Gush Katif: Never Again

Last night I saw the movie "Home Game" about the expulsion from Gush Katif, based around the last Gush Katif youth basketball tournament. There was extensive footage of the expulsion troops carefully carrying out the orders orchestrated by the people on top with expert technical advice from teams of psychologists. I am posting a piece from last year's Jerusalem Post about how the troops were trained.
My friend and neighbor, psychologist Dr. Moshe Leibler sent this to me, pointing out that the glazed eyes of the officers and the dissasociation from the events while they carried them out is causing them disorders and there will be more psychological problems which will crop up. The psychologist quoted at the end of the article is speaking from a leftist, politically colored position and is about as valid as the forecasts for the New Middle East. Hashem Yerachem. Hopefully there will be no new examples of expulsion of Jews from there homes. Unfortunately I don't see anyone doing anything differently to prevent it.

Troop therapy

Jerusalem Post - Jerusalem
Author:
SHEERA CLAIRE FRENKEL
Date:
Sep 2, 2005
(Copyright 2005 The Jerusalem Post)
The psychological training the IDF underwent prior to the Gaza pullout may start a new trend in an army anticipating further evacuations
It was barely daybreak when Lieutenant Dan Fabin's platoon arrived at Netzarim, the last community to be evacuated from Gaza as part of Israel's disengagement plan.
Breaking up into groups of three, the soldiers pored over maps of the community. They had been trained to read between the lines of the data provided on the charts, and they assigned the houses among themselves accordingly.
"This family has five children, all girls," said Lt. Dan.
He pointed to a group of two female soldiers and an older male police officer.
"You go there. Have one of the soldiers play with the children while you talk to the parents."
For the previous three months, Lt. Dan's platoon, "Spirit of the Desert," had been training for this moment. They had run countless drills practicing the best way to hold a person's arms and legs to limit his or her resistance. But more important than the physical training, said the soldiers, was the mental and psychological preparation they underwent.
"It is very unusual for an army to do such intensive psychological preparation," said Arieh Shalev, former IDF chief psychologist. "It was wisely done and appears to have been very helpful. I think this is a very positive lesson for the army."
With the evacuation portion of the disengagement completed in six days, a fraction of the time the security services had expected, many military experts are championing psychological preparation as the next wave in IDF training. Amid rumors that illegal outposts in the West Bank are next in the government's sights, many are asking whether the past two week's operations were just a warm-up for what may become an ongoing task for the army.
"If the government continues evacuating Jewish communities, it is possible that this type of psychological training is only the beginning," said Shalev.
IN THE months leading up to the pullout, IDF strategists and psychologists used a network of local informers and social workers to gather data about the communities they were preparing to evacuate. As settlers and anti-disengagement activists fought the withdrawal through court battles and almost weekly protests, experts studied their behavior from the sidelines. They then created specifically targeted exercises that exposed soldiers to the type of psychological warfare the settlers were preparing.
"It became clear that the settlers were planning a psychological war on the soldiers' psyche once they saw that their other options had been used up," said an official from the IDF press office. "They were counting on being able to convince the soldiers that what they were doing was wrong."
Nearly a dozen soldiers resisted orders in the weeks leading up to the withdrawal, giving settlers hope that during the actual evacuation, a critical mass would not be able to go through with their task, said military experts. However, during the six days that the army took to evacuate settlers from their homes, there was not a single case of a soldier refusing orders.
"It was important to build a shell around the soldiers. We needed to make it clear to them that the settlers' rhetoric and insults were not the result of hatred for the individual soldiers but for the situation in general," said Dr. Hagai Dafna, a psychologist based in the West Bank who advised the army on its training exercises. "We worked with soldiers so that they could understand that they and the settlers were on the same side, and that it was okay to feel sadness and sympathy, but to not break down because of that sadness."
In Netzarim, Lt. Dan recalled the strategies he was taught as settlers hurled insults at him. At one door, a woman snapped a photograph of him which she claimed she would, "curse for all eternity."
"Instead of feeling angry, I just felt myself becoming very sad at this woman and the amount of hatred she must have been feeling," said Dan.
"After she took the photo, I told her that I was very sad that this was the way in which she would remember me."
Throughout the day, Dan remained with the woman, helping her pack and even giving her his phone number. As she left, she told him that it saddened her to think that she had met him under such difficult circumstances.
"I realized that when she was angry at me, she was just displacing her anger at the situation," said Dan. "I am still very sad, and I feel sympathy towards their pain, but I realized that I cannot blame myself."
Dan's experience epitomized the use of good psychological training, said Ruth Pat-Horenczyk, Director of the Israel Center for Child and Adolescent Psychotrauma.
"The sensitivity on the part of the soldiers was incredible," said Pat-Horenczyk. "I can see that they were very prepared. The damage caused to the settlers was much less because the soldiers approached them gently and on an individual basis, and the damage caused to the soldiers was less because they succeeded in convincing many of the settlers to leave peacefully."
[Illustration]
Photo; Caption: COMPASSIONATE COAXING. Soldiers had performed exercises specifically targeted to the type of psychological warfare the settlers were preparing.
Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Abstract (Document Summary)
IN THE months leading up to the pullout, IDF strategists and psychologists used a network of local informers and social workers to gather data about the communities they were preparing to evacuate. As settlers and anti-disengagement activists fought the withdrawal through court battles and almost weekly protests, experts studied their behavior from the sidelines. They then created specifically targeted exercises that exposed soldiers to the type of psychological warfare the settlers were preparing.
"It was important to build a shell around the soldiers. We needed to make it clear to them that the settlers' rhetoric and insults were not the result of hatred for the individual soldiers but for the situation in general," said Dr. Hagai Dafna, a psychologist based in the West Bank who advised the army on its training exercises. "We worked with soldiers so that they could understand that they and the settlers were on the same side, and that it was okay to feel sadness and sympathy, but to not break down because of that sadness."
"The sensitivity on the part of the soldiers was incredible," said [Ruth Pat-Horenczyk]. "I can see that they were very prepared. The damage caused to the settlers was much less because the soldiers approached them gently and on an individual basis, and the damage caused to the soldiers was less because they succeeded in convincing many of the settlers to leave peacefully."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.