[Sundaycommunity] Israel’s Psych-War Is Relentless, Vicious and Deliberate

[Catherine Walther]

It’s just terrible. Thanks, Catherine

 “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to
recover is our original unity. *What we have to be is what we are.”*
Thomas Merton


On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 1:16 PM Arthur Blomme via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

>
> Israel’s Psych-War Is Relentless, Vicious and Deliberate
>
> One part of Israel’s military operation in Gaza that’s been largely
> ignored by the mainstream media is the extremely sophisticated
> psychological war that’s being waged on the Palestinian people. If we look
> carefully at some of the more unusual elements in Israel’s strategy, we see
> the outline of plan that is clearly aimed at inflicting maximum
> psychological damage on its victims.
>
> Take, for example, Israel’s repeated demand that civilians leave a
> particular city at a designated time. Every time this demand has been made
> it was followed shortly after by airstrikes on the fleeing civilians. We
> could easily dismiss this unfortunate action as an operational snafu
> attributable to human error, but that does not appear to be the case. After
> all, these airstrikes have not happened just once or twice, but over and
> over again. This suggests that it is official policy.
>
> The same is true of the seemingly random killing of civilians by Israeli
> snipers, (some of them waving white flags) or the so-called “indiscriminate
> bombing” of homes, hospitals and refugee camps, or the hyper-belligerent
> pronouncements by political leaders, or the massive slaughter of civilians
> peacefully gathering food at humanitarian aid trucks.
>
> What we’re saying is that none of these things have any apparent tactical
> value, rather their efficacy can only be measured in terms of how they help
> Israel achieve its overall strategic objective which is the expulsion of
> the entire Arab population. In that regard, the strategy appears to be
> working quite well because the majority of the population is now convinced
> that “nowhere is safe”. This, in fact, is the cornerstone upon which Israel
> has developed its psychological battleplan, to eradicate any sense of
> personal security prompting feelings of anxiety, confusion and
> hopelessness. Keep in mind, this mindset did not appear out of thin air.
> This mindset is the product of a meticulously-plotted and
> thoroughly-sinister plan to inflict maximum psychological damage on 2
> million people so they will be easier to expel from their historic
> homeland. That is the underlying goal of Israel’s operation, ethnic
> cleansing. And the psychological aspect of the campaign may be more
> critical to its success than the relentless airstrikes or nascent ground
> war. This is from an article at Save The Children:
>
> “In times of war, people usually seek refuge in safe places. There are no
> safe places in Gaza right now, and there is no way of reaching safety
> outside. With a sense of safety, the constant reassuring presence of
> family, some kind of a routine and appropriate treatment, children can
> recover. But so many children have already lost family members, some have
> lost all, and the violence and displacement are relentless,” Jason Lee,
> Save the Children’s Country Director for the occupied Palestinian
> territory. Children’s Mental health Pushed Beyond the Breaking Point, Save
> The Children
>
> While Lee recognizes the importance of “safe places”, he fails to connect
> the dots. He seems to think the present situation is an accident of war,
> but it’s not an accident of war. Israeli leaders have undoubtedly worked
> hand-in-glove with groups of behavior psychologists to settle on a plan
> that would achieve their political goals while minimizing casualties. (Mass
> casualties lead to fierce political opposition which Israel wanted to
> avoid.) The current psyops achieves both which is why we should assume that
> it is not ‘accidental’. In short, Israel’s bombing campaign is more focused
> on terrorizing and traumatizing than it is on killing. Can you see that?
>
> Once we realize that there’s a rational motive for Israel’s seemingly
> random violence, we begin to see it everywhere. Every day there are new
> airstrikes on tent cities and refugee camps that have no strategic value at
> all. Why? Have Israeli leaders lost their minds?
>
> No, they haven’t lost their minds. They are deliberately terrorizing the
> Palestinians so they will eagerly stampede into Egypt as soon as the wall
> is breached. This is the real purpose of Israel’s psychological war.
>
> So, what are the consequences of Israel’s psych-war on the Palestinians?
>
> Well, if we review the data from the past, we see that Israel’s frequent
> incursions have been nothing short of catastrophic. Check out this excerpt
> from a report by a group of scholars from the University of Washington in
> 2009:
>
> “A recent report found that 91.4 percent of children in the Gaza Strip
> suffer moderate to severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”…
>
> The most recent studies indicate that the vast majority of Gaza’s children
> exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)….. Of a
> representative sample of children in Gaza, more than 95 percent experienced
> artillery shelling in their area or sonic booms of low-flying jets.
> Moreover, 94 percent recalled seeing mutilated corpses on TV and 93 percent
> witnessed the effects of aerial bombardments on the ground. Vast majority
> of Gaza children suffer PTSD symptoms, Electronic Intifada
>
> Repeat: “91.4 percent of children in the Gaza Strip” already have
> “moderate to severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
>
> So, even back in 2009, Palestinians were experiencing a “staggering level
> of psychological trauma.” Imagine how many more people will be severely
> impacted by today’s bloody rampage. It’s worth noting, that the
> psychological damage from the current conflict will not vanish when the
> hostilities end. Many of these people will spend the rest of their lives
> wrestling with their own demons in a hell that is entirely of Israel’s
> making. Here’s more from a 4-month-old article at the Guardian:
>
> Children in Gaza are developing severe trauma symptoms alongside the risk
> of death and injury, according to a Palestinian psychiatrist….
>
> The psychological impact of the war on children was showing, said Fadel
> Abu Heen, a psychiatrist in Gaza. Children had “started to develop serious
> trauma symptoms such as convulsions, bed-wetting, fear, aggressive
> behaviour, nervousness, and not leaving their parents’ sides.”
>
> The “lack of any safe place has created a general sense of fear and horror
> among the entire population and children are most impacted,” he said….
>
> Studies conducted after earlier conflicts have shown a majority of
> children in Gaza exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
> (PTSD).
>
> Among Unicef’s other findings were: 91% of children reported sleeping
> disturbances during the conflict; 94% said they slept with their parents;
> 85% reported appetite changes; 82% felt angry; 97% felt insecure; 38% felt
> guilty; 47% were biting their nails; 76% reported itching or feeling ill….
>
> A report last year by Save the Children on the impact of 15 years of
> blockade and repeated conflicts on the mental health of children in Gaza
> found their psycho-social wellbeing had “declined dramatically to alarming
> levels”.
>
> Children that the aid agency interviewed “spoke of fear, nervousness,
> anxiety, stress and anger, and listed family problems, violence, death,
> nightmares, poverty, war and the occupation, including the blockade, as the
> things they liked least in their lives”.
>
> The report quoted António Guterres, the secretary general of the UN,
> describing the lives of children in Gaza as “hell on earth”. Children in
> Gaza ‘developing severe trauma’ after 16 days of bombing, The Guardian
>
> We tend to think of the survivors (of war) as the “lucky ones”, but that
> is not always the case. When you strip a child of all sense of personal
> security and cast him into a world of uncertainty, violence and death, his
> ability to feel joy or love or self-fulfillment are greatly impaired. We
> think Israeli war planners deliberately created the conditions required for
> inflicting maximum psychological damage on the Palestinians living in Gaza.
> We don’t think there is anything ‘accidental’ about what we are seeing. We
> think this is the only rational explanation for an erratic battle plan that
> focuses less on beating the enemy than it does on terrorizing the
> population. For Israel, driving the Palestinians out of Gaza is simply not
> enough. They want to ensure that their victims face years of agonizing
> psychological pain until the day they die.
>
> While we do not yet have sufficient data to accurately assess the
> magnitude of the damage, we can safely say that the ongoing massacre vastly
> exceeds any in the past. For all practical purposes, Israel has destroyed
> the lives of every man, woman and child in Gaza. But when we see video of
> the wasteland Israel has created – with the rubble extending in all
> directions– we should remember that the psychological damage they have
> inflicted is far greater. These are the invisible wounds that will never
> heal and will thrust an entire population into a world of chronic anxiety,
> depression and despair.
>
> Israel alone is responsible for their suffering.
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