Kadry Hefny: A psychology of hope
From prison to Madrid and beyond
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"I remember seeing the image of Sadat coming down from the plane and giving his address to the Knesset... and I saw the crowds that received Sadat -- normal people on the Israeli street. At that moment I felt that there was a possibility of attack by peace."
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The 11 September 2001 will remain in the minds of Americans in the way 5 June 1967 has Egyptians' -- staggering, life altering, deplorable. Both cases forever scar the national psyche, internalising the stigma in each case of a terrorising demon unleashed by some lesser god.
The defeat of Egypt at the hands of Israel in a war that lasted a mere, mortifying, six days is one the psychological manifestations of which -- I am regularly told -- can never be understood by the country's younger generation. Perhaps, one gentleman suggests, not even by those whose prime coincided with that of former President Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
Dr Kadry Hefny was 28 during that heady June day. The radio, days before, had announced news of the Egyptian army's unyielding and unmatched resilience. The troops were moving forward with an unobstructed momentum. Victory, the likes of Hefny came to believe, had already been secured. The possibility of defeat did not even occur.
"I graduated in 1959 from Ain Shams University's department of psychology," Hefny backtracks, laying the pathway to explain the full impact of 1967 on his life and subsequent choices. "I could see that there were problems in society and that people were struggling, and I felt it myself given that I came from a poorer family. So social psychology appealed."
After graduating top of his class doors began to open and offers to be made. Hefny opted for a position at the Ministry of Industry. His term, he adds off-handedly, was cut short.
"After a number of months I left psychology," he says.
I mentally awaited the arrival of a more lucrative offer.
"I was 21 at the time. I left the field because I was detained. My crime, of course, was communism."
Within walls which saw little light, and where time was of little consequence, Hefny spent pivotal years.
"From the age of 21 to 24/25, those are critical years in terms of growth and development," he says. "I finished college young, was imprisoned young, and experienced torture young," he says. "Group torture," he elaborates. "And solitary confinement."
It was his academic background, he believes, that saved him from the kinds of madness known to engulf those in confinement.
"I busied myself with trying to understand what was happening in this other world. Trying to understand the behaviour of the guards, my fellow prisoners, the new daily habits that I watched develop as time went on and stress increased."
Hefny sits in the living room of his home. He is calm, his voice pleasant. His face is that of a man who appears to have let go of bitterness and regret.
"When I was in it, of course, it was horrible, suffocating," he recalls, a smile sneaking into the corners of his mouth. "But looking back, I now see it as a nice piece of my history -- a fruitful experience."
Re-entering society took significantly more effort than the decision to sideline his political involvements.
"I returned to my position at the ministry," he says. "My political ties and involvement ended before the dissolving of the Communist Party. Prison changes you in ways you cannot fully understand before the experience. In my case I decided to move on with my life, in a traditional sense. I started focussing on my needs -- building a life in this society."
And then came the catastrophe of June 1967.
"I was, like most of my generation, self- centred. Or shall we say, very sure of myself, feeling I knew everything, understood everything. Believing I was informed about global politics."
For the first time in the conversation Hefny laughs out loud. When he stops he takes some time -- a pause.
"I discovered in June 1967," he resumes, in perfectly articulated classical Arabic, "that in reality I knew nothing. All my expectations were shattered, and I discovered that there was something very important I didn't know. My generation was much more concerned with things like the development of the Egyptian people -- we gave little attention to Israel. The result," he articulates, "was that we lost our bearings."
"My friends and I had many discussions about what we should do," he says.
Disillusioned and perplexed by the world, they chose divergent paths. Propelled by his academic interests and preoccupation with the human mind, Hefny's post-defeat focus became the "enemy" itself.
"I decided to try to understand Israel, to understand who these people who defeated us are," he explains. "I turned to my professor and mentor Sayed Khairy, and told him I wanted to pursue a master's degree on the Israeli psychology."
He pauses.
"He refused," he continues, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head. "He asked me how I could talk about Israel scientifically. He pointed out that what I would produce would end up being an emotional essay saying that Israelis are bad, evil, Jews, and that they harmed us. Which isn't science, and is unacceptable."
They struck a deal. Hefny would pursue another second degree, and only upon passing with distinction would Khairy endorse his next, on the psychological make-up of the Israeli -- specifically the Ashkenazi.
"He kept his promise, but warned me that I would not pass if I produced a subjective piece of work, nor a political one . It proved problematic," he says. "How was I to study the Israeli personality during a time of boycott. Under the circumstances I turned to methods seldom used -- what they call the reconstruction method, meta-analysis, which means taking a large number of studies (involving field-research), taking their results, and reconstructing them together."
The work involved the reconstruction of over 800 studies, conducted over 25 years.
He laughs again.
"I thought I would discover something amazing," he smiles. "Groundbreaking things about Israelis and what differentiated them from us. Instead, I discovered after all this effort that the Israeli Ashkenazi were normal characters psychologically. Like us," he adds. "Some had weak personalities, some strong personalities, some geniuses, some with ethics, some without. Their children were like our children, their old people like our old people. From a psychological point of view they were exactly the same."
The findings punctured Hefny's energy.
"I brought this up when defending my thesis but then, later, when I thought about it more, I realised that the result, for me anyway, was an important finding."
"To me this was the alternative view to Zionist racism," he says, "which say they are superior. In reality, they are a people no different from others around the world. But while this was an important discovery, it created a problem for me, for if they were like us, then why did they attack us?"
"I finished the thesis in 1973, and as I was waiting for its defence in January 1974, the war of 1973 broke out."
Hefny slows down.
"If you call university the first shaping phase of my life, my detention the second, and the war of 1967 the third, then this was the fourth," he offers. "After the war of 1973, the region and the world really changed. From 1974 until 1980 things were brewing. What would come next ? The strife does not end," he says, detaching himself, commentating his way through the time. "Israel continued to claim part of Sinai after the end of the war. And the world debates -- what's the solution?"
"In my mind I asked myself what was right. Do we fight again? If we don't fight, does that mean we're giving in? Can this end? And an idea began to crystallise..."
"Attack by peace," he says slowly.
"Peaceful attack," he repeats.
"I asked myself if this could be the tool to liberation. I questioned what it is that drives people to respond to force with force. And as well, I asked if force means only war, or is there also a force of peace?"
It was at this point that Hefny also became aware of the intricacies of Israeli social fabric.
"I had been living in the media buzz which spoke only about Israel and the Israeli people. Nobody mentioned the 102 nationalities residing in Israel. Could all these hold the same political views? And I discovered something else inside Israel, something I had not taken into consideration at all -- that is the Arabs of 1948. And I discovered that they aren't 20 or 100, but constitute a sixth of the population of Israel."
His ideas were published under the title Peaceful Attack, in which Hefny argues that there are allies in the other camp.
"If you will not see them, or speak to them, at least find out about them," he wrote. "We are not asking you to create them. They already exist."
And then former Egyptian President Anwar El- Sadat made his trip to Jerusalem.
"I remember seeing the image of Sadat coming down from the plane and giving his address to the Knesset, and I saw Begin respond pleasantly. And I also saw the crowds that received Sadat -- normal people on the Israeli street. At that moment I felt that there was a possibility of attack by peace, without giving in."
Camp David began shortly thereafter, negotiations involving the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Sinai on 25 April.
"They did in fact withdraw from Sinai but held on to Taba. Egypt turned to the international judicial system, and took back Taba. The lesson was clear in my mind at the time: we liberated 15kms of Sinai with arms, and we liberated the rest of Sinai through negotiations. Our stance towards the situation with Israel has to be one of peaceful attack."
Hefny began to write and lecture. His youthful questioning, naïveté perhaps, solidified, and he developed an international reputation.
In a column, "Jewish Right, Arab Left", (1997) in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's signing of the Hebron withdrawal accord that it signalled a fundamental split on the Jewish right in Israel.
"The only debate left in Israel is not whether there will be a Palestinian state on the West Bank, but what size it will be: A size 15 wide, a size 10 narrow, or a size 7 small?" he wrote. "The answer to that question will depend, in part, on whether the split on the Jewish right will be mirrored now by a split on the Arab left."
"I just participated in a roundtable discussion with 50 Moroccan professors at King Hassan II University in Casablanca," he continued. "And I heard attacks on Israel that were so bitter I finally said to them: 'I feel as if I've entered a time warp and woken up at an Arab League meeting in 1960.' For these Moroccan intellectuals, Hebron didn't exist, Oslo didn't exist, Yasser Arafat was misguided. They spoke from the heart about the 'rape of Arab land' that the Jewish state represented. Kadry Hefny, an Egyptian expert on Israel, summed up their mindset, saying: 'The cultural domain is the last bastion of normalisation. Let us [intellectuals] be careful. If boycotting Israel would hurt it, let's maintain that strategy.'"
Hefny offers the world a more moderate, alternative even, perspective.
"Political psychology," Hefny says, "is not about analysing political leaders. It's the analysis of the dimensions of the political phenomena, and of analysing how children are raised -- which is critical given that they are the future, and society is shaped through them."
At the Madrid talks with Israel in 1991 Hefny was chosen as a member of the Egyptian delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.
"I was the only psychologist in the hall," he recalls. "The US ambassador kept asking me how I saw things from a psychological perspective," he laughs.
"I was asked to join partly because of my area of expertise, and because Amr Moussa and President Mubarak felt that it would add a different dimension. As a psychologist I observe things others may not."
For example -- all the delegations were headed by the respective country's foreign minister except the Israeli delegation which was headed by the prime minister.
"Why? Because they attended under pressure from Bush senior," Hefny explains. "If you're pressured to do something, you go to a lesser level in some way -- instead, for example, of sending your president you would send your vice president."
Body language too, was telling.
"The Israelis were closed on themselves. They weren't interested in interacting with the Arabs. Communication was stifled."
Hefny is reluctant to say more. Instead, he offers a different subject.
"In terms of politics and psychology there are two things we are affected by -- racism and regression. So my areas of concern are racism, fundamentalism, and the turn towards extremism."
As a nation, he concludes, Egypt is becoming more closed-minded.
"The Egyptian street is moving more and more towards a lack of tolerance for the different. The verbal aggression in the street, it's a reflection of a lack of acceptance of those whose attire, whose body language is different. This is a new phenomena in Egyptian culture. In the late 1930s Ismail Ahmed published a piece called 'Why am I an Atheist' -- something no one would dare do now. The response, looking back, was admirable. One of Al-Azhar Sheikhs replied with an article entitled 'Why am I a Muslim?' It dealt with Ahmed's points with dignity and respect."
It was a national climate that prevailed into the 1940s, even during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"What changed on the Egyptian street? I did a study which highlighted three factors fuelling this transformation: the revolution, the defeat and oil."
The July revolution's impact on civil society came through its adoption of "uni-opinion". The defeat of 1967 fast loosened that cohesiveness, questions arose and new ideas began to form. One of them, which crystallised fast, was premised on the belief that defeat was the price of straying from religion.
"The solution was a return to piety," Hefny says. "But not in the form of the 1930s because now there was a third factor, oil. As it happened oil was discovered in more conservative countries, in Saudi Arabia. When Abdel-Nasser persecuted the Muslim Brotherhood, and deported some of them to Saudi Arabia, Egyptian employees who went to work in Saudi learned from them, and made their fortunes there. The Wahabi tradition merged with the religious tendencies of the Egyptian people and created what we have today."
"Yet despite the chaos, despite the disasters happening around the Arab world, the prospects for change are strong."
"On a national level I have hope. I constantly hear people debate the apathy in the country, that 'we just talk but do nothing'. But is talk not action? Absolutely. And I say that because I lived at a time when there was no talk, when you could not talk."
"Today, when people hold a demonstration, and hoist signs which have pictures of people who have been tortured and killed in Egypt, and the press then carry those pictures and the story, is that talk not action? When a demonstration for the Palestinian cause takes to the streets, and the police arrest people, is that not action? Let me tell you something, all the revolutionary movements of the world, that changed the lives and thoughts of people, they all began with words, with people talking. When a person verbally denounces the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, is that nonsense?"
There is momentary silence. Hefny shifts in his chair and takes a long breathe. The conversation has been long.
"As a psychologist," he resumes slowly, "I tell you, that concern begins when you ask that question and the response is 'it's none of my business'."
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