Fear versus Faith

Can old wounds be met with trust instead of force, opening a way toward coexistence and lasting peace?

BY DR. ICHAK ADIZES

Many destructive conflicts stem from fear. In personal life, many decisions about career, partnerships, where to live, or even what to eat are based on fear.

In marriage, fear can become a major source of destructive conflict. I already discussed in previous articles how much conflict stems from fears that we are not loved, that expressions of love are self-serving or manipulative, or that they are offered only to get something in return.

In international relations, much foreign policy and many security decisions are also based on fear.

Take the Middle East, for instance. The Jewish people are a traumatized people. Two thousand years of persecution, inquisitions, pogroms, and finally the Holocaust left deep scars. I do not know a single Jewish family that has not suffered casualties from antisemitism. In my own family, over 100 relatives—grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins—were murdered in the Holocaust, and two relatives were killed in the Arab-Israeli wars.

Traumatized people live in fear. If one analyzes many Israeli security and foreign policy decisions, fear is often a major driving force behind them.

People who fear tend to use power to solve problems. And the greater the fear, the more concentrated and intense the use of power becomes.

But Palestinians also live in fear. Many fear that Israel will not stop with the territory proposed for a Jewish state under the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan, that Palestinians will continue losing homes and land, that even if peace comes, Israeli Jews will dominate the economy, and that Palestinians will permanently remain economically and politically subordinate.

Fear. Fear. Fear.

And fear invites the use of power.

The problem with power is that it rarely solves anything permanently. It may temporarily suppress a problem, but over the long run, the more power you use, the stronger the reaction against it.
 

People who fear tend to 
use power to solve problems. 
And the greater the fear, 
the more concentrated and
intense the use of power becomes.

How do we move from fear-based decision-making to faith-based decision-making? That is the real question.

And by faith I do not necessarily mean religious faith. I mean faith that human beings can find ways to live together constructively.

This probably requires some form of therapy—not only at the individual level, but at the social level.

For years I have been telling leaders in Israel that a strategy based solely on defeating Hamas militarily will not work in the long run. History shows how difficult it is to permanently defeat a people driven by national aspiration.

The Serbs fought the Ottoman Empire for centuries from the mountains. The United States left Vietnam. The Soviet Union and later the United States both left Afghanistan after prolonged wars.

Some friends in Israel tell me: “But the United States defeated Germany and Japan in World War II.”

Is that all? Or did something else happen afterward that mattered even more?

After the war, Germany and Japan were rebuilt economically and socially. The Marshall Plan greatly helped rebuild Germany. Japan was reconstructed and reintegrated into the global economy.

If Israel wants long-term peace, perhaps the strategy should focus not only on military security, but also on helping rebuild a viable Palestinian society and economy.

Look at Vietnam today. After a terrible war, Americans are welcomed there. Why? Because eventually the relationship moved beyond power alone.

The challenge is whether human beings can make decisions based not only on fear, but also on faith—faith that coexistence is possible, and that solutions can be found that are not win-lose but win-win.