נור קאסם, מתוך כנס חוצות "לחשוב את הטראומה מקרוב ומרחוק - מעין הסערה ומחוף נרעד", ספטמבר 2024

Hi everyone. I don’t want to repeat the acknowledgements at the beginning of the presentation, but I do want to address two points. One is that it’s a really difficult time, it’s a very distressing time. And it’s a very dark time, and we’re mourning not every day, but every couple of minutes. I always open presentations with acknowledgements. I think the statistics are now higher, but every ten minutes a child dies in Gaza. And it’s horrible; and it’s horrible to face academic discourse, and although this is not a pure academic conference, it’s important for me to acknowledge that. The second thing that actually Esther has addressed, and that I also want to highlight, especially for me, being the Palestinian presenter: while we all share a plight, we all share distress, but this is with very varying levels, and sometimes it’s hard to capture. Especially in these times, it’s hard to capture the full agony and then to be representative of that.

But I want to discuss two points, and maybe before talking about the presentation, I do want to address your last point, Jessica. When I saw the "Ḥotsot" advertisement about our presentation, I thought we’re different, we come from very different places, very different ages and places and backgrounds. I did think, when Esther invited me, at a late hour of the night, to participate, that it would be a very interesting combination. Especially when I actually wrote my abstract after receiving yours – it was very interesting, the places that your abstract sent me to. So actually, it’s a response, but in a very different place. But talking about reparation, the ruptures and reparation, the one who gives and the one who receives – actually I wrote a book chapter on taking power disparities into account when addressing interventions; about this idea of perspective, giving and taking. This is very simplified now, but of course power disparities really influence emotional experiences and the role that everyone should take in this equation – and although it’s not always simplified like that, you have given me some material for thought.

But talking about my presentation: I’ll have two sections in my presentation. In the first section, I’ll discuss this breakdown of boundaries or falling walls in the therapeutic space of disadvantaged dyads, but not only in therapeutic spaces. And in the second part, I will bring testimonies, poems, of people from Gaza… because when I thought about the concept of resilience in such dark times, it was different from saying “this variable connects to this idea”; I wanted to capture the human experience as it’s being said and represented. So I’ll start with the falling walls, as I've experienced them; every day when I drive to work, I think how the distances between me and my patients has begun to diminish. The unrecognized villages, unrecognized history, presence and existence, resonate differently with me now in these times. If our histories have been shaped by different shades of political violence, the current realities of extreme dehumanization of Palestinians create now a shared reality that binds our worlds. It’s very different, still, but it is shaped by this extreme form of dehumanization. Both of us seem to be living part of our ancestors’ lives and having dialogues with them. In my abstract I use the term falling walls relating to Yolanda Gampel’s term of this description of a pervasive reality that is now shared between the patient and the therapist; and these realities certainly impact emotional experiences with me and my Palestinian patients. The feeling of being silenced – persecuted – may impair the ability to connect, to speak and to find the words. And as at the beginning of the presentation, Esther mentioned, and thank you for that, in these really high levels of persecution and really high levels of dehumanization, it’s sometimes hard – not hard only on emotional experience, but it’s hard to exist in spheres, and to talk in such times, and this sometimes also reflects on the internal social texture. And while these boundaries are set, it’s also that this kind of shared reality of persecution also shapes this disadvantaged bond, this disadvantaged ability to understand the existence of oppressive spheres. While, when I’m referring to the term “intragroup empathy” it first of all applies to the disadvantaged group members, experiencing and sharing the feelings of their in-group members: compared to advantaged groups, disadvantaged group members have higher levels of empathy because it’s kind of a survival mechanism, because when you are encountering really high levels of violence, you do tend to, paradoxically, bond more, especially with your in-group. This creates this ability to provide protection, and to provide resilience, in such times. And this therapeutic bond, shaped by the shared sense of togetherness, may allow work on silenced intergenerational trauma, which is now activated by the existing reality. And as I was reading the interview, in Ḥotsot, قاطعات, with Shirin that Manal conducted, and so many materials, always the description of the current reality comes with a reference to the ancestors. And I think many of us are having these dialogues with our ancestors about what our grandmothers did, and what it felt like to our parents, and I think they are becoming a part of the reality, and in many cases me and my colleagues actually face these threads of the ancestors and this silence of intergenerational trauma, which now becomes more evident and salient. And in such a sphere, walls are falling on many fronts. So on the one hand, we talked about the descendants and the ancestors sharing now a kind of reality, and we also have the therapists and the patients, who now exist in this form of being oppressed, of sometimes lacking this ability to speak and to feel safe. And now I want to borrow Ali’s case, which we wrote for a shared paper. We had two cases, and I think he did a more sophisticated job, so I’ll borrow his case, and that’s how we will proceed now.

So just to give examples about these falling walls through discussing Ali’s case. I forgot to introduce Ali; Ali is a clinical psychologist, and he’s my husband, so I tend to borrow things from him, so we’re taking his case. So, a brief background about the patient, Ali called her Wattan, وَطَن, which in English is homeland. Wattan is a young Palestinian woman from East Jerusalem, and she’s 23 years old, a graduate student in occupational therapy, attending an Israeli university. Wattan is the youngest of five siblings. She was born in a Palestinian family residing behind the separation wall. Her mother spent her life in Jordan after her family was expelled from Jerusalem in 1967, following the Israeli occupation of the city. They become, later, refugees, in the camps of Amman. Later, her mother returned to Palestine, through family reunification, when she met and married Wattan’s father.  Following somatic symptoms, Wattan is referred to therapy. And she has these somatic symptoms, which resemble a panic attack. And then during Ali and Wattan’s session, she really depends on intellectualization, focusing on academic material. When he refers to her defensive stages, she avoids and inhibits. And at some point, she expresses anger and irritation about the soldiers’ treatment of Palestinians when they cross the border: because every time she comes to the clinic, she needs to go to the checkpoint. And she talks about these distances that the wall creates and the robbery of time, and in every following session she enquires about her therapist’s background, about his identity, about whether he could understand the experience of people in East Jerusalem.

And while she tries to encourage him to reveal his identity – this is her request so that she might feel safe – she encounters this book, in translation; it’s The Shadow of the Cloud, ظل الغيم, a book by Hana Abu Hana, and when she encounters this book, she becomes more flexible and more open to sharing her internal worlds and seems able to transcend these concrete barriers. And the threads of her family history also appear; she wants, she sees, this rug at the clinic, following every decoration and she says to Ali that the plants in the design resembles the scent of the past zamman (زمان), the past, the fragrance of the past, and she discusses her home, her parents’ home, which is the first time she relates to it. And she revisits childhood memories, including suicidal thoughts during her teens. She felt her mother could not understand or fully empathize with her. She had long wanted to discuss this topic, but couldn’t as she felt ashamed, saying sometimes ‘I’m embarrassed to be born into such a family’. Wattan frequently feels this lack of control over her destiny, because her mother sets these concrete boundaries and limitations for her, and when Wattan received this scholarship to study abroad, her mother rejected the idea. She could not confront her mother, to say that this is a really important scholarship for her; she had for so long wanted a sphere without these borders, and where she could have more academic freedom, and so on. And when the war began, Wattan feels very affected by the surroundings; the experiences of crossing, the checkpoints, become more humiliating; she was exposed to violence when she was reading this Palestinian literature, because of the Arabic writing of course, and she came to a point where she really could not stand this siege and humiliation; and that there was this place, and in these hard circumstances, really resonated with her. And a very interesting thing that happens at this point in time is that she was able to feel empathy towards her mother – there was a moment of reparation where she could understand the fears, understand the overprotection, and she could be more tolerant of her mother: but her sense of wanting freedom, emancipation, increased, so she had this discussion with her mother that she had long avoided: a confrontation, in which she acknowledged the mother’s fears but also sticks to her dreams and this sense of a will to liberation, and she actually takes the scholarship and travels.

And the reason that I chose this case is that for many of us, being under this oppressive context, there’s sometimes a sense of fragmentation – people exist in different areas with different degrees of political violence, and because of the silencing, this sometimes creates a sense of fragmentation. Do you understand me? Could I trust you? Are you the right kind of Palestinian? Especially with the people Ali talked to, as he has cases from Jerusalem: I work with the Arabic unrecognized villages in the Bedouin area, and sometimes in the Negev, and sometimes in these talks I could really understand them, especially when the system becomes a persecutor, even in the mental health context: what you say, how you act, these things could be held against you. So this is a really unfair context to be in, also as a therapist. And in the war, there were points of time where you could not be silenced anymore – it would be hard for the patients to be silent. Everything is falling and the bombings are everywhere, and you become part of this reality. I had to stand with my patient in the shelter, knowing that back there in her unrecognized village, there are no shelters, and there are a high number of casualties, because you cannot provide shelter for Palestinians, it would be so much to ask. So, the war created this shared reality which could also have contributed to the existing fragmentation and sense of alienation, but it also contributed so much to creating something bigger, a sense of we, in creating and representing the narrative. And it gave representation to these unresolved family traumas. People were coming from families with histories where people were expelled, people were killed. I have my share of family history, but Ali could relate with other circles and other colleagues, where we often as patients have dialogues with our families: what could have been different and what would lead to different outcomes, and yes – it’s a point where we’re thinking, we’re thinking about the implications of that, and the meaning of that and the transference, and the countertransference, and where we are going with this reality, because the scenarios are getting worse and worse.

And I was often wondering, because of my own experiences, about what it means to be resilient. My academic work focuses mainly on empathy and resilience, and there’s something in this situation that sometimes feels that it’s beyond the ability to think about. I mean, more people are killed every single minute, it’s too much. And this traditional way of pointing to which variables could contribute to resilience, and which interventions in spheres where people lost everything, their home, their families, part of their bodies, I mean – it’s a very difficult time to think about it. So I read one of the Refaat Alareer (رفعت العرعير) poems, which could be also seen as a testimony, but really it was a strong example of the way someone could maintain a meaning, a subjectivity, and even resist in this phase of dehumanization and extreme danger and death everywhere. I will now read the poem:

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

 awaiting his dad who left in a blaze –

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself –

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale.

So, Professor Refaat, who was tragically killed in an airstrike on December 6, along with his brother, his brother’s son, his sister and her three children, wrote this poem “If I Must Die.” And this powerful piece, which transcended death, siege and dehumanization has been widely shared since his passing, and translated into so many languages including Yiddish, and Hebrew, etc. I have never met him, but I wish I had. He touched me deeply and I was busy trying to collect pieces of his work, talks he gave, poems – and it really became therapeutic for me. And I was asking myself, why am I obsessed about this person and collecting his works? And when I think about it, it’s that in this cruel reality when there’s no savior, there are no validating figures in the international platform, there was something in his words that he created. In his poem, and in his work, he was actually someone who has a deep interest in stories and oral history, and he mentioned that it was his mother and grandmother who were the source, which shaped the self and the essence of the self. His meaning of life and connection to the homeland – this bond with family and ancestors – was a core aspect of resilience within Palestinian communities. Every paper that discusses resilience among people residing in the Gaza Strip relates to the importance of family and this bond with ancestors. Refaat here talks about stories and oral history. And this sense of being an extension of the narratives and struggles of one’s ancestors provides a profound sense of meaning, instilling the belief that even when physically expelled, one cannot be truly uprooted, because he would have this bond with his ancestors. And we demonstrate this in the first case. I think that for Wattan, there was something about when she encounters these extreme levels of violence, there’s something that was healing in her ancestors’ past. There are people who were uprooted. They had gone through multiple forms of political violence – she’s an extension, but she also, in her own way, chose to resist. And Ali, sorry for cutting so many parts of the analysis which appears in your case, and for adapting this to my own needs, but as I already told you, he’s my husband, so he’ll put up with it.

And I think that the ancestors, as we have said, have played a really active role in this reality. There are so many forms of dialogues, people are thinking about: now I could forgive my grandparent for being internally displaced, or I wish I had a different connection, or something even more increased this craze for the ancestors, everyone with his or her own ancestors. It’s playing an active role here, it’s becoming a part of every story about the current reality. And talking about witnesses, I think Jessica, you discuss this, because people are not really being heard on the international platform, and so many sites are not acting as witnesses, and are even denying what's happening. I think that one of the things that Palestinian people are coming to now is being witnesses for their own experience. They are creating an internal function of witness. Refaat is saying here that his words would be the witness, it would be something that would transcend siege, and transcend even death, it’s a testimony that will last. And in this act, he regains the power, because what power does he have when he’s waiting for these bombs to kill him along with his family? But now, he’s regaining power by creating his own witness, and the interesting thing is that another witness in his poem is a child; to think about the choice of a child to be the witness is interesting: he’s not a figure of authority or something, but this child has experienced suffering first hand on the deepest level possible, witnessing the loss of his father, and it gives the child this profound understanding of loss, making him a fitting witness to Refaat’s story. And another witness that Refaat approaches is the reader, and he keeps his faith in humanity, for a reader who may encounter this poem. He was an academic, he was a parent, he was a friend: he lives through many of the people’s stories that he shares; but I am finding that for someone in such a situation, where the world is not able to supply any means of protection, and is even contributing – the ability to talk with a random reader and preserve this faith in humanity is really interesting.

I think one of the really striking scenes, was, especially at the beginning of the war, but similar ones have since continued to come, was of this lady, the nurse who protected patients in the hospital with her body. We see people who are trying to save the remains of the children’s bodies from the ruins: and there is something about this… the doctors who are operating while they are being targeted. There is a very interesting situation here, above and beyond only individual acts of bravery. There’s something that is beyond the usual here, and I think that when people have this knowledge that they could be killed at any moment, this bond with the bigger “we”, the ability to maybe live through the sense of the community, the ones who will survive, this enables the ability to sacrifice in order to live later. And I think for him in his poem he dedicates his remains to be made into a kite. There’s something about looking for a child’s right to have freedom, to have love, his ability to provide love and provide bonding with the child even if it was after his death, and having his remains: it creates a sense of resilience, something that could not die, could not be targeted or killed. And so, these are my very initial thoughts about the situation – it’s a situation that’s hard to think about, sometimes hard to perceive, to process. But I will also say that maybe we'll have a time to heal our wounds. But it’s not currently happening. We’re encountering more and more. But yes, it would also be material to reflect on at a later point, maybe, maybe. There would be a decrease in these horrific circumstances. This is my own thought about it.