ABSTRACT
One of the principal questions that Stanley Cohen posed during the years he lived and worked in Israel was this: Why do Israeli liberals not try to do more to change the political situation? In 1988, Stan delivered a lecture entitled ‘The Psychology and Politics of Denial: The Case of Israeli liberals’, to a group of Israeli and Palestinian psychologists and social workers, active in the cause of peace. He spoke about:
the educated, enlightened, western-oriented sectors of the middle class; those supposedly receptive to messages of peace and co-existence; those who are first to condemn racism and human rights violations in South Africa or Chile; those who are ‘like us’ in every respect but one: their reluctance to actively engage with the political situation. They might be wringing their hands, saying how terrible things are – but not much else. 2
