Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté: Difficult Conversations About Gaza

good uh good morning good afternoon good evening wherever in the world you are my name is Macio benatu my name is z benatu we are here from the Ana territory of South Pomo and castal miluk now called sebasto California and I'm looking that we might be reaching the limit of this meeting so if you have friends that are trying to connect we'll be live streaming it also on YouTube and we'll be sharing in a moment link to the YouTube so you can send people friends there um so um well I just no words can speak to the immense suffering Devastation and Injustice that we're witnessing on a daily basis as the Relentless assault on Gaza is happening and intensifying and a horrendous humanitarian crisis many of us are experiencing anger rage grief um Despair and many of us are haunted by images of unspeakable suffering and how in grief so I think this is a little bit the background as I would imagine for many of us for this conversation and we have invited Gabor and Daniel to to tackle the the difficult question how to stay conversation how to stay relationship as uh we're facing those um completely uh different narratives and realities um yeah and as a brief introduction Dr mate is an expert in trauma addiction and the connection between stress and illness and Daniel mat is an award winning theater song writer and co-author with Gabor of the book the meat of normal trauma illness and healing in a toxin culture as a support we also have with us bip potin an internationally recognized breing movement specialist and bestselling order of who last book is the name human Manuel yeah so thank you all of you for being here thank you so much okay thank you everyone and just to give you a little bit of a structure we'll start with an introduction from Gabor and Daniel we'll ask a couple of questions and then open the conversation to you to bring your own questions and the way we invite you to send your question is by typing it first in the Q&A box and then raising your hand if you want to ask your question live otherwise uh we can read it on your behalf if we don't see your hand raised so please type your question first in the Q&A yes and raise your hand not like this but in the bar at the bottom of Zoom which I know you all know right now and the chat will be closed during the conversation let's start so Gabor uh welcome and um if you have any introduction for for the conversation sure thank you so um welcome everyone there's a heaviness in the world these days um S I mentioned the word grief the word grief itself comes from the Latin word for heaviness and um it almost doesn't matter which side of the fence you're on if you will from your point point of from your perspective the heaviness is felt by everyone it's also felt by a lot of people who are not um either necessarily Jewish or Pro anti-zionists or Pro Palestinian and just the heaviness in the world about what's going on people say what is my expertise to talk about this what is what gives me special authority to address this issue the answer is nothing nothing gives me special Authority nothing has ever given me special authority to talk about anything um people say well you're a trauma expert and ADHD addiction what are you talking about this issue for and you know there's a validity to that argument the fact that I'm Jewish doesn't give me any special Authority the fact that I'm personally an infant survivor of the Holocaust that gives me no special Authority because that mean there's lots of people who are Jews and survivors who don't agree with me at all the fact that I'm a former Zionist doesn't give me any special special Authority either because there lots of former zionists who are still zionists the only I can say on my own behalf at least not on my own behalf but on behalf of the perspectives that I put forward is being Jewish being a Survivor and being a former Zionist I fully understand the perspectives that come from those experiences I used to believe in them I'm talking about the mainstream perspective I used to be able to articulate it I could do so in my sleep even now so if I no [Music] longer subscribe to those perspectives is because I've been through a process of transformation and that has been true for all my all my work I was raised in the and and trained in the mainstream Medical ideology about health or illness about addiction about mental health and so on if I've come to my own particular perspective on all of these issues is because I've examined them for myself and I found the mainstream perspective to be lacking to be narrow to be not congruent with all the evidence none of that gives me special Authority it just means that I have a point of view that's based on my own investigation of the phenomena whether it's medical or political or whatever it is and that's all I can say on my behalf right now is that I've looked at it from every angle and I've come to believe what I believe and it's for you to decide not based on any Authority on my part but simply on does it make sense to you does it congr with your experience and you can ask yourself have you looked at all the evidence have you looked at all sides of the question or have you accepted uncritically or naively one particular view without even really particularly examining the other that's all we can ask of ourselves is such an emotional subject there are no experts on this subject I mean there are academic experts but for all their academic credentials that doesn't mean that they're right because underneath the academic perspective and all the intellectual points of view and facts and history that we put forward there's a world view there's an emotional stance and on this issue whatever you say intellectually or factually or historically is very much determined by emotional stance so you can have any number of phds multiple phds completely disagreeing because the emotional stance that they're coming from has them look at it in completely different ways and that's the Dilemma is how to we cross how to we bridge that gap of perspective that's the challenge I'll stop there Daniel you want to say like to hear Daniel hear your yeah I Daniel okay hello hi everyone uh um so I might be less familiar to many of you than the the previous speaker I'm gabor's son Daniel and um you know I'm here at this one I wasn't at the previous ones so I've been wondering what am I doing here which is a thematic a thematically resonant question in my life I often wonder what the hell I'm doing somewhere or here in general and I've been trying to answer that for myself like what can I bring to this conversation um and what am I in some ways hoping to get from it too but certainly what am I hoping to provide you know in a way the title of this is a bit misleading or could be a bit misleading in my other work with Gabor my dad we do a workshop called hello again a fresh start for parents and their adult children which is exactly what it sounds like it's a workshop about bridging two different kinds of perspectives the PA perspective of being a parent of an adult child and the perspective of being an adult child of a parent and you have one of each one of each what am I I'm in Paris right now I'm starting to develop a strange accent um maybe I'm just nervous you have one of each in on stage repres you know representing the two different sides of the issue so it's truth and advertising well this event is called navigating different difficult conversations around the crisis in Gaza and what you have is two mat who completely agree with each other and we're supposed to here you know help you figure out how to navigate difficult conversations well some of you are going to find that Arrangement more enjoyable and uh welcome than others I would think because if really the goal is to learn how to navigate difficult conversations it would be a bit more of a representative challenge to have say you know one family member who sees things one way one family member who totally disagrees and then we will embody and hopefully exemplify how to navigate those difficult conversations that's not what you have here you have two people who are different and who have different approaches to this and who's who are using their respective Platforms in different ways and who have different styles you may have already noticed that about me and him but ultimately our perspective on the issue you they pretty much align oneto one and I learned a lot of what I know about it or at least I got my start from having him as my father and then going to the Zionist summer camp he sent me to and learning what the limitations of that were and all that so this isn't going to be an event where you're going to get like both sides of the story you're going to get kind of one side told two different ways so just let's just be honest about that off the bat right so we have our expect and which means if you need to balance it out by going listening to a Zionist perspective you better go do that because you're not going to get it here so what could you be here for well if you're someone who sees things the way we do you might be here for emotional support to have your pain seen and heard to get support for how to speak to people in your life who see things very differently who are either cheering on what Israel is doing or justifying it or ignoring it or being silent about it which to you if you have that perspective is going to be very painful but if you're someone who's coming at this from a place of already suspecting that these two mates are kind of off base on this thing what could you be here for and I really respect you for being here and I really appreciate you for being here truly that's not an easy thing to willingly and on purpose tune into something that's going to push your buttons and Trigger you and it will because as as my dad said it's it's a triggering emotional issue I'll just say this and I've been noticing this in my Instagram uh DMs I get a lot of people writing to me I can only respond to some of them and many of them are coming at me from a perspective of how can you say the things you're saying now some of them just come at me with vitriol and abuse that's how they lead that's what they lead with that and I just take it like look they're activated they're upset I'm not a gentle speaker about this on Instagram I am not moderated or I mean I try to use humor and some lightness but I can often be very very sharp and I'm going to try to not bring that side of my personality so much here tonight except if I really think it's useful because I want people to remain open and I want to remain open to people but I can get very activated but sometimes people come at me with a kind of strong Sharp Energy so I had a woman write to me the other day I posted the video that my dad and Aaron and I did that's on YouTube that you might have seen and her opening line was [ __ ] these three are self-hating Jews and then I wrote back I said well thank you I'm not sure how you intend this conversation to go if that's how you're going to start it and then she said look I'm a --- ws intimately know except in this case the roles have been slightly changed but it's a familiar script that Universal human principles are more dear to us than tribal concerns and nation and certainly than nationalist of allegiances to which we have no allegiances because we get based on Jewish history we're very skeptical of such allegiances all kinds of stuff obviously we think that that's where the light is right we think that that is a perspective that is more expansive than one that is tribal nationalistic all those things so you may not agree with that but that's where we're coming from if we're right then how does the light get in where are the cracks for someone who is still cathected CED is that the word still attached to to a perspective that has them clinging to a nationalist project that is fraying at the seams that is flailing around that is acting lunatic right now the whole world can see it where might the crack be for someone who for whom Zionism has been an answer to a very deep question Who Am I who are we as a people where can we be safe that's are those are very powerful adhesives that would keep someone glued to a perspective so the first thing you need to do is if you're interested in their freedom if you're interested in their expansion in their Liberation if if your intention for them if your prayer for them is that they should release their heart from all the shackles that keep it tied to a losing ideology what I sometimes call a suicidal death cult but that's a pretty extreme way of putting it well then you need to understand why are they holding on to those shackles in the first place what just like with any addiction as the work of a certain Dr matate lets us know what not what's wrong with the addiction what's right with it what does it do for the person well zionism's done a lot for a lot of Jewish people and having gone to a Zionist summer camp I can feel it inside I can still feel the warmth and community of of of the Zionist dream of Jews finally liberated in this warm beautiful Mediterranean Place away from the Shettles and away from the you know the the the Jack Boots and away from the cacs and away from all the suffering finally we're free finally we're Sovereign finally we're together the belonging Zionism you know Hitler had his final solution to the Jewish question Zionism is another solution to a assumed Jewish question which is what what is the world supposed to do with these people who don't belong anywhere well Zionism solution is let's belong there except let's not really pay too much attention to who we had to unb belong in order to make it happen so in other words your Zionist friends that you are dreaming of shaking loose from their shackles or getting through to they're holding on to something for dear life and for a very good reason because they don't know who they would be without it now their education didn't allow them to imagine who they would be without it because just like all education systems and this is not a Jewish thing this is not a Zionist thing this is just how education systems especially inside nationalist Frameworks work you convince people that without this perspective they'd be nothing and they'd be lost so you could have some compassion for that and then you just look for where are the cracks where might this person be shaky on this where might that sense of security be failing them what questions might they have what you know and if you can be Al alert and attuned to that then you're tuning into not where you can where can you get through to them but where might they in a sense be opening to you without them even realizing it that's what I'm finding to be a a more energy efficient and less crazym approach and I think a more effective one but it's not guaranteed I would simply say listen to them listen to these people reflect their perspective in a way that they know that you got it that you understand where they're coming from and then ask them are you open to a different way of looking at it if the answer is yes then go ahead if there answer is no don't even try I keep quoting this expression you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink the bad news is you can't even lead the horse to water so listen acknowledge as Daniel said the value of that perspective in their lives you can ask is there no opening if there isn't don't push it all you're going to get is resistance okay we've answer that and well and one last thing don't fall into the Trap of thinking there's some tone you should take or some thing you should say kind of anything goes if they're willing to have a conversation with you I'm finding sometimes I can be very gentle and patient and loving and just my compassion takes that form and sometimes my compassion takes them more impatient like come on wait wake up already kind of form it depends on who I'm with and who I'm talking to there is no one way you're going to get through to People Best by being yourself and if they meet all the conditions gbo just laid out which is they're open to a New Perspective at that point letting them know where you're coming from and leading with your own heart not just with your mind not just with the facts is a great way to reach people because people will not be convinced simply by reason alone they'll be touched in their hearts and they'll feel a resonance in you where you you have something they want you have a perspective that rounds out theirs thank you thank you uh we'll bring Sonia Juni yeah there you are hi hello hello um so I'm calling from Germany and uh I am Swiss half Swiss half uh Tunisian actually not quite a Swiss and quite a Dutch but anyway I am calling you or asking you to help me find out how to speak to Germans about this topic because um I have many friends who are great amazing people similar World Views but on this topic I cannot get through to them yeah Germany of all the countries in the world is the most difficult place to have this conversation the um the persecution and prosecution of um people who speak at all critically of Israeli policy or in favor of Palestinian rights is most pronounced in Germany of all the countries in Europe and uh a third of the PE I saw an article recently in the Guardian newspaper about this a third of the people who've been threatened or silenced for speaking out in favor of some justice here have been Jews yes indeed so so so Jews in Germany are accused of anti-Semitism if they speak on behalf of Palestinian rights yes if you if in Germany you um talk about a part hiide and you quote Israelis rabbis and academics and and and journalists and intellectuals and civil rights workers who talk about a part in Israel in Germany you can be cancelled and we likely your job now what's behind that I think behind that so so sometimes it seems to me that the Germans haven't learned to thing yes you know but I have I have the impression that I have the impression that that uh they they want to learn you know they're engaged to learn but something is is blocking them guilt I think was blocking them are two things three things actually one is a tremendous guilt and uh I've talked to Germans who are in their 30s who feel guilty about the Holocaust yeah so they carry this guilt just as just as trauma can be Collective and pain can be Collective and multigenerational it seems so can guilt be multigenerational so that's one thing the other thing is Germany is very much part of the Western Alliance m so you don't get much truth in the western press about what the West does in the in the rest of the world this is not unique to Israel and Palestine how much truth was there about like Germany was one of the countries that invaded Afghanistan send troops to Afghanistan Germany largely supported the amican invasion of Iraq or million Iraqi civilians died no they're no they were very much against it okay well I'm wrong on that one thank you but by and large but by and large Afghanistan which is crazy yeah so okay more recently then Germany has largely lined up with the American perspective and and and and what the Germans are hearing is a narrative that largely is whatever the Americans support they support you know so I don't know how to speak to them anymore you know just take the answer that Daniel I gave to the previous question yeah you know just take the same approach but you know avoiding to talk about it is definitely not helping you know asking them if they're open to other perspective uh I can s do that maybe that's that's a door but I expect them to say oh yes I'm open but actually they aren't so I would offer this you know it feels kind of like we're in Orwells 1984 but we're not quite you know the Stasi isn't going to be at your door the minute you have a subversive conversation you are allowed to say hey are you noticing something around right is there a little something weird going on in this country right now around this yeah is it just me or like are we not like do you notice that people are really scared to talk about this do you notice the tension in the air when we even just bring this is there any other topic in the world where we would feel this constrained does this remind us of any other time in German history I mean you actually almost have some fun with it not fun but the but the the the the the levity that comes when you when you just speak the unspoken right because it's so obvious it's so where that it's nowhere but the minute someone has the guts to just point it out like huh this is a little weird here we are the country that um taught the world the dangers of authoritarianism and um you know the the the the radical dangers of closing your eyes to obvious Horrors what lesson did we learn exactly I don't know I don't know how they would react but I'll tell you if you get inside underneath their beer man it's tense in there it's no fun to not be allowed to talk about something like this it just sucks and if someone said this is what standard comedians are for in a good in a in a healthy Society they say is anyone am I crazy what's what's the deal with censorship around Palestine you know that's the Jerry sunel I want so what I'm saying is if you can't change their minds on the content maybe you can poke a few little holes in the context the invisible context that you're all stifling inside of put bring a little oxygen in the room open a window is anyone noticing this see what happens yeah actually I I had this um if I quickly can can tell we have so many questions I would like to move on so we can give the voice to other people too I just I'm just I'm just gonna read you one quote okay in response to this question I'm going to read you a quote this is from a father to a son okay keep your good heart become a person who lets himself be guided primarily by warmth and Humanity learn to think and judge for yourself responsibly don't accept anything without criticism is absolutely true the biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything Faithfully which came from the top and I didn't dare to leave have a least bit of doubt about the tr --- t what they say theyve never said that that's a lie okay that you've been fed by your propaganda machine I'm not here to speak on behalf of Hamas I'm not a supporter or lover of any fundamentalist religious organization or any organization that kills civilians I'm not not at all but if we're going to speak about the facts let's talk about the facts and what the what Hamas has said is they don't accept the right of the state of Israel as a state of Jews to dominate all of Palestine and if you look at the charter of the liquid party it says the same thing that there's no right for the Palestinians to have a state in from the river to the Sea so I'm saying let's just be fair to both sides that's the first point the second point is in terms of October the 7th being somehow different and um of a different category of inhumanity well it was bad enough okay innocent people died and terrible things happened nobody questions that but did you know that in 1948 many a women were raped by the Jewish militias were you ever taught that I don't make that stuff up that that's been discovered by Israeli historians Zionist historians I can quote them to you did you know of the massacres that happened in 1947-48 of men women and children I could go on the whole history quoting nothing but Zionist and Jewish sources you guys are not taught that over there so when October 7 happens it just seems like these animals came out of nowhere for their pure hatred and they tried to kill us all well what I'm saying to you is I'm not going to go through the whole history is but there's a whole other narrative that you guys don't know and the reason we keep doing talking about it is not because we want to favor Palestinians we're saying that the Jewish suffering itself is created by a system that denies the right of the Palestinians to exist and that's what creates the Jewish suffering as well I don't want Jews to suffer I don't want Palestinians to suffer but I think but from my perspective for that suffering to end there has to be an understanding of what's happened here all these years October the 7th didn't come out of nowhere and if you look at the the psychiatric studies of Palestinian kids in 2005 2007 already 20 years ago the vast majority of were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder before Hamas okay yeah because of the occupation because of the mass killings because of the massacres that have been perpetrated on them for 75 years and you guys don't know this over there you just don't know it excuse me I just wanna I just wanna before you respond Rifka I just want to say something as well because I can see this is really hard for you I can see you breathing very consciously grounding yourself taking this in I want to admit to something here there's truth in what you're saying even if I don't agree with some of the facts you articulated I agree with God that there's a propaganda system that you've probably been subjected to everything I know about Israeli Society tells me that's the case that said there has been a hardening of my heart against Israeli suffering there has been and I have to be honest about that because I get so identified with the ones that I consider and I think it's just factually true to be at the the butt end of the traumatized the trauma stick overall in this conflict in terms of who's done what to whom over the last hundred years and how many people have been displaced and killed and all that and I get also so angry at the zionists who miseducated me and I get so angry at the world that were were so many of my fellow Jew are you know caught up in an ideology that I think is is is destroying us that that something had like October 7th happens and there is a part of me that doesn't let myself even for a moment say oh my God those poor people on those kibot seem even though those people are of all the Israelis they're the most my people they were peace activists Vivien silver a Canadian Jew murdered these young people who were dreaming of a better day who were doing coexistence work who were going to theim going to the West Bank to to you know to shik Jara or wherever else putting their bodies on the line did you see that incredible eulogy of of Vivian's Palestinian friend uh who who who who worked you know who who were was remembering her at her funeral at her memorial service it's Unthinkable and even the people who were killed who might have had views I abore they had families they were people the terror of waking up one day and all of a sudden there's there's there's violent people in your place you know and and and and and they're and they're taking some people and they're killing some people and whatever happened and as you know if you follow the gry Zone there is a lot of question about what happened on that day but that's not important right now what I'm saying is there's a part of me that has shut down my empathy selectively at times and then I talk to real Israelis and I remember that I just love Israelis I always have and I've become better friends with some Israelis as a result of October 7th and just feeling into the panic in that Society where you are and the pain there and the bewilderment so I need to let myself melt sometimes off of my you know my righteous Glacier of knowing who's right and who's wrong but then I'll say this to you Rifka acknowledging that when I look at the whole picture and I melt into a kind of compassion for everybody and feel into the pain of the Jewish people there you know how I end up furious at benir schot Netanyahu and the government that feeds on your pain and your trauma that requires it for its lifeblood that uses the suffering of your family and my family as a pretext to do what it's doing I see an entire you know we talk about 130 hostages in the Hamas tunnels I see however many Israeli Jews there are 5 million 7 million I see 7 million hostages of a fanatical cult right now and I know that you're all struggling and I know that you all don't support Netanyahu many of you are out in the streets protesting and before October 7th but there's a kind of emotional cognitive spiritual capture that the Jews of Israel are under right now and my prayer is that they break free from that terrorist group now I know that seems very scary I know they did some horrible things that's a different conversation the facts of the matter are not as you've been taught them as gab said but I'm going to say to you we owe you our sympathy we owe you our compassion we owe you our empathy no matter who's right and who's wrong of course your country endured an unendurable trauma on that day and then when I let myself open into my heart about that I still end up at man oh man oh man do I want Israel to be free from Zion ISM do I want Palestine to be free from Israel do I want Jews to be free from this ideology that keeps them doubling down on not seeing other people fully as human being and not acknowledging and being accountable for what it took to create this state and this state of affairs so that's as far as I can go with Integrity for myself can I just one more thing I know I know other people have want to talk but Dr Dr mate gazi ham or whatever his name is on memory TV they have the the their own TV station he has it's publicly spoken interview in a two-minute interview he said we will do October 7th over and over and over until we destroy every Jew and get rid of Israel Israel has to be destroyed he said it Rifka here's my here's my answer to you okay yeah if you build the world's biggest prison Camp which is what David Cameron called Gaza he's no he's no friend to the Palestinians the former British UK prime minister called it the world's biggest open air prison or the world's biggest concentration camp which is what the Israeli sociologist baruk Kimberling called it as well as Gora Island who's still in power in the in the IDF called it a large concentration camp back in 2004 if you build an internment camp of that size and you police it the way Israel has and you deprive its people of you brutalize them you starve them you do all the things which we don't have time to prove right now that Israel's done but we easily could by directing you as Gabor said to Zionist and Israeli sources you do not get to choose the nature of the prison gang that rises up to try and liberate its people quite aside from the fact that Israel did choose Hamas back in the day and and support them they did but H we're noton we're not gonna be able to we're not going to be able to have it back and forth all I'm going to say is if there's extremist rhetoric coming out of that out of the depths of Hell which is what Gaza is if there are people who are so grieved and angry and even psychotic driven DED by their suffering that they see the Jewish flag on that plane that's bombing their apartment building and killing their grandmother and and brutal and and maming their their nephew and says kill all the Jews I'm not going to spend too much time getting up in arms about it I'm going to ask what are the damn conditions that created that psychosis for those people I'm going to try and direct my attention to the powers that actually have some power that's my perspective Rifka sorry we have to move on we have to move on you muted so we can't hear you but we need to move on and the only thing the one thing I'm going to say more is again rifco pointed to something true and Daniel have both acknowledged that that we haven't talked as much about Jewish suffering and in a certain sense as D acknowledged for himself and is true for me my heart has been a bit Harden to even go there and I'm not proud of that I'm just saying that's what's happened that's been in reaction what you don't know Riva is the context in which we're speaking because the context in which we're speaking is in North America where for 75 years the Palestinian experience has been denied we're speaking in North America where people don't get reports about what happens in the occupied territories every day the killings the land deprivations the house demolitions the torture of people in jails the thousands of Palestinian hostages that are in Israeli jails children who are in jail because they posted something on social media children who tortured you don't believe me read how it it's documented in there okay now I sorry all I'm saying is I'm losing it again Betsy you're going to have to come in here and calm me down okay but what I'm saying is this thing called breathing you can do just breathe we're speaking in a certain context yeah we're trying to correct we're trying to correct the historical record and that's where we're coming from Betsy do you want to come in for a minute and just shut me up and calm me down okay yes um okay easy quick take one hand yeah and put it on the back of your head so that half of your hand two of your fingers are on the hard part of your head the hard part and two fingers are on the soft part and leave your hand here and what we're doing is we're contacting The Reptilian Brain the survival brain the fight or flight that is now activat --- and we see what's happening in Palestine and it's for the sake of power and control and profit war is essential War Machinery is essential most most of the aid that goes to the Ukraine for example doesn't go to the Ukraine it goes to American War uh Industries much of the aid that goes to Israel doesn't go to Israel it goes to American war manufacturing companies orange manufacturers but it's not the war Machinery that's driving it's contributing to it but it's not the fundamental um Dynamic the fundamental dynamic is domination of the world of which war is an essential um but it's an essential necessity is what it is to keep it going and as soon as one war or one enemy goes they're already beating the drum the drums are already beating for the war with China the drums are already beating somebody was the last speaker was from Ecuador let's look at the history of Ecuador how many thousand thousands of people were massacred in Ecuador to maintain the glory of the American Empire not that long ago the world has forgotten it so we have the world system here that's bent on domination war is essential to its project and Israel and Palestine horrible as it is are like little fish compared to the big sharks that are really controlling the tank that's how I see it thank you and just to feed on that there couple of questions that's and how does that feed on our trauma on intergenerational trauma on unconscious well the essence of trauma is fear and the politicians use fear they exploit people's fear and as no chsky said there nothing is easier than to make the American public afraid so there's always enemies there's always a war on something there's a war on drugs there's a war on terrorism there's a war on communism um so the Empire needs enemies and it needs fear to fuel the public support for his projects and in a society where there's a lot of trauma nothing more easy than to uh trigger people's fears and just to continue on that few questions about Safety and Security we all need safety to feel safe and at the same time is there is also a false quest for safety or security that we're seeing and um well I I give you one quick example so there's this film made by Jewish Young Jewish Americans called israelism israelism it's about their own um education and and and and and um rearing in a pro-israel pro Zionist environment they disillusionment from that perspective by finding out the broader perspective on it and it's been seen by a lot of people it was seen here in Vancouver recently you can watch it online Israel M now when people when certain campuses invited the Jewish filmmakers when Jewish students on American campuses invited the Jewish filmmakers to show this film about Jews some people said oh we don't feel safe what they're really saying is we don't feel comfortable there's a h huge difference between feeling safe and feeling comfortable there's nothing threatening to anybody nobody's going to get beat up fired hit killed abused because Jewish filmmakers invited by Jewish students to show a Jewish Film on a campus there was no threat to anybody there was discomfort and in today's world we often say I don't feel safe well no you don't feel comfortable the two are not the same thing yeah and that how does that connect to the right to defend itself Israel America that feeds back to the war machine as well on that level well look the Vietnam War was fought in Americans right to defend itself because the idea was if the Vietnamese win back their own country from American control that would The Dominoes would start falling and then you know Indonesia would be next and you know the Domino Theory when Hitler launched his Wars he did it in the name of German safety we don't want war we want peace we're just being you know threatened Israel does have a right to defend itself every country has a right to defend itself but against who on October the 7th and we've said this my sons and I have said this Israel had the right to defend itself its territory was invaded its people were being killed some of them were captured Israel had the right to defend himself on that day it couldn't stand by um uh silently and passively and it's people being killed nobody's arguing that but for the most part when we talk about Israel's right to defend itself we're talking about defending itself against the people resisting the brutal occupation of their own lands in the West Bank Israel has no right to defend itself in Gaza Israel has not no right to defend itself in Israel Israel has a right to defend itself but who is defending s against when they go into refugee camps in the West Bank and they kill 12 people men women children they don't care when they capture since October the 7th they've taken 7,000 prisoners in the West Bank 7,000 hostages on getting heated again and killed 400 people in the West Bank hundreds of people have been killed trilli have been killed who is it defending itself against against the people that it's occupying so let's make a distinction between a country's right to defend its borders and a country's right to occupy suppress oppress kill torture dispossess other people and the two are often confused okay so D we can bring let's try to bring Duran on otherwise we have her question as well and this would be the last question we take Okay can now hear me yes um so I um am a retired military officer and Air Force social worker who was a conscientious objector um while serving in the Iraqi War and I felt really ashamed at that time to be an American citizen someone from the United States of America while watching babies die innocent babies die uh when I was there but I can't help but to also see that this these wars uh you know are constantly reminders of white supremacy culture that black and brown bodies are viewed as less than all around the world and for that as the as the founder of black therapist Rock what I'm experiencing is a lot of black and brown people saying you know this feels like the same of what we've always experienced so how do we prevent those who are systemically marginalized how do we help them navigate compassion fatigue and um vicarious trauma at this time well I don't think the trauma is vicarious I think um there's been [Music] um interesting phenomena recently it's been going on for quite a while actually but it's been um heightened recently there were it's true a lot of Jews involved in the civil rights movement in the states that's true and now Jews are saying well we stood with you in your civil rights struggle why don't you stand with us when it comes to defending Israel and I think the answer is is that what a lot of people of color and marginalized people in the states of feeling is not vicarious trauma they're feeling their own trauma that they suffered for a long time being mirrored in what's happening in Palestine so in that trauma in that sense the trauma is not vicarious it's actually black American trauma has not been healed yet in fact it's exacerbated every day by the system and we can see that in the health status of uh of of of minority people in the states we can see that black children are much more likely to die at Birth than white children incidentally if they're delivered by black doctors that death rate is half as much and if they delivered by white doctors whereas the death rate of white children infants is not affected by the race of the physician and I could go on and on and on and wew write about this in our book The Myth of normal but what I'm saying is that the trauma [Music] of and if you look at who goes into the military United States and who gets BTSD it's the people who are poor and marginalized so they find in the military some kind of a possibility of a COR then they get sent overseas and they endure all these terrific exper terrible experiences so what I'm saying is that the trauma that you're describing here is not very curious It's a mirroring of the trauma that people in States particularly minority people people of color have historically endured and that's why a lot of American black people automatic and almost intuitively identify with the Palestinian people these days because they get it thank you dur do you have anything to say is no I just really appreciate gab where giv words to that so eloquently um it's it's been really challenging to you know try to hold space for all of our clients regardless of their identities and also take care of ourselves for me to take care of me um it's been very challenging during these days and just a lot of grief um that's what I've been experiencing a lot of pain in my heart around what seems like the world falling apart has always you know often frequently felt like the world has been falling apart and so to say yes it's a mirroring of the trauma that lives in me that feels accurate thank you thank you Dar thank you so much Gabor should we bring Betsy before we close the meeting sure please Betsy yes okay so what's happening with your breathing are you breathing because with the anxiety pain sadness our breath gets affected how can it not so often shallow or limited so watch your breath again no need to change it or fix it just watch and more specifically right now watch the speed as your breath sped up or slow down and stay with that just watch and of course allow change if it happens and next watch the movement where is there movement inside you where does your breath hit the wall when it hits a wall what happens what are the shape changes inside as you breathe changes happen inside shape changes and as you watch your breath it has the potential to Ripple bounce off those walls and move somewhere it hasn't been before and again your support your contact to the ground and as your breath is coming in and out perhaps there's a little more room inside to hold whatever's there and again we're not trying to change anything anybody's ideas but is there more room inside to hold whatever's there or perhaps take the edge off your breath more space I call it space medicine not getting rid of anything but hold the pain with more of me and that allows you to not disregulated one part quite so much and watch your breath thank you back to Gabor thank you Betsy thank you so much and thank you Gabor for so for stay the extra half an hour to hold this conversation it's such a honor and a gift and thank you each and everyone for being here in this difficult conversation and all it so and sorry we couldn't address all the questions but we hope to continue this conversation with Gabor and other speakers to create this space to continue to grow and learn and learn how to be uncomfortable together that's a practice we have yeah we don't develop much don't develop that skill especially in the US yeah in the western world thank you Gabor thank you for being here with us thank you to the sen team for holding the space for this Stacy Lisa Sarah Carlos jri thank you so much and until we meet again we'll be sending the recording to everyone feel free to share it and also the list of resources we will receive an email with all the resources mentioned