From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: PASSING ON UNHEALED WOUNDS
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 00:00:11 GMT

/** gn.peacemedia: 170.0 **/
** Topic: Stress Syndrome, Israel **
** Written 11:06 pm  Sep 29, 1992 by gn:peacemedia in cdp:gn.peacemedia **
PASSING ON UNHEALED WOUNDS

by Gene Knudsen Hoffman
[Peace Media Service]

Walking in London in 1980, I saw a sign which read: ``Meeting for
Worship for the Tortured and the Torturers'' sponsored by London
Quakers. I was astonished. As a Quaker pacifist, I believed that I
should have no enemy and care for the wounded on all sides of
every battle. But put the torturers on the same level as the
tortured? I'd never thought of that.

The thought opened a new chapter of my life. I began to wonder why
people tortured others. I reasoned that if I could know the
answer, it might open new possibilities for peacemaking and
reconciliation.

That same year, I worked on both sides of the Israel-Palestine
Green Line, interviewing Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.
The suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation was
horrifying. I began to wonder whether the brutal treatment of the
Palestinians by the Israeli government, the Israeli military, and
even many of the Israeli people themselves had anything to do with
Jewish suffering during and after the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

Reading everything I could find on the subject, I learned about
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)--a tragic condition which
can affect soldiers even years after they emerge seemingly
unscathed from battle. Triggered by terror from a catastrophic
event ``outside the range of normal human experience,'' it can
produce a variety of symptoms. These may include depression,
isolation, withdrawal, convulsions of rage, emotional numbing,
alienation, intrusive thoughts, horrifying flashbacks, a form of
hyper-vigilance akin to paranoia, and more.

Many veterans have used alcohol or drugs to blot out terrifying
memories. Many revert to violence when they feel threatened. There
have been more suicides among Vietnam veterans than there were
soldiers killed in the war.

In the hope of understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more
deeply, and of being able to feel compassion instead of anger and
despair, I joined an American Friends Service Committee trip to
the Middle East in January 1992. On that trip I learned that there
is a new consciousness of the long-term effects of the
concentration camp experience on Jewish survivors, for whom there
were no healing processes available at the time they were
released. Some people are beginning to call it PTSD. Like combat
veterans, Holocaust survivors experience both fear of surfacing
memories and fear ``that it will happen again.'' Many Israelis
appear to be affected by a ``siege mentality,'' which is
understandable. Throughout our trip there was no way of forgetting
we were in a ``war zone.''

The suffering of Palestinians is deep and wide. They see the land
they call their homeland shrinking and their children dying from
malnutrition, disease and bullets. Many are jobless, homeless, or
both. Palestinian schools are most often closed; there are
imprisonments, beatings, killings, daily disappearances. Like
soldiers, or the concentration camp inmates of World War II,
Palestinians live lives of rage and terror.

Dr. Jan Bastiaans, a Dutch psychiatrist, is an authority on the
Holocaust syndrome and has treated many survivors. In 1973 he
wrote, ``In recent years the [concentration camp] syndrome has
suddenly received general recognition.... This concept is
concerned with ... pathological processes that occurred after the
war in former concentration camp prisoners.... The ... syndrome is
the expression of a permanent, chronic obstruction of sound human
relationships. The victims are not free from the concentration
camp ... Behind their adaptation facade continues to live the
child or adult of [that time] in all fear, in all misery, in all
powerlessness.''

Dr. Haim Dasberg, associate professor of psychiatry at the Hebrew
University and medical director of the Ezrat Nashim Jerusalem
Mental Health Center, has written extensively on PTSD and the
Israeli army. Now living on the outskirts of West Jerusalem in an
apartment filled with books, paintings, and oriental rugs, he
resisted conversion efforts by the Christian couple in Holland who
adopted him after his father was put into a Nazi concentration
camp and his mother went into hiding.

As a therapist for the Israeli military, he encourages battle-
shocked soldiers to return to the front because he believes there
is no cure for PTSD except the return to community and belonging.
``If you leave your comrades in war, you are exiled and cannot
function again,'' he writes.

Dr. Dasberg and three colleagues have written thoughtfully on the
psychological disintegration that can follow severe trauma. ``The
trauma forces the opening of boundaries [in the sufferer],'' he
explains. ``This forced, open state and the inability to terminate
it is accompanied by intense emotions, immense fears. The usual
supports ... may be drastically de-structured. The final
realization is that the rules which define reality are not
operational anymore and the individual loses the capacity to
function and collapses.''

An American-born Israeli, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, heads Israel's
Clergy for Peace. ``The Holocaust has left Jews so scarred we
believe powerlessness is a sin,'' he says. ``We feel the whole
world is hostile to us. This is sick behavior. Our political
agenda is irrational because of the Holocaust. Our Jewish state
has been implemented at the expense of the Palestinians because
spiritual Zionism changed to [the quest of] statehood after the
Nazi persecution. Our agenda is corrupt because we're not
permitting the Palestinians to reunify. We Jews feel guilt toward
the Palestinians and we're unwilling to have a dialogue with them
because it will be so unpleasant.''

Other Israelis resist such an outlook. ``It is very dangerous to
suggest that our people in government still suffer from the
Holocaust,'' an Israeli psychiatrist who wished to remain
anonymous warned me. ``They are our government, our leaders--they
cannot be crazy.'' While resisting applying the label PTSD to
Holocaust survivors, he admitted they have similar symptoms.

Chaim Shur, editor-in-chief of Israel's _New Outlook_ magazine,
explained: ``The Holocaust is the worst trauma in Jewish history.
The whole world was killing us. No one did anything to prevent it.
The Holocaust syndrome invades a large part of our life. Five
hundred thousand people in Israel are Holocaust survivors and now
there is a second generation...'' The editor hesitated, however,
to say that survivors suffer from PTSD. ``PTSD is not a scientific
diagnosis,'' he said. ``I have a daughter-in-law who comes from
Holocaust survivors. I don't accept it. ''

Dr. Eliezer Witztum, a psychiatrist at the Ezrat Nashim Hospital,
who wrote _The History of PTSD and the Israeli Army_, told me that
PTSD was denied in every Israeli war, including the 1973 war, and
all PTSD data was edited out of psychological papers. ``PTSD
sufferers were treated as cowards,'' he explained. ``Officers and
mental health workers were told that if they recognized this
phenomenon, they should not encourage it. But, in 1973, 30 percent
of the casualties were PTSD sufferers and the military began to
admit this was a problem. However, in 1982, they withdrew their
admission and cut the budgets for psychiatrists.'' He said that
Israelis are also in a state of denial in regard to the Holocaust.
``The Holocaust was a Pandora's box and it was better not to talk
about it.'' He believes there is a direct connection between the
Holocaust and much of the subsequent tragic Israeli political
behavior regarding the Palestinians. He spoke of Israel's loss of
her spiritual connection and believes it must be regained before
healing and peace can occur.

Today some of the most cogent voices about PTSD and the Holocaust
are coming from the United States. In the February 1992 issue of
_The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs_, Rabbi Yonassan
Gershom's wrote about ``Breaking the Cycle of Abuse.''

``On a conscious level,'' he said, ``the Israelis are not
purposely punishing the Palestinians for the Holocaust. But it is
also true that people who have been abused will, when they come to
power, abuse others because they do not have healthy models for
exercising power. Abuse is passed down from generation to
generation ... unless there is some kind of therapy to teach new
ways of coping with frustration and anger.'' He sees nonviolence
training as opening a way of overcoming dehumanizing responses go
those perceived as enemies.

In an article entitled ``Terrible Knowledge'' in _The Networker_,
Jeffrey Jay extends PTSD not only to Holocaust and war survivors,
but also to survivors of child abuse.

``Some great individuals like Martin Luther King, Elie Weisel, and
Thich Nhat Hanh lived through brutalization and drew from it
visionary insights that have moved whole populations to greater
compassion for human suffering,'' Jay writes. ``These exemplars
suggest the possibility of return from exile for victims of
trauma. Their terrible knowledge is a message few can afford to
refuse.''

Thomas Greening, editor of _The Journal of Humanistic Psychology_,
writes: ``The moral, philosophical, and religious context in which
[a trauma's] meaning is interpreted by the sufferer is very
important.'' He notes the testimony of Holocaust-survivor Viktor
Frankel that ``human values are sometimes sustained and recreated
in dehumanizing conditions.''

The poet Longfellow summarized what I have discovered in exploring
the link between the Holocaust and Israel's brutalization of the
Palestinians: ``If we could read the secret history of our
enemies, we would find in each person's life sorrow and suffering
enough to disarm all hostility.''

All efforts at finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
dispute will be more fruitful when the parties come to see
peacemaking as a healing process.

===
Gene Knudsen Hoffman holds an MA in pastoral counseling. She
worked with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and, in the 80s, was
one of the creators of its US-USSR Reconciliation Program. She
lives in Santa Barbara, California.
===** End of text from cdp:gn.peacemedia **

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