Response to Sarah Kalai’s Obituary

I was very pleased to read the obituary for Sarah Kalai in Contexts (issue 89, Autumn 2020).  It gave me hope that Sarah’s voice and passion will not be lost and might continue through the work of her colleagues. I think Sarah would be pleased to know how much her work had affected others.

When I last met Sarah this last February, at a conference in Tel Aviv, she told me how furious she was with her colleagues: “ I do not know what to do with my anger, but my mouth is sealed.”

She was furious because it had been her experience that the voice of a Palestinian had been silenced, and that her voice was silenced too when pointing to this.

The obituaries were honest and appreciative of Sarah, which I hoped she would have been able to hear.

Sarah was the first and only person of my Israeli colleagues who gave a talk about the terrible treatment of Palestinian families by Israeli soldiers. Those of us who listened talked about feeling unbearable pain.  Such trauma inflicted on children and parents.

“This is what you do when you occupy”, Sarah told us when visiting her in Jerusalem. A statement I am still uncertain about.

When I voiced my anger in the large group of the Symposium, about the way my Israeli colleagues had reacted to the voice of my Palestinian colleague, I was cursed with shame. I had also expressed something like despair at being part of a group where I experience, again and again, that attempts to talk about Palestinian suffering is silenced. We are told that we are using Israel as a scapegoat, and that we do not understand. The enormous  trauma, fear and pain of our Israeli colleagues seems to suffocate that which I need to talk about, and which causes me pain. I start to feel complicit as a bystander, and I cannot be silent, nor, it seems, can I be understood.

I am still hearing the pleading voice of our Palestinian colleague at the end of one of the large groups, saying: “This is the only place, the only place where we can listen to you Israelis, and for us Palestinians to talk about our situation. So please, please can  you allow us to have some space to talk.”

I later learned that I was not the only one with such strong feelings. There were others that had felt like that, even some Israeli colleagues who had felt uncomfortable with what had been said in response to the Palestinian colleague. I know that Sarah would have understood.

Angelika Golz
angelika@devonpsychotherapy.org.uk