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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
I learned a lot about the mechanics of the psychology of revenge. And one important thing that fuels revenge is humiliation. In an Arab society, pride and honor are very important. Palestinians feel humiliated, whether it's an individual Palestinian being stopped at a roadblock or the fact that their entire Third World society lives next to this wealthy, Westernized society. The Palestinians are thinking, "Why are we deprived?" So there's this national humiliation and individual humiliation that definitely fuels the search for revenge on the Palestinian side.
For the Israelis, their state was built on the ashes of the Holocaust, which was for them the ultimate experience of victimhood. There's this revulsion at being a victim. There's a cycle called "predator and prey" where people feel like, in order to avoid becoming a prey, they have to become a predator. In Hebrew, the word for revenge is "nekamah," which is linked to the verb "kum," which means rising. So nekamah is about being a prey and becoming a predator, rising up. Israelis are obsessed with security and not being suckers. So they feel like whenever they're attacked, they have to attack back. Whether or not it benefits them strategically or militarily, it answers the public need to lash back.
So on one side you have humiliated Palestinians who feel like they need to get revenge, and Israelis who can't stand the idea of absorbing a blow without returning a blow. For their own reasons, they feel like they have to strike back.
Then you have these two leaders, Arafat and Sharon, who are playing out this grudge match from 1982 in Beirut in a kind of death clench. They're absolutely trying to rewrite the history of the Lebanon War by reliving it today. Ramallah is on its way to looking like Beirut.
In the end, when you revealed your identity to Omar in court, your mother stood up and said, "If our family forgives Omar, Israel should." And after all your searching for revenge, you opted for forgiveness, too.
No! Forgiveness was never an option. I had too much to prove. I had some points to make and I knew that I wasn't going to make them through forgiveness. One of them was about the nature of evil in the world. Is it possible to transform evil? Everybody's always preaching forgive, forgive, forgive. And sometimes you can't forgive. So let's just be honest about what we're feeling. Sometimes we want to get even. I'm not advocating that you get out a hatchet and whack somebody. In America, revenge is a darkness in ourselves that we deny. I would tell people that I was writing this book and there would be this pinch between their eyebrows, they would take a step backward; the word itself is threatening.
What I was trying to say is, don't deny it, build something with it. The need to get even is universal, but it doesn't have to mean piling one misdeed on another. You can satisfy the urge to get even by educating the person who wronged you and helping to end the cycle of revenge rather than continue, which is what I hope I accomplished with Omar. I got down into the muck of revenge as a reporter, and also as a daughter, and I came back up with a message of hope.
Do you think that revenge is justice?
For some people they're synonyms. Really, I think they exist on a continuum. Most people see them as opposites -- revenge is personal and justice is procedural. Revenge is subjective and justice is objective. But one shades into the next. If you can imagine a rainbow: Justice shades into punishment and that shades into retribution. And you have reprisals and counterstrikes and getting back and getting even and then you're into revenge and then vengeance and vendettas ... and then you're in Sicily.
A lot of times it's just language. Right after Sept. 11, Bush started talking about revenge. Then one of his aides said, "No, it's justice." Even in death penalty cases, the families of the victims will say, "We want justice, not revenge." It's semantic.
I asked the Israeli military chief of staff, "What's the difference between revenge and retaliation?" And one of his generals piped in and said, "It depends. When we do it, it's retaliation. When they do it, it's revenge."
Do you feel better now?
I do. I never knew where I would end up. I was hoping that I didn't end up being self-destructive because in all the revenge stories we read and the morality plays, revenge often ends up with the avenger dead or hurt. So I was trying to find a new ending to the story.
What was it about your revenge that didn't make the Khatibs continue the cycle?
I found redemptive revenge. I performed this impossibly optimistic act that left me vulnerable. On the one hand, they saw what they had done wrong, and on the other hand, they felt sort of grateful toward me. Even though they know that I got revenge on them, they sort of understand why and accept it. I got the acknowledgment that I was looking for -- that my father is a human being and what Omar did was wrong.
Were they surprised when they found out who you were and that you were Jewish?
Completely. Even though it's obvious. Anyone in America or New York would know I was Jewish. You don't get more Jewish looking than me. No, they had wished me merry Christmas and happy Easter. They assumed that because I was a member of the foreign press, I was Christian. And they never imagined that I was the victim's daughter. But they did say that they thought I might be a CIA operative or some kind of government agent.
But you didn't see a flicker of anger when they discovered your identity?
They were so shocked by who I was and what I had done. They were just crying and stunned. The Jewish part was the least of it. I was the daughter of the man that their brother tried to kill.
