A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Paradox of Prejudice: Understanding us Policy toward Israel and the Palestinians*

This essay is dedicated to my colleague and friend, George Awad. We found a special camaraderie in our mutual endeavors to understand the formation of peoples' national identities in the context of the legacies of colonialism. George and I converged in our thinking about the difference between the aggressive attitudes and unconscious dynamics of prejudice located within an oppressor group and those found in a defensive reactive form as they are experienced and enacted by individuals within oppressed groups. There is much overlap in George's analysis of the dynamics of prejudice between Israelis and Palestinians and my analysis of the same phenomenon as it has been reflected in the history of US-Latin American relations of domination and subordination. I thank George for stimulating my interest in the history of US attitudes and policies toward Palestine, which, from my perspective, have played a major role in the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the unremitting cycles of violence in the Middle East. I continue to miss George's wonderfully self-reflective capacities, his candid ability to examine the sources and function of his as well as others' prejudice, his disarming humor and his extraordinary warmth and love of life.

The ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians can be understood as the result of two peoples whose respective traumatic pasts have impeded their mutual capacity to collaborate in the peaceful and just resolution of conflict between them. While this perspective helps to explain an important psychologycal