Yasmin Eran-Vardi is an Israeli anti-occupation activist and the coordinator of the Mesarvot, a network of activists supporting Israelis who refuse to serve in the army for moral and humanitarian reasons. She and I worked together during my three-month solidarity project in the occupied West Bank. Yasmin originally published the below post in Hebrew on Facebook. Although her analysis and language may be jarring to some, I must say that her words speak to my experience witnessing the brutality of the Israeli occupation. I feel her anger in the face of glaring hypocrisy. I am sharing an English translation here with Yasmin’s permission.
Last summer, I completed two years of national service at an Israeli therapeutic boarding school. I worked with children and young people who had left or been removed from home due to neglect or behavioral issues. As you've probably noticed, since then and until today, I have spent most of my time in the South Hebron Hills. In a previous post, I spoke about a five-year-old boy who told me that he was afraid that soldiers would shoot him like they had shot his uncle. This story forced me to consider, once again, the nature of imagination and the difference between my work with children in Israel and with children in Palestine.
All in all, it’s very simple. In both places, I meet children who are traumatized. I meet children who are victims of things much bigger than themselves, who are simply the byproduct of others’ suffering. And in both places I see the effect of these larger things on their souls, their behavior, their opinions and actions.
During my national service and up until the last few months, I wanted to study social work. Today this desire feels so far away—not because social work is not important, and not because I got completely immersed in getting beatings from soldiers and settlers and now just can't stop. This old desire feels so distant because in recent months I have met the third and fourth generation living under Israeli oppression. I have met children born into the reality of occupation, in which they live day-to-day under a widespread system of economic and psychological repression with endless means of indignation designed to weaken and exhaust them. The same country that provides safe home and care for some children who have experienced trauma systematically traumatizes hundreds of thousands of other children. Our country creates a situation in which it is impossible to give children everything they need in order to grow up healthy. We create a situation in which every child carries a bag containing generations of pain and suffering, not to mention a ton of anger.
In the boarding school, and in general in therapeutic environments, we try to address the problems that children experience, and not just the problems that they create. We aim to find the innocence and “good” in children, even when they can't “control themselves”, even when they operate violently, verbally or physically, and even when they could be dangerous. I, and apparently also these institutions, believe in leading the child to see that by hurting others he will eventually hurt himself. We want to help him understand that there are good people in the world who want to support him, and that sometimes they themselves (and people in general) act in a way that is perceived as “bad” not out of intention, but out of despair and pain.
Now, I can’t comprehend how people can hold a variety of opinions; but more than anything I find it hard to grasp how people, especially Israelis, are so blind to the cycles of hate and anger, and how they are surprised each time by violent Palestinian resistance, or even the prevalence of violence in the Palestinian society. How can you expect it to be different?
When a child is sent to jail or shot because he yelled, or acted violently, or just because some soldier wanted to; when a child sees guns, grenades, tanks, and fighter jets every day; when a child can easily be killed if he “does not control himself”, that child will grow up knowing that there is nothing to strive to be “better” for. And the truth? He is right. He doesn't have anything to be better for, because they will continue to abuse him, whether he is good or not. The children is right because, from the Israeli point of view, any resistance, including nonviolent resistance, is illegitimate when it’s from a Palestinian. When all the protests are illegal, when there are no elections, and when Palestinian civil society organizations and activists are defined by Israel as terrorists, then why the hell try? Israel glues a huge sticker with the word “terrorist” on the head of every Palestinian child born here, and then we simply waits until we feels like throwing him in jail, or killing him.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that our authorities want the Palestinians violent. As much as possible. They want as many terrorists as possible, and as many bereaved Israeli families as possible. It strengthens the right-wing. It adds to the image of “Jews in danger.” It gives legitimacy to our acts of violence and justifies the continuation of the occupation. Thus our enlightened country’s super sophisticated method for staying as fascist as possible without recompense is creating at-risk youth.
There is but one authority which, on the one hand, creates budgets for and invests resources in therapeutic institutions for troubled kids, and, on the other hand, systematically puts children at risk.
The children here in Palestine are as good and as innocent as children anywhere. Like kids all over the world, they too are victims of unjust systems. They are just like the kids at the Israeli boarding school, except nobody is trying to help the Palestinian children to want to do better.
In the State of Israel, social work, like everything else, is also part of the apartheid system.
In the above video that I filmed a few months ago, you can see a routine IDF operation: the destruction of a family's home, a violent arrest of the landlord, and one girl, maybe 4 years old, getting a stun grenade in the face as she watches a relative get beaten. Dozens of people surround her with guns, yelling. Do you think that this treatment will make her a better person who believes in nonviolence?
Curious to learn more about the experiences informing Yasmin’s perspective? Check out this recent article in Haaretz about an Israeli police officer who headbutted her for documenting human rights violations.
At-Risk Youth