The Palestinian Counseling Center in Beit Hanina

(Post from a journal entry of December 2005 in Jerusalem)

The Palestinian Counseling Center is located in Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem. I didn’t have a map of the area but I had a cell phone and the goodwill of the female passengers on the bus.
PCC Counselor Siham Rashid advised me to look for The Garden of Eden. Since I’d forgotten whether she’d said it was an actual garden, an archeological site, or something else, I carefully pronounced the Arabic words and looked questioningly at fellow bus passengers. At first they were puzzled, then dumbfounded. Finally someone connected my halting Arabic with the name of a local grocery store – The Garden of Eden - and I hopped off the bus and phoned Siham. She kindly met me on the street and guided me to the Center.
PCC is funded by many international donor organizations…excluding USAID. Siham explained that PCC turns down funds from USAID as its mission is incompatible with PCC’s work and goals. USAID has a reputation for creating dependencies between funds and recipient organizations’ missions; a group that receives USAID funding can find itself financially dependent and pressured to align organizational strategies with those of USAID’s. Siham added that USAID’s donations too frequently include military equipment such as Apache helicopters. She asked how could a group such as PCC accept funds from an organization that also donates weaponry and military equipment that is used against Palestinians with deadly results?
Siham’s full interview will be available in the book, Long Time Passing: Speaking about War and Terror. Meanwhile, a summary follows:
With clinics in several West Bank and Gaza towns, PCC offers mental health services to Palestinian families. Counselors are seeing progressively more severe symptoms of stress, trauma, and mental breakdown in men, women, and, especially, children. Siham is working with a case of selective mutism in a young child, something she says she had never experienced before the start of the second Intifada. The refusal to speak, she believes, is directly related to the child witnessing the demolition of his home, the physical humiliation of his family, and the shooting deaths of his family members at the hands of IDF.
Having interviewed many families, I will mention that traditional Moslem families are highly structured. Men and fathers are breadwinners and they conduct family business with the outside world. The loss of prestige in this respected figure is highly significant. The disempowerment of the family through the loss of prestige, property, and the ability to make a living is devastating to the family unit and the community.
Unusual behaviors in families currently recorded by PCC include domestic violence, violence perpetrated against in-group community members (physical fights at bus stops, for example) the breakdown of authority between fathers and sons, and increasing resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine by young people that result in catastrophes such as suicide bombings.
One point I found particularly important in shifting my own assumptions was PCC’s work to stop local Arabic television stations repeatedly showing images of violence perpetrated by Israelis against Palestinians during the Intifada.
My assumption is that the lack of – or biased - coverage in the United States about, for example, the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan – and in Israel and Palestine – presents false impressions to Americans. Most of the images shown on American television are sanitized. I believe that, if the American public saw more accurate and through coverage of just how our troops are dying, how Iraqis and Afghans are dying and suffering, the extent of the infrastructure damage in Iraq, just how grievously wounded are American soldiers and Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and an accurate social, financial, political and emotional accounting of the magnitude of the devastation, Americans would vehemently protest and our politicians would be forced to act and end these occupations.
Siham pointed out that the images of violence constantly aired on Arabic television increased the stress and the mental suffering of the Palestinians. She believes the producers of the shows were trying to share the real story and attempting to educate the public. What happened instead was that the international community ignored the images while the Palestinians couldn’t escape it on their streets, in their families and communities, and in their homes. Eventually the TV producers agreed to stop showing non-stop footage and the mental pressure was relieved to a small degree on local people.

After my visit to the PCC, I returned to East Jerusalem for dinner at the Jerusalem Hotel and to meet my guide and translator for a trip to Nablus. I made the necessary phone calls and set up interviews with 1) a family with three generations of men imprisoned by the State of Israel and 2) the mother of a Palestinian suicide attacker.

At about 8pm I walked toward Ecce Homo thorough the Lion’s Gate (aka St. Stephen’s Gate) into the Old City. Something was odd about this section of the City. Thursday nights in Moslem tradition tend to be social and festive, something like Friday nights before the weekend for Westerners. The Moslem holy day is Friday. For Jews, the holy day, Shabbat, begins at sunset on Friday. For Christians, the holy day is Sunday.
This Thursday evening the streets were oddly empty except for Police and IDF troops. After entering the Old City I noticed a large gathering, perhaps three to four hundred people, mostly men, in a public space against the northern wall of the Temple Mount / Mount Moriah. This is the one of the most contested and one of the holiest places in both Islam, housing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Judaism, comprising a section of the Western (or Wailing) Wall from the Roman destruction of the second Temple.
Since no one stopped me I walked to the edge of the group and climbed up a low wall for a better view (other people were already on this wall). It was a gathering or celebration of some sort, clearly Jewish with a lot of Jewish religious symbols and much singing. While the crowd was predominantly men, particularly young men, I saw a few women dressed similarly in little brimmed hats and long, loose, dark colored, western-style skirts and tunics with flat shoes and socks or stockings.
The event was winding and the clusters of energetic dancing and singing men were breaking up. One young man with a bullhorn was directing the singing, chanting and prayers. I took an example from a couple of other amateur photographers and snapped a few pix. I wanted to pull out my video camera and interview but I sensed that this would be unwelcome.
I departed shortly before the entire group dispersed and I retuned to Ecce Homo. At the reception desk I inquired about the event and the group.
Turns out I’d witnessed the tail end of a once a month ritual of the Third Temple Group, Jewish fundamentalist settlers determined to rebuild the Jewish Temple. While a smaller group meets once a week – Thursdays -- in the same spot where I’d encountered them, once a month a group of as many as three thousand marches, chants and sings its way around the Temple Mount and through the Old City while the Police and IDF try to keep the peace. Besides chanting and singing the group intimidates and bullies any non-members braving the streets. Reportedly they spit, verbally abuse, ram flagpoles against doors and entryways of residences, and rail and shout as they go.
Looking back, I’m both sorry I missed the group passing through the streets and glad I did not run into them by returning home earlier.