Psyche, Science, and Society

Scandinavian Psychological Associations joint statement on Gaza

The Scandinavian psychological Associations yesterday sent out this press release to the international society. It is the first ever joint international press release from these organizations:

Stop the shelling of children’s future

Since the escalation of the war in Gaza several hundred civilians have been wounded and the general health situation has severely deteriorated. The presidents of the Scandinavian Psychological Associations plead the parties for an immediate cease fire and appropriate working conditions for humanitarian aid organizations.  We urge the parties of the armed conflict to fully comply with the Geneva Conventions to ensure the protection of civilians and their relief in times of war.

Threats of major physical damages and the fear of extinction holds true for all ages. But the traumatizing effects of war are especially severe for young minds, both on the Palestinian and the Israeli side of the border. War deprives children of fundamental rights such as a safe home, proper schooling and their parents’ ability to care for them. The most vulnerable and invisible victim of the cruelty of war, is the mental health of children.

The present situation represents a daily fear for one’s own live and the lives of significant others. This fear constitutes a severe threat towards children’s visions and promises for the future and will undoubtedly have long term negative effects on their mental health.

There is great risk that the current situation will destroy the children’s conception of a safe future and a normal life. We are worried that in this chaos marked by fear, sorrow, anger and aggression the only survival strategy readily available for the affected children may be hatred and violence, despite devoted and tender attempts by their parents to protect them. This is a tragedy – not only for the children and their families itself – but for all those who wish for a lasting peace in the Middle East.

We strongly urge the parties and the international community to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population through working for a negotiated cease fire followed by a peace settlement.

January 8, 2009

President of The Norwegian Psychological Association: Tor Levin Hofgaard, phone: +47 91865931

President of The Finnish Psychological Association: Tuomo Tikkanen

President of the Danish Psychologists’ Association: Roal Ulrichsen

President of The Swedish Psychological Association: Lars Ahlin

President of The Icelandic Psychological Association: Petur Thyrfingsson

January 9th, 2009

Jimmy Carter: An Unnecessary War

Jimy Carter Op-Ed:

An Unnecessary War

By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, January 8, 2009; A15

I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.

After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.

Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.

We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.

Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.

After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.

Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).

We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.

On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.

After 12 days of “combat,” the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.

The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

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The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.

1 comment January 9th, 2009

Juan Cole on reasons for Israeli violence toward civilians

Juan Cole has some provocative thoughts on Israeli actions as a defense of settler colonialism. I post here the second half of a long piece in which he discusses the UN ceasefire resolution, and a letter from A US Marine criticizing Israeli actions toward the civilian population. Among other thins, this Marine said:

In particular, I am stunned at the Israeli explanation for the 30+ civilians killed at the UN school. The Israelis say they were responding to mortar fire from the school. Mortars are insidious because their high trajectory and lack of primary flash make it very difficult to trace the source of the fire; you have to have a spotter locate the crew. The Israelis claim that they traced the source of the fire precisely to the school; if so, they must have directly spotted the crew. Thus it is inconceivable that the Israelis did not know that the target was a crowded UN school, yet they chose to fire on the school anyhow. I say without hesitation that this is a criminal act. If the Israelis had said, “sorry, it was an accident”, that could indicate a targeting problem, confusion, or inferior training. But to openly admit that they responded reflexively to the Hamas fire without consideration for the inevitable civilian casualties is beyond the pale. The Israelis blame Hamas for firing from the school (although UN personnel on the ground dispute this), but choosing to fire directly at civilians is far worse; it is tantamount to murder….

The Israeli approach in Gaza strikes me as uncontrolled and vengeful. My objective analysis is that it has little tactical effectiveness; my opinion is that its main goal is to whip the entire Gaza population into submission.

Cole here discusses what he sees as an Israeli government indifference to the suffering they cause:

Note that I am not alleging, and neither is the letter writer [the Marine], that Israeli troops are deliberately killing civilians. I am alleging that Israeli troops don’t care very much if they happen to kill civilians while getting at what they think of as Hamas targets. They are not doing due diligence to avoid civilian deaths and casualties.

The difference between Israeli military action in Gaza and most US operations in Iraq is not a matter of national character or some other essentialist attribute. It is the difference between imperial occupation for specific purposes and settler colonialism. The Israelis are both an army and a settler movement. The US never considered flooding Iraq with colonists from Alabama and Mississippi.

When threatened by an indigenous population trying to expel it, settler colonialism is vicious. It is after all facing an existential threat. The US can withdraw from Iraq with no dire consequences to the US. In 1954-1962, the French killed at least half a million, and maybe as much as 800,000 Algerians, out of a population of 11 million. That is between nearly 5 percent and nearly 10 percent! The French military had been enlisted to fight for the interests of the colonists, who were in danger of losing everything. (In the end they did lose almost everything, being forced to return to Europe, or choosing to do so rather than face the prospect of living under independent Algerian rule).

The brutality with which the British put down the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s is another example of massive human rights violations on behalf of a settler population.

This latest sanguinary episode is a further manifestation of Israel’s insecure brand of settler colonialism, in which the lives of the indigenous population are viewed as worthless before the interests of the colonists. The Israelis have not killed on the French scale, but I would argue that they kill, and disregard civilian life, for much the same reasons as the French did in Algeria.

Settler colonialism is unstable in the contemporary world because of the facilities subject populations have for mobilization and resistance. Conflict between colonizer and colonized has only ended in one of three ways: 1) The expulsion of the colonists, as in Algeria; 2) the integration of the colonists into a nation that includes the indigenous population, as happened in South Africa; or 3) the expulsion of the indigenous population, as with the Trail of Tears in the nineteenth-century United States.

Bob Simon told Charlie Rose that the ‘two-state solution’ in Israel-Palestine is dead, which is likely correct. He suggested that the most likely outcome is Apartheid. However, I would argue that Apartheid is a phase and its itself an unstable situation, and that only one of the above three outcomes is actually permanent. Given that the Arabs are becoming more technologically sophisticated and wealthier over time, and given their demographic advantage, I do not expect a trasnferist or trail of tears policy to be implemented or succeed. In the long term, over several decades, I think either there will be a gradual outflow of Israeli emigrants that leaves Jews a plurality in Israel. Or there will eventually be a single state. The other possibilities, of either a century-long Apartheid or another expulsion of Palestinians a la 1948 seem to me less likely. The Gaza operation is intended to extend the life of an incipient Apartheid. But that is sort of like giving a heart transplant to a man diagnosed with terminal cancer.
/End

January 9th, 2009

A creative proposal for Bush accountability

In this time of discussing administration legacies, Joe Klein in Time discusses Bush’s true legacy and has a couple of interesting and creative proposals to dealing with the likely lack of criminal indictments for our torturer- and vice-torturer-in-chief:

If Barack Obama really wanted to be cagey, he could pardon Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld for the possible commission of war crimes. Then they’d have to live with official acknowledgment of their ignominy in perpetuity. More likely, Obama will simply make sure — through his excellent team of legal appointees — that no such behavior happens again. Still, there should be some official acknowledgment by the U.S. government that the Bush Administration’s policies were reprehensible, and quite possibly illegal, and that the U.S. is no longer in the torture business. If Obama doesn’t want to make that statement, perhaps we could do it in the form of a Bush Memorial in Washington: a statue of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner in cruciform stress position — the real Bush legacy.

January 9th, 2009

Boston rally to close Guantanamo, January 14

To my Boston-area friends and readers, I will be speaking at an Amnesty/ACLU of Massachusetts vigil next Wednesday, January 14, outside the Federal Building in Government Center, Boston, 4:00.

Save the date!

This is one of a series of vigils being held across the country to demand that Obama follow through on his pledge to close Guantanamo. Seven years is far to long!

As a reminder of the need for our continued pressure, 10% of Guantanamo detainees are now on hunger strike and being force fed.

I will post more details if I can get them.

January 9th, 2009

Pilisuk: Moving from Violence to Talks in Gaza

Long-time Psychologists for Social Responsibility member Marc Pilisuk hs written a short piece on the PsySR blog:

Moving from Violence to Talks in Gaza

By Marc Pilisuk

January 8, 2009 — PsySR Blog

gazablog-26373206There is a psychological message of misperception affecting responses to the Israeli attack on Gaza. It mistakes the actions pushed by leaders for the needs of the people who inhabit the areas involved. Leaders need to proclaim they are striking out against feared enemies. People need to go about their daily lives with resources necessary to survive with dignity and with a minimum of catastrophic disturbance.

In common parlance about international affairs, we often tend to refer to countries as allies or enemies, as aggressors or defenders. The tacit support of the Israeli attack upon Gaza has been met by governmental statements from the region hoping for an end to violence on all sides. But public protest in every Middle Eastern country is delivering a different message — of disproportionate response, collective punishment, seeking to starve the people into submission, Israeli refusal to prevent violence from the settlements, and an unconscionable willingness to treat Palestinian lives as less valuable than those of Israelis.

Demonstrators in many countries, including the U.S., are taking heed of the Palestinian message to Israel. It says, “You ask for a ceasefire but you break it. You expect a ceasefire without any cessation of cruel deprivations that kill our children and humiliate us. You honor the resisters in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but will not even talk to the resistance leaders in Palestine. You do not negotiate with the government we elected. You ask us not to hurl small rockets at civilians but we do not have sophisticated guidance systems, and the much larger weapons you aim at Hamas leaders are killing many more civilians.”

Governmental leaders prefer to deal with other governmental leaders. They lead us into the questions of what side is to blame and what group needs to punished or taught a lesson, rather than the questions of what people are to suffer, to lose family members, or to die. But in the case of Palestine, and throughout the Middle East and beyond, it is the populace from whom future perpetrators of violence will be recruited. Retaliation has been the policy at least since 1968 and it has not succeeded in quelling violence. The policy has isolated the Israeli government and to a degree the U.S. government, not so much from other government leaders as from the people in those countries.

For those in Israel and in the U.S who would like to reduce the likelihood of violent attacks by and upon our children, the continuation of this wholly asymmetric war is not only tragic but entirely counter-productive. Leaders always find support by justifying actions on grounds that something must be done for security. When what is done is to wage war resulting in large civilian casualties, and devastating trauma, the choice is antithetical to human well-being.

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PsySR member Marc Pilisuk is Professor Emeritus, the University of California, and Professor, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. Marc is the author (with Jennifer Achord Rountree) of Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System (Greenwood/Praeger, 2008). He can be reached at mpilisuk@saybrook.edu.

January 9th, 2009