How do we even talk about Palestine and Israel?: one group's experience in unspoken territory

The world changed on 7th October 2023 when Hamas made incursions into Israeli territory, resulting in 1200 deaths and 251 hostages. The response by Israel’s government and military has since brought terrible destruction to Gaza, killing over 60,000 people, with 2.3 million forced from their homes. How have we allowed it to happen? What can we say? One group of twelve child psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists – with children’s welfare much in mind – met fortnightly to discuss the insurmountable difficulties of the Palestine-Israel conflict and their feelings about the horror streaming daily on their media. Can such matters be discussed in a group? Can minds be changed? Deep disagreement and pain – yet nothing near the pain experienced in Gaza. Silence can’t be the response. Some of the collection’s contributors come from Palestinian or Jewish heritage, others from different but divided, conflicted backgrounds. Their history goes back to the Balfour Declaration and to the Holocaust. A mother who lived through Kristallnacht; a father from Jaffa with shrapnel head injuries during the Nakba. The group shares memories, reflections, essays and poems in a courageous effort to urge us all towards sense, empathy and a more complex understanding of the catastrophe before our very eyes.