Buried Neck Deep

Lately, a dream I had twelve years ago has been coming back to me. I dreamt that my four-year-old son (he's sixteen now) was buried neck deep in the middle of a neighborhood and surrounded by modest houses. Passersby would kick his face, but he remained silent, as if the kicks were part of life and not to be contested — as if, to survive, he needed to keep his mouth shut.

This dream has had many meanings for me. Twelve years ago, I thought my four-year-old son in the dream was me: buried in a failed marriage with nowhere to go. Of late, my son in the dream has become the Palestinian people: “You either capitulate or we will continue to beat you to the ground.” Their struggle for freedom is terrorism, children throwing rocks are arrested or killed, many young adults have no hope — if they can't escape, they wish they could die. Parents in Gaza must do whatever they can to help their children escape the largest open-air prison on earth knowing that they may never see them again.

I spent a good portion of my adult life in the U.N. Department of Peace keeping Operations. Over the years, I came to believe that resistance can take many forms. As a mental health professional, my role is to protect and heal, while politicians and diplomats work toward peace (one hopes). To protect and heal, I have a role to play inside and outside the consulting room. It is not enough for me to hold and contain the client's pain. I need to do what I can to change their sociopolitical environment. But, sometimes, I ask myself: What do you do when there is no peace to keep and politicians are certainly not working to reach it? What

do you do if you're all alone? The Palestinians have been abandoned by Arab nations, none of their Arab neighbors want anything to do with them, the Palestinian authority leaves much to be desired, and the world community seems impotent. In Israel proper, a Jewish state, they are not like other citizens. In occupied Palestine, they liv