kill for your country does not benefit individual, family, or country.
• To learn that as dead warrior-heroes, besides sacrificing themselves, they will have abandoned and sacrificed their children; and as surviving warrior-killers they become the traumatised victims of their governments’ warmongering.

Concepts:

• The importance of governments to engage Ethical Mindsets and provide a secure base of hospitality and care, within a democratic and just culture which extends to their neighbours; all peoples survive and flourish together.
• In the absence of a secure base the politics of fear dominates social and economic policies and encourages war-mongering.

Issues to Explore:

• What process have Itamar and Bassam undergone to refuse to sacrifice themselves, or children? What is the meaning of sacrifice in this Video Part?
• How do you understand Itamar’s father’s fear of what might happen to Itamar as a ‘refusenik’?
• Why is Itamar unable to imagine caressing someone with his blood stained hands, and Bassam is not able to look at blood?
• Explore the difference between sacrificing yourself by being killed, sacrificing yourself by killing someone else, and sacrificing the younger generation for your ideology.
• When a father sends a child to military service, who or what is being sacrificed?
• What does Jessica Benjamin mean by the statement, “…revolutionary movements sacrifice their children? Is this true for statutory armies?

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Think through the different concepts of sacrifice, starting with willingness to kill to prove loyalty (Abraham/Ibrahim).

   The group might be encouraged to look at the function of ‘sacrifice’ to prove loyalty or submission by looking at accounts of what is expected of Abraham and Isaac in the Torah, and Ibrahim and Ishmael in the Quran.

2. Next consider sacrifice for ‘the greater good’ (Jesus Christ).

   The group could look at the story of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, in which the father was willing to kill and the son was willing to die to save the world. Encourage the group to look at this story in relation to mandatory conscription to save the country.

3. Now think about the principle of non-violence, and refusal to fight, by looking at World War I when women handed out white feathers to non-combatants.

4. Consider the idea of being a warrior as heroism and refusing to fight being cowardice.

   Suggest that the group look at the proposition from this viewpoint, and then reverse the statements.

5. Where would you place sacrifice and refusal to sacrifice on The Ethical Mindset diagram?

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 8: Loss of an Ideology

In Video Part 8 Itamar tells us about his deep pain that he was ‘lied’ to by his humanist anti-occupation Zionist parents, the education system and the Zionist narrative. He says his sense of betrayal by the Zionist, State, education and army ideologies was more painful to him than killing someone.

As a youth Itamar couldn’t wait to join his pilot father and brother in the army only to become, once he joined increasingly uncomfortable with some army activities in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Itamar confronts his father with regard to his part in the 1948 War of Independence which his father’s generation believed was essential to protect family and country. Itamar reflectively shares with us his internal and external process of stepping out of denial and the Israeli collective narrative, and slowly constructing a new ideology of personal responsibility where he makes his own decisions about whether violence is necessary. CLICK - Glossary Kafr Qasim Ruling 1956

Learning Objectives:

• To be aware of the pain, confusion, and sense of betrayal when relinquishing a previously trusted belief system or collective narrative.
• To understand that discovering truths behind a collective narrative of denial is not only traumatic but also shameful for those left to confront perpetrator images of their loved family members, and by implication themselves.  The Creative Process of Stepping out of Denial
• To understand that individuals who have stepped out of denial may find themselves isolated and in danger. It is important for those individuals to identify a support system before attempting to share their enlightenment with others.
• To explore the role of protest groups, peace groups and the Ethical Mindset in supporting those who reject a collective narrative which promotes a cycle of violence, death and any unethical behaviour (see Video Part 9).

Concepts:

• Different narratives may be constructed to make sense of the same conflict or situation:
• Understanding the role of the Ethical Mindset when stepping out of a collective narrative of denial, and replacing it with an integrated ethical collective narrative that can recognise and hold opposing positions.

Issues to Explore:

• Can we make a connection between Itamar’s secure attachment with his parents, his collective narrative, and his subsequent discomfort as a soldier?
• Itamar says “the lies” he was told by his parents, the system, and the Zionist narrative were “more painful to me than the fact that I killed”. How do we understand the experience of secure attachment and trust in this context?
• What does Itamar mean that he will only do ‘what is good for him’ after his army experience and his pain at ‘the lies’ that were told him? Consider Itamar’s process of Rupture and Repair, his bravery and sense of agency
• How do we understand Itamar’s father’s different self-states – the soldier father’s pride and duty as an IDF airforce pilot, and his support of his ‘refusenik’ sons (see Video Part 3)? 

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Reflect on your own attitude to ‘whistle-blowing’ (making known an unethical situation) and the relationship with betrayal. Who has betrayed whom?

   The group might be invited to think about the different views held by the ‘whistle-blower’ and the wider protest group or organisation, as a safe way into looking at the dilemma of being the betrayer versus betrayed.

2. Consider the part betrayal may play in Itamar and his father’s relationship. Itamar (who felt lied to) and his father who felt betrayed by his sons’ disloyalty to the Israeli collective narrative, but nevertheless recognised them, (Video Part 3) by supporting their decision.
   
   The group can be invited to compare and contrast the twin felt betrayals of Itamar and his father as an exercise in empathy in the Ethical Mindset.

3. Consider the value of ‘holding contradictions’ as intrinsic to an ethical self-state and the Ethical Mindset.

   Ask for examples from the group where they are able to suspend judgement of right/wrong and instead can hold contradictions, at least most of the time.

4. Despite laws to the opposite, ‘blowing the whistle’ in most Western societies is dangerous for the individual, as may be stepping out of denial of a collective narrative.   How can ordinary citizens and soldiers be supported and empowered when they feel something is wrong?

5. Looking at the diagram The Ethical Mindset can you describe the development of Itamar’s father’s warrior self and support of his refuser sons?

In part 10 we meet Elik Peled-Elhanan whose 14 year old sister Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in 1996. At an alternative annual commemoration ceremony to those who have died in the previous year due to the conflict he calls on the public not to mourn but to express rage against leaders who did not do enough to bring about peace.

The Peled-Elhanan and Aramin families are close friends and active members of Combatants for Peace
and the Forum for Bereaved Families. Bassam says “Our work is not being bereaved parents. Our work is to engage in the non-violent struggle against the politics behind our conflict and to stop the Occupation for the sake of both sides”.

Issues to Explore:

1. Use this workshop to discuss the issues Elik raises, and to discuss your experience and response to the film and workshops. Do you feel it is has enabled you to address stepping out of denial and violence, stepping out of unethical collective narratives, and engaging in the concept of the Ethical Mindset in your own work or community? Please share your views on the Discussion Forum (hyperlink: )

 WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 9: Peace Movements – what do they do?

In Video Part 9 Itamar tells us of the excitement and fear of the first meeting between Israeli and Palestinian combatants, former mortal enemies. They had all individually renounced violence while not relinquishing their political aims. They later formed Combatants for Peace where together they fight against their common enemy the Occupation. Bassam later tells of a crisis within CFP, erupting as a parallel process of the external imbalance of power. The rupture was repaired by facing their differences as well as their shared aim to end the Occupation and their strengthened attachment.

Jessica Benjamin talks about the processes within a peace group which functions as a safe base offering support for moving out of denial and ‘transgressing’ against the collective narrative, constructing a new identity and ideology and the relationship between members of the group; she describes the value of witnessing and social witnessing, and talks of the world as a ‘failed witness’ by taking sides in conflicts, sending sons to kill or die, rather than acknowledge their suffering and seek a Third way.

Learning Objectives

• To raise awareness of the function of protest and peace groups as a support system for enabling moving out of denial and constructing a new identity and collective narrative.
• To look at the role of these groups’ individual and social witnessing and of providing support against the world when it acts as a ‘failed witness’.
• To explore the relationship between members of the group in the light of external imbalance of power, individual and ethnic differences, and the internal processes and pressures inherent in groups.

Concepts:

• Protest groups can provide support from which to step out of denial, transgress the collective narrative, and face the emotional and physical dangers of social exclusion. They can allow members to reconnect with humanity particularly after trauma or, as a new community with a belief system and narrative which does not put them in an ethical conflict.

Issues to Explore:

• What happens to our identity when we become a member of a group?
• How can differences between group members be recognised and supported?
• How did dialogue, despite the external and internal imbalance of power, help members of Combatants for Peace when they were in conflict?
• What measures could be used to diminish internal imbalance of power in a bi-national peace group in a conflict zone, e.g. the choice of language.
• Explore the journey protest groups you have been involved in have taken? Would you say they succeeded, and if not why not? Why might protest groups fail: think of size, duration, finances, institutionalisation, coziness, hierarchy of power, external imbalance of power, failure to repair ruptures.

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Map where you would place Peace Groups on The Ethical Mindset diagram.

2. Consider the importance of the ‘rupture and repair’ process in the Combatants for Peace internal crisis.

   What measures could be used to diminish the impact of external imbalance of power on the internal process of a bi-national peace group?

3. Witnessing trauma and comforting pain is an important function of protest and peace groups, how would you build that in to a group?
4. Think about the different ways protest groups are perceived: as anti-establishment resistance movements supporting the oppressed, or as divisive and destructive undermining the establishment and the rule of law.

5. What strategies might members develop in order to see both sides and hold the contradictions while they may be ostracised from mainstream society. What support can the group and external sources offer members if members are emotionally or physically threatened or in danger.
6. What team building skills might help a multi-ethnic group establish relationships and identify the aims and purpose of the group?

   Build an exercise with the group whereby members can be helped to identify their own and others’ identities, similarities and differences. Practice dialogue skills.

7. Consider the importance of the ‘rupture and repair’ process as intrinsic to maintaining the Ethical Mindset.

   Ask participants to think about the functions of apology and justice. Possible responses: ending feelings of internal conflict, a tactic to move the focus to more important issues.

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 6: Death of a Child

In Video Part 6 Bassam and his wife Salwa talk about the killing of their 10 year old daughter by an Israeli Army Police bullet outside her school. Bassam tells us how he chooses not to revenge his daughter’s death as it would sacrifice his other children to a life without a father. He chooses legal justice for the killer. Salwa talks about her initial anger with peace activism and her subsequent reaffirmation. We also meet Rami an Israeli whose 14 year old daughter was killed by a suicide bomber. These two sets of parents have put aside their desire for revenge. We accompany them on their journey through unbearable pain to their ultimate recognition of the subjectivity and humanity of their ‘enemy’.

Learning Objectives:

• To try to understand the journey of bereaved parents (Palestinian Bassam and Salwa, and Israeli Rami) after the murder of their daughters to ultimate recognition of the shared humanity of their ‘enemy’.
• How revenge sacrifices self and others.

• How the diagram The Ethical Mindset helps us to understand Bassam’s and Rami’s response after the death of their daughters?

Concepts:

• Killing and death in conflicts can lead to a process of relinquishing violence between ‘enemies’ when loss and pain can be accepted (Klein’s depressive position) when the same suffering is recognised in the ‘enemy’. In this process projections are withdrawn to allow empathic recognition of perpetrator and victim in self and enemy; fear is overcome and pain and comfort shared.

Issues to Explore:

• Ask the group members if they would like to share what they are feeling after watching this video part? 
• What can we learn from Bassam’s and Rami’s respective response to the death of their daughters?
• Do Bassam and Salwa and Rami see themselves or their children as victims?   children?
• How do you understand Bassam’s ability to maintain his ‘responsibility to his message’ when his daughter has been killed?
• What do we learn from Salwa’s reaction to Bassam after their daughter’s death; think about the role of women in peace-building?
• What is Bassam saying about his daughter’s murderer’s reason for killing her and his insistence on the legal process? Glossary: mentalisation

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. You will need to address your own feelings about these bereavements, e.g. sadness and anger, views about perpetrator deaths versus victim deaths (no consensus about which is which!),    imbalance of power, and whether loss does or does not obliterate the political backdrop of the two deaths.
2. Think about individual and community bereavement and the range of interventions possible after traumas involving terrorists or natural trauma such as earthquakes and floods, where there are no perpetrators.

   Allow the group to compare and contrast these and consider the context of the deaths of these two children.

3. Consider what the function of having someone or something to blame, e.g. where there may be culprits.

   Invite the group to look at the way this option is rejected by Bassam and Rami and others in the film.

4. Compare the desire to forgive and who may be being forgiven, with the search for justice. Are they compatible? What happens when justice is not achieved? Consider Bassam and Salwa and Rami with regard to victimhood and sacrifice, resilience and agency.

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 5: Not Seeing the Other

In Video Part 5 Bassam and Itamar talk about how Palestinians and Israelis can get to the point of not “seeing” one another, nor their own experience and behaviour. We follow Bassam and Itamar’s process of re-humanising themselves and one another.

Learning Objectives:

• To become acquainted with the cognitive and emotional process of ‘not seeing’ the other:   In the absence of empathy, our projections may idealise or dehumanise the other, leading to violence, dissociation or denial of their existence.  By not including, responding or relating to the other, we psychologically ‘kill them off’.
• Recognising how projections in the absence of empathy may idealise or de-humanise.

Concepts:

• While projections can dehumanise, withdrawing projections can re-humanise and allow empathy and recognition of the real other i.e. our common humanity, our similarities and differences
• Not seeing the other can become a collective defence mechanism for denial of fear
• Winnicott’s False and True Self: our True Self may become invisible to self and others

Issues to Explore:

• What is the difference between ‘being seen’ and‘recognition?’
• Have you ever felt 'not seen' or not ‘recognised’? What did you feel or think? What, if any, action did you take?
• Have you ever rendered another ‘invisible’? Were you aware it was happening? Did you re- render them ‘visible’ at some stage?
• What action might help when we or the other are feeling invisible or ‘not seen’?

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Where might visible/invisible fit into The Ethical Mindset diagram?

2. Become clear about the function served by consciously rendering an individual invisible.

   It might be helpful to look at whistle-blowers and how rendering them invisible serves the organisation.

3. Look at your own strategies that help you hold onto your real and True Self when you are feeling ‘not seen’ i.e. when you are receiving someone else’s projection.

   How might you use the ground-rules if your group develops a hierarchy of those listened to and those ignored.

4. Compare individual responses to the way groups collectively render others invisible (members of rival tribes, nations, oppressed groups, etc.).

   Enable the group to recognise that the stratagem of rendering whole groups invisible becomes a collective survival mechanism for denying fear.

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 4: Pain and Empathy

In Video Part 4 we hear from Bassam and Itamar of their childhood experiences of pain and of how their families related to it. We see the connection between that response and their recognition of others’ pain today.

Learning Objectives:

• The association between recognition and empathy and the desire to comfort others’ pain, and peace building.

Concepts:

• If one's own pain has been recognised and comforted we are likely to recognise and comfort another’s pain.
• When pain is not recognised or comforted it might lead to dissociation or denial, lack of recognition and empathy, loss of agency or violence.

 Issues to Explore:

• What is the nature of Bassam’s and Itamar’s respective experience and response to pain?
• How might we understand the development of resilience in this context?
• What is the process that Bassam undergoes when someone else is suffering for him?  
• What might be the role of pain and other’s response to it in peace building?

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Refer to the Ethical Mindset diagram and the role of pain.

2. Think of ways (both constructive and destructive) that people use to try to comfort themselves when in pain

   Examples include eating chocolate, smoking, substance misuse, dissociation, denial, causing others pain, etc. but think of some of your own.

3. Reflect both on your own pain and on the comfort you have had, and how they might affect your response to the pain of others.

   Develop ways to raise awareness of the other’s pain if the group is in conflict.

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 3: Recognition and Empathy

In Video Part 3 Bassam and Itamar tell us stories from their childhood which highlight the recognition and empathy they received from their secure attachment with their parents. Bassam says “It all begins at home…”. We watch Bassam and Itamar take empathy and recognition with them into adulthood as they step out of denial of their individual collective narratives and out of violence.

Learning Objectives:

This Video Part 3 and workshop is an underlying component of the Moving-Beyond-Violence construct for an Ethical Mindset. We suggest time is spent preparing and researching the issues we raise; please share your own experience and ideas on the discussion forum.

An Ethical Mindset and ethical behaviours of fundamental hospitality and care are necessary for ethical coexistence.

• Bassam and Itamar’s childhood stories recall Bowlby’s secure attachment. Research associates secure attachment patterns (in early or later life) with recognising the other, their pain and a desire to comfort it, internalisation of the secure attachment relationship into personality structures that are associated with peace building. What can we learn from Bassam’s and Itamar’s childhood experience that can be taken into social, educational and political settings in the hope of promoting an Ethical Mindset?
• Experiencing and acquiring recognition and empathy, and congruent behaviours of hospitality and care, are complex processes. This workshop aims to explore different pathways to recognition and empathy including relational, cultural, creative arts, socio-economic, political and existential and inclusion–exclusion dimensions. For instance, recognition and empathy from a teacher or friend, a film or book, a secular, religious or political ideology, observation of recognition and care between others; identification with excluded others; a ‘spiritual’ connection with nature or the planet etc.

Concepts:

• The relevance of the theories of Bowlby, Winnicott, Benjamin and Maslow for facilitating a secure base in the family, society and work place as an important component of peace building.
• The impact of child-rearing practices, socio-economic environment, health, education, inclusion-exclusion, and collective narratives on peace building.

Issues to Explore:

What influenced your interest in this programme, and in Ethical Mindsets and behaviours, and peace building?

• We invite participants to explore their own path to recognition and empathy, and if it exists, whether they feel this has been a component in their relations with different others. 
• Might an experience of exclusion and rejection, victimhood or perpetration lead to identification with excluded and oppressed, victim or perpetrator others? How would that happen? Would that identification necessarily include empathy and recognition? 
• The Ethical Mindset includes congruent ethical behaviours of fundamental hospitality for shared humanity, and care for the other. They may be the dictate of a religious or political social system. Do empathy and recognition have to be present in order for the behaviour of care to be ethical? Might survival be an issue? 
• What role might empathy and recognition play in stepping out of denial of an unethical collective narrative? What other factors might be relevant?

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. Think of ways to create a safe base in the group of a secure attachment with empathy, recognition and trust.  Co-creating a safe base
   
   Setting ground-rules: You might use games for equal validation, e.g. ‘What does your name mean?’

2. Develop your intercultural knowledge-base for groups with members from a range of cultural, political or ethnic backgrounds.

   Any ‘difference’ in the room creates opportunities for working with recognition and empathy; use narrative for people to tell their stories, and invite others to share how the stories change initial impressions.

3. Using your own listening, feeling and feedback skills think of ways to enable people to move into dialogue with each other.

   ALWAYS serve vegan biscuits and explain that they are ‘anti-discriminatory biscuits’! This draws difference and communality together and also provides some necessary ‘light relief’.

4. You might want to try these exercises with the group if it feels safe enough:

• Invite members to pair up and to try ‘being in the moment’ as a Buddhist might describe recognition, by silent gazing between them, ‘being with the true other as egos dispel’. 
• Bring up an image of two unidentifiable bodies of children from conflicting groups killed together in an accident: the parents are faced with not knowing which is their child, so they must mourn and love both.

WORKSHOP VIDEO PART 2: No More Killing, No More Dying

In Video Part 2 Itamar reflects on his experience as a killer, and specifically of being seen through a Palestinian child’s eyes as the “ultimate evil”. We follow Itamar’s internal process as he struggles with his image of being a perpetrator. Meanwhile Bassam is undergoing an experience with his prison guard where he learns that “through talking you can change the most extreme mind”. They are both going through the process of stepping out of denial.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the emotional and cognitive Creative Process of Stepping out of Denial
• To consider the role of empathy and recognition in relinquishing denial of perpetrator and victim identities, violence and sacrifice.
• What components of dialogue are important for conflict resolution?

Concepts:

• The complexity and creativity involved in recognising the other's humanity i.e. your enemy in yourself, and yourself in your enemy.

Issues to Explore:

• Itamar came to see himself as a killer when watching that film rather than when he actually killed. What helped Itamar step out of dissociation and denial?
• How did dissociation help Bassam in prison? Can you think of examples of your own dissociation? How might we recognise individual or group dissociation or denial?
• The dialogue with Shimon (Bassam’s prison guard) did not get Bassam released from prison, so what did Bassam gain from it?
• What was Shimon’s part in initiating the dialogue? What transformation did Bassam and Shimon undergo through their dialogue?
• Working with the farmer from Gaza changed Itamar’s attitudes about serving in the reserves in the occupied territories. What brought about this change in Itamar?
• Would you like to describe a situation where your own belief system changed? Can you describe the process? Did it put you in danger – in what way and how did you protect yourself?

Facilitating the Workshop:

1. How would you use the diagram The Ethical Mindset to help the group understand the events in Video Part 2?
2. Consider how you might help the group recognise dissociation or stress after traumatic events: invite members to share their own experiences of dissociation.

   Examples might include wandering attention, absence of person or mind, unconscious facetious comments, orno memory of the event.

3. Can you devise an exercise in the group, perhaps role play, which involves dialogue as seeking ‘the third’ as an alternative way out of the conflict?

   Help the group think how people can move into dialogue; practice empathic listening, feeling and feedback with the group.

4. Considerthe complexities of bringing past and present together into a coherent understanding following traumatic experiences. Recognise that dissociationor ‘denial’ might look like a ‘safe space’ where pain can be avoided, but that resorting to this defence actually perpetuates trauma and its destructive consequences.

   Offer the perspective that accepting the pain can acknowledge and integrate trauma while denial perpetuates it.

5. Help group members identify what support they would seek if stepping out of previous denial of an unethical set of beliefs in their community were to invoke anger or violence.