Dear Mr Cade, We are writing with reference to the October 2015 issue of Context 141, entitled: Black voices ii – strength and resilience. We are student members of AFT, having both recently completed the intermediate- level training with Central and North West London NHS Trust and are eager to further our systemic leaning and development. With a mixture of curiosity and extreme disappointment, we wish to highlight what we feel are distortions both in the editorial by Pat Gray (pp.1-2) and in the opening article, Culturally grounded therapy in the Palestinian context, by Makungu Akinyela (pp. 3-5). We suggest that references to Israel in these articles are out of place in a magazine dedicated to listening to black voices, and further enhance ideas and beliefs about blame concerning division and conflict rather than seeking to promote dialogue amongst those in conflict throughout the world. We began having conversations around our response to these articles and were aware of strong emotions that had been raised in us. We paid attention to the contexts of religion and culture that were informing our response. We are choosing therefore to be careful to frame this response systemically, seeking to bring in multiple perspectives and to question the editor’s decision to publish an article that, in our opinion, is not true to systemic principles. Through this exploration we hope to act out of the context of systemic practitioner and curious reader. We aim to suggest three key areas of systemic practice that, in our opinion, have been compromised by the publishing of these articles. We would suggest this raises questions about the ‘systemic’ underpinnings of Context magazine. Language As systemic practitioners, we pay careful attention to the language we use. We come to believe that how we talk about people influences what they and we become. We try to be respectful about the people we are working with and yet also are careful to be respectful to those who may not be ‘in the room’ with us. In this regard, we are curious about the language used to describe those on either side of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict in Akinyela’s article. Words such as “victim” and “poor oppressed” are used to describe Palestinians. Similarly, Pat Gray has described the, “grace of the Palestinians” These descriptions connote a compassionate empathy whereas Israel, by contrast, is described by Akinyela as, “politically violent”, and he talks of the “anger towards the Israeli defence forces”, suggestive of a military tone, positioning Israel as a military dominant force. The article makes no mention of the Israeli civilians who also position themselves as ‘victim’. Nor do we learn about the military wing of Hamas committing crimes against their own people, whom Amnesty International in their report Strangling Necks in May 2015 have concluded;
committed serious human rights abuses, including abductions, torture and summary and extrajudicial executions with impunity during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict. To date, no one has been held to account for committing these unlawful killings and other abuses, either by the Hamas de facto administration that continues to control Gaza and its security and judicial institutions, or by the
Palestinian “national consensus” government that has had nominal authority over Gaza since June 2014.
Neutrality
Makungu Akinyela positions himself within a dominant narrative of Israeli aggressors against Palestinian victims. We are not questioning the suggested plight of people that have restricted freedom of movement. However, we do question the evident gap in pursuing a fuller description of a complex system in conflict. In this regard, Akinyela appears to have compromised a ‘neutral’ position. Dominant narratives view a complex situation as, literally and figuratively, black-and-white.
We are guided by the Milan principles of hypothesising, circularity and neutrality, and a non-blaming position. We therefore are surprised to read such an evidently biased and blaming stance on this issue. As systemic practitioners, we would become more curious concerning a repeated cycle of violence and seek to understand more about the reciprocal relationships between those in conflict. Peter Lang has suggested being “guests in a culture,” meaning, “not knowing too quickly” or making judgements about conflict among cultures unfamiliar to us. In systemic practice, we resist the temptation to attribute meanings according to our own ideas and biases and become reflexively aware in order that we take a ‘not-knowing’ approach to the conversations we have with others. We wonder whether being positioned differently within this system would yield a different view. We wonder about the civilian population of Sderot, Israel who live daily with rockets being launched at them from Gaza. Since 2001, Palestinian militants have launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip as part of the continuing Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace. Medical studies in Sderot, the Israeli city closest to the Gaza Strip, have documented a post-traumatic stress disorder incidence among young children of almost 50%, as well as high rates of depression and miscarriage.1 Indeed, Akinyela minimizes the intent and damage caused by the vehicular attacks in the Autumn of 2014, claiming that, in a recent incident, a car “accidentally brushed” against an Israeli, when in fact the ‘car intifada’, as it was dubbed, was meant to terrorize and kill Israelis. In November 2014, several vehicular attacks wounded and killed Israeli civilians; for example, on 5 November 2014, two vehicular attacks wounded 16 Israelis and killed one.2 According to One Family – a charity
1 "Attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinians". B'Tselem. 24 July 2014. Martin Patience, Playing cat and mouse with Gaza rockets, BBC News 28-02-2008 Report: Missiles on Sderot increase miscarriages, Jerusalem Post 24-02-2013 Study: Half of Sderot's toddlers suffering from PTSD, Ynet News 30-06-2009 Israeli survey: Almost half of Sderot preteens show symptoms of PTSD, Haaretz 20-11-2012
2 Hanna, Jason (20 November 2014). "Police: Palestinian admits intentionally driving into Israeli soldiers". CNN. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
Palestinian confesses to Nov. 5 car attack on troops". Agence France-Presse. 20 November 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
supporting families who have lost loved ones in terror attacks – the month of October 2015 has seen forty eight stabbings, five vehicular attacks and five shootings by Palestinian people against Israeli civilians. 3 Furthermore, it is interesting to note that Akinyela makes reference to the attack on a mosque in Hebron in 1994 by an Israeli, a tragic attack condemned by the Israeli government, making a direct comparison with a shooting by a, ‘white supremacist’ in a church in South Carolina. We would suggest this is another example of linear thinking about this conflict, without due consideration for the wider system and the cycle of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We suggest the two incidents are incomparable through the lens of ‘occupation’, which he suggests is his personal experience, although both equally as devastating and sad in terms of human life lost unnecessarily. If we are to try to maintain neutrality, then we are aiming to seek alternative positions and multiple perspectives within the system. We are curious about the resourcefulness of Palestinian and Israeli people who have developed initiatives to share dialogue, to talk, to break boundaries and foster openness and communication with each other. We question; where is the counter-narrative?
Context With heightened curiosity, we read that Akinyela makes a direct personal comparison between black people living in America and people living under the “violent occupation of Palestine”. He talks of being, “pulled in as a participant in the shared experience of occupation”. We wonder whether he is acting out of his highest context in this situation, that of race, and acting less out of the context of a systemic practitioner. If we are to adopt a more ‘curious’ approach, then we may consider this comparison to be an example of ‘Blackwashing’ – the appropriation of the struggles of people with African heritage to justify human rights abuses, including the campaigns of suicide bombings, shootings and lynchings that have become known as ‘intifada’. It may be of interest to note that Israelis are not white but a multi-ethnic society that includes a large African refugee population; that the Palestinians offered refuge to Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir after the International Criminal Court indicted him for rape and genocide of Africans in Darfur; and that ‘resistance’ groups like Hamas are profiting from human and organ trafficking of Eritreans trying to cross the Sinai.4 If we are to take a curious approach, we can invite readers to explore a different perspective on this situation held by a black man. We draw you to the work of Dumisani Washington, a Black American pastor in the USA. In 2013, he established the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. Talking from the context of race, he adopts a different perspective and has recently published an article entitled Seven reasons why the Palestinian analogy to the black historical struggle for freedom is hopelessly flawed and down-right offensive.5 As a systemic publication, we would
3 www.onefamily.uk.org
4 http://www.theaggie.org/2015/10/27/guest‐opinion‐blackwashing‐and‐appropriation/ 5 http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/7-reasons-why-the-black-struggle-for-freedom-and-the-palestinian-crisis-are- absolutely-nothing-alike-by-a-black-man-whos-sick-and-tired-of-the-comparisons/
have hoped that alternative perspectives would have been included in this article, to inform the Context readership.
We invite your urgent response to these matters, particularly the permission to publish an article with no grounded evidence, no references and without due consideration to seeking other perspectives in a complex conflict. This edition was entitled Black voices ii – strength and resilience. The editor would do well to adhere to the ‘context’ rather than publishing linear, ‘knowing’ accounts in which ‘curiosity’ has been compromised. Context magazine has a responsibility to its readership to provide rigorous, systemic thinking. We will expect an apology to the readership with a full explanation of the decision to publish this article. Rebecca Corney, systemic practitioner Kate Benaim, systemic practitioner