Title: The adults do not acknowledge that the stories are upsettin
1Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Israel and the Siege
of GazaThe Exploitation of Childrenby Judith
Deutsch
2The Problem Understanding Israeli Aggression
and Impunity
- Although much information is easily accessible
about Israels many violations of international
law, Israels abuses continue unabated. What lies
behind the paralysis to stop this cruelty, and
what does it mean to know when this does not
guide behavior? - How is reality reversed into its opposite so that
most Israelis and their supporters believe that
Israel is under siege, not Gaza? - Psychologically, it is predictable that
brutalizing, impoverishing, and humiliating
people will lead to violence. Yet Israel is seen
as the victim. - All violence is entirely preventable by putting
an end to humiliation and to impoverishment (see
Gilligan). - Humiliating parents in front of their children is
psychologically the most devastating experience
for children and will often evoke vengeful
feelings. This is described by Dr. El-Sarraj,
Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, and by Sigmund Freud.
3Psychoanalytic Insights
- The psychological factors examined here are
cruelty, humiliation, hypocrisy, and the absence
of conscience. - Psychoanalysis distinguishes between reality and
illusion. - Two documentaries show how Jewish adults exploit
youth by provoking the specific anxieties of each
phase of childhood and adolescence. - When Israeli youth are in a state of anxiety,
adults offer an excitedly violent solution to
deeply held fears. - In this state of fear, there is an unquestioning
acceptance of exciting distortions of reality and
a pull to identify with the aggressor. - When adults do not acknowledge childrens
feelings, it is difficult for children to develop
the capacity to be introspective and to empathize
with others. - From early childhood, there is interference with
the mastery of essential psychological tasks
that make for citizenship in a democracy the
capacity for individual responsibility, for
repairing wrongdoing and shameful acts, for
feeling concern for others.
4Film 1 Avi Mograbis Avenge But One of My Two
Eyes
- Youth in Israel are taught the Samson and Masada
suicide myths. The adults do not acknowledge
that the stories are upsetting and frightening to
children. Children learn from early childhood to
not notice their own feelings or those of others. - Early childhood a father tells of Samson
mutilating a lion, stealing the honey from inside
the lion, and killing 10,000 people. At this age
children fear bodily injury and loss of control,
especially of oral impulses. - Oedipal age parents repeatedly tell their son
that Samson was blinded. At this age blinding
equals castration and punishment. The only way
to not feel vulnerable is to identify with the
aggressor. - School age a teacher enacts Samson heroically
committing suicide terrorism. The children say
that suicide terrorism is heroic. Aggression is
exciting and pleasurable. Interference in
individual conscience development.
5Mograbi Samson and Masada myths Developmental
Anxieties and Tasks, continued
- Adolescence An adult guide tells adolescents to
empathize with the victims of siege at Masada.
He repeatedly instructs them to merge with the
group, to not think for themselves. They talk of
separation wall, watchtowers, and choose
suicide terrorism as a solution, yet they make no
connection with the present. - Adolescence other adults express seductive,
intense excitement about revenge, suicide
terrorism. They distort reality, breach incest
barriers, demand obedience to charismatic
authority. - Guides press loyalty to the group at a time when
adolescents waver between finding their own
identity vs. conforming to others. - Adults are overtly seductive when adolescents
need to distance themselves from incestuous
wishes.
6 Psychological Mechanisms Documentary about
Masada and Samson myths
- Using children in these ways to satisfy adult
needs is a fundamental aspect of abuse. By
stirring up anxiety and then coupling it with
exciting fantasy solutions, adults and children
collude in not acknowledging reality, in
supporting identification with the aggressor, and
in seducing youth into excited and pleasurable
aggression. - This documentary indicates that Israelis know
exactly what conditions produce violence, namely
hopelessness, rage, and humiliation. - The mechanism of projective identification is
used to provoke violence in Palestinian people.
In this way Israelis minimize their own anxiety
and justify their own grandiosity and
aggressiveness while feeling entitled as victims
to be violent. - This mechanism is how parents directly induce
their children to behave in delinquent and
forbidden ways to satisfy their own wishes and to
feel powerful and in control (Johnson and
Szurek).
7Film 2 Juliano Mer-Khamis Arnas Children
- Arna Mers children are Palestinian children in
Jenin who were students at her theatre school.
The programme was designed to enhance self-esteem
and hopefulness by inviting children to express
their anger about the Occupation. - Arna received the Right Livelihood Award for her
contributions to peace. She is a Jewish woman
who fought in the Palmach in 1948 and who married
a Palestinian man. - Even as an old woman, she defiantly protests a
checkpoint closure and energetically leads the
children in songs about peace and freedom. - She talks of her own background but does not take
responsibility for her involvement in the
Palmach. She does not feel uncomfortable about
her excited and sexualized army experience. - There are many scenes in the movie about the
children being invited to express anger, often in
a sadistic way. Arna invites the children to hit
her. One boy is invited to enact his sadistic
teacher. A child is instructed to enact an angry
dog. Children do not speak in their own words
and do not verbalize feelings other than anger.
8Psychological Mechanisms Arnas Children
- The ideal of being a fighter is explicitly
promoted, albeit with the aim of lifting
self-esteem through being active rather than
passive. - Control comes from the outside, from adults, at
an age when the psychological task is forming
ones own inside voice (conscience) to monitor
and guide individual feelings and actions. - Excited fantasies and play acting that involve
excited aggression replaces a reality orientation
that prepares children for the serious choices
they will eventually need to make. Three of
these boys later die fighting in the Israeli
invasion of Jenin. - Generational boundaries are breached when adults
use children as part of their own psychological
functioning, disrupting mastery of essential
developmental tasks. - It is shocking that the director, and Israeli
Peace Now leader Uri Avnery, compare these boys
tragic sacrifice with Masada and Samson, admiring
these youth for fulfilling the Israeli ideal of
suicide.
9The Application of these Observations
- Ibdaa Cultural Center at Dheisheh Refugee Camp
10The Inner Psychological World andOuter
Socio-Political Pathology
- For individual mental health, people need to be
able to express themselves in their own words and
to be listened to. In these documentaries,
children were actively invited to be vengeful and
aggressive words were given to the children in
the form of songs, stories, scripts. - At the GCMHP, the mediation program at public
schools allows youth to speak for themselves and
to speak with each other. - In clinical work, it is important to distinguish
between inner psychological pathology and outer
social pathology to diminish the pressure to
collude and comply with a disturbed social
environment. - Helping youth to understand Israeli pathology may
diminish personal feelings of humiliation and the
pull to identify with the aggressor. - In these documentaries, people in authority
distort psychological and social reality. The
adults do not see that admiration of extreme
aggression can cause anxiety in youth they do
not acknowledge Israels separation wall and
siege only the wall and siege at Masada they
show no discomfort about idealizing mass murder
they do not hesitate to alter facts (e.g. one
adult substitutes Palestine for Philistine).
Children learn not to think and to notice
feelings. - An alternative education system developed in
post-war Germany. In addition to learning about
the Holocaust, children learned about individual
responsibility and about challenging authority.
11Peace or War?
- Two hundred two Israelis signed the Olga
Document If we muster within ourselves the
appropriate honesty and requisite courage, we
will be able to take the first step in the long
journey that can extricate us from the tangle of
denial, repression, distortion of reality, loss
of direction and forsaking of conscience. We are
united in the belief that peace and
reconciliation are contingent on Israels
recognition of its responsibility for the
injustices done to the indigenous people, the
Palestinians, and on willingness to redress them.
The State of Israel was supposed to tear down
the walls of the ghetto it is now constructing
the biggest ghetto in the entire history of the
Jews. - The Samson Option Israel has the fourth largest
military and the fourth largest nuclear arsenal
in the world. Eminent journalist Seymour Hersh
states that it is conceivable that Israel would
use its nuclear weapons.