I saw a rae_review video about a woman who murdered her husband and his new wife, and, somewhat surprisingly, something she said resonated with me.
She was speaking about betrayal trauma (and her belief that the murder occurred because the murderer had been used, then gaslit, and was let down by the professionals she sought assistance from).
Her description of betrayal trauma:
This isn't heartbreak. This is a profound psychological injury that happens when someone you deeply trust or depend on for emotional or physical survival violates your trust. It is deeply dysregulating and traumatising because it really shatters your reality and it stops your ability to trust. This is what can happen if you discover that the institutions and people you thought you can trust, you can't. And what the untreated psychological torment and betrayal trauma can do to somebody if their pain isn't witnessed. Because if the pain doesn't have anywhere to go it goes inward and starts to metastasise and eats away at everything good in you.
And some of that seemed to kind of describe what Jews experienced on and after October 7th. Lots of betrayal, lots of gaslighting, a feeling that society has been lying to us about everything it is and everything it believes in, friends have lied about who they are. All the pain of seeing our people massacred, losing friends and family members, and then the repeated pains of all those betrayals has not really been witnessed (because we keep getting gaslit).
Some descriptions of betrayal trauma specify that the harm to cause betrayal trauma would come from significant betrayal by someone close to you, that you rely on, and obviously what I'm describing isn't quite as intimate. But it also describes institutional betrayal: When organizations, workplaces, or religious institutions cover up harm or fail to protect members. And, in a lot of ways, the betrayal is coming from an... entity?... we rely on to survive. If society turns against us, or doesn't adequately protect us, our safety and our lives can be at stake. And hasn't that been the most shocking thing? Even more so than friends. Individual people proving themselves to be easily influenced or secretly prejudiced is disappointing, sometimes bitterly so, but we assume that the organisations we rely on and trust are more robust and less likely to fail so spectacularly. Seeing how organisations that are trusted, even beloved by people, are not only letting Jews down but are actively causing harm? Extreme mindfuck.
And the amount of betrayal is what really sets it apart. This one issue (how they reacted (or didn't) to a massacre, then how they reacted (or didn't) to attacks on Jews in the diaspora. Seeing these horrific things happen to our people, and the world either ignoring it or celebrating it or denying it or justifying it. Everything we thought we knew about people was rocked. Almost everybody let us down. Friends, social groups, but also communities we belonged to or felt a part of, organisations and political parties we supported (so the betrayal felt more personal), but also organisations we might not have had any personal relationship with but had assumed had some level of decency and drive to do the right thing by everyone that could be relied on.
It was bad enough in the immediate aftermath, but we've had two and a half years of repeated, incessant betrayals.
Alongside the initial betrayal, there was probably some hope (or betrayal denial, I guess) and we gave too many chances, which just meant being disappointed again and again.
'They aren't speaking because they don't know, but when they realise, they'll speak up. They're scared to upset their pro-Palestine friends if they seem to be supporting Israel which is why they won't speak up for Israeli Jews, but they'll speak up for diaspora Jews getting hurt if it comes to it. Okay, they didn't speak up for those diaspora Jews being attacked but maybe they don't know about it and it's in a different country. They didn't speak up for those Jews being pogrommed but I'm sure if anything happens here they'll speak up...' On neighbourhood apps or groups, the people who would reliably step in if someone posted any prejudiced comments against other groups were nowhere to be seen when derogatory and hateful comments were made about Jews. Workplaces that celebrate various religious and cultural events chose to ignore Jewish events. All those 'punch a nazi' people suddenly turning a blind eye when the people throwing up nazi salutes and frothing about how they want to kill Jews are wearing keffiyehs.
Things continued to escalate both in severity and in spread. It's like wildfire, and all the friends, communities, organisations, we thought would put it out have just stood by and watched, fanned the flames, or even thrown on accelerant. We were even told, for a long time, by a lot of people, that there is no fire. We're making it up. Even as we watched it consuming Jewish establishments and Jewish lives.
So is it any wonder if we see a keffiyeh or Palestine flag or watermelon emoji and feel kind of uncomfortable, or even repulsed? Those things have become so deeply associated with all those many betrayals that it's hard not to associate them with hatefulness, gaslighting, lies, spite, abandonment, distrust...