A Look at the Conflict as it Unfolds in the Middle East

A Proud Palestinian Teta Defending her Land

At the top of my mind, as it is for so many of you, is the renewed bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. I can’t help but see weapons for one side, and band-aids for the other. The question that is worth asking amid this conflict is how can the United States ever be trusted on human rights and peace building when it is giving more money for bombs than for cease-fire solutions? 

As I watch the news and the see the double standards, I can’t help but relive the life of that young girl running along a dusty dirt road in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm who thought that the quicker she moved the less of a target she would be. All the sudden I am also that young girl of mass exodus living in a sanctioned country without enough to survive, whose family fled to the sheltering mountains to escape mass murder from Saddam Hussein’s regime. My dormant PTSD symptoms are immediately triggered, and I am shaken to my core in a fight-or-flight survival stance, that I thought I had exiled to my mental recesses. That trauma was derived from growing up in war-torn Iraqi Kurdistan and experiencing frequent nearby explosions and being surrounded by the constant fear that at any moment, your “normal” day could be turned into a hell on earth of fire and scattered body parts. 

Too bad the United States does not seem to know how to avoid military-juggernaut activities. In the past two decades, the United States has used its superiority and privilege to justify its interference in the business affairs of other countries, costing us the respect that we used to enjoy within the international community. Many foreign policy decisions that have emerged from the United States in the last two decades have been made with an “us” versus “them” mindset, which created more enemies and more hatred towards the United States and has left the world in a far more dangerous state than it was twenty years ago. 

Through the lens of “otheration,” we have vilified these countries, bombed them, dehumanized them, and ripped their families apart. 

Abandonment and sanctions create more tension and anger towards the U.S., which is contrary to what our policy makers intended. They tend to forget that humans are social contagions who crave belonging and deep social connections regardless of their place of origin. By bombing them and forcing them to leave their country, we remove them from what makes them human. 

“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” was included in the Declaration of Independence to emphasize the inalienable rights given to all humans by their creator. All systems created by the U.S. government need to protect these rights. Ideally, any policy decisions should first be in line with American values and then the long-term gains for the country should be assessed. However, in the last two decades, 'American values' has come to mean different things to different Americans, and the interpretation of these non-specific values is in part responsible for how divided we have become as a nation. As George Orwell famously said in Animal Farm, "We are all created equal. But some are more equal than others.” 

Of course, one can argue that if the same attack had occurred on the Americans soil by those who we call “terrorist,” we can justify declaring a war. However, it is not as though we have not assumed the land and territory of the indigenous people, and relegated them to the level of second-class citizens. When we acknowledge the racism, injustice and the illegal acts we have committed against other countries, then we can judge other nations for their response to violence against their internationally recognized authority. Until then, we need to support a cease fire, and humanitarian aid to both the Palestinians as well as Israelis. 

While America is filled with incredible people, one can’t deny how profoundly divided we have become. For example, we are more sensitive to and even threatened by a person with a different political point of view. We have become overly reactionary to minor disputes and encounters. As a result, we are allowing the less rational part of our brain, the hyperactive amygdala, to negate our ability to make decisions in the rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. We act without giving others an opportunity to express their opinion, and we spend very little time learning about their roots. Our go-to reactionary method of addressing a dispute is often avoidance. 

Consider the resignation letter by Josh Paul, a State Department official who quit his job this week after seeing the direction the Biden administration was going. 

He wrote: “The response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people. … I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it.” 

When I first landed in the United States as a teenager in 1996, I was fascinated to come across every color, texture, and mix of the human race all in the same country. I knew then that this rich diversity is what made the United States one of the greatest nations in the world. It is through this diversity that strength can be derived. In the U.S., people from every ethnic background are free to spread their compassion, empathy, and a taste of the greatness of their motherland to make America even stronger. 

But those at the helm don’t always agree. Soon after taking office, President Trump and his administration worked hard to diminish diversity by intentionally reducing immigration to the United States, specifically targeting people of color from countries where Islam is the predominant religion. His policies also attempted to deport Muslims who were already in the U.S., which served to reinforce a culture of white supremacy and fear. Many human rights advocates criticized these policies by calling the executive order a “Muslim ban.” In response, the Trump administration issued a statement claiming that these policies were not meant to target any religious group. Instead, they were meant to keep the United States safe by preventing religious extremists and terrorists from entering. The administration also reduced the number of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, which further confirmed that the purpose was to prevent any Muslim from entering the United States. This perpetrated the idea that all Muslims are extremists and terrorists. 

As a Muslim woman of color from a country that was on the banned nations list, I was insulted and outraged. The United States gave me a second chance at a good life after many years of war. 

It is important to remember what it takes to be a member of an immigrant minority. An individual from the group had to leave their motherland because there was “something” that made the conditions in their home intolerable. Thus, they came to America seeking a second chance to live well and seek opportunities. Yes, there were difficulties. 

Growing up in Atlanta, I was often approached by locals and religious groups who were so kind yet stunned to learn about my faith and wondered aloud how a bright young lady like me could have fallen for an “evil” religion like Islam that promoted the killing of innocent civilians. They often wondered what was wrong with me. Through all the comments, I never forgot that the United States government had brought me in and I tried hard to rise above the ignorance. 

But sometimes the physical cannot keep up with our attempts at mental strength. The people’s curiosity and wonder evoked a stress response in me where I would turn pale, my hands would shake, and my heart would pound because my faith was being belittled and attacked by those who I believed to be kind. Ultimately, I assumed they were right, and something was in fact wrong with me. These ‘kind’ people were exhibiting judgmental behavior because I was Muslim, and I kept wondering if there was something shameful or broken about me because I was a Muslim woman of color from the Middle East. 

Remembering the shame I carried post 9/11, I can relate with this powerful statement made by my favorite shame expert and psychologist, Gershen Kaufman. He said: “Contained in the experience of shame, is a piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deficient in some vital way as a human being.” And in the words of professor of family therapy Kenneth Hardy, “the soul of one’s being gets perpetually punctured.” Thus, who I was and how I felt became the byproduct of how I was perceived by the outside world, and my self-worth was defined by what I was not, rather than by what I was. I became the other, the outcast, the oppressed woman from a patriarchal society. The stain and the strain of being defined by outside prejudice could not be stopped from penetrating the core sense of who I was. 

Humans have always been the source of trauma for other humans. As stated earlier, our stress responses and gene expressions develop in relation to our environment and how we are perceived by others. This means we cannot and will not heal the wounds of people of color and create a safe America for them by targeting their origins. As philosopher J. Krishnamurti so eloquently said, “Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.” War, tension, separation of children from parents, bans, and economic sanctions only create more trauma and environmental destruction in the world. 

Many Americans fail to realize that the war they approved of in Iraq is the very same war that resulted in the displacement of thousands of refugees who were forced to seek refuge in the United States, bringing their unprocessed trauma with them. Many Americans believe that after arriving in the United States, refugees somehow end up living happily ever after, without realizing the level of trauma and cultural exclusion they encounter on a daily basis. Think of the little refugee girl from Iraq whose house was broken into by a group of white U.S. Marines in summer of 2003 looking for her father. She is among the lucky children who were granted asylum in the United States. Imagine her stress response to all the white males she sees in America who resemble the Marines who broke into her house and assaulted her parents. Imagine how triggering this experience could be to her body. 

When we encounter racial trauma, our brain looks for shortcuts, using the low road through the “hyperactive amygdala” to scan for danger because we feel out of place. Often, these shortcuts get us in trouble because they are not logic-based and are driven purely by emotion. They make us more vulnerable to stereotypes, and our emotional brain generalizes people with specific attributes based on their racial or ethnic group. Remember that as children, our first views of the world are developed through the associations our brain makes using our senses. In the early stages of brain development, developmental association is what leads to the formation of our bias towards others. 

In 1871, Charles Darwin captured his hope for humanity in his book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: “This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings.” 

According to Darwin, to thrive as a human race, we need to expand our circle of sympathy and compassion until it reaches everyone. His hope is a calling card to humanity. Until we put our differences aside and let our compassion and sympathy drive our initiatives, we will continue to build walls that separate us instead of bringing us closer together.