 And welcome to Salon Shalom report on Palestine as we're I'm Mark Cage. This shows the production of Ramoners for Justice in Palestine. Please visit our website at vtjp.org. Tonight our program will be devoted largely to a film by Harry Friars. It's called Gaza Still Alone. Friars was in Gaza in 2014 and Israel launched a massive and devastating assault on the territory. He returned in 2019. This film documents the intensive and long lasting impact on the mental and physical well-being of Gaza's people by having to endure now more than 10 years of equippling and illegal blockade. Friars said of his film, quote, I wanted to re-approach Gaza with questions that would refresh people's engagement with and compassion toward Gaza's people. And we'll close our program with a short video produced by Jewish Voice for Peace. It's part of a longer video project entitled, Wrestling with Zionism. Thanks for being with us. Here now is Harry Friars Gaza Still Alone. By all accounts, Gaza is a unique place. Two million people live here. Most are refugees. Most rely on food handouts. Most are children or youths. And most bear psychological scars of war. It's the most impoverished Palestinian enclave besieged by Israel and Egypt for more than a decade. There have not been elections since 2006. Hamas still governs here. Palestinian factions can't agree on reconciliation. I witnessed the last war with Israel in 2014 and saw the utter devastation. Mass loss of housing and life. But then Gaza left the headlines until, more recently, ongoing protests along the border have highlighted Palestinian's desperation. Four full years after the last war and after 11 years under siege, how are people coping? How is mental health? This film is not about Palestinian reconciliation politics or the politics of Israeli occupation. Nor is it about rockets or bomb craters. Rather, it is about the scars and craters in people's minds. Aya was victim to one of the most widely condemned episodes of the last war. Several UN-designated shelters were hit indirectly by fire from Israeli tank shells. Israel blamed Hamas for drawing fire toward Gaza's civilians. I hope we forget about it. Because it was a war in the past. I hope it will be forgotten. We'll go back. I remember how the planes were flying. We were near the school. We were watching it and hearing it. Nine family members were injured while seeking shelter. Aya, then 10 years old, was hit by shrapnel in her arm and both legs. I remember everything. After that, I think about it again and again. I remember the time of the war. But it was right. When I saw my body, I felt something inside me. I felt it. I felt it when I saw my body or when I saw my body. Oh. Back then, I reported on the psychological effects of living under heavy bombardment. In the impoverished and densely populated beach refugee camp, I interviewed Malak, who's now 12. The vast majority of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer post-traumatic stress symptoms. Emotional and cognitive effects include separation anxiety from relatives and what's called an exaggerated startle response. Behavioral effects include aggressiveness or withdrawal. Physical symptoms include bedwetting among children. Hassan Ziada is a lead psychologist at Gaza Community Mental Health Program. We have programs for the kindergarten. We are working with teachers. We are working with the children. And some of the children, they are in need for advanced intervention. They can be referred to our community centre. We have three community centres in Gaza Strip. We will see the exhibition now for the drawing of the children. This picture is after the 2014 operation. And we asked the children, they brought some of their toys, broken toys. And they continue to have a picture. What ages are the kids? The ages, it's between 60, 12 years old. And you can see one of the children choose this and he tried to continue around the bloody issue. The average child over the age of 10, they have seen multiple traumatic incidents. Yes, yes. It's unexpected, uncontrollable, unavoidable. It's actual threat for your life, for your integrity. So all of these things, it's a traumatic thing. And all the time you have the worry and you have fears that something will happen to you and to your family. And this is at all that you can see, it's imputed. And the child tried to continue the leg and you can see how it's a bloody face. It's not easy for the children to talk about their fears, about their concerns, about their nightmares verbally. So sometimes we are using a drawing as an activity for the assessment and for the intervention to help the children to talk, to express what they are thinking about, about their intrusive moments, images, their dreams, their fears. Israeli psychologists Jamal and Mohamed helped bring some of the latest techniques to treat trauma to Gaza's clinics. They're with the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights and joining medical delegations to Gaza for a decade. Trauma and grief are everywhere here, among children and among adults. During the war also it was a terrible experience for me in the individual level. It was on the 22nd of July, I lost six immediate family members. I'm sorry. Three brothers, my mother, my one of my nephew and my sister-in-law. And that was the family who was totally diminished by that attack by the Israelis. So it was affected in that time. Aya still has shrapnel inside her leg. With time it's moving, risking tissue and nerves. But it's worst, the physical pain reminds her of the psychological scars. Every day I feel pain in her leg. I feel pain inside her in every moment. And when I feel pain in her leg, I remember the war. I remember the face, I remember the life we lived together, the war days, the school days. For so many here, the past is still very much present. I thought I changed after the war. Of course I was in the war. When we arrived in the war, I was afraid. It was in my old age, I was so scared. I had so much fear, I became so scared. I got so mad, I was so scared. That's all it was. There was no change in the world. It was the first time in the world that you were afraid. You say, what happened to the war? And then he made it easier, easier, easier. You say, what happened to the war? What happened to the war? Everything was like a war. Everything was like a war. War, war, war. Malak's school performance worsened after the war. It's all too common. Images of trauma and questions of life and death distract the mind. Two events shook Malak's world. The family was asleep, sheltering at her grandfather's house when a neighbouring home was destroyed by an airstrike. And then a playground that was a reference point of her childhood world was also attacked. What were you afraid of? I was afraid of my brothers. We all thought that this was the result. We went to see my mother. My father went to bring your brothers. We went to visit them. We were very scared. We were very close to each other. Thank God, we didn't leave. Every time I heard something, I was afraid. I was like this. We don't talk about a normal bird. We don't talk about a flying plane. We don't talk about flying planes that are flying from the canals and destroying entire buildings. What I'm afraid of in these moments is that I'm afraid of death. I'm afraid of war. I'm afraid of death. I'm afraid of the future. I'm afraid of the future. Hanging over Gaza like a dark cloud is the deep dread of more war. It's the morning meeting at the Gaza Mental Health Centre. I'm sitting in to better understand the challenges faced in trying to help others keep things together. So could you tell me about this? We have the power. The life is based on understanding the people on their own, their lives. We don't have to deal with it, we're going to do it. You and I are in the middle of all these things. We're going to build a Palestinian man who has a goal, but even that. We have to love life to keep doing it. There are many young people who try to make them feel comfortable. Today, we are trying to create a value in the middle of nothingness. A value in the middle of not having support. How do we make a social network that is connected to the success of every family and hard life? Today, the world is a matter of order for human beings. We are like those in the desert and we have to live and learn. We are in the middle of nothingness and we have a lot of success. We have reached a point where we are the second in the system of values and morals. We are the ones who have become the houses of God. We are the ones who have been put out of the war, who are the homes and who are the humans. Okay, that's right. But there is a new way to continue the resistance. This resistance instead fastness, psychologists call an adaptive belief system that strengthens people's psychological resilience. Greater resilience means better protection against trauma symptoms and, what's worse, debilitating trauma disorders. The same psychological trauma, but until trauma symptoms are developed and the other person doesn't develop. This happens because of their personality, their culture, their social support. Some people don't have these things, so they need to be resistant to them, because they develop less psychological symptoms than others. Gaza has experienced three major wars in the last decade. Varying between each person is whether the repeat traumatic shocks build up or wear down an individual's resiliency. How well one copes is often interdependent on those around them. These people and these individuals are able to face all the dangers and difficulties they face. Some fathers used to run away before their children. Some parents can't stop their children from hearing the sound of the plane. Even today, they are oppressed, and all the noise they hear here and there makes them in a dangerous area. I came to the kingdom to hide, and if a new war came, I wouldn't hide. Why? Because we are all in Gaza, we are exposed to any kind of war. At the same time, things have become normal. I also have an answer. No one is afraid. Psychological research confirms Palestinian's remarkable coping ability. Muhammad did his thesis in 1995. His research found Palestinian's culture of resilience had helped children better cope with their trauma than Sicilian children traumatized by mafia violence. Ahmad was our driver during the war four summers ago. During the war, Ahmad received a brief phone call while driving. He showed no reaction to the call until, after a few minutes, he told us his apartment building had been targeted in an airstrike. His house was bombed just now. Let's go there. After seeing the rubble and remains, Ahmad continued to work for the rest of the day. Many times, he came to work for the stop, to work for the bad feelings or the psychological trauma. Even for the children. Because the children in the heart of Gaza know that we are Somod people, we are resistance people. Somod people and resistance people are not allowed to be oppressed. This is one of the things that prevents people from expressing their sorrows. In front of others, I should not be strong. But when I am at home, when I am here, I can see the weakness. If we want to stop living, we can't make a step forward. We may live in our homes, we may have a big event, and we will continue to live. We have lived our lives. Because I had three wars. During that time, I saw a lot of things. I saw a lot of people, a lot of people, hundreds of people. I reached a stage where I had a kind of pain relief. I had a kind of cold. I didn't see much of it. I reached a stage where I had a kind of pain relief. I had a kind of relief. I was moved by the situation. How could I be moved by it? Whether it was bad or good, I was moved by it. Fritz's case is something that is a natural reaction. Many of the people who suffer from emotions, who gather emotions, it is a very natural reaction. We see many people. There are children in schools who have lost their lives because of the war. They are living their lives. This is Fritz's case. This is a defensive message. Many times, there is a need for it. In a situation like this, what can we do? What can we do? Other than that, they can heal themselves and feel pain and live and live their lives. We are talking about pain that is not easy, or any other children can bear. The house that is being built now with the other children, the campfire. It is not over yet. The house was closed for six times, and now it is not on the first floor. Of course, I checked it, I put it on the third floor and it didn't work out. Almost 20,000 homes were hit in 2014. The Gaza Strip is just 140 square miles. No neighbourhood was spared the effects of the last war. Israel's targeting of the homes of Palestinian militants was controversial both politically and militarily. But the psychologists here have their own professional take on the tactic. There is a lot of family massacres. Because they knew that one of the main protective factors in our community is the family. It's one of the strongest survival mechanisms for our community. Because of that, if you can't talk about how many mosques were demolished, how many schools, how many organisations were demolished during the last war, because they are knowing, because they have a question, why still this people have this resiliency and they still have the motivation to struggle for their persecutors. So they tried to proc these protective and strong aspects in our community. So you have to not to deal with any national activities as a Palestinians because you will be punished. You will be punished, yes. If you will have, you are living in a building that somebody, according to their perspective, as a suspected, as a resistance one, that all the building will be demolished. If somebody is a family member, all the family will be killed. I'm putting that to the Israel Defence Forces, that the military tactics hurt the civilian population at large more than Hamas. I got no response. But previously Israel has said this. During the 2014 Gaza conflict, the IDF took various steps to mitigate the risk of harm to the civilian population. Unfortunately, some of these attacks resulted in damage to residential buildings, mostly when these sites became lawful military targets due to Hamas's use of such sites for military purposes. The short and long term psychological effects of attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israel's civilian population have been devastating. But Israel's army is not unaware of the pressure cooker of stress in Gaza. It's ironic that within Israel, army chiefs are often the first to raise the alarm on crises among Palestinians. Their pulse on people's desperation informs their war preparations. Israeli government critics say the current leadership is occupied by a zero-sum game mentality that any Palestinian weakness is Israel's strength. In the Middle East, in many parts of the world, there is a simple truth. There is no place for wars. Wars are coming, they are coming, they are coming. They are coming from history. And the terrorists are the best of them. They are the ones who are coming. There hasn't been a war in Gaza for almost five years. But the soundscape of war still plays out here and not just in people's minds. Aya lives in the north, near the fence with Israel. Drones fly overhead, buzzing every second of every day. At school, kids and teachers regularly talk about a potential imminent war. It's been a long time since there was a deadly war. One day, I asked a woman, how many children did you have? She answered me, in the next war, there will be six years. Unfortunately, the problem we face is what we call un-gong trauma. Through my experience, children feel that they are doing well. After that, especially the children who live in the north or near the fence, if they hear planes, if they hear things related to politics, they get back to the present. This is our problem in Gaza. If something happens, people in the street, in the school, there will be a future war and children will be afraid of it. The Gaza community mental health program offers a qualification in community mental health. It's like a story about a woman who is suffering from depression and derailation. How can we say this? It's a story about a woman who is suffering from depression and derailation. It's a story about a woman who is suffering from depression and derailation. There is energy here, and the will to resist suffering by helping others. These are tomorrow's psychotherapists. But the human resources currently available mean it's only possible to tackle the toughest, most chronic cases. That means mental health care in Gaza is but a drop of supply in an ocean of demand. In Gaza, there are two or three or four institutions in Gaza. There are hundreds of special mental health specialists in Gaza. We need a number of specialists. In fact, it's very difficult for people to live in Gaza. People want to eat in the beginning. And they want to find their soul in the second level. So, when I talked about the cases of depression, depression, fear, depression, mental health, mental health, there are no such places. People don't care about these things. This is what scares me. Israel and Egypt, Gaza's two neighbors, impose a tight blockade on the strip. Generally, people can't leave here, and what goods enter are controlled. Israel says it imposed the siege after Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. The UN says this has prohibited collective punishment of a civilian population. Economists warn the economy here is on the brink of collapse, that the strip is a step away from de-developing. Even hospitals face chronic shortages of key supplies and medicines. Thank you so much. How have you been? I'm fine. Thank you. I can't say I'm good, but still alive. What is the collective mood at the moment here in Gaza? To live under siege for 11 years without electricity, without clean water, all the borders closed, no one can go out, no one can find the essential things to live in. This makes you feel that you are in a prison. We are really living in a big prison. So this actually is very bad and makes the people very frustrated and without hope, actually. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. A feeling like you're living in a prison creates its own kind of ongoing trauma. The World Health Organization says long-term feelings of frustration, lack of opportunity and crushed dreams are indirect consequences of the Israeli occupation. Almost half the workforce has no means to earn a living. Youth unemployment is at a crushing 60%. Youth unemployment is at a crushing 60%. There is no hope. There is no hope that this situation will change. Our old driver Ahmed still works 14 hours a day, but his brother is not so lucky. God bless you. Are you done with your work? Yes, I'm done. Why didn't you pay for the cash? I tried to pay for it, but they told me that I had to pay for it. I had to pay for a lot of expenses, like 160,000 or 160,000. So I had to give them a chance to pay for it. Thank you. Thank you. We are the ones who are oppressed. We are the ones who have no chance to pay for it. We are the ones who have to pay for it. You can imagine that you are a father. You have the skills and you have the motivation to work. You want to fulfill the basic needs of your family, and you cannot find a job. You can see the feeling of despair and the anger that will be expressed to him very physically, to your wife, to your children or to yourself. If it will be to yourself, that means you are on the path to reach depression. So if you want to suppress it towards your wife and your children, that means your violence, domestic violence increased, and this is the impression from our practice that the level of domestic violence came more than before. Divorce rates have been worsening too, and it's a taboo to say but there have even been reports of women prostituting themselves. All the indications are that Palestinians are reaching a breaking point. Two years ago, a UN official warned Gaza had already passed the threshold as an unlivable place. The people here in Gaza, they start to have manifestations of their suffering. People, they express their psychological problems through physical and somatic complaints. You are talking about headache, back pain, abdominal pain, you are talking about high blood pressure, you are talking about diabetes, you are talking about heart problems and disease. The psychological pressure continues, it affects the body's immune system, and this causes diseases, and these diseases are in this area. You have children, right? How are they doing? I have two young children, one in high school, and the youngest is in the sixth, primary school, sixth grade. How does he deal with this situation? Actually, every day they tell me whenever the border is opened, we don't want to live here, we want to go anywhere else. How do you feel about that? Very sad, very sad. I never imagined that we reached this point. I never imagined that my children were waiting for the moment to leave our home. So imagine this, that people who, although financially they are comfortable, other people who are not comfortable, of course they are more eager to leave this country. So this makes me feel very sad actually, that my country became a miserable situation that no one wants to live in. Like so many young people, Aya also believes life would be better on the outside. I said to myself, let's open 15 cm of meat, it's very painful. I said, I'll do it for you, I want you to be able to remove your legs. That's why everyone is afraid of the doctor. They told me to try to travel outside better than here. I hope that I can travel outside to get better and better, to get out of this problem, from this psychological problem. But even with injuries requiring treatment abroad, the idea of being granted freedom to leave is more distant illusion than workable plan. Some people's desperation to escape Gaza has been so great that they've tried to smuggle themselves on small boats bound for Europe. Ahmed was seriously considering joining one attempt. He was trying to get out of Gaza, but it was too dangerous. He was trying to get out of Gaza. Today, I don't know where the country is, I don't know if it's their land or their land. Most of them live in the sea, and no one is clear about them. I don't know people who live in Gaza, but I've heard a lot of people living in the sea. We live in our own country. I was living in Gaza, but I didn't get out of the house. God took us out of the house. With war in siege from the outside, with overcrowding and poverty around, Gaza offers the perfect storm in a cage for people's mental health. But the numbness and depression start inside, internally, in people's own minds. It's a global issue that will affect every aspect in your life, by electricity, by lack of the water, by pollution, by lack of medical services. It's not allowed for you to travel. It's everything. You are unemployed. That means every aspect of your life is affected. It means not the specific, it's a global effect. And it's also stable. That situation will continue, and it will be more worse and worse. And that means if you are talking about it's internal, it's a global, it's stable, that means you are in the state of land healthlessness and it's planned. They are using the maximum punishment towards the people here in Gaza. It's the same mechanism. It's used with the torture survivors in the prisons. It's the same. When you are talking about torturing, put the prisoner in a state of total helplessness and he cannot do anything. The psychologists say the siege serves to weaken the Palestinian's mental resolve. Cut off from the outside world, there's also a collective sense of total abandonment. The United States recently withdrew funding for the UN refugee agency here that supports half the population with food aid. Trump now promises the deal of the century to settle the decades-long conflict. The fear is this too is about squeezing Palestinians before imposing a settlement on them. What is going in the news and how we are talking about the deal of the century and how the Palestinian leadership will be under pressure and they have to accept what will be offered without any objection and so it's like putting you in the position you have to accept what will be offered if it also will be against your struggle for your basic rights as a people. It's hard to tell whether Dr. Abu Shaban looks more strained back when I interviewed him at the height of the 50-day war or more strained now because, like during the last war, the ongoing psychosocial war on Gaza delivers its own supply of casualties to the Burns Clinic. Now you're seeing more suicide attempts every month. That's right, that's right. In the past, suicide attempts were very rare but it increased dramatically actually in the last few years. It's at least two to three cases every month but this made me raise my voice to all the leaders in this country and around the world this is a warning thing. It's a very bad thing. It gives the impression that people are reaching a very difficult point and exclusion is not far from now. Raising their voices is what thousands of Palestinians have been doing since last March. Israel, which calls the protests riots, has come under global condemnation. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed, mostly by sniper fire, sometimes after throwing stones, other times for simply protesting too close to the military fortified fence. But this new normal of violent suppression is not deterring ongoing protests. Because I see many people, as I said, as a result of this situation, suicidal cases, people burned due to electricity, they used candles, they used primitive stoves. Actually, these things should not happen, actually. If you imagine living with electricity for only four hours a day and 20 hours without electricity, how can you imagine yourself and your country live? This is very difficult, very difficult. This reflects on everything, everything. So, just we are asked to live as human beings. Leave politics for people to speak about politics, but we have to live as human beings. This is the simple right to live as a human being, not to live under siege, not to live without electricity, not to live without clean water. We don't have clean water to have because everything depends on electricity. Even the sewage system depends on electricity. For many, especially the poorest families, Gaza's beaches were one of the last places to go to feel some freedom. But now, many tell their children to stay out of the water because even the polluted sea is really no longer safe. For many here, to be still alive in Gaza is to have no real freedom, no real life. And that's why so many continue to put themselves at actual risk of really losing their lives. It means a lot for the Palestinians in the psychological level. To be engaged in the struggle for your basic rights as a people, it's a psychological thing that we will keep our self-esteem and self-respect as a Palestinian because it's an issue that we are fighting for these basic rights. But if the Palestinians will not be engaged in the struggle to end the occupation, that means it will be the moral defeat for the Palestinians and they will lose their self-respect and their self-esteem. Because of that, still the Palestinians, they have a high level of tolerance, they have resiliency because what we are believing and the meaning we are giving for our suffering. With all the pain that you see here, with all the pain that is present, you are making pain and you are making hope in the same time. The Gaza people are the people who are above the expected nature of man, with their ability to survive, with their ability to live and to survive. In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. There is transgenerational trauma here, but there's transgenerational resilience too. Those spared by war have been left behind to survive with the pain and to endure long-haul battles against trauma and despair. Many never begin to understand what is happening to them and what is happening to them. Many never begin recovery. The protest suppression has become another cause of ongoing trauma. When there's electricity, the bloody scenes play out on local TV. They don't have to be witnessed firsthand to affect people in this environment of pervasive insecurity. In one school surveyed, 6 in 10 children reported having frequent nightmares. If the psychological situation was dire and dire, this would leave a huge impact on the future. If the country was built in yesterday and there was Palestine, many men will be taken out to take out the young people from the psychological crisis. Their souls will be saved, and they will be saved until the end. Every time I go to Gaza, I see it as a nightmare. Yes, I love it. Every confrontation is comfortable, but the is not just homes not being rebuilt, It's not just homes not being rebuilt, it's people's mental health too. I witnessed the last two wars here. Since the most recent in 2014, people haven't been able to get their lives back together as they could after the war in 2012. Coming back now, I've been shocked to see old faces still shell-shocked. Most people I've met here look like they've been deprived of daylight, or free life itself. How are people here still alive, but a sense of suffocation permeates daily life? Post-traumatic stress disorder has been described as an engine that perpetuates conflict. You relive and re-experience trauma through repeating flashbacks and nightmares. But in Gaza, the trauma is continuous and cumulative. In the eyes of the psychologists, if Gaza were a single person, you'd say it's been trapped in solitary confinement for more than a decade. But Gaza is two million people, each with their own feelings, hopes and dreams. If Gaza has a population of two million, it needs a million trauma experts. Going up in Israel in the 1990s, there was never any particular moment when I started being a Zionist, just like there was no moment when I started being a Jew. Being a Zionist to an Israeli Jew simply means being a good citizen. My father was eight years old in 1948. The family lived in Ramla, city of central Palestine. My family were thriving farmers. We lived in Abyss. Muslim Jewish Christian celebrated each other holidays and worked together. After the Belfort Declaration, everything changed. Palestine was partitioned and also the Zionists got almost 60% of the land. They wanted more. They occupied the city of Lod and many Palestinians were killed. My family went from being farmers' owners to being refugees in camps to being homeless and stateless. My dad just started to share his stories because after 69 years, his wounds started to bleed. He has nightmares when he screams and wakes up horrified. My ongoing struggles with Zionism have been defined by the fact that it was Zionism in the first place that radicalized me. It was in Zionist education that I learned to develop a critique of society and to think about how race, class, and gender contribute to privilege and inequity in my daily life. I'm not proud of how long it took me to reach my current convictions about Zionism. And yet, I cannot regret the attachment to Israeli society that my education afforded me. I was born in Romania during World War II. I grew up in Tel Aviv and spent years on the kibbutz. As a liberal Zionist, I prided myself on my progressive values. I was against wars, racism, and discrimination. I did not know how much I didn't know. The population in Israel-Palestine is divided about half in half, Jews and Palestinians. Yet I did not have one Palestinian friend, a Quinten or neighbor. The Palestinians are on the dark side of the moon. Do you know that in Jerusalem city maps, Palestinian neighborhoods are blank as if they don't exist. It has been hard work to examine my own mind. My solid identity has been shaken and then broken. I am a Palestinian American whose family has lived in the West Bank for over 400 years. I also have family in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers are everywhere. When they see my Palestinian name, they treat me like a criminal. They pat me down and check my bags. It's stop and frisk Brownsville, Brooklyn style every single day for Palestinians. I remember seeing a group of Israeli soldiers going up to a young Palestinian man and slapping him around and calling him names. He looked scared and confused. His hands went up to shield his face. My instinct was to protect him, so I walked toward the Israeli soldiers. One of the soldiers came up to me, put a gun to my head and said, do you want to die? I would show my face in this video, but I fear for my safety. We've been threatened because we're Palestinian and because we're Muslim. My father was born in Hebron, Palestine. He always identified as a Palestinian Jew. He was very Jewish and very anti-Zionist. People are generally surprised by this, but there are a lot more of us than you think. I wanted to learn. I wanted to see.