חנן בן ארי - עטלף עיוור | Hanan Ben AriT

They Sing, they sing

If Bob Hope were around today, he would entertain the troops in Israel. I'm sure. 

Why Israel is Forever the Fall Guy

 I can’t say it any better than this. Even if you only read the first few paragraphs you’ll see where it’s going. 

Yossi Klein Halevi in Times if Israel.

I like their reporting in general, Times of Israel.

therapydoc

Taking a Side

 I think we can sum it up like this, regarding what happened on college campuses last week and the week before: 

If you don't condemn it, 

   you condone it. 

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Blood Libel Confirmed

Protest against the War in Gaza at a Skokie Marianos

A prayer meeting in Skokie, Illinois is interrupted by protesting Palestinians harassing Jews trying to get into the assembly hall to pray. There are two thousand Jews trying to pray peacefully in an assembly hall. The mob scene, people praying, people protesting the war in Gaza, is difficult to leave. Hundreds are crowded in a Marianos parking lot where the overflow is parking their cars. 

The Palestinians make up a story that one of their children has been run over, a Jewish person did this, wanted to do this. There is no evidence that this happened. None.

Today a New York Times headline reports that Hamas actually failed to prove the accusation that the missile that hit a hospital in Gaza came from Israel. Turns out, it was a Hamas missile that backfired. The Times finally caught on. You can see the video in the previous post. 

If you want to blame Israel for something, just don't present any evidence to the contrary

Those who know about propaganda understand that to win a war sometimes takes more than rockets. It can take a good deal of psychological insight. Hamas has it in spades.

Never miss an opportunity to malign the enemy, to make the enemy look really bad, even if that enemy feeds, houses, and finds you jobs on her own turf.

Historically, pre-Crusade but well before that, when Christians (many of whom are now the best of friends with Israel) wanted to slander the Jews they constructed malicious lies about the Passover custom of dipping a finger into a glass of wine, decorating a plate with red droplets. Ten droplets are the equivalent of each of the Ten Plagues. 

Dipping a finger, or a spoon, into a glass of grape juice or red wine is a way to teach children to remember the plagues unleashed by God upon the Egyptians because their king, Pharaoh, refused to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. 

God wanted the Jews out of there, wanted them to go, to inherit their land, the very land that we are fighting over today. 

Thus at the Passover seder, to remember the story, to celebrate freedom, we take a spoon, or dab a finger into a glass of red wine, make a droplet on a plate and recite the plagues. We don't use the blood of Christian babies, as the blood libels of old actually believed.

Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, livestock, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness, and the death of the first born son. 

Yes, the ten plagues imply death, but the word blood refers to rivers in Egypt turned into blood, God's doing. Let my people go. 

The 12th century pre-Crusader libel and many both before and after, is that Jews kill Christian children and dip matzahs into the blood during the seder to celebrate. Absolute libel. Extraordinarily ridiculous, nothing could be farther from the truth. To read more, click below.

The proximity of such charges to Easter was thus also often associated with the continuing belief that Jews were responsible for the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus. Blood libels, together with allegations of well poisoning, were a major theme in Jewish persecution in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern period. They were a central component in the development of modern antisemitism in the 19th century.

Blood libel accusations often led to pogroms, violent riots launched against Jews and frequently encouraged by government authorities.

Murder is expressly forbidden in the Torah, as are the blood sacrifices which were practiced by ancient pagan religions. In fact, Jewish dietary laws (kashrut), forbid the consumption of blood in food and require all blood to be drained from slaughtered animals before consumption.

Thus if a Hamas rocket misfires and hits a hospital in Gaza, Hamas can spin this and jump on the opportunity to lie and say, The Jews did it. 

Ditto, if a prayer meeting in Skokie is interrupted by protesting Palestinians harassing Jews, the Palestinians will make up a story that a Palestinians child was intentionally run over by a car in the Marianos parking lot. 

This is what we are dealing with. 

Those responsible for the mayhem (Palestinian war protesters) maced two policemen. 

This is what we are dealing with. You can see, psychologically at least, who is winning the war. 

You win if you lie, is the thing. You win if you can slander the enemy, lie about the enemy, make up terrible stories, the more terrible the better. Tale as old as time.

This is the kind of thing you teach your kids?

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Misfired rocket from Gaza Likely Caused Deadly hospital blast | AP visua...

Here's a video of what happened to the hospital in Gaza.

 

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That is from an Al Jezeera news cast soon after the hospital missile firing.

Like everyone else, I saw the news. an Israeli missile hits a Gazan hospital. It must be true, right? It's in the news. 

But then I saw a video by Al Jezeera, of all networks, showing that the missile actually originated in Gaza, that it didn't make it, and fell back, landing on a hospital. In Gaza. 

In a follow up from an Israeli feed, which had already posted about this, I hear that the missile fell onto a hospital parking lot, not the actual hospital, and only a dozen victims fell to the fire. 

In yet another story, we learn that this happens often when Hamas aims at Israel. Missiles fail, they don't make it very far and return to Earth. Gaza. The Iron Dome doesn't have to do the work of snapping them out of the air. They simply fail. 

CNN finally acknowledges that the story about the Israelis targeting a hospital is not true but hasn't the guts to apologize for disseminating a blood libel against the Jews without checking it out. 

 therapydoc

The War, Uncertainty, and Depression

Israeli security-acting on a tip finds 4 terrorists from Gaza in an apartment.

Let's take a minute and discuss the misinformation about the 'Israeli' strike on a hospital in Gaza. A video from Al Jazeera, of all places, indicates the missile came from Gaza, aimed for Israel, misfired and fell on a hospital parking lot. Yes, people were killed, but not as many as the news you get will tell you. The news we hear is, I hate to say it, biased, Jew-hating media. This business about Israelis aiming for a hospital is, in four words, yet another blood libel. 

Tom Lehrer used to sing, in National Brotherhood Week, .   The punchline, And everyone hates the Jews isn't funny, but we used to laugh. Because it feels, sometimes, like it's true.

In the therapy chat groups we are told that trauma victims in Israel need therapy. I signed up as did hundreds of my Jewish colleagues. One mentioned, Well, what about malpractice. My feeling is, what about it. 

My heart is in Israel, always, so I am in mourning as I work. 

Many of us feel stuck in the United States, our soul tied to the land and the people, unable to move for a million different reasons. We visit, we give money. FD and I have always wanted to be Israeli citizens, even have plans to move there next year. Even now. That's the plan. 

I'm grieving (oh, we can make it about me, why not) but am depressed, too. This grief is layered.

A woman I know, not in Israel, tells me she cries in the morning, cries before she sleeps, if she sleeps, she cries at random times in between, and this is normal, she knows it. She feels guilty for feeling good when she feels good. She feels guilty for not doing enough for the war effort. People are buying supplies from Amazon, shipping over to Israel. It is hard to keep up with the opportunities to help and we all have our own domestic and business responsibilities, too.

We in America, many of us, are like her. We feel helpless and hopeless and scared, we cry. We are very sad and angry. We pray constantly. This is not an exaggeration. Constantly. Obsessively. I get it, we are a tiny minority, but it feels as if we are everywhere.

So it is strange that we are not, as I tell FD, we are not in need of Citalopram or some other antidepressant, which would take away the tears that matter. We need the tears, in my professional opinion, to purge the negativity. We need the tears, in my metaphysical opinion, to get G-d's attention. This is a merciful G-d and tears, we think, influence Heavenly decisions. 

So we need anti-depressants but won't take them.  Give me my grief, my anger, yes even the depression. That is the party line. It proves I care. That I can't control the depression is mind-blowing. It is not simply a reaction to negative thoughts and it is not simply fear. Fear? We all have fear. The challenge, as the Buddha would say, is not to listen to fear. Don't do what she says to do.

 

I am afraid, I must be, of nuclear war, but don't dwell on it. I'm not even conscious of this fear unless someone brings it up. (Mindfulness training is amazing).  But this is unusual, not feeling fear but knowing it is there. It is in a place inside of me, and I am fighting it. 

 

So no, let's not medicate. Let's lean in or distract (I prefer that, distracting). Or go ahead and feel, damn it, I told a patient this week. Just cry.

 

That's what I'm trying to do. 

 

There's a thing on FaceBook that says: 

Your Jewish friends are NOT okay. 

This is in answer to the obvious question, Are you okay?

Of course we are not. 

But do we dwell on that not okay-ness? Do we want to talk about it?  

Not so much, if at all! We have a war to win. We have work to do. To fight a war soldiers needs energy, food, dry clothes, and most important, spirit, song, social media support, a belief in a positive outcome. And anger at a bad reporting.

 

No time for tears. No time for fear. No time for negative thoughts--definitely no time for those. No time for a biased media that loves anyone who hates Jews. Don't ask us for money, National Public Radio. You should rot, go under. 

Anger is nice in these situations. 

 

Is this the usual treatment for depression, avoiding medication? 

It can be.

But when you know it's not going to go away or let up at all, meds are recommended. For some of us, fake it 'til you make it has never been more important. Find some spirit, some light, serotonin, and hang onto it, and when it is completely gone, when the tank is empty, go ahead and cry. 

Get some sleep. Give to legitimate causes. Open the pocketbook. Find out how to do something.

The thing that kills us is the uncertainty. We can't stand not knowing what's to come. But emotionally healthy people have a high tolerance for uncertainty. They have patience, know when things are beyond their control. They know when they will have to 

WAIT AND SEE. 

Tolerance of uncertainty is critical at times like these. Tomorrow is a new day, until tomorrow we can wait and see what will be. And there is always another tomorrow. We hope. We pray. 

We haven't been confronted face to face with evil for over fifty years, and yet, here we go again. 

Did you see the story about the pizza restaurant in Gaza with a banner in the window: A holocaust survivor's face, an old woman, and a pizza? Both go into the oven. This is the implication. 

I couldn't make that up. 

This time, it appears, we have America on our side. From the too, not years into a war. God bless America. God bless Eretz Israel. God bless God bless Klal Yisrael (the congregation). 

Am Yisrael Chai.

The people of Israel, as FD likes to say, believe in life. Remember the words: Therefore choose life? 

Unfortunately that isn't the enemy's world view.

Blessings, 

therapydoc

 

Mindfulness

 I'm never sure where we left off. But lately, at work, which is still primarily on Zoom, people are telling me that what we're doing is working. Mindfulness. Just so you should know. This rarely happens. Usually if I prescribe a behavior it is with confidence that the patient will likely act receptive during the visit but will shift to oppositional soon thereafter and do their own thing. They will either succeed or fail but we'll have something to talk about next time. 

Mindfulness is extremely powerful, so while in my 'office' this is what we are. 

History: 

Siddhartha Gautama, as a young man in search of quiet, noted that we humans spin from topic to topic in our heads and can't let thoughts just go. Then he realized if we focus on what is, rather than what was or could be, 99% of the junk in our heads, we are more calm. We see birds in the sky. Flowers. Bugs. One another. 

Then he realized that this is likely to be temporary, this calm interlude. We will inevitably, maybe within seconds, return to our minds and our minds are full of much gobbledygook. I think that was his word. And we judge with abandon. This is bad and that is bad. I am bad, they are bad, that one is good, no, not really. What is the point of all this judging? Does it change anything? Anyone? No it does not. Compassion. We all need that.

BUT MORE THAN THAT. If we shift our attention to the breath return our attention to what is, the thoughts spinning in the head become irrelevant. (I say this is because we cannot parallel process. We can only focus on one thing, not two, so choose focus on the breath, not whether or not So and So is likely in a car accident. At least for a moment or two, return to the breath. We will return to the thoughts but can easily shift back to what is, especially to the breath. It is breathing we can always rely upon. As FD likes to say in his humble medical opinion, Breathing is important.

There is more, but the holiday of Succot is upon us tomorrow night and I have to make gumbo, a therapydoc standard recipe for a holiday that requires hot food in a cold succah. Because in Chicago, and I'm still in Chicago, it can get pretty chilly, even in late September, early October. 

There, in the succah, a hut that FD has up on the deck, I'll try not to think about work or the sorry state of the world, or anything that might interrupt the sublime experience of communing with our history. I will make the exception, roll back in time to wandering in the desert protected by Clouds of Glory.

Next time I post, no surprise, I have a feeling we're going to be talking more about mindfulness. Mindfulness and OCD, Mindfulness and ADHD, etc. But we might talk about the latest novel I'm reading. 

Yours in peace and non-judgement,

therapydoc