For example, Marcus Klingberg [an Israeli scientist who crossed the lines and spied for Russia]. The story of treason can also be one of heroism. I think Klingberg claimed he never received anything in return, that he only wanted to reward the Russians for having saved the world from Nazism. Vanunu said something similar at one point. And what are the layers that lie below?
The experience of oneself as victim — and when I experience myself as a victim, I need to help the weak, because the weak are actually me. Those are exactly the psychological components we try to discover. Klingberg, who wanted to help the Russians and to prevent World War III, or [Edward] Snowden, who wanted to save the public and to leak secret information about the surveillance plans of the NSA [National Security Agency], are the ideological spies who construct in their consciousness the narrative of freedom fighters for an ideal world.
The thing is that self-deception is always in the eye of the beholder. Whoever does things for their country that go beyond fulfilling their own needs, is considered a savior in their own eyes. Betrayal for them is a heroic deed, self-sacrifice for the common good.
But the hero of one side is the traitor of the other side. Another report, issued by the U. Defense Department, collected and analyzed information about traitors. Some of them underwent psychological tests and in-depth interviews.
The report points to two personality patterns among traitors: a dominant, manipulative personality, and a passive, dependent personality.
What both patterns have in common is that they are characterized by egocentrism, by a heightened preoccupation with themselves and indifference to the difficulties of others. In addition, the biographical background of a large number of the traitors includes an experience of a significant conflict with a father figure.
Take, for example, Ashraf Marwan [an Egyptian who worked for the Mossad] , who had a dependent, passive personality. Nasser also instructed his confidants to keep an eye on Marwan, to ensure that he would not embarrass the president and his family. After a long and complex process, it was decided to recruit him as an agent.
His Israeli handlers understood that the way to utilize him was to fulfill his need for an appreciative and laudatory father figure, which Nasser refused to be. His need for such a person, who would esteem and accept him, led to the then-head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, being involved in handling him. What about a dominant, manipulative personality? Biographers of Kim Philby, the British agent who spied for the Soviets, described the personality of an arch-megalomaniac — selfish, charismatic and conscienceless.
He betrayed his sources, his own agents, informed on them to the Russians and led them to their deaths. Philby himself was married four times. He cheated on his second wife and claimed that she tried to kill him.
The psychiatrist who treated him testified that Philby subjected her to mental abuse and pushed her to suicide. She was found dead in her apartment, in circumstances that are not known to this day, but Philby was by then already in a romantic relationship with the person who would become his third wife, who was married to a close friend of his. If I live an entire life whose essence is concealment — keeping secrets from my partners, my friends, my family — why would I not also conceal things from the person responsible for me in the organization?
Lie to him? What will hold me back? What will hold you back is the context of the way you are treated. Basic relations of trust with the system. Without such relations, there is no loyalty. If I suspect that the system is not telling me the truth, that can generate frustration and resistance, even a counterreaction.
That is genuinely dangerous. Relations in which we feel that we are being used, in which there is no mutuality, are dangerous. When hitches like that arise they need to be corrected immediately, not at the level of the employee but at the level of the system. In other words, the way the organization is managed will determine in large measure whether there will be traitors in it. The management of employees in the organization.
Snowden, for example, encountered difficulties when he was working for the CIA. He was in distress, he needed help, someone at his side. Did anyone check to see how far his superiors pressed him? After all, his administrator or team head is also a person who lies and manipulates.
Not really. The filtering and the assessment tests are intended to check that, too — whether I possess manipulative ability, but am not a manipulative person. I do what I need to do within the job framework, but I am not manipulative when I come home and I am not manipulative toward my friends.
The manipulation is a tool; it is not who I am. A correlation exists between people who are prone to betrayal and people who will be attracted to work in an intelligence organization. The espionage world is a place of deceptive mirrors, reflections amid reflections, and when the agent has multiple identities and covers, he is liable to become confused.
His anchor is judgment of reality. In the end, the traitor will be the person who fails the test of reality and believes that he is someone he is not. The healthy person working in intelligence will be the one who succeeds in executing the transitions between different identities and remaining the same person.
Do you think that the degree of trust and commitment a person feels toward the state can affect his capacity to betray it? Is that temptation heightened in periods of crisis? Can anger or despair facilitate that choice? Think, for example, of Breaking the Silence [the anti-occupation organization of former soldiers who speak publicly about their experiences in the territories] as an example that of motivation based on anger and frustration, in circumstances of a lack of transparency of the military and political leadership.
Is it traitorous? Perhaps we can talk a little about the social function of the traitor. Who, then, is a traitor? Treason is actually the shattering of a social taboo of commitment and mutual loyalty, which are a condition for belonging to a group, a community or an organization.
Tali Fahima, or for that matter people who abandon their faith, are not harming state security and obviously are not violating a legal commitment to maintain secrecy. They defy social norms. They do not meet the expectations of their group of affiliation, and as such they undermine the resilience of social consent.
If 30 percent of the community are traitors, then no one is a traitor. The more general the definition, the farther that country is from the values of democracy.
The Israeli Penal Code contains about clauses, some of them in the nature of definitions. In other words, there are only , and perhaps even fewer, illegal types of behavior. Everything else is permitted. This is a democracy that minimizes criminal prohibitions. Ayelett Shani Sep. Write a character sketch of someone who is going to turn against a friend, a colleague, an employer, a superior officer.
Photo by Jospeh Bremson Creative Commons. Join over , readers who are saying YES to practice. Building an Author Website. Instagram Facebook Twitter Pinterest. This guest post is by Misha Burnett. He blogs about writing and publishing on his blog mishaburnett. You can also follow him on Twitter mishaburnett. Guest Blogger. This article is by a guest blogger. Would you like to write for The Write Practice? Check out our guest post guidelines.
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