IT’S GOING TO BE A HARD SELL IN A TIME WHERE TRAUMA IS EXPECTED, VICTIMS REVERED AND WHEN THE FIRST THING OUT OF THE MOUTH OF EVERY STATESMAN IS A VERSION OF, ‘MY HEART GOES OUT TO …’
After an attack, stiffen the spine, but not the heart
It’s going to be a hard sell in a time where trauma is expected, victims revered and when the first thing out of the mouth of every statesman, television talking head and person on Twitter is a version of, “My heart goes out to…,” but a little of the old “accommodation effect” would go a long way right now.
It’s an adaptive behaviour, or in the modern parlance, a way of coping.
It means that as traumatic events such as the latest terror attack in Nice, France, occur more often, people get used to them such that the amount of stress actually decreases — if, that is, the targeted people and society are reasonably resilient.
Accommodation was first noticed in the British during the German blitz of London, again in Israel during the first Gulf War of 1991 and again in Israel during the bloody second Palestinian Intifada, from September of 2000 to the beginning of 2005.
In a 2011 scholarly paper entitled Living with terror, not Living in Terror, political science professor Dov Waxman of Northeastern University in Boston examined the effects of repeated terrorist attacks on Israelis.
During the second Intifada, more than 1,000 Israelis were killed, most of them civilians who died in suicide attacks, many going about their ordinary business in places like cafés, outdoor markets and on public buses.
In fact, 19 months into the second Intifada, an astonishing 44.4 per cent of the population had either been a victim of a suicide attack, had friends or relatives who were victims, or knew someone who had survived an attack.
By comparison, France has had three major terrorist attacks in about 18 months; in 2002 alone, there were 53 suicide attacks in Israel.
As Waxman said, “Suicide terrorism can be particularly effective in terrifying people because it projects an aura of fanaticism, which makes the threat of future attacks seem more likely.”
Add to that the fact that Israelis have long feared terrorism with good reason. “No country has endured more acts of terrorism over a prolonged period than Israel,” Waxman said. “From before the state was established in 1948 and ever since then, Israelis have been the targets of terrorist attacks, both within Israel and around the world.”
(Indeed, modern terrorism is inextricably linked to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as Arab militant groups pioneered new tactics and carried out some of the most notorious attacks.)
Waxman found that more than a third of Israelis who participated in a major psychological study reported at least one traumatic stressrelated symptom. It’s similar to the number reported by Americans after the 9/11 terror attacks, though far fewer of them were directly exposed.
Interestingly, that study found that those who are actually injured in such an attack are “no more likely to suffer from psychological disorders than a person whose only connection to the attack was seeing it on television.
“The extensive media coverage of terrorist attacks can therefore seriously harm people’s psychological wellbeing.”
But, as another study in 2010 showed, the Palestinian terror attacks of the second Intifada had a very limited — negligible — effect on the overall happiness of Israelis.
That suggests, Waxman said, “that the psychological effects of terrorism should not be overstated. While they can be severe, they are generally short-lived.”
Most Israelis recovered well, he found.
Take the worst month of the Intifada, March of 2002. “In one week alone,” Waxman said, “Palestinian suicide bombers struck at a restaurant in Haifa, a Jerusalem supermarket, a café in Tel Aviv, and a hotel in Netanya, the latter during a meal for the Jewish holiday of Passover.” The last attack alone killed 30 and wounded more than 140 others.
Yet, “Instead of panic and public hysteria, there was stoicism and fortitude.” Though they were afraid and under stress, Israelis kept going to cafés (though now they sat far from the entrances where suicides might blow themselves up) and those who used buses kept on doing it.
“When one considers the huge toll in Israeli lives that Palestinian terrorism during the second Intifada took” (in more than 13,000 attacks, 1,030 were killed and 5,788 injured or about 0.1 per cent of the population), “the ability of Israeli society to cope … is quite remarkable.”
Waxman identified three key factors: acclimatization to terrorism; declining media attention as attacks became chronic; and growing social resilience.
INSTEAD OF PUBLIC HYSTERIA, THERE WAS FORTITUDE.
There were some lousy social and political effects, chiefly a rise in ethnocentrism, a hardening of attitudes toward Arab citizens, and a general brutalizing of Israeli society, supported in a rise in violent crime during the second Intifada.
The bad news is that if lone wolf attacks such as the one in Nice, whether carried out by the merely unhinged or those inspired by Islamic extremist groups, is the new norm, the good news is that they will draw less and less attention by the press and social media, there may be less hand-wringing, and if people toughen up (in every way but in attitude toward ordinary Muslims), they can be managed.
In my pig-English interpretation of Waxman’s learned paper: Remember the victims but don’t glorify victimhood. Stiffen the spine, but not the heart. And don’t watch the freaking tube with its death fetish.