Banksy’s “Scar of Bethlehem”: A Lament
Judith Deutsch is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She is former president of Science for Peace and is currently a member of the Global Palestine Mental Health Network.
At least 52,030 Palestinians have been killed, according to Euro-Med, with 33% of the casualties being children and 21% women. And of 46,410 civilians killed, 190 of the casualties were journalists, and 2,313 were healthcare professionals, including 83 doctors.
Out of the 108,320 Palestinians injured by Israeli attacks, “several thousand have suffered amputations or permanent impairments, with over 10,000 children losing at least one leg.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/october-7-a-history-in-threads/
My article is about feelings of incredulity, indignation, and incomprehension about the indifference, emotional and physical sadism, and impunity perpetrated by so many against the people of Gaza and against ordinary people of this world. It expresses emotions mainly through poetry and music. It is about the bottomless sorrow especially for children and parents in Gaza but also in the U.S., Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, India, China, the DRC… It is a repudiation of modern psychology with its omission of emotions, with the pathologizing of emotions as a form of neurodiversity and neuropathology.
It is about two worlds during this holiday, (holy day) season.
“While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads”, and Santa’s sleigh bells gladdened the hearts of many children this season, drones and nightly sonic booms and bombs pierce the stimulus barrier of Gaza’s children causing night terrors, bedwetting, permanent hearing loss.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 17,400 children in Gaza. Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead. Children endure amputations without anesthesia because of blockaded medical supplies.
It is a tale of two Abrahamic Gods: one loving, protective, “humane” and one genocidal:
“Oh, God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’.
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”.
God said, “No” Abe say, “What?”…
Well, Abe said, “Where d’you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61”
Bob Dylan
Or from Deuteronomy, 25;19, Cf also I Samuel, 15:3:] ‘
Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven’, ‘Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’
Or from Jesus on the cross crying out to God the Father “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Enzo Traverso, Historian of modern Jewish history and of the Gaza genocide, offers an explanation of how Reasons of State supersede all laws for “reasons of state” so that every atrocity is allowable. “The historian of political thought Norberto Bobbio has summed up the concept of reason of state as follows:
“‘By reason of state’ is meant a set of principles and maxims according to which actions that would be unjustifiable if committed by a single individual are not only justified but at times praised and exalted when performed by the prince or whoever exercises power in the name of the state.’ The fact that the same action can be considered reprehensible when it is the result of individual behavior and praiseworthy when implemented by the state, Bobbio continues, reveals the gap between politics and morality, paving the way for a so-called political realism that tramples morality…”
Madeleine Albright and the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Food Program infamously used Reasons of State to justify the killing of ½ million Iraqi children in the oil-for-food program. Madeline Albright infamously said the killing was “worth It.”
Here are poignant words of poetry and cadences of music:
From Dylan Thomas
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truthNor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further Elegy of innocence and youth…. After the first death, there is no other.
And also from Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
From Paul Robeson
And sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long ways from homeA long ways from home
Come my brother
A long ways from homeA long ways from home. Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone
Bob Dylan
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Matthew Arnold
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
in.And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Here is a desperate moment when a Palestinian father attemped to shield his son from Israeli bullets. This tragedy was captured and memorialized in Aharon Shabtai’s poem J’Accuse.
For the sniper who fired at the child
Is only a single stinking instrument
Within an enormous orchestra,
Which is conducted by the man who knows
More than anyone else
That long-term solutions can be found
For any and every problem,
When it’s no longer breathing.
When hoarsely, he pronounces
The word “Peace” –Mothers wake up trembling;
He’ll roll up his sleeves …
And get down to the work at which he excels,
And bring about a blood bath.
Music
Here is a movement from Beethoven 15th quartet opus 132 “Heiliger, Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity for relief from suffering and pain.
Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart.” It is a musical offering, of a prayer.
And here is Mozart celebrating love. From The Magic Flute. Papageno and Papagena singing about love and about having children.
References
Enzo Traverso, Gaza Faces History, Other Press, New York, 2024.
Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The weight of three thousand years. Pluto Press, London, 2002.
H.C. Von Sponeck, A Different Kind of War: the UN sanctions regime in Iraq. Berghahn Books.com, Hamburg, 2006.
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