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Dealing With October 7: 'Trauma Is Like a Scar, or a Tumor, and It Ripples Out to Friends and Families'
Ilana Kwartin talks about setting up a space to help traumatized victims of October 7 and the war with non-traditional, mind-body methods: 'This is a huge change in our Israeliness. It's not for nothing that the Shin Bet, the Mossad and the police send us their people'
Things that don't ripple out - scars, tumors (unless you're a tasmanian devil)
Things that do ripple out - the unstoppable proliferation of the California self help grift.
Sadly it seems they are missing the fact that in this case they could easily help themselves: go live literally anywhere else.
They can't.
Something like 80% of Jewish Israelis were born in Israel. Only about 10% of all Israelis have other passports. Poverty is widespread - 21% by official numbers and probably a lot higher.
The idea that everyone in Israel is actually a New Yorker from Long Island was never true, and is less true than ever. Many of the Israelis who could flee already have fled. Especially in the current wave of anti-immigrant xenophobia no western country is going to take in millions of impoverished Jewish refugees.
Shit's fucked. There's no outcome here that doesn't end with millions of Israelis remaining in some portion of Palestine. Like it's possible the west could absorb seven million Jewish refugees, but I think we'd very quickly find out that Europe is just as virulently anti-Semitic now as it was in 1945, they've just gotten more polite about it. It has to be remembered that the Holocaust was a success; The Europeans successfully destroyed or expelled almost the entire Jewish population, wiped out many of the communists, wiped out many Roma people, wiped out many disabled people and lots of other "undesirables". All of Europe's post-war opposition to anti-Semitism comes from a Europe largely without Jews. I think their unlimited support for Israel would change drastically if Israel had to pick up and move to Brussels.
It's all fucked, we're just at the stage where what kind of fucked is still being decided.
yo thanks for educating me. you're right that I had understood it is lots of people who could easily go elsewhere.
As you describe it, a very difficult situation on the individual level.
I've met all kinds of Europeans and there is no doubt in my mind their guilt about the holocaust only continues as long as they don't have to deal much with Jewish people. As long as they are like a historical artifact. Just like Americans might feel bad about the genocides so long as indigenous people are confined to the Past.
It makes me think, about organizing in other countries to offer an exit strategy for these people. If they are feeling like caged animals having things thrown at them from all sides, then they will be acting in self-defense. OK, even though broadly speaking they're in the wrong, they were born that way and not making the decision to be there.
So would it make sense for us to create a path for these people to de escalate by leaving their occupied homes, offering to set them up elsewhere? If you could get a guarantee of amnesty from the future governments of Palestine.. if you leave in 2025 we will not prosecute you for your crimes, we will not come after you for reparations. But that would incentivize the richest and the worst of course.
You'd basically have to include some kind of re-education component in this, in order to not be seeding the local territory with future violence.
Obviously just spitballing from an uninformed person.
I hadn't ever considered that, and I think it's a good idea and worth looking in to. I agree that for many people, whether they're ardent zionists or not, they likely feel trapped with no alternatives but to continue their war. Even if we could just siphon off cowardly zionists who believe in Zionism as long as they're not expected to die for it that would still deprive Israel of labor power and potential soldiers. There's a number of parts in The Art of War where Sun Tzu advocates for subverting your enemies or capturing their forces intact so you can either convert them to your side or make use of them for your own ends. Your thinking is on the same lines as the great strategists of old.
But does sun tzu have any advice on how to avoid doing operation paperclip?
I imagine Sun Tzu would 100% support Paperclip it's exactly his kind of deal.
Kidnapping siege engineers, artisans, and anyone else who seemed useful has been a pretty normal part of warfare for as long as there's been warfare. If the mongols were going to burn your city down and kill everyone in it yelling that you had a useful craft or skill was one of the few ways to be spared.