Home > The Generation That "Doesn’t Know Joseph"
The Generation That "Doesn’t Know Joseph"
by Gideon Levy (levy@haaretz.co.il)
Ha’aretz - Sunday, Aug. 10, 2003
TEL AVIV - Israel’s contact with the next generation of
Palestinians - those who grew up under the occupation - and its
attempts to achieve peace with them, will be far more problematic
than with the generation that preceded it. This is something we
need to be aware of and take into account. No past generation grew
up in conditions as severe as those that afflicted the members of
the current generation in the territories. Indeed, there is no
place in the Western world where children live in comparable
conditions. A year ago, a report by USAID, the U.S. Agency for
International Development, found that about a quarter of the
children in the territories suffer from malnutrition, either
prolonged or passing. A United Nations agency found at the time
that 62 percent of the Palestinians did not have sufficient access
to food. Since then, the situation has only been aggravated.
A similar state of affairs exists in the health system, in which
all medical treatment, including vaccinations and first aid, is a
complicated, and at times impossible, bureaucratic process. One
need only participate in one of the events held by Physicians for
Human Rights to see the health conditions in which children are
growing up in Israel’s backyard.
It is not only food and physical health that these children lack.
From Jenin to Rafah, hundreds of thousands of children are
suffering from psychological traumas whose impact is difficult to
gauge. These are children who, in the past three years, have been
exposed to death in truly frightening dosages, to destruction,
shooting, tanks in the streets, soldiers invading their homes in
the middle of the night, arrests, beatings and multiple forms of
humiliation. Some of them lost their friends, in some cases before
their eyes: 230 Palestinian children under the age of 15 and
another 208 aged 15-18 have been killed since September 2000. Many
others have been rendered paralyzed or disabled, and their friends
have been exposed to horrors. One doesn’t have to be a psychologist
to understand that children who live with deep anxiety for such a
lengthy period will suffer mental problems. And, of course, hardly
any of them are getting professional assistance.
These children are growing up with deprivations that are hard for
an Israeli parent or child to imagine. They have never seen a
beach, have never been in an air-conditioned room, have never
splashed around in a swimming pool, have never been on a bus, have
never gone on a trip anywhere - they can only dream of being on a
train or a plane. Some of them were unable to leave their homes for
months on end, or leave their villages for years.
Day and night in the same village, without a community center,
without a sports field, without books, toys or games. They have
never been to an amusement park, they have no idea what a computer
is, they have never been to a movie theater, seen a play, visited a
museum, attended a concert or taken part in extracurricular
activities. For months they couldn’t even get to school. Their
cultural and social world was formed by the conditions of their
lives under the closures and sieges imposed by Israel. Some of them
have never seen their grandparents, even though they live in a
nearby town; others have never seen their imprisoned brothers or
fathers (in some cases, both parents are in Israeli detention)
since visits to prisons became impossible. Many children, too, have
been arrested and given severe punishments without any
consideration for their age, and have been jailed together with
adults.
However, it is not only the living conditions of the Palestinian
children that should be causing Israelis sleepless nights. Because
in addition to their distress, for most of which Israel is
responsible, this is a generation that "did not know Joseph." Their
fathers worked in Israel, in some cases from a very early age,
working its fields, building its houses, cleaning its streets or
doing commerce with Israel. From childhood they were exposed to
Israelis, becoming familiar with both their ugly and their good
sides and even learning their language. Consequently, the attitude
of that generation toward Israel is more complex: the great
majority of that generation still believes in peace and some of it
aspires to emulate Israel in certain spheres.
In contrast, the children of the present generation are totally cut
off from us. Their only exposure to Israel is through two figures:
the soldier who bursts violently into their home in the dead of
night, smashes a hole in their living room wall and humiliates
their parents; or the settler, who has plundered their land and
sometimes also abuses them.
This is a generation that has never heard of nonviolent, unarmed
Israelis. The only Israelis today’s Palestinian children -
tomorrow’s generation of adults - have seen are those who imprison
them in their homes, shoot them, beat them and humiliate them. They
don’t need the incitement doses in day camps or Palestinian
television to mold their worldview. All they have to do is look
around at what is happening close to home.
When they come of age they will carry these memories with them.
They will not be able to forget the spectacles of horror they were
exposed to, or those they hold responsible for them. Thus before
our eyes a generation is growing that is not only hungry,
psychologically traumatized, unhealthy and without proper education
– but is also thirsty for revenge and consumed by hatred. This is a
message that should be of deep concern, not only to the parents of
these wretched children, but to us all.
Copyright 2003 Ha’aretz. All rights reserved.