January 2, 2024
How can we be certain that marketing psychology tricks are not applicable to politics?
Recently, with the growing voices advocating for Palestine, particularly in light of the events unfolding in Gaza, there has been a surge in the boycott against companies supporting Israel.
Simultaneously, voices from Gaza have risen, revealing concerns about the efficiency of international committees operating within the strip. Entities such as the Red Cross and UN agencies are said to be hindered in their humanitarian efforts due to the need for Israeli permits. This raises questions about the true objectives of these international humanitarian agencies. If they are not fully independent and free to carry out their work, it prompts consideration that they may, in essence, be under occupation as well.
An alternative perspective suggests that these agencies function similarly to international clothing or food brands. They market their names based on the work they claim to do, presenting a trustworthy facade. However, in reality, they might be owned by individuals who established them to serve and protect their own interests.
Examining the establishment dates of UN agencies, such as UNICEF in 1946, UNHCR in 1950, and WFP in 1961, reveals that many were founded after World War II, particularly after 1945. It’s intriguing to ponder their efficacy, as after this date, white individuals didn’t suffer as before, especially in comparison to situations like the one in Gaza. Comparing Gaza to events in places like Ukraine may seem unfair, given the absence of reports on organ theft or other gruesome stories that we’ve witnessed in Gaza. However, the resignations that the world witnessed from individuals such as Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and Hind Sabri, a World Food Program goodwill ambassador, can be seen as evidence of the inefficiency of these agencies for Gaza.
Contemplating the possibility that these humanitarian agencies could be akin to well-known brands like McDonald’s or Starbucks, owned by individuals with their interests in mind, can be disheartening. It challenges the humanitarian beliefs that many once held dear.
The aim of these thoughts is to express gratitude, tinged with deep sorrow, to Gaza for provoking questions within us, compelling us to act as humans rather than sheep, and urging us to reclaim the humanity we once believed we possessed. Gaza has restored many meanings that were once artificial. Unfortunately, the cost of this truth has been the obliteration of the city and the sacrifice of tens of thousands of martyrs, each with their own untold stories.
Hanan Abubasheer
December 29, 2023
After enduring 75 days of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, I find myself devastated by the profound silence that surrounds us every day. It becomes increasingly evident that, in a world where power dictates one’s right to live, those without sufficient influence are left voiceless.
Amidst the chaos, I am grappling with numerous questions and finding only a few answers. My beliefs are unraveling, and the once-held notions of a free world and liberated nations are collapsing. It appears to me that we, as individuals and nations, are enslaved by leaders with malicious intentions. These leaders manipulate our perception, convincing us that we live in a world of liberty, while in reality, we are subject to their control.
The internet, touted as a tool to connect us, seems to have played into the hands of these malevolent leaders. Instead of fostering unity, it has been employed to spread false news and superficial life meanings, diverting our attention from the harsh realities of our world.
In this modern era of supposed liberty, the prevalent narrative fails to acknowledge the existence of slavery. Countries rich in resources, like Sudan and Gaza, are colonized without regard for basic rights, including those of children and women. The media, an invaluable tool for sharing truths, is manipulated and targeted in places like Sudan and Gaza, hiding the theft of their havens.
The concept of freedom appears elusive. I envision our world as a piece of land owned by a figurehead, with partners aiding in the exploitation of its resources. These ‘landlords’ vehemently discourage any notion of ownership or independence among their ’employees.’ Those daring to dream of autonomy find themselves cast into a dark abyss, subjected to torture and deprivation. Seeking answers and uncovering hidden truths lead to the same fate—torture and imprisonment.
While this may seem like a work of fiction to some, I once believed the same until I spoke with a friend who survived the genocide in Gaza (after living 58 days under the attack). He described the insanity in a way that resonated deeply with me. He likened the experience to those sci-fi movies depicting alien invasions—unseen tools, attacks from all directions, leaving no room for escape.
This revelation left me with a profound sorrow for everything around me. The person once aspiring to land on the moon now appears as a greedy colonizer, driven solely by the pursuit of possession.
-Hanan Abubasheer
January 2022
The changing meanings of the Israeli occupation to different generations of Palestinians.
Hanan Abubasheer, psychosocial counselor, BA in Counselling and Educational Psychology,
Al-Azhar University, Gaza
מאת: חוצות – כתב עת תרבוטיפוליטי
תאריך פרסום: 24/11/2021
Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, neither Palestine nor the occupation itself have remained the same. How the policies and faces of the occupation have changed from one decade to the next, how names on the map have been erased and replaced with others, how, more generally, Palestine has gradually become Israel – all these questions belong in the domain of the historians. What we mental health professionals can contribute to this discussion is a reflection on the changing psychological effects of the occupation on Palestinians and the changing ways in which Palestinians of different generations make sense of their personal and collective experiences.
I would like to speak here from my personal experience. My grandma used to tell stories about the old beautiful Palestine that she knew. The key moment of her story, for me, was when she began to define the occupation that she lived under. What struck me as I listened to her stories, was the realization that she saw an altogether different face of the occupation than the one I know! Clearly, the ideas that were linked to the word “occupation” in her mind were very different from mine. It seems to me that we are not just experiencing a different Palestine, but also a different occupation. In my grandma’s eyes, the Israeli occupation was a militia who took her people’s land by committing massacres throughout the country, whereas the Palestinian parties were quite simply popular movements born from anger – the anger of people who had been kicked out of their homes and who felt betrayed by the British. Grandma used to say that fearmongering and spreading rumors were two main psychological techniques that the occupation then used to take control of the land. She would also talk about how, back then, most people were deceived and manipulated by such simple psychological strategies. Both the geographical and the mental policies together formed the first steps of occupying Palestine.
My father’s generation, raised by traumatized, wounded parents, was probably primarily driven to survive and to ensure that their and their families’ basic needs would be met. During the 1970s and 1980s, Palestinians were allowed to work throughout their country, under the control of the Israeli occupation forces. During these decades, connections were established between Palestinians and Israelis – connections that were not possible in the earlier decades, marked by the two major wars (the ones that took place in 1948 and in 1967), nor in the latter decades, the 1990s and the 2000s. Still, even during those decades, when contact was more easily possible, the occupiers’ policy was to use Palestinian workers to build a country in which there would be no room for them, a classical colonial policy aimed at exploiting these Palestinian workers’ basic needs while dissipating their anger, by offering them what they were secretly dreaming of: “a job in Israel with excellent salary”. Back then the occupation was still a nameless trauma, and its dimensions and costs were not yet fully comprehended.
After the Oslo accords, a new, more draconic shape of the occupation fatefully impacted our people, while Israel gained more power than ever before.
In my own mind, the occupation is something that keeps moving within me wherever I go. It is both the truth/real and an illusion. It is about the land of our dreams that I have never seen before, but that has continuously defined me. For me and my peers, the occupation operates intellectually and psychologically, not only physically or geographically. The occupation lives in us, not with us! It is rooted in us! We, in my example, the youth of Gaza, are locked inside a small city and left behind to struggle to survive, forgotten by the world.
So, the same occupation grew in our minds in different ways, in some ways bringing the Palestinian generations together and in other ways creating gaps between them. We often focus more on the geographical split, as it is the most common and noticeable effect of the Israeli occupation, but generational splits are equally important. Our grandparents did not have any background knowledge about the Israeli occupation – instead, they lived it. Our fathers heard a story full of anger, defense and remorse from our grandfathers, whereas we, young people, heard our fathers’ stories about the times when they were allowed to work, study and communicate with Israeli communities, while we are being denied that and left to dream of the chance to get Israelis’ permission to work in Israel, envying our fathers for the opportunities that they had.
When asked “what are you fighting for?”, the people in my family gave very different answers – yet another expression of the generational differences.
Grandma said: “To return to my village home”.
Dad said: “To see one united identity”. His wish was to repair the catastrophic post-1967 split of the Palestinian people into multiple populations, that were then incited against each other.
Me and my peers say: “We are quite simply looking for better living conditions, meaning to be able to cross borders whenever we plan to, without any humiliation on crossing, to look for job opportunities and ways to meet other basic life needs”.
We share the same fate of living under the occupation, yet the specifics of its impact on our minds and the damage that it has caused us separates us from each other. I think that the occupation has affected our personalities in ways far more catastrophic than the land. For example, I see our current leaders’ tendencies to overcontrol the people as an outcome of the control that they have experienced themselves. As for the ordinary people, their love of bragging over small things comes from the frustrated ambition to glorify their land, Palestine. The heightened sensitivity to being humiliated by each other is based in the objective helplessness to restore one’s dignity when one goes through a checkpoint or a crossing.
I will now touch briefly on issues of clinical work. How does the patient picture the threats and to what extent does he or she feel they can manage them, and how does feeling helpless and out of control affect their lives? The therapist should hold the notion that the occupation lies deep in peoples’ minds and therefore, while evaluating patients and treating them, special attention should be paid to the story that has been passed to the patient through generations and to the political events that happened in his/her city during his/her childhood and teenage years.
This has to do with assessing to what extent the threat that the occupation presents, influences peoples’ mental health. If the person recognizes that threat as long-term, this might cause them to experience life as permanently on the edge, while if the person denies that, then could be more vulnerable to emotional instability and may be psychologically fragile in facing any new event
The traumatic events facing the Palestinians continue with every new offensive happening on the ground. For instance, people in Gaza were experiencing the escape of the six captives from the Israeli jail similarly to how they experienced the last attack on the Strip, in May 2021 watching news every hour, and feeling intense emotions, including the triumph of the sense of victory and a sense of being united and powerful, to be immediately followed by the feeling of heartbreak, tears and anger. The attack and the escape are only a few of the episodes from the long series of events that have been deepening the trauma and making it part of our minds and bodies. Personally, I think this is what the occupation wants to achieve. The psychological suffering of being hit in our weak spots – which the occupation knows well because it has created them.
The injustices facing my generation of Palestinians are not limited to the armed attacks. One face of that injustice are all the barriers we face when we consider traveling. Many countries think of us, not as of young people wishing to see the world, but as of potential refugees. When applying for student’s or visitor’s visas, we will be asked to prove our plans to return home, but sometimes even that proof will not help one to obtain the visa. Once a friend of mine said to me, “I am so fascinated about Greece but no one would believe that I am visiting it for just a vacation”. That we are escapees has become another stereotype about us that we have to challenge.
We could say that colonialism has never left us – rather, it has changed its mask. Its contemporary barbaric mask uses psychological tools alongside other, more conventional, weapons.
November 2018
“Thank God! The child was not with her.”
by Hanan Abubasheer
At 7:30 am on a Monday morning, I get a call from Zainab, my supervisor, asking me if I still want to join her in facilitating a psychological support group for traumatized women in Rafah – south of the Gaza Strip. I say “yes” – mainly because I am not yet fully awake. Fifteen minutes later I am outside, looking for a driver to Rafah while sending a text message to Zainab to please start the session on her own and I’ll join in the moment I arrive.
Zainab and I provide social and psychological support for women and children in Gaza Strip. The Rafah group, intended for women who feel they are suffering and overwhelmed, is scheduled to meet ten times. Fourteen women have signed up, women whose bodies may be health but whose souls bleed. “It’s hard for people to believe you are not okay when you are physically healthy, they simply don’t see what you mean”.
In 45 min, I enter the room where the group is meeting. Everyone is already there, so I say hello quietly and take a seat. Zainab has put her phone on speaker and everyone is listening to her conversation concerning a participant named Samah (made up name), who cannot make today’s meeting. There is a man on the other side of the line, so I know right away that something is very wrong with Samah – if she were well, she would’ve called herself!
The man tells us everything is alright. He is lying on the hospital bunk bed, we learn, and his wife Samah is on the bed just above his own, recovering from her surgery. I find myself disconnecting emotionally. I am not that curious about that person, I tell myself.
After the call ends, one of the women says angrily, “she should’ve known this was going to happen!” What is it that she might have done that they have no compassion for her, despite her illness? “Remind me to tell you during the break”, Zainab whispers. She then skillfully refocuses everyone by offering water and a 10-minute relaxation exercise.
The time runs fast and before I know it, Zainab is telling me Samah’s story: “ This woman was injured while looking for her husband at the Great March, but what’s different about her is that she wasn’t planning to participate in it. She was there to tell him that his mother passed out and was hospitalized – chances are, she had forgotten to take her medicine. Samah had a 4-week-old son. She packed a bag with everything the baby might need but as she was walking towards the fence, she realized she had forgotten the baby himself! There must have been too much on her mind. She panicked for a moment, trying to remember if she had locked the door. Should she go back at once or continue on her way? She decided to keep walking, planning on asking the first person she met to relay the news of her mother-in-law passing out to her husband, so she could go home immediately.”
As she kept walking, she soon met someone who told her that her husband had been injured. Forgetting everything else, Samah began to look for her husband – but before she found him, she herself was injured!
I was feeling dissociated and confused. How did all this happen??
Zainab somehow manages to maintain a positive view of the situation: thank God, she says, that the child was not with her!
Samah, her husband and his mother were all taken to the same hospital. What happened to the child, I wonder? The neighbors heard him crying, Zainab explains, climbed into the house through the window and took care of him that night.
[wpvideo 5OVxNOxR]
June 2018
I have always hated crying for help.
You may have read about Gaza’s plight in newspapers or academic articles and you may have heard about the many deprivations we the Palestinians face, like having just four hours of electricity each day, three extraordinarily brutal wars, the almost always closed border crossings and so on and so forth.
We, as humans with the human bodies and feelings, before any kind of divisions human beings may create, are all trying to send a message from inside the box (Gaza) to the humans outside the box. Our signal is intended to be sent everywhere that humans live, it is meant for all who want to listen. I am not worried about whether or not you are receiving accurate information. But what I do truly worry about is whether you people are able to reach the feelings zone, to feel the emotion in our words and be touched emotionally by our incessantly flowing blood. Our actions and responses, personality and memories, anger and impotence are what we are, the conditions of our lives don’t just affect but also build us. How we deal with every single day in our daily life when there’s no war, emergency or crisis (the ordinary days!), like how we move on and rebuild ourselves after crises. I know I am not explaining it well but what is normal for me is what you fear could happen to you in the worst-case scenario, the worst nightmare you can imagine.
Let me see if I can give you a little example. For instance, you are returning happily from a close friend’s wedding and you suddenly hear loud noise. If you are Gazan, you don’t think of the possibility that there may be children playing or fireworks going off somewhere; you think, oh—the war is back.
Another thing I wonder about is our memory: how bad or good is it to be a person holding memories of war? What might it feel like to not have such memories? Can one know anything about war not having experienced one personally? For a good, kind person, is there a connection between war memories and aggressive urges (like the ones Freud wrote about)? Who has stronger desires to hurt others—we who experience war first-hand, or you who watch it on television?
When I am not consumed with these psychological questions, I like to travel in my imagination. I do this every day. I don’t need travel documents in order to be able to do this, nor do I need anyone to open the crossing for me. In my imagination, I can try to live like a normal person—one with dreams and hopes—unaffected by all the mess that has been forced upon me. I escape from dirty roads, tragic events, terrible history and a grim future by hanging out in empty places or by watching movies telling me what young people my age are doing in their lives. Movies show me what it looks like to be a normal person living a normal life and how I could possibly become one.
If I didn’t have my imagination and could not fantasize about my personal future—like the academic courses I am going to take, my career path etc.—I would probably head for the fence, as many have already done.
I just want to take you as a reader to new places hidden away from the reporters’ cameras. I may not be able to explain much but I hope that I managed to drop a few hints that can help open some ears and doors.
March 2019
Palestinian Reality Vs. Stanford Prison Experiment
In 1971, a team of researchers headed by a well-known psychologist by the name of Philip Zimbardo, conducted an experiment in social psychology that came to be known as “The Stanford Prison Experiment”. By means of this experiment, Zimbardo tried to show the darker side of de-individuation – a phenomenon occurs when individuals do not feel that they stand out as individuals, leading to a reduction of inner restraints against doing various prohibitions. In that study, 24 men judged to be physically and mentally stable and mature, were randomly assigned to either the role of “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison. Shockingly, it took a very short time for the guards to being stripping the prisoners, using sexual harassment tactics to humiliate them and put bags over their heads. Going to the toilet became a privilege that a guard could grant or deny. The worst abuses were performed at night, when the guards thought they were not being observed by the researchers. Ultimately, one of the “prisoners” felt that the only way for him to get out would be by acting as if he had gone crazy. He began, strategically, to play the role of a crazy person, but soon his craziness, too, became real, as he went into a fit of uncontrollable rage.
From Zimbardo’s view, many factors can lead to de-individuation, diffusion of responsibility being one of the most important ones. Here is some of his commentary about the experiment: “The study makes a very profound point about the power of situations: that situations affect us much more than we think. Human behavior is much more under the control of subtle situational forces – in some cases very trivial ones, like rules, roles, symbols and uniforms – and much less under the control of things like character and personality traits that we ordinarily think of as determining behavior.”
How does this all apply to the Palestinian situation?
Since 1967, Palestine has been known as the West bank and Gaza Strip, while the rest of the country became known as Israel. In 2006/2007, following Israel’s effort to empower Hamas as a way to weaken Fatah, these political parties in Palestine became involved a conflict – “the Fatah-Hamas conflict” that later divided the country into two territories. Hamas took over Gaza and Fatah ruled the West bank. Keep in mind that the people from the two territories were kept from visiting each other by Israel, which also blockaded Gaza.
Now, think of this situation as a kind of experiment, not unlike the Stanford Prison Experiment. As part of our experimental design, there are two separated prisons – “West Bank” and “Gaza”. The role of the guard has been assigned to Fatah in the West bank and to Hamas in Gaza. The prisoners are the people who live in these territories. Although the “prisoners” know that the “guards” are themselves very limited in the power that they are given, they take their authority seriously. Like the guards in Zimbardo’s experiment, the guards perform their worst abuses when they believe that they are not being watched. Meager privileges like jobs and the freedom of self-expression on social media are being manipulated by the guards, and that way the guards manage to convince themselves that they have some power. Astonishingly, the people now playing prisoners and guards are one another’s friends, family members and colleagues, with no prior history of hostility towards each other. All are living under the control of the same occupying power – Israel.
Palestine’s political parties were initially meant to serve the people, but the good feeling of having power, that the party leaders have gotten used to, has turned the situation upside down.
Forgetting that you are no more than a player can lead you to lose the game. Obedience to authority, foolish acceptance of the rules and the fear of punishment have superseded in importance the human principles of decency and solidarity. The party leaders seem to have forgotten that the ideas at the core of their respective parties are more like road signs, for the road whose route has since been revised.
Let me conclude with a quote from a member of the research team that conducted the Stanford Experiment: “They’re supposed to be together as a unit, but here they’re abusing each other because I requested them to, and no one questioned my authority at all, and it really shocked me.”
Hanan Abubasheer would welcome emails from friends and colleagues around the world. Her email address is pal.hanan@hotmail.com
