Yitzhak Mendelsohn
Yitzhak Mendelsohn is an activist and a clinical psychologist in private practice. He has four grandchildren and a son and a daughter.
Since 1987, several weeks before the first Entifada (Palestinian uprising), he’s been involved in all kind of dialogues between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, both Palestinians from Israel and Palestinians from the West Bank. His main concerns are the psychological obstacles for reconciliation, peace building, and conflict management.
Along the years he has learned about the main characteristics of the relationships between victims and perpetrators, the rules of these relationships and the characteristics involved in perpetuating the repetitive patterns of interaction.
In his four visits to Rwanda he learned about the responsibility of the victims in any process of ending a conflict and the crucial role the perpetrators can have to help victims to end a conflictive situation.
“In inter-ethnic conflicts with political violence, I do believe in the need for justice, repair and freedom as the corner stones of any solution. As part of the Jewish legacy I know from within the simultaneous position of being a victim (of the Holocaust and the Palestinian resistance, I’m myself are a victim of a terrorist attack) and being a perpetrator of the Palestinians through the unbearable violence we use trough the collective punishment of the occupation against the Palestinian people and population.”
