Bereaved parents in Israel: from silence to a significant participation in the public discourse (original) (raw)
Related papers
The pervasive impact of war-related loss and bereavement in Israel
International Journal of Group …, 1999
The study of loss as a result of war and conflict has been a mainstay of the bereavement field in Israel. The present article provides a brief background of Israel and its literature relating to loss and bereavement. A series of research studies based on the Two-track Model of ...
Journal of Loss and Trauma, 2005
This study is a phenomenological exploration of bereavement among a population of Israeli parents who became demonstratively activist following the death of their offspring either as soldiers in the line of duty or as victims of terrorism. It illuminates how an anger-forgiveness continuum gives a politically charged significance to the bereavement experience regardless of party or ideological orientation. Strong nationalist identification with the armed forces is overlaid with intense personal emotions of guilt and blame assignment. Mourning as a career may follow pathological or normative courses. Political leaders emerge who mobilize similarly situated mourners to protest against military and civilian policy related to the perceived nexus between security matters and the personal loss. The dynamic between factors which assuage personal needs and simultaneously endanger national consensus regarding the performance of leading state institutions-the government and the defense establishment-is underlined in the conditions which both facilitate and impair any transition from anger to reconciliation.
Death Studies, 2005
The grief and mourning of Muslim citizens in Israel are considered. First, a series of mourning customs spanning the period from notification of death until postmourning are presented from 3 perspectives: (a) the requirements of the Islamic Sunni tradition; (b) the manner in which Islamic mourning rituals are practiced; and (c) the authors' interpretative perspective. Next, a synopsis of the personal experiences of two adult children to the death of their elderly father illustrates Muslim bereavement from a narrative point of view. Lastly, the concluding section continues a consideration of the distinction between the Islamic religious emphasis on return to functioning and the myriad ways in which the memory and relationship to the deceased are experienced. The article demonstrates how belief system, Islamic mourning rituals, and the power of loss create an experiential blend that is neither monolithic nor stereotypical.
The domain of military bereavement is the ultimate expression of national-republican values in the nation state. The fallen in battle are deeply engraved in the public memory, 1 and their families possess a special status in the public discourse. By following this discourse of bereavement, which is especially prominent in the statements and public conduct of its official and unofficial "spokespeople," one can elucidate ethical processes in the general society that have to do with citizenship, nationalism, and political culture. This is because processes taking place in what is regarded as the societal "Holy of Holies" penetrate deeply into society's most conservative and mythical locus, and thus not only reflect the spirit of the era and its public discourse, but play an important leading role in it as well.
This article explores attitudes toward death and bereavement in the Jewish agricultural settlements of Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) from the First Aliyah (1881) to the 1920s, based primarily on newspapers of the period. The sources indicate that whereas members of the First Aliyah viewed death as a failure of the Zionist act and strived to conceal it to the best of their ability, the pioneers of the Second Aliyah effected a revolution in this realm, articulating a perspective that viewed death in the name of the Zionist act with pride and veneration as an attribute of the “new Jew.” This positive attitude focused on the casualties of Jewish guarding who were killed during clashes with Arabs, but also went further. Overall, the Zionist pioneers perceived blood as a means of actualizing the relationship between the Jew and Eretz Israel and expressed a desire to saturate the Land with their blood. The height of this process was the well-known pre-death utterance of Yosef Trumpeldor – a defender of the Jewish settlements in the Upper Galilee in the 1920s – that “it is good to die for our homeland.” This positive attitude toward sacrifice remained a prominent attribute of Zionism for many years to come.
Women and Criminal Justice
This article, which employs interviews as its central methodology, examines Palestinian mothers' reproduction of, opposition to, the Palestinian culture of martyrdom. Palestinian nationalist discourses encourage mothers to produce fighters and to re-produce the religious and national discourses on martyrdom by receiving their sons' acts of martyrdom with celebration which signifies their adherence to the hegemonic masculine model of bereavement based on emotional restraint and expressing the necessity of martyrdom. Based on this logic, religious and national discourses function as a defensive mechanism that helps mothers to cope with their loss. However, some mothers prefer the well-being of their families over the abstract ideals of heroism and sacrifice, opposing the religious and national discourses that shape the Palestinian collective identity. While the mothers who perpetuate the culture of sacrifice are promoted socially, politically and symbolically, those who express their grief and condemnation of this culture are deemed traitorous and un-Islamic.
Panopticon of Death: Institutional design of Bereavement
Individual behaviors, such as loss-coping and ''grief work'' are affected in organizational contexts. In everything pertaining to coping with trauma in general, and loss more particularly, the individual is ''trapped'' within a political psychology that enforces the habitus and expectations of institutional dominance on the ostensibly intimate and private response. Regimes have perceived bereavement over battlefield deaths as a form of social capital that can be mobilized to enhance national loyalty and political support. Employing both existential/hermeneutic and institutional analysis, this study examines three diachronic models of bereavement -hegemonic, political and civil -and their political ramifications in the Israeli context. Drawing on changing parental conceptual orientations towards fallen sons and their role as cultural and ideological agents in public sphere, the article traces the movement of bereavement from its capture by the hegemonic state institutions to its creations under the domination of others institutions: political and civic and ultimate use in critiquing the political and military echelon. The article indicates the powerful impact of the social institutional-organizational context on the intimate-psychological context of coping with loss, by illustrating this phenomenon in the Israeli society.
Bereavement responses among Palestinian widows, daughters, and sons following the Hebron massacre
Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 2002
ABSTRACT In February 1994, an Israeli settler shot Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahime Mosque at Hebron, West Bank. Fifty-three people were killed, and 200 injured. The Derogatis Symptom Checklist-Revised (SCL-90-R), a 90-item 5-point self-administered discomfort scale was administered to all surviving widows (n = 23), daughters (n = 12), and sons (n = 26). Statistically significant different results occurred in 3 of 9 subscales. Widows scored higher somatization than the daughters, who scored higher than the sons. Daughters scored higher phobia than the widows, who scored higher than the sons. Widows scored higher anxiety than the daughters, who scored higher than the sons. Culturally-and-religiously-proscribed gender and familial roles appear to contribute to the different bereavement response patterns. No respondents sought professional mental health counseling.
Proactive Grief: Palestinian Reflections on Death
Meridians, 2022
Part memoir, part theoretical reflection, this essay offers one answer to the question “How do Palestinians grieve?” In this narration of the author’s mother’s relationship to death, her multiple displacements, and her plan for her life, the term proactive grief is used to theorize how and why her mother’s life trajectory was shaped by her strife to have a dignified death, in other words, to be able to die in Palestine. To illuminate the significance of her mother’s approach to death and its relationship to being Palestinian, being refugee, and living under colonial war conditions, this essay also reflects on the difficulty of writing about grief while being personally entangled in its complicated emotions. Ultimately, her mother’s proactiveness and commitment to home within and beyond life present an intimate narrative and a family history that could show readers what it means to be Palestinian, to live colonization, to love home, and to face constant threat with dignity.