It´s Saturday, 5 am, Oct 21, 2023. Exactly two weeks after the Jewish communities all over the world and their neighbours woke up into the worst nightmare after shoah.
I am getting up while it´s still dark, fight with the virus after two demanding weeks and unload the dishwasher after yesterday´s shabbos with our five kids. In the meantime I am pondering over the article I found at the status of a person I know titled Why you might have lost all your jewish friends this week and didn´t even know it. I have not read it yet, therefore I am writing this text first, which – having read the strongly resonating title – comes to my mind. Why can you actually loose your Jewish friends these days and not even notice?
Saturday Oct 7, 2023 was for all of us, who in some way, consciously or not, practising or not, ideologically, religiously, ethnicly or nationally, belong to the world Jewish community, a nightmare coming true. In our subconscious mind, Israel is a Jewish state we can go to once things are bad, everything turns against us and everything starts dilapidating. We can leave for Israel and we do not need to be afraid to feel our Jewishness in a way that suits us, to choose from the rich versions of environments, communities, synagogues and opt for the right rabbis, schools or places of residence. Or just live the secular life in Tel Aviv or Eilat and celebrate high holidays only, and live in a cultural connection. Israel is an archetypal symbol of a mother, father, parent. But Israel is not just a metaphor, the very existence of the state is in a material and raw manner, without any ornaments or romantic sentiments, connected with our own existence. Jews from all over the world have a place to go to should the waves of hatred and attacks grow, they no longer have to stay in the trap of collective hatred, violence or ignorance towards both. They have a state in which they are not attacked or murdered because they are Jews. Jewish state represents life.
On shabbos Oct 7, the Jewish state was attacked, put in danger, raped and paralyzed by a systematic and organized terrorist attack of a neighbouring Gaza government. As a psychologist and an expert on trauma, during that horrible morning of a normally joyful holiday Simchat Torah I had to immediately ask myself: „Did the terrorists use in this upcoming war, among other things, the collective Israeli trauma and a sort of exhaustion in the long-term inner conflicts and the ending of the series of high holidays?“
The answer is more than clear. Yes, the enemies undoubtedly did use all of that. It was namely the post-shoah trauma and the destabilized inner political situation that did psychologically weaken the reactions, the result of which was that the Israeli political, military and police sector did not at all act that quickly, efficiently and professionally as they should have. But those quilty of brutal murders, rapes and abductions of Israeli and other citizens to the Gaza strip are noone else but Hamas and its supporters.
In the war that Hamas started by the abductions and brutal murders of children, women, elderly people, whole families and adult Israelis, the only quilty party is Hamas, the official government of Gaza strip, and those who support and direct it, who help and express joy. All the others are victims. If someone is pondering this clear statement, they are lying, ignoring and normalizing terrorism, brutal violence, sadistic murders and abductions. Can a human being overlook that? A family, parents and two kids (a six-year old boy and a seven-year old girl), kneeling opposite each other with hands tied behind their backs, whose bodies were tortured, gauged eyes and missing bodily parts. The only question that remains left is whether the children had to watch first how their parents were tortured to death, or was it the other way round. While the murderers ate their breakfast they invaded upon. As they invaded upon the breakfast of all of us.
Israel is defending itself, leading a defensive war, struggling for its existence. We watch with horror as the world reactions and sympathies gradually, many times in a sentimental and dyslogical manner, shift towards the so-called Gazan street. A clear perpetrator becomes a self-proclaimed victim. The dead and the murdered are forgotten very quickly. One inclines towards the agressor. All the civilians (but also the female and male soldiers of a democratic state) deserve compassion. Including those Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas, who condemn its government and protest against its rule, including all the children living in such a dark spot, who are used by Hamas as human shields.
There are waves of hatred and judgement rising against Israel at the moment when by the terrorists and their supporters, still over two hundred people are held hostages, including babies and shoah survivors. Jewish lives are once again irrelevant and overlooked, their murder somewhat common.
Try to imagine you come to see a raped woman whose daughter is being raped at the same time in an unknown location as well, and you start telling her that a rapist had a hard life, that she should behave reasonably, that the country she lives in is not doing everything right either, that it is necessary to focus on the important things and not to bother that much.
Presently all over the world, people with Jewish ancestry, those affiliated with judaism, go through an inner hell. They often feel helpless, anxious, sleep poorly, are disconnected from their emotions, loosing control over themselves and their surroundings. They feel existential worries about their children, families, themselves, their future. They are flooded by a myriad of other, oftentimes ambivalent emotional states, from anger and wrath to paralysis and freezing. They fear for their lives. They are often misunderstood, unsupported by their near and distant surroundings and crushed by the business-as-usual and belittling attitudes from people they thought they knew well. They are deeply hurt by the news coming from media, dehumanized comments, questioning the situation and spreading unverified news and hoaxes, often on the global level of the biggest media players.
In reaction to the horrors we lived through, we are often silent. We are silent because we are wordless. We are silent because we are terrified to speak. We prefer not to ask, we are afraid what we might, seeking answers to our questions, come to know.
Please, should you have in your surroundings people reacting to the situation in a similar way, or silent ones, support them. Try to imagine what they need, and do it, say it. Name the evil which is not relative clearly, express understanding or even that you are searching how to understand it all, and look for it and educate yourselves. Do not transfer the search or the responsibility for explaining to your friends in vulnerable positions. Have no fear that you may say or do something wrong. The very expression of compassion and willingness to look for means of support through your own activities is empathy. Do not speculate, do not analyze, do not make any historical exercises. In a given psychological state, your friend will not at all be interested in the map of today´s Israeli territory from the half of the 20th century, and will not probably even discuss or consider that. Something quite different is troubling them; they feel an existential threat concerning their own life as well as their families, they are thinking of their own grandmothers or grandfathers who survived Auschwitz and they are glad that they did not live long enough to witness that. A friend who is talking about her fears as to the future of her children will not be helped by your rational statement that there were and there are pogroms, and one must count on that.
Be kind, use empathy and ask your neighbours about their feelings, states of mind, mood and ideas. You can support them not only by words, but also acts. Should you not be able to, be silent, in this case silence is golden.Since in the background of these events, there is something much darker and more sinister. The division of people into we and they is deepening. The common denominator of both social and individual reactions to this war as well is antisemitism. Lots of the utterances, attitudes, thoughts and feelings regarding the Jewish community or individuals is antisemitic, whether people realize that or not. Antisemitic narrative is deeply rooted in us. And it does not avoid even those with Jewish ancestry, and belongs to a certain type of dysfunctional defense mechanisms.
With today´s text, I would like to start a series of articles on the collective initiation into the post-shoah trauma and its manifestations. The belief that next week, people all over the world will sit at the shabbos table, noone else will be missing and there will be no lack is utopian, therefore my today´s wish is universal and telling it all: Am Yisrael Chai!!עם ישראל חי
Vaše psychoterapeutky v centru Prahy 