There is a huge fear in Israel at the moment, a basic fear of all
kinds of terror actions against us, ratcheted up and up, week
after week. And the government is pumping it. Every single day
there's the news coming from the army, talking about the
horrible things that might happen to Israel at the hands of the
Iraqi army, or Saddam Hussein; all trying to justify our position
alongside the US or Mr Bush.
I had a new patient a couple of weeks ago who came asking me
should she emigrate to Canada to create a safe place for her
daughter and grandson in case there is a war with Iraq. It is not
my business to give her advice, but the fact is she didn't go to a
lawyer to talk about the practicalities of it, she came to me, a
psychiatrist. I could see the depth of her anxiety and the wish to
control a situation which, for her, is completely uncontrollable.
The war with Iraq, al-Qaida, biological weapons – all these things
are so out of the control of normal people, and this is what is
creating this enormous anxiety in Israel. The feeling that
something might come out of the sky, uncontrollable, without any
previous knowledge, and kill me – this is a strong feeling. And it
becomes stronger when it is disconnected from reason.
In order to cope, I would say people are losing interest in most
of the social and common affairs, and withdrawing inwardly.
They are trying to manage their own problems, their own anxiety
about their safety, but it's impossible for them to deal with this
situation, and so they are withdrawing further inside and giving
less and less attention to what's going on outside them. I call it a
kind of internal exile. When it is like this, when people are so
frightened, it is very easy to manipulate people.
Things have changed in Israel so much in the last year, but the
direct connection to September 11 is hard to trace. It's like the
mechanism of an old-fashioned clock, one wheel turns another,
and it's exhausting trying to trace back where it all started.
But to speak in American terminology, which I don't like to do, a
year ago in Israel human rights were "in". Now they are entirely
out. Human rights have been violated in Israel in the past year
on a bigger scale than at any time in the last 35 years. This
month the Israeli supreme court ruled that it was fine to
"relocate" the families of suspected militants – when of course
they are just deporting people without trial.
Our prime minister and our chief of staff think it is OK that
innocent children are getting killed while the army is
assassinating people that they think should be killed. There are
voices raised against the killing of the "innocents" but nothing
against the assassinations themselves, as if killing Palestinian
suspects is OK – and it is so far from OK.
Today I got a phone call from a Palestinian friend in the West
Bank who told me about the driver of the only ambulance in
Nablus that is allowed to operate in the curfew. He was almost
crying, saying that the ambulance driver had been severely
beaten by the Israeli army. People are dying at home for
nothing, for things they could be easily treated for in hospital.
The most serious thing, if I may say so, is this kind of really
infantile world view where everything is divided into black and
white, good guys and bad guys and no one in between. It's all
part of Mr Bush's axis of evil following September 11 – and our
government, of course, adopted it in no time. It's almost that,
after September 11, there's a global permission to treat the bad
guys however you wish. And naturally we are the good guys and
the Palestinians are the bad guys. People in Israel and the US
are slicing history, suggesting that somehow history started on
September 11. As if nothing had happened before.
But the changes are not all one-sided. Of course the right has
got more extreme, if that's possible, but there are new
movements and groups on the left also, and many of those who
are involved are young people, who haven't really been taking
part in the peace movements up until now. Women are
mobilising, a group of Israeli women visit the checkpoints every
single day, morning and evening, to watch what is going on
there. And even our little group, Physicians for Human Rights, is
not so little now. New members are knocking on our door every
day and asking, "what can I do, can I take part?"
Esther Addley