Commentary of Concern on July RMG

I was left very troubled after this reflective members meeting, and I want to put some of my thoughts and feelings here:

The atmosphere and interactions were so different from the tone of the large groups during the last study days at the Foulkes Lecture. I had come away from there  feeling hopeful.

Yesterday, the aggression that erupted, especially after Reem spoke, frightened me. I did not want to speak because I knew it would just stir more aggression and fighting.

Here I want to respond to one person’s exasperation concerning the ‘posting of the Swastika’.

I don’t know whether that person  had seen the actual posting, but it was the lifting of a corner of the Israeli flag that started to expose the Swastika.

I know that the Swastika is forbidden in Germany, and that it is a terrible symbol especially for those whose family suffered under it. But does that mean its symbolic meaning does no longer exist? To my mind this posting presented a symbolic image, which could apply to many countries at this moment of history.

It was helpful to me when another member at the large group of the Study days related it to the history of his birth country where indigenous people were killed and discriminated against.

What happened in Nazi Germany was the dehumanising of a whole people, who then could be killed off indiscriminately.

I do not mean to defend the posting of this image, and I do believe that Reem apologised for the hurt it caused. But I do want to warn against the demonising which followed.

Whenever I listened to Reem, I felt her passion/compassion and her big heart. She apologises when she feels she did wrong, she states her feelings, and she tries hard to keep the dialogue going without allowing herself to be silenced.

This I did not experience from those who asked for her resignation, who want her out.

To those I want to say that Reem has been voted for by many members of our society, and that her voice  speaks for many members of our society, often for young members who do not dare to raise their voices themselves. I heard young people say that they felt represented with every posting Reem did on the Forum. I think we need to ask ourselves why it is so hard for them to speak out.

Is there a parallel to the silencing of unwelcome voices which happens more and more within our countries, with laws and police actions re-enforcing it?

Concerning conversations about Palestine, Gaza and West bank, within our Group Analytic community, this leaves me more and more speechless.

How can we still discuss whether this is genocide or not, justified or not, while watching friends and families being robbed of their homes, killed, starved to death or poisoned by contaminated water?

It seems easy to talk about 7^th October, the terrible killing of so many young people.

And we also all know that history did not start there.

How can we still hear about beheaded babies, when this story has long been identified as a wrong account (by the very Israeli military and other investigations)?

Those of us who know young people and families in Gaza and the West Bank feel so pained to watch them suffering, especially young people who were full of hope and creativity. Amazingly, despite them losing their friends, they are still going on hoping and creating.

What is happening in the West Bank is very little in the public realm.

So, this is me, with my feelings and understandings, and I know that there are others who feel and think differently, and the Management Committee is painfully dealing with these differences.

Those who think the Charity Commission will help, have no idea how difficult a task it is to communicate with them. The Charity Commission has absolutely no idea about our work, and what our mission could be, which is why we left that statement simple in our constitution. We agreed to a simple mission statement which they could agree about, what they thought could justify being a charity. It does not present any of the complexity of our work, and we tried hard to formulate a mission statement which would present what we are about, and to put this on our website. Even that was difficult, as we disagreed about our formulations. I don’t even know if any of this did bear fruit.

I just hope that we can keep our hearts open to those we disagree with, and keep talking to each other. I so much wanted to leave the meeting, and the society, but I have to stay.