A Psychoanalytic and Historical Account of the Zionist Psyche

Author: Irem Kepkep

Abstract:

This paper investigates how Zionist political commitment remains affectively compelling and morally resilient despite sustained exposure to Palestinian dispossession and mass violence. Rather than approaching Zionism only as a geopolitical strategy or settler-colonial formation, the analysis foregrounds its psychic and moral economy: the ways in which historical trauma, redemptive imaginaries, and defensive attachments shape political judgment. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and critical political thought, the paper conceptualizes the “Zionist psyche” as a historically constituted mode of political self-understanding. It argues that unresolved legacies of Jewish persecution are mobilized to stabilize national identity while simultaneously narrowing the space for moral responsiveness. Within this configuration, Palestinian presence becomes intelligible primarily through threat, and violence is repeatedly authorized as a means of preserving coherence, sovereignty, and historical meaning. By situating this dynamic alongside settler-colonial analysis, the paper shows how psychoanalysis clarifies the affective and justificatory conditions that allow domination to persist even when its consequences are widely visible. The contribution lies in explaining not how violence is produced, but how it is continuously lived with, defended, and reaffirmed.

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