A week before Israeli psychiatrist Ruchama Marton and her Palestinian colleague, Eyad El-Sarraj, addressed an audience at the University of Toronto in May, Israeli soldiers — in what they called a case of mistaken identity — shot and killed 5 Palestinian police officers. A week after their talk, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed more than 20 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv disco. The tit-for-tat nature of those events formed depressing bookends for the 2 physicians, who delivered a message about the need for peace in the Middle East during a series of speeches and interviews throughout Ontario and in Montreal this spring. Their U of T presentation was sponsored by Science for Peace (scienceforpeace .sa .utoronto.ca/), a Canadian organization representing natural scientists, engineers, social scientists, professors and students. The speaking tour itself was sponsored by 22 groups, including Oxfam Canada and Inter Church Action.
“I come from a hectic place,” says Marton, the chair of Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) and the target of vociferous criticism in Israel because of her views about the need to compromise with Palestinians. “Things are changing so fast, history cannot be written. Since the recent changes in Israel, which began 8 months ago, there is no more talk of peace, of being good neighbours, or of equality. The new rhetoric is full of power. It reminds me of the rhetoric after the 1948 war, when every Palestinian was an enemy.”
The 2 doctors are calling for international intervention “not only to keep Palestinians safe but to save Israel from itself,” Marton said.
Marton, the 1999 recipient of Israel's highest human-rights honour — the Emil Grunzweig Award — said Israeli patients complain of sleeplessness and heart palpitations because of the violence, and ask: “Why do they do this to me? What did I do?”
“Almost no one asks, ‘What is the reason for this violence?’ ” says Marton. “The media does not ask this question. When the question is not asked, all violence is unexpected and ‘explained’ [as] terror.”
El-Sarraj, commissioner general of the Independent Palestinian Commission for Citizens Rights, has lived his life in Gaza, but says he has never seen as much anger and despair as he sees now, and the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank means the current situation can only deteriorate. “Just come to Gaza and you'd be immediately sensitized,” said El-Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.
El-Sarraj said that while he has publicly urged Palestinians to pursue nonviolent resistance, few listen. “Due to their culture and the severe form of trauma they've experienced, their immediate reaction when emotional is to act. Also, death is glorified by martyrdom. I have been surprised by some ordinary people, patients of mine, who now express this wish to die as martyrs.”
El-Sarraj says the violence is self-perpetuating. “Every Palestinian bullet,” he says, costs Palestinians the support of an Israeli peace activist.
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Ann Silversides
Toronto
Figure. Aftermath of a bombing at a Tel Aviv disco Photo by: Canapress