Saturday 3rd January 2009

This piece was originally sent to the Canberra Times as an opinion piece for the op-ed page, but I never received a response.

I feel terrible for the Palestinians. Even as a psychotherapist I cannot imagine the psychological damage that all Palestinians have sustained in the last 60 years in the occupied territories, in the refugee camps and in Gaza. My heart breaks. I was at home while an Iraqi Scud missile hit only a few metres from the front of our apartment building in Ramat-Gan near Tel-Aviv in early 1991. It was a fairly primitive missile but it caused a huge amount of damage in our street. Our building was severely damaged but I was lucky that nothing happened to me. Miraculously no one in our street was killed or even injured. For many years, in fact until recently, I suffered from trauma from this one missile attack. I couldn’t bear fireworks because in my mind, the explosions sound exactly the same as the Scud and the Patriot missiles that were shot from near by batteries but failed to intercept it. But the trauma of having war in our streets, among our buildings, lingered for a long time. This is with two long years of military service behind me, many opportunities to observe military drills and fire power, and only one missile. It took me many years of peaceful existence in Australia to not feel physically and psychologically distressed when I hear fireworks or the sound of a jet fighter. I can’t imagine what it is like for all these people in Gaza, and the children in particular, who are growing up with tons of bombs falling all around them, buildings destroyed, dead and wounded everywhere, no electricity, water and food, damaged sewage and the powerlessness of it all. I can’t imagine the years of therapy that might be needed to heal from that, and all those who will never heal.

Why wouldn’t the citizens of Gaza support Hamas when it’s the only body that gives them the feeling that they are doing something about their hopeless situation with Israel? Over the years Israel systematically assassinated the moderate leaders among the Palestinians, and is regularly crushing all forms of non-violent resistance. By building settlements and the separation wall Israel made sure that a Palestinian state is now an impossibility. What hope do the Palestinians have for a normal life, freedom from occupation, their own sovereignty and a future for their children? I don’t think people understand how powerless the Palestinians feel and how hard Israel has been working to generate this feeling of powerlessness in them. Everything Israeli leaders say to the media right now, is designed to reinforce this feeling that Israel is so powerful you can do nothing against it so you might as well give up... This is why they are attacking Hamas. They know Hamas is giving the Palestinian spirit some kind of hope, helping their people feel less helpless in the face of such overwhelming oppression.

Last Monday during the protest in Garema Place organisd by the AJPP (Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine) I was interviewed on SBS radio and asked if I felt sympathy for Israelis because of the missile attacks from Gaza. Because of my experience with the Scud missile of course I can sympathise with the feelings of Israelis. But to look at the present events in isolation from the past 60 years and Israel’s ongoing suffocation of Gaza, and to compare these last vestiges of Palestinian resistance with Israeli military and psychological might is not only misleading but also colluding with Israel as the supreme occupying force, and the country who also has the last word when it comes to PR.

All Israel has to do to stop Palestinian attacks is to end the occupation and give a right of return to the Palestinians. This the real and permanent solution to the problem, and the one that will bring peace to the entire Middle East and maybe even beyond. But of course Israel will not do that because it wants to remain exclusively Jewish and the prospect of sharing the land with Palestinians is not congruent with this desire. And this is a fact that is severely downplayed in the media. How would the world respond if Israel admitted openly to what every Israeli knows, that they are attacking the Palestinians because they want to remain exclusively Jewish? I wonder. I remember when I was 11 that there was a UN resolution that equated Zionism with racism. (It was resolution 3379, adopted on 10th November 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35.) It really scared me then, and I genuinely didn’t understand why those ‘horrible people were saying these lies about us’. I was a product of the Israeli education system and knew nothing of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and of the nature of our occupation of the Palestinians. Being a young Israeli I had no real concept or awareness of my own racism. This resolution was revoked in 1991but shouldn’t have been. The Israeli state is racist because it is only for Jews, and the Jewish people still believe everyone hates them.

The Palestinians have been fighting for their freedom from Israeli oppression and occupation for 60 years hoping to some day go back to their homes that are now within Israel. Almost always Israel’s responded with overwhelming power and campaigns to increase its territory to improve its ‘security’, as it did in 1967 and as it tried to do in 1982 and even two years ago in Lebanon. Who of us can really say what we would do if we were under a brutal occupation and a constant attack on our bodies, minds, property, culture and dignity by such an overwhelming power, and with a feeling we have nothing to lose? Even Ehud Barak said a couple of years ago that if he was a Palestinian he would join a group to fight against the occupation.

Last night on SBS television during the story about the Hamas leader that was murdered, the news-reader was quick to say: “Several Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets that are still being fired across the border”. It was interesting that SBS editors chose the vague word ‘several’. They want their reports to be ‘balanced’ and are afraid to appear ‘biased’ against Israel. But the problem is that the facts themselves aren’t balanced; reality isn’t balanced. Israel is killing 100 Palestinians for every Israeli, and SBS is too squeamish to say so. It was also interesting that this comment came so quickly after the description of the killing of the Hamas leader. This is typical of Australian media and their stubborn insistence that one has to be ‘balanced’ about the occupation of the Palestinian people. You can’t balance something that isn’t if you report it truthfully. Did Australians feel compelled to be balanced about South-African Apartheid? I don’t know. I wasn’t here during those long year when white South-Africans felt completely justified in keeping black South-Africans as little more than slaves under the rule of law. What was it like then, and what happened when someone expressed views that were critical of the white South African regime?

But of course many would argue that this isn’t the same. But why isn’t it? An injustice is being committed. Something profoundly unfair and unjust is happening and the world is letting it happen. Israelis managed to con the world into believing that Israeli Jews are still victims, and that the Palestinians are this huge powerful enemy just like all traditional enemies who hated the Jews and tried to destroy them. As a former Israeli I actually believed this myself for many years. Why wouldn’t people from the outside believe it, especially when we have the Holocaust to ‘prove’ that others hate us so much, they are prepared to make such an effort to destroy us. European Jews were powerless in the face of European antisemitism and the Holocaust. But Israeli Jews aren’t. Israeli Jews responded to past victimhood by creating a state that is armed to the teeth, is very powerful, has nuclear capabilities and that convinced the world that it is above the law and can do no wrong. Israel is an occupying power that also controls the official narrative about the occupation and conflict with the Palestinians. And Australia and the rest of the world collude.

The self-righteous call to end Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel as a condition to ending Israel’s attack in Gaza is ignoring the reality of the occupation. It is also ignoring the question of what happens next. Say that Hamas stops sending missiles into Israel, and Israel responds by stopping their attack on Gaza. Then what? Back to business as usual? The Palestinians will no longer be on the world’s agenda. What will become of 1.5 million stateless people with no rights living in the largest open air prison, indeed concentration camp on the planet? I think the world seriously expects the Palestinians to stop fighting for their freedom, and simply continue to live the way they have been living all this time. Since negotiations with Israel are pointless as there is no realistic possibility of a Palestinian state, where do you go from here? How is it acceptable for us in the West to expect an oppressed people to simply go on with their lives as they are, when we are supposed to be representatives of justice, freedom and democracy?

The trauma is not just from bombs, death and destruction. It is from powerlessness. The Hamas knows they can’t destroy Israel or even dent it much with their missiles. Israelis know that too. Hamas attacks are a symbol of resistance, sending a message to their own people that their spirit is still alive despite international collusion with Israel, and despite Israel’s overwhelming power. This is what people do when they are oppressed. If they can’t fight for their lives they will fight to defend what they have left, their dignity, their self-respect, their memory in the eyes of the world.

And when a proud people is reduced to having to kill or commit suicide in order to defend their dignity and self-respect you must ask what is wrong with the world. I don’t know who I am upset with more, Israel for its aggression, or a cowardly world that ignores reality and doesn’t know how to do the right thing.


Page content last modified: 5 January 2009