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The following narratives emerge from a project in which we asked practitioners and activists we knew—friends or esteemed colleagues—for anything they wanted to write about their experience of the unfolding war in Gaza and Israel/Palestine. We believed our colleagues were on uncharted ground, trailblazing a terrain not many wanted to witness. We wanted to hear what they were going through and to let them know that what they were seeing mattered to us. We believed that in the midst of an unfolding catastrophe, those closest to the fire are letting us know about the layer of the psyche, which, Dorothy Evans Holmes writes, is saturated with murderous aggression and the “crimes of humanity and their history” (p.642, 2016).
How were they making sense of this “radioactive” (Gampel,2000) deluge in live time?
We understand that no one is trained to meet this level of cruelty, brutality, and atrocity. We imagined that they were reflexively accessing their clinical wisdom and therapeutic souls in order to orient, engage, and survive—or help others survive. Robert J. Lifton writes that survivors of mass violence can possess “certain kinds of wisdom and [which] can be a reminder of pain, possibility, and hope” (p.xxxvii, 2023). We wanted to capture this knowledge, born in the immediate aftermath—and in the midst—of overlapping catastrophes.
For these writers, the length of time it has taken to curate and reach a public that cares has been disheartening, and mostly, the sense that their writings can make a difference at all has evaporated for some. We still feel committed to making sure their visions and voices are published within our professional and activist communities.
— JUDY ROTH, MANAL ABU HAQ, MAYA MUKAMEL