Betrayals And Treason

Violations Of Trust And Loyalty

Nachman Ben-yehuda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429981708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Betrayals and Treason Nachman Ben-Yehuda identifies the universal structure of betrayals as the violation of trust and loyalty and charts the different manifestations and constructions of these violations, all within numerous cases across time, place, and cultures. Betrayals do not just lie in the eyes of the beholder, completely relative. While the very idea of betrayals is a social construct, underlying it is a universal structure of violations of both trust and loyalty. Whenever this structure materializes, the label "betrayal" is invoked and applied.

Part One

1
Introduction: Violating Trust and Loyalty

In this book we shall acquaint ourselves with a dazzling spectrum of behaviors that qualify for the dubious title of "betrayal." We shall try to develop an understanding of the essence of this fascinating form of behavior and examine whether behind its many varied manifestations there is a common analytical and empirical core. Are there such acts that, when committed, increase significantly the probability of being branded as "betrayal"? As we shall see, betrayal does indeed present a universal structure.

The actual behaviors that fall into the "betrayal" category form a fascinating spectrum. Outlining this spectrum requires some vivid and powerful illustrations. Hence, I have tried to invoke as many illustrations as possible. This is a good place to start. I have deliberately chosen somewhat problematic cases to whet the appetite for what follows.

The Yehuda Gil Affair. During December 1997 and January 1998, the Israeli public was amazed to learn that a Mossad (Israeli foreign secret intelligence service) operative called Yehuda Gil, who was in charge of collecting and processing information about Syria, was suspected of fabricating sources and falsifying his reports. The general implication was that he made Syria appear much more threatening, with belligerent intentions, than it actually was. His reports made it appear as if Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad was planning another war against Israel. Gil was probably effective in helping to create a false impression in the summer of 1996 by telling Mossad that Syria was planning a surprise, but limited, ground attack in the Golan Heights, which supposedly aimed at seizing some territory. Part of his deception was based on reports of threatening movements by Syrian army units. This falsified information might have caused great harm if Israel had acted on it. Luckily that did not happen, as other checks and balances were operating.¹

In March 1999, a Tel Aviv district court convicted Gil on charges of providing false information, intending to harm the state's security, and stealing tens of thousands of dollars from Mossad. He was given a five-year prison sentence.

The Bus No. 300 Affair. On April 12, 1984, four Palestinians boarded Israel's Egged bus no. 300 in Tel Aviv. The bus was heading to Ashkelon, a southern Israeli town on the Mediterranean coast. Along the way, the Palestinians hijacked it. Later, Israeli soldiers stormed the bus and released the passengers. Two of the Palestinians were killed during the action. Two others were taken prisoner, interrogated by SHABAC (Israel's domestic secret security service), and later killed.

In what was probably the most spectacular (and nasty) cover-up operation in the history of the Israeli secret services, SHABAC initially denied that its people were ordered to, and did indeed, kill the two Palestinians. Civil servants in SHABAC lied and manipulated other civil servants (including, among other things, an attempt to falsely implicate Brigadier General Yitzhak Mordechai, later Israel's minister of defense). Eventually, this cover-up was exposed (by some SHABAC whistle-blowers).²

In both cases, the same violation of values and norms occurred. Although Gil's motives were complex (he held a personal grudge for not being promoted, a political inclination to the right, and a problematic personality), it can be easily argued that Gil violated in the most fundamental way both the trust invested in him by Mossad and his loyalty to be truthful to the organization of which he was a member for many years. In the case of bus no. 300, there can hardly be a doubt that the chiefs of SHABAC and those who participated in the cover-up betrayed the trust and loyalty invested in their positions in the most fundamental way.

The Puzzle

Social life, the very essence of sociological inquiries, is a complicated issue. On the one hand, cultures and societies are "out there," as if they constitute separate entities that we can talk about, orient ourselves toward, and study. On the other hand, these entities are "there" because we construct them to "be" there. That is, without us and our language, they have no existence. For a sociologist this problem is magnified because, clearly, the terms we have devised to describe and analyze cultures and societies are abstractions. They form what C. Wright Mills called "the sociological imagination"—a sort of consciousness based on a particular perception that is shaped by the abstractions we use, not unlike one of those stories involving Baron Munchhausen, or perhaps Alice's Wonderland. People's social life may appear quite chaotic, but with a good conceptual apparatus, its inner workings and order can be made clear.

Taking a long and critical look at cultures easily yields one basic observation. Most people in any one particular culture would agree about certain aspects of their life, such as facts, which they take for granted. Furthermore, we can get more refined agreements regarding these facts if we consult the relevant experts. However, when we demand to know the meaning of these facts—the way they are interpreted and contextualized—then we very quickly encounter a problem referred to as the social construction of reality. That is, different people and experts, as well as their reference groups, create a dazzling, fantastically complicated, and fascinating kaleidoscope of varying definitions (and constructions) of reality. If we are not careful, we can easily get lost in a myriad of symbolic moral universes of meaning with Wonderland's Cheshire cat's partially materialized smiling mouth chuckling at us from different corners.

I shall examine very closely one particular aspect of social life—the puzzle involving the violation of trust and loyalty, which is referred to as "betrayal." I shall explore the nature of trust and loyalty the different empirical manifestations of their violations, and their meanings. A major focus of this inquiry is on one particular form of violation of trust and loyalty—treason. This form of social behavior provides us with some interesting and important insights about the ways in which we construct realities and create meaning.

Some of the more interesting and instructive aspects of cultures are to be found in contrasts. Among the more enchanting contrasts are those between truth and that which is not truth, between loyalty and its betrayal, between good and evil, between right and wrong, and between trust and lack of it. Studying these contrasts brings one, first, to the issue of social and moral boundaries³ and, second, to issues of power. Moreover, by focusing on the Hegelian concept of antithesis, this book can be thought of as raising the age-old Hobbesian question, How is social order possible? This general plot is occasioned by directing attention to how, why, where, and when challenges to the status quo emerge and function as catalysts for processes of social change or stability. Concepts of deviance and conformity are endemic to such an inquiry, as well as the concept of truth.

Trust, Loyalty, and Their Violations

In exploring the nature of these concepts, we shall have an interesting opportunity to examine culturally created contrasts. We shall look at conformity loyalty and trust, as well as deviance. When we focus on treason, the relevance of these topics to processes of social change and stability to moral boundaries and the way they are formed and changed, and to the power behind these processes will become clearer. With loyalty, the important question is that of "loyalty to who" or "to what." Loyalty is something we negotiate. Trust is not. Trust, loyalty, and their violation touch some very profound and powerful feelings we all have about the moral nature of our cultures, what is right and what not, and how violators should be treated. That is, the nature of the societal reaction to deviants becomes an issue, too. Moreover, the results of examining violations of trust and loyalty can be surprising and are not always morally pleasant. The materialization of a double violation is the analytical heart of betrayal. It also involves significant, but different levels of, threat potential.

Violations of loyalty and trust can appear in such varied and different contexts as religion, politics, science, the military industry, commerce, and personal relations. These violations often involve using deceptive techniques such as lying. Thus, discussing violations of trust usually involves examining truth and its subversion. Hence, in some profound sense, discussions about trust and its violations assume that there are some parameters of reality that we all accept as true, as genuine, as authentic. Constructions of reality are woven on this shared and accepted foundational framework.

Trust involves a particular type of relationship, where the participants perceive that a genuine, authentic, and truthful interaction exists. Violating that trust and subverting that truth typically involves lying, cheating, concealment, and deception. Loyalty first and foremost, involves fidelity Violating these moral codes invokes strong emotional responses because feelings of trust and loyalty are typically constructed as deep and profound.

To achieve a better understanding of these concepts, I shall rely on a contextual constructionist interpretation (Ben-Yehuda 1995:20-21), and then continue with looking at the characteristics of trust and loyalty.

Contextual Constructionism and Culture

In recent years a theoretical distinction (whose antecedents can be traced to Schutz, Mead, James, and others) has emerged between the so-called objective and constructionist views. The objective view is a variant of the positivist approach, which is closely related to functionalism. It assumes that deviance (or more generally, social issues and problems) constitutes an objective and measurable reality and, in particular, that it consists of objective conditions and harm. On the other hand, there is the constructionist approach (also referred to as subjective or relativist). This approach maintains that deviance and social issues and problems do not present the characteristics of a so-called objective reality and that they are the result of collective social definitions of what some organized members of a culture view as a problematic, harmful, or dangerous condition(s). That is, the nature of what is, and what is not, defined as reality is not a result of some objective condition but rather is a social construction. As Goode puts it, "to the subjectivist, a given condition need not even exist in the objective sense to be defined as a social problem" (1989:328).

Both Best (1989, 1995) and Goode (1989, 1997:58-61) point out that there are two variants of the constructionist perspective. First, there is strict constructionism (for example, see Best 1993), and second, there is contextual constructionism. As Goode (1989:328-329) notes, the first variant argues that the expert or scientific evaluation of, for example, deviance, social problems, or other issues represents simply one "claim-making" activity out of many such activities. This view argues that scientific claims are socially constructed, as are other claims, and can be studied as such. This view negates the existence of an objective dimension of reality and argues that there are different versions of reality, each one just as valid as another, including this statement itself. Obviously, postmodernism's influence can be easily detected here.

The second variant argues that although such phenomena as deviance and social problems are the results of "claim-making" activities, the so-called objective dimension can be assessed and evaluated by relevant experts on the basis of scientific evidence. This view accepts that in a given time and place, it is possible to use empirical facts to reach a consensus (even a temporary one) about the nature of reality. This perspective implies that although there may indeed be different versions of reality, they should not be accepted as equal. Contextual constructionism attempts to find out and substantiate which version is more empirically valid. Works that utilize this theoretical perspective typically contrast the "objective" with the "constructed" versions of reality and utilize empirical evidence as a basis for evaluating different constructions.

It is important to note that contextual constructionism does not claim to know the absolute "truth" or to be absolutely "objective." Rather, it bypasses the epistemological problematics involved in deciding on "objectivity" by establishing a consensus of relevant experts. The goal of contextual constructionists is to collect empirical evidence and make informed and intelligent choices based on the relevant and important facts for specified narratives (or versions). Although this agreed-upon, fact-based consensus is temporary and relative, it provides a powerful baseline with which we can evaluate a variety of claim-making activities.

Specific cases of treason and betrayal exist within specific moral and cultural contexts. One observation that must be made immediately is that this is typically not the case in betrayal between individuals. The context of such cases is such that in most (if not all) of them, interpreting who violated whose trust and loyalty is not too difficult to establish. The context (and therefore the interpretation) of betrayal on the collective level is much less clear. However, although the specific context and interpretation of different cases may sometimes be unclear, the social structure of the cases is not. The very structure of betrayal means that it always involves essential violations of both trust and loyalty. Thus, the conceptualization that I utilize takes the factual level of each case and examines the way in which these facts are socially constructed and interpreted vis-à-vis violations of trust and loyalty. This is a genuine exercise in examining the facts as opposed to the social construction of those facts—that is, a contextual constructionist approach.

Essence and Constructionism

This book attempts to combine two perspectives. On the one hand, I assume that the label "betrayal" will be universally invoked whenever both trust and loyalty are violated. This is an essential statement. It implies that these violations can be objectively described and measured. On the other hand, the content and meaning of these violations are always (and necessarily) contextual and, thus, highly susceptible to social constructions. It is this level that yields the statement that "betrayal lies in the eyes of the beholder," a paraphrase on Becker's (1963) classical work on deviance. To some extent, betrayal does lie in the observer's eyes, but not completely. The construction of betrayal is limited by a universal structure of violations. It is possible that such structures underlie and limit the generalizability of Becker's argument about other forms of deviance as well. Contextual constructionism enables us to bridge these two perspectives: essential and constructionist. However, there will always be tension between these two levels of analysis.

Culture and Betrayal

What are the basic characteristics of culture that make betrayal possible? On the personal level, it requires at least two characteristics: the ability to deceive or lie or manipulate and the specific motivation to do so. The two criteria can be easily met. We are quite capable of both lying and developing devious motivations. Still, we must remember that the overwhelming majority of people are not involved constantly in behavior labeled by their respective cultures as "treacherous." However, once these two criteria are met, we are still left with the question of the "cultural why," which goes beyond specific personal motivation. The answer for that, I believe, can be found in a major cultural facet: socially constructed moral boundaries. This cultural aspect is composed of both power and morality.

Culture can be conceptualized as being composed of a number of symbolic moral universes,⁴ each of which competes with the others for symbolic resources (support, recognition, influence) as well as economic resources. In fact, this structure is intrinsic to a pluralistic society The problem is that morality in such a society becomes a c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index