Psychiatrist Says PLO Terror is Even More Damaging to Its Young Victims Than the Holocaust

A Bar Han University psychiatrist told the American Psychological Association (APA) meeting here that the legacy of concentration camp experiences could now be seen among the grandchildren of some Holocaust survivor are — and that the psychological damage inflicted on child victims of Palestine Liberation Organization tenor was “even more damaging psychologically.” Dr. Judith Issroff of Bar Han’s Institute of Holocaust Studies spoke at an APA panel on, “Psychological Treatment and Research on Hostages, Torture Victims and Refugees.”

Issroff said she was opposed to “static memorials” such as monuments honoring Nazi victims, asserting: “If we wish to inhibit the on going transmission of psychological harm from generation to generation, if we seek to prevent damaged people from becoming damaging people, greater resources must be allocated to human services and to psychotherapeutic programs that will offer counseling, treatment and assistance in forming self-help groups for Holocaust victims and their families.”

Issroff who is also a child psychiatrist at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, said that child victims of PLO terrorism in Israel suffered “perhaps greater psychological damage than adult inmates of Nazi concentration camps.” She explained:

“While an adult has an ‘observing ego’ — that is, the cognitive capacity to give meaning to even the worst kind of torture and terror, and thus to sermon up the strength of spiritual resistance — young children seized by terrorists or made to witness the murder of their parents or teachers are reduced to utter helplessness and hopelessness. The result is a stress so overwhelming that treatment of children victimized by terrorists become an all but impossible task.”

She added: “In Israel, where every child is the potential victim of terrorist attack, the campaign to alert the Israeli population of the danger has a positive effect in psychological terms because it combats the feeling of helplessness and offers the possibility of action to prevent or respond to attack.”

TERROR COMPARED TO AN ABCESS

Issroff compared the psychological damage done to child victims of Arab terrorism in Israel to an “abcess” that festers in the body and that may erupt at any time. She described the case of a child who saw his parents shot dead before his eyes in a PLO attack on Ma’alot in 1975 and who himself was left for dead. “Adopted by another family, the child evinced symptoms of severe trauma-induced stress — an inability to talk, frequent fight mores and similar deeply disturbed behavior,” she said.

“Slowly the child responded to the loving care of his adoptive family. Then one night, the tire of an automobile blew out near the house — and the sound made the child suddenly re-live the experience of horror he had known a year earlier, and some of the symptoms as well.”