Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 04:58:37 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [NYTr] Double-Speal II: Dissociation and Dehumanization During War
Counterpunch - Jul 14, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenthal07142007.html Dissociation and Dehumanization During War: Psychological Defense Against Suffering and Feelings of Powerlessness By SUSAN ROSENTHAL, MD When Tina Turner sang, "Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken," we all knew what she meant. In a world filled with pain, nature provides a defence against suffering called dissociation. Experiences that are too horrible to be integrated into our understanding of the world are split off from conscious awareness. Dissociation provides a mental escape when there is no physical escape. Dissociation separates contradictory experiences to avoid internal conflict, making it possible to love our own children and support wars that kill other people's children; to want freedom and support wars that deny others their freedom. To feel outrage at being robbed and support wars that rob the people of other lands. Dissociation mentally disconnects us from intolerable experiences. When thinking brings pain, dissociation helps people to move through life without thinking; we shut out the world or imagine it to be much safer than it really is. By numbing fear, anger and pain, dissociation creates a false sense of safety, reducing our motivation to remove the dangers that threaten us. Severe dissociation numbs compassion and empathy, making it possible for people to do cruel and monstrous things that they would never do in a non-dissociated state. An unthinkable war The barbarism of the Iraq war is creating mass dissociation in Iraq and America. Iraqis are going out of their minds with suffering. So are their tormentors, the American soldiers who are themselves tormented by what they have seen and done. Ordinary Americans must also dissociate in order to live "normal" lives while a horrific war looms menacingly in the background. Such dissociation provides temporary comfort, while allowing the war to continue. The media encourage mass dissociation, presenting sanitized coverage of the war and sedating commentary that drips with lies. "Doublespeak" promotes dissociation to make the unacceptable acceptable. Invasion is defense; civilian deaths are collateral damage; a freedom fighter is a terrorist working for us; and a terrorist is a freedom fighter working for them. Politicians revel in doublespeak. On Independence Day, President Bush equated the U.S. war to dominate Iraq with America's fight against British domination. Such upside-down distortions encourage people to dissociate from the fact that their government is conducting mass murder in their name. Dissociation in the face of terrible injustice is mistakenly perceived as a lack of caring instead of what it really is: a psychological defense against feeling powerless. Polls consistently show that Americans are very concerned about the war, and most want it to end. Yet, they see no way forward. The Democrats consistently betray the anti-war movement, and liberal leaders of the social movements tail the Democrats. The recent vote to bring most American combat troops home next April is just another sham. All troops must come home now, combat and occupation forces, because Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. Delaying the pullout only compounds the misery and provides politicians with enough time to change their minds. While the powers-that-be promote war as necessary for peace, prosperity and security, peace never comes, only the wealthy prosper and life becomes increasingly insecure. The ordinary American, the American soldier and the people they are supposed to hate, all are victimized by the rich and powerful who feed off their suffering. Americans don't need to care more about the war. They need an uncompromising anti-war movement that can organize them into a force powerful enough to end it. [Dr. Susan Rosenthal has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years and has written many articles on the relationship between health and human relationships. She is also the author of Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-1937 General Motors Sit-Down Strike (1996) and Market Madness and Mental Illness: The Crisis in Mental Health Care (1999) and Power and Powerlessness. She is a member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. She can be reached through her web site www.powerandpowerlessnes.com or by [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Counterpunch - Jul 14, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri07142007.html Language as an Instrument of Crime A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak By RANNIE AMIRI It is indeed a great irony that George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, the same year Israel was created. For this nation, above all others, has proven itself most adept in the use and promulgation of doublespeak. Defined by Webster's Dictionary as "evasive, ambiguous, high-flown language intended to deceive or confuse," Israeli governments have always relied on it to justify the expansionist nature of their state, excuse the confiscation of land and minimize the extent to which its inhabitants have been mistreated or abused. A few examples: The Security Fence The monstrosity which Israel is constructing along the entire length of the West Bank is no more for security than it is a fence. The barrier, started in 2003 and now more than half complete, is scheduled to run over 450 miles and reach a height of 25 feet  four times longer than and twice as high as the former Berlin Wall. Composed of concrete and electrified wire, surrounded by trenches and mounted with strategically positioned sniper towers, calling it a "fence" is more than farcical. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled construction of the barrier illegal (a verdict, of course, ignored). Within the last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a report indicating that it will "restrict access to workplaces, health, education, and to places of worship." In addition, it fully recognized that Arab-majority East Jerusalem will be severed from the West Bank by its route. In another area, 50,000 Palestinians would be completely isolated and restricted to the zone between it and Israel resulting in their inability "to access critical services such as schools, clinics and shops in either Israel or the West Bank without special permits." More telling is where the barrier is being built. According to the UN report, 80% of it on West Bank land. The "security fence" is thus an offensive structure rather than the defensive one it purports to be. It is just one illustration of how Israel attempts to obfuscate a reality  in this case, a very expensive land grab - through use of language. Moderate Physical Pressure and Work Accidents Israel was at one time the only country to officially sanction the use of torture, euphemistically referred to as "moderate physical pressure." Lea Tsemel, a defense lawyer and founder of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) remarked, "Israel is the only Western country that openly uses torture. This is not some brute in the secret services beating up a prisoner. It's done in the open. There is quiet legitimation by a high-ranking commission and government ministers" (New York Times, May 8, 1997). The Sunday Times had already arrived at the same conclusion in June 1977: "Torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as 'rogue cops' exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy." Whenever a detainee died under torture, it was dismissed as an unfortunate "work accident." It took a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 to ban the practice. Unfortunately they have now reversed themselves. A judgment issued this past June allows Shin Bet to use methods regarded by PCATI as torture when in a "ticking bomb" situation. With likely wide interpretation of this circumstance, it appears a green light has just been issued to reinstate the practice. The Absent Present This bizarre term was used describe those Palestinians who were not driven out of Palestine in 1948, but remained within what was to later become Israel. If they temporarily left their homes or were away from their land during the war, they were prevented from reclaiming it. Confiscation of the property of the "absent present" was then permitted (Haaretz, January 14, 1955). The Abandoned Areas "We take the land first and the law comes after." - Yehoshafat Palmon, Arab Affairs advisor to the mayor of Jerusalem (Guardian, April 26, 1972). Whether to assuage the conscience of emigrating Jews or not, the Zionists who founded Israel passed a series of discriminatory laws with harmless and protective sounding titles explicitly for the purpose of expropriating inhabited Palestinian land. In some instances, these laws were made retroactive. They carried such names as the Emergency Defense Regulations, the Abandoned Areas Ordinance, the Emergency Articles for the Exploitation of Uncultivated Lands, and as described above, the Absentee Property Law. These laws all attempted to reinforce the myth peddled by Zionists depicting Palestine as "a land without a people." Nonetheless, they were aptly described by the Jewish writer Moshe Keren as "wholesale robbery with a legal coating." Definition of Israeli doublespeak: the use of language to hide crimes of the state. It would surely make Big Brother proud. Reference 1. Zayid, Ismail. Zionism: The Myth and the Reality. American Trust Publications, Indianapolis, 1980. [Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on issues dealing with the Arab and Islamic worlds. 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