DR. EYAD EL-SARRAJ AND DR. AHMED ABU-TAWAHINA

TESTIMONY AT THE UN WAR CRIMES COMMISSION

Gathering this morning at UNWRA headquarters, Dr. Eyad Sarraj and Dr. Ahmed Abu Tawahina gave testimony before the UN War Crimes Commission investigating last winter’s Israeli assault on Gaza. Proceedings were broadcast live on Al-Jazeera television, reaching an audience throughout the Arab world.

Commission head, Judge Richard Goldstone, a highly respect South African jurist, along with other distinguished international human rights activists, listened intently and asked follow-up questions as the GCMHP president described the devastating psycho-social impacts of the war and of the protracted and still continuing siege.

According to the two clinicians, negative consequences were likely to be deep seated and long-term. Just as the trauma of the 1948 Nakba became burned into the Palestinian consciousness, so too would memories of this current experience of collective punishment and collective suffering become part of a bitter legacy passed down from generation to generation.

The wanton killing of women and children that took place over the course of the 22-day attack reflected Israel’s systematic de-humanization of the Palestinian “other,” said Dr. Sarraj. He traced the origins of this destructive syndrome back to the historical vulnerability and outcast status of Jews themselves, which culminated in the Holocaust. Unresolved and untreated, these anxieties have triggered a counter-phobic aggression meant to ward off feelings of fear and weakness. Those who were once victims now act as perpetrators. He observed that Israeli discourse towards Palestinians (“drugged cockroaches in a bottle“) directly borrows the language of genocidal contempt that paved the way to the Final Solution.

Dr. Abu Tawahina explained that the systematic effort to break not just the bones but the spirit of Gazans represents a deliberate campaign. The aim, he suggested, is to produce a culture of “learned helplessness” where no one feels safe and in control. He argued that treating the cumulative, deleterious effects of poverty and material dependency posed an even more formidable challenge than addressing the immediate effects of war. The Israeli strategy is designed to undermine the educational and economic base that people need to create a decent, dignified life and a healthy and productive society.

Both Dr. Sarraj and Dr. Abu Tawahina predicted that such a campaign of disempowerment would eventually boomerang: children who day in and day out saw their fathers humiliated would search for compensatory embodiments of prowess with which to identify, becoming ready recruits for armed resistance movements. Massive, disproportionate Israeli violence, meant to “teach a lesson” and induce fear and passivity, would instead trigger an escalating vicious cycle, with terrible implications for both sides.

In diagnosing the threats to peace, Dr. Sarraj and Dr. Abu Tawahina each referred to impunity and injustice as major causative factors. Each praised the Goldstone Commission for its fight to preserve memory, to promote accountability, and to give voice and visibility to those who felt alone and abandoned. Even if no criminal case was eventually brought against Israel, the act of witnessing and the process of documentation would establish a body of truth that defended the integrity of Gazans' collective experience and that served notice on violators of international human rights law that the world was watching. .

Gaza Community Mental Health Programme