Israel's Monopoly On Psychological Suffering: The Trauma Vortex

Based on the tallies currently being produced by Israeli towns located in the haphazard line of Qassam rocket fire, it appears that the bulk of Israel's civilian casualties in its war on Gaza will once again be shock related.

This was the case in the July 2006 war on Lebanon, during which the Israeli Health Ministry reported that 4,262 wounded Israeli civilians were treated in hospitals; this total was broken down into 33 seriously wounded patients, 68 moderately wounded, and 1,388 lightly wounded, with the remaining 2,773 treated for "shock and anxiety." The UN Commission of Inquiry on Lebanon, meanwhile, cited the Lebanese authorities' claim of 4,409 wounded Lebanese civilians—the only attempt at classification of casualties being a chart listing 56 different "collective massacres" conducted by Israeli forces during the war, with identifying labels such as: "Air raids struck heavily on the funeral procession of the victims of the previous day['s] air raids."

BBC News reported different figures in its August 2006 civilian casualty scorecard for the war, according to which there were 32 seriously wounded Israelis, 44 moderately wounded Israelis, 614 lightly wounded Israelis, 1,985 Israelis treated for shock, and 3,697 wounded Lebanese. Israeli casualties were thus still overwhelmingly shock related, while the Lebanese were still:

1. a lump sum.
2. not affected by acute stress disorders.

The same trend will most likely hold for Gaza—and not only because it is difficult for hospitals to accommodate people with heightened norepinephrine levels when they cannot accommodate people with missing limbs.

I awoke this past Sunday morning to find that 1 Israeli in Sderot had been lightly wounded, 4 Israelis had been treated for shock, and 23 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since midnight. After performing a Google search of the terms "Palestinians treated for shock"—which mainly produced articles about Israelis being treated for shock due to Palestinian behavior—I phoned a Palestinian friend in Lebanon in an attempt to determine why enemies of Israel did not enjoy the luxury of psychological conditions. The investigation was conducted in modified English, the idiomatic form on which Hassan and I relied for all of our communications:

ME: Do Arabs ever go to hospital for problem with head?
HASSAN: Arab he don't have head.

This hypothesis would undoubtedly have been endorsed by ex-Israeli premier Golda Meir, who might have used it to back up her argument that Palestinians were not real people. Other possible excuses for the traditional embargo on Palestinian shock included the following:

1. The Palestinians were used to having bombs fall on their heads.
2. It was the Palestinians' own fault that bombs were falling on their heads.
3. Shock had become the exclusive property of Israel's international sympathy campaign, as had the words "hail," "shower," and "barrage."

The Health section of Sunday's online edition of the Jerusalem Post offered some insight into the unique phenomenon of Israeli shock. The main article was entitled "Escaping the trauma vortex," which—although it sounded more like instructions for breaking down the Rafah border crossing—turned out to be the goal of Somatic Experiencing (SE), a self-healing philosophy that had recently been advertised in Sderot.

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punditman says ...

This is long, but worth reading all the way through. With a sarcastic tone that bites, the author deals with the transparent double standard and racism applied when it comes to the very real psychological suffering amongst both Israelis and Palestinians. Punditman thinks that one sure way of stopping future psychic traumas on both sides is to end the subjugation of the Palestinians. In the jargon of alternative therapy, that requires a holistic approach, in stark contrast to the propaganda model that favours treating symptoms rather than the actual disease. And that disease has a name: Oppression.