Following the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, the fear of terrorism has triggered America’s trauma from 9/11. Halfway around the world, Israel experiences a wave of Palestinian-executed stabbings of Jewish citizens, the “knife intifada.” The attacks trigger memories of the previous century of violence.
The traumas of our past affect our perception of current threats. Americans remember two distinct traumas: 9/11 and Afghanistan. On the right, 9/11 is the symbol for aggressive counterterrorism and justifies the assumption that all Muslims are dangerous.
On the left, Afghanistan is the symbol for a long and unsuccessful war in which aggressive counterterrorism did not work, a justification for minimal intervention. Meanwhile, Israeli Jews remember the Holocaust in their perception of the “knife intifada,” and the existential threat it poses leads to the emphasis on security and quick, short-term solutions.
Israel has fought for its right to exist since it declared existence in the ’40s. This continual fight with the surrounding Arab countries and Palestinian people who deny Israel’s right to exist leads Israelis to perceive terrorist attacks of any scale as an imminent threat. And because the international community criticizes Israeli policy, Israelis go at it alone, focusing on enactable short-term security solutions: gun permit changes, a security fence, racial profiling, and drones.
Daniel Kovler, a reserve Israel Defense Force soldier, said that the mandatory stint in the IDF and the constant threat to existence leads Israelis to elect prime ministers who are ex-commanders or chief of staff in the military. Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, served in the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit.
In the last election, the Labor Party, a more left-leaning party, was ahead in polls until Netanyahu posted a 28-second video on Facebook.
“The right-wing government is in danger,” he said. “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are bussing them out. Get out to vote, bring your friends and family, vote Likud in order to close the gap between us and Labor.”
Netanyahu’s strategy worked. He equated the “left” with what Hebrew University Professor of Political Science Reuven Hazan calls “doves,” people who argue for more communication with Palestinians and greater commitment to peace processes. Netanyahu is a “hawk,” promoting a strong defense front and counting on the Israelis’ collective existential fear to show that the “doves” will not protect them. In times of heightened security and intifada, the word “Arab” triggers voters to run to their strongest leader. Security becomes Israel’s only politics, dividing people into hawks and doves and neglecting social and economic issues.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump, a hawk as well, echoed Netanyahu’s “Arabs” when he insisted that we ban the entry of all Muslims. This suggestion invokes our terrorist trauma and dangerously conflates “us” and “ISIS and hostile Arab countries” with “us” and “Muslims.” His comment is a reaction to President Barack Obama, a dove, and his reluctance to call the California attack a terrorist attack, which would be racial profiling and would label the radicalized Muslim couple “them” even though they were average Americans before.
Real violence leads American citizens to lose their faith a dovish government. In response, people call for a hawkish leader who demonstrates greater strength and become hawks themselves by turning to private ownership of guns. They hope that guns will succeed where the White House and its counterterrorism strategy seems to fail.
The psychology of terrorism, in the U.S. or in Israel, relives trauma and divides people into “us” and “the enemy,” “hawks” and “doves.” Terrorism turns people against each other and people turn to the “hawks” for protection. Israelis perceive terrorism much more imminently because their existence is not secure like that of Americans’. They enact short-term security solutions out of necessity and push economic and social issues to the back burner.