Learning From All Things

Dear Eyal,

Thank you for your courage to engage with me. I say this knowing full well that the risks to me for speaking about Palestine are far greater than they are to you. Nevertheless, I am grateful.

The first thing I want to say is that your approach makes sense to me. It is similar to mine. You are trying to be brutally honest while maintaining your allegiances, or while speaking from personal and collective dispositions. For me, psychoanalysis is about truth, and a real psychoanalyst is one who refuses to lie, refuses to flinch away from painful realities.

I felt appreciative of you for being willing to write the material facts. Israel has dropped the equivalent of two nuclear bombs in Gaza on a helpless and trapped population. It has killed tens of thousands, maimed hundreds of thousands, destroyed almost all habitable structures and almost all infrastructure including healthcare. In fact, health care facilities are being intentionally targeted and destroyed. Doctors are routinely killed by sniper fire when they walk by hospital windows. They are being arrested, tortured, and killed. Dr. Adnan Al Bursh, who was the head of the orthopedic department at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, was taken from the hospital while caring for patients. He was detained at Ofer detention center in the West Bank and tortured to death. He died on April 19^th, 2024. He was loved and appreciated by everyone who knew him. In other words, he was a national treasure who was deliberately erased. The Israeli government has yet to release his body.

We were speaking earlier of not being on an even playing field. My group is hated by the global northern powers and it is being decimated. Your group is loved by the global northern powers and is being given EVERYTHING it wants, regardless of its actions. The numbers speak for themselves. Twelve hundred Israelis were killed by Hamas fighters, some in a most brutal and inhumane way. Millions of Palestinians are being decimated in response. Further