Anyone who looks in the rearview mirror at the planet's recent history sees a lot of destruction, especially from climate catastrophes and wars. The new IsraeliPalestinian conflict, which began three months ago and still has no end date, is the most notorious chapter of 2023.
Deaths, bombings, shootings, food and energy shortages, genocide, massacres, diplomatic disagreements are words that flood the news. But even as we talk about the great tragedies of the past year, a closer look, a conversation with people who do not take up arms, with analysts who think beyond security and geopolitics, allows us to see some development possibilities for the year in which this is the case begins.
One of these characters is Ahmed Alghariz, a 34yearold dance teacher who, although he was born in Saudi Arabia and lives in Germany, considers Palestine his parents' country his country. So much so that he has been running a dance school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip since 2012. In Gaza, he also conducted emergency education interventions, a discipline dedicated to healing trauma in children from conflict regions.
He travels to Gaza every year, and 2023 was no different. It arrived in August. But from October 7, when Hamas carried out the surprise attack on Israeli territory that served as a pretext for the massacre that has since been carried out in Palestine, the planning of his stay had to be changed.
Children
“The idea of emergency pedagogy is to work with children as soon as the tragedy occurs in order to integrate what happened into their biographies,” explains German Fiona Bay, head of the emergency pedagogy department at the Association of Friends of Waldorf Education. In short, the aim is to prevent disorders related to posttraumatic stress or other pathological developments related to trauma.
“During a traumatic event, a new situation takes control of you. “So you have to create a routine to give the children something to hold on to,” says Fiona. In her opinion, this work uses resources from Waldorf education and techniques related to this universe, such as art, music, dance. “When you go into shock, your breathing stops and that affects your body. Art gives you the opportunity to express something that’s inside you without the need for words.”
Act quickly and create a routine that suits the new situation. This is what Ahmed did in Gaza, in UN schools that, despite the suspension of classes due to the Israeli attack, were full of displaced people who used them as a refuge below, video taken on November 8th, a month after At the beginning of the war, it shows the dancer's work (in red Tshirt and yellow cap) at a UN school in Nuseirat.
“I had to learn to act immediately without planning so much. I had to improvise one activity at a time. I didn't have time to think. I had to keep the kids busy all the time,” he said, answering the question Brazil actually via video conference from Egypt on December 26th, a few days after they managed to leave the Gaza Strip. I still have back pain and “trying to wake up from everything I’ve been through,” as he said before the interview began.
To illustrate how the extreme situation in Gaza has affected his work, he says that usually when he opens a dance circle, he asks the participants who would like to join in and says he will choose the bravest.
But he realized that the approach had to be different there because everyone had an unusual need to participate in the activity, to receive attention, “because in this situation they had no one's attention.” “They just wanted to be kids and participate. If they felt that they were not chosen in such a situation, they would feel very bad.”
“God's Gift”
The professor does not believe that this new requirement has affected the application of his work. On the other hand. “I had to improvise and that’s how I gained more experience. It's a gift from God,” he reflects in a statement that pauses the conversation for a few seconds and causes a certain excitement because it is impressive for a person to see such positivity in such an adverse situation. “We know that God always writes something better than what is in our plans.”
Alghariz says a bomb fell near her during an activity at a UN school in Gaza. “The children were scared, but I managed to stay active.” To reduce stress in such situations, he uses techniques such as body manipulation, screaming and active breathing. “I try to activate collapsed nerves, which are responsible for many functions that children cannot perform due to trauma. I try to control body language so that it anchors the person's roots in the ground. It is a moment to forget everything, to forget that there is a war.”
“Something changes in the children who receive appropriate educational support in such situations,” says Fiona Bay, recalling experiences she had in 2009 in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip itself, after another war in the area . Palestinians. “I saw children in shock, I remember a little boy. He looked at me, but his eyes were empty. After three days of work, he began to look deeper and smile. Their behavior changed, they started to relax again.”
“Freeing children from their trauma helps adults feel less resentful, with less stored hatred and fewer feelings of revenge,” says philosopher Lúcia Helena Galvão in an email interview. “We should even address adult trauma so we can alleviate this desire to pay for blood with blood.”
The work carried out by emergency educators is aware of this need, not only to take care of the adults themselves, but also so that they can better care for children, whether they are parents, teachers or guardians of another category. “As an adult, if I understand my reaction to a certain situation, it helps me to support the child,” explains German Fiona Bay.
In our daily work in the newsroom, due to the news and images coming in from the Palestinian front, we receive some photos of clowns working with children, as you can see in this report. This type of work is supported by the psychoanalyst Christian Dunker, who has particular experience in this clown work, so much so that, alongside the educator, he is coauthor of the book “The Clown and the Psychoanalyst How listening to others can change lives” and Clown Claudius Thebas.
“I bet on it because I saw it work,” Dunker tells Brasil de Fato. He says that he once witnessed a situation in a hut on the IsraelPalestine border in which a Palestinian clown tried to promote dialogue between an Israeli and a Palestinian. With humor and nontrivial communication, he managed to be the third voice that brought the conversation to life and promoted a “real bond.”
“The clown is a role model for the psychoanalyst, a prototype figure for the psychoanalyst,” analyzes Dunker. “If we get into a situation like this and can develop the listening skills of a clown, the chance of transformation is very high.”
Artists dressed as clowns perform in Rafah, southern Gaza, during Israelsponsored massacre: Fun helps create less violent people, experts say / Said Khatib/AFP 12/18/2023
Mutual recognition and dialogue
The psychoanalyst, the grandson of a German who fought in the Second World War, who had early contact with testimonial literature and is a thinker who deals intensively with the problems of Jews and Palestinians, believes that time is in favor of those in power, i.e of Israel. Reasons: Illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to be supported; Israel continues to develop into a technology hub, which goes hand in hand with the militarization of society; because citizens accept having a gun in their pantry; Mothers and fathers accept that their children participate in permanent military training; and also because the Israeli left is being “massacred” due to, among other things, a lack of international support.
Dunker sees the current situation as a “break in the basic grammar of recognition,” which is reflected in the fact that a significant number of conflict actors defend the idea that the other side does not deserve to exist. In other words, the existence of the State of Israel and the Palestinian State is not confirmed. However, he believes that at the point where the current Israeli offensive has reached the point of massacre, there is a chance that something positive is on the horizon. “If we change the logic of deexistence to that of coexistence, we can restart the dialogue.”
In his opinion, moments of extreme violence such as the current one can be favorable for this resumption, since the outrage they provoke can “mobilize the most transformative forces in this process”. The psychoanalyst sees the feeling among some Palestinians and Israelis that the conversation about the IsraeliPalestinian question has “delayed and become older, it has become less phallic.” For him, the least phallic conversations are those that correspond to the least worst and that lack boldness.
Lucia Helena Galvão has reservations about the idea that the worstcase scenario represents an opportune time for recovery, since it is not known where the bottom will be. “This can lead to a state of revanchism, with massacres on one side and massacres on the other, until everything is destroyed, with more and more nations taking sides on one side or the other and wanting to massacre each other,” says the philosopher. “The ground could be kilometers deeper than we imagine. It could even lead to the destruction of all humanity, the planet itself.”
In Ukraine, a bunker to play in
The emergency pedagogy proposal is to deploy teams distributed around the world so that local educators can provide the necessary support in times of crisis. First they are trained and then they apply the methodology to local children and also to adults. This preventative work is carried out in technologically peaceful places such as Brazil (http://pedagogiadeemergencia.org/).
But also in places where traumatic experiences happen, such as the earthquake in Turkey in February 2023. “We were there and worked with children, parents and teachers for two weeks. “We then developed a project where we offer children two friendly spaces to visit every day, and this will continue in 2024,” says Fiona Bay.
Another example is Ukraine, where operations began shortly after the war with Russia began in February 2022. “Our first training there took place in Horodenka in March 2022, followed by introductory training in Khust, Kamenetz Podolski, Odessa, Liviv, Rivne and Kiev,” she says. These were four or five day training courses, consisting of theoretical lessons and practical workshops, with the aim of imparting knowledge in areas of knowledge such as psychotraumatology, emergency pedagogy and trauma pedagogy.
One of the trainees was Ukrainian Angelika Merzalowa, a music teacher and educator for children with special needs, who implemented the acquired techniques in her hometown of Kharkiv, where she promoted outdoor activities and also transformed a bunker into a welcoming space for children. “It was a basement in a fivestory building. It stood idle for many years and was used as a landfill. After residents helped remove the trash, about 30 to 35 children and adults used this room for our meetings,” Merzalowa recalls.
The basement was transformed into a kind of kindergarten, with drawing materials, ropes for climbing, balls for juggling… a space where you could have a routine every afternoon, meet friends and play together. It wasn't exactly a pretty room because it was in the basement, she says. “But the beauty came from the wonderful atmosphere created by emergency and trauma pedagogy. When the kids saw me, they started screaming, “Yay, it’s time for the best activity in the world!” That gave me and my assistants strength.”
In the basement converted into a playroom, Ukrainian children had a routine full of fun and artistic activities/disclosure
“Yay, it’s time for the best activity in the world!” said the children of Kharkiv when it was time to play in the bunker / Disclosure
“In 2022, many schools were closed for a long time and many children had nothing to do. In Kharkiv, the situation was very unstable, with frequent shelling in several parts of the city, power outages, economic difficulties and food shortages,” says Fiona Bay.
The Mountain of Failures and the Studio Apartment Universe
At the end of 2022, Lúcia Helena Galvão, in a talk entitled “Ending the year with momentum,” addressed the need to build solid relationships in order to respond positively to the world's problems, a perspective that could encourage people to do so Do take the reins of humanity so that problems can be solved instead of just whining and waiting for someone else to do it. I ask whether there is a necessary update to this argument that can be applied more concretely to the world order at the end of 2023.
“What I would like to add is that today we are trying to pacify wars in a very external and palliative way, that is: 'Let's end a war, let's make a ceasefire, a final ceasefire.'” This only generated external facts , but we haven't changed the way we interact internally. Man is very competitive, he is used to succeeding over other people's failures. For him, being at the top of the social pyramid is the best thing, even if it means climbing a mountain of failures. As long as this mentality does not change and we do not learn to win together, as long as this victory does not take place within the human being, war is always a latent potential. Tension lives in people when they believe they can find their success and happiness in the defeat of others,” says the philosopher.
Teo & o Mini Mundo comic strip used by Lúcia Helena Galvão to illustrate the abovementioned lecture / Disclosure
Asked for the point of view of the American philosopher and mathematician Charles Eisenstein, who defends the need to sometimes exercise restraint in our beliefs so that we can restore channels of dialogue with people who think differently than us, in order to relax polarization and a “To build an evergrowing network of people who believe the world can be improved,” she agrees, adding:
“From the moment that man is convinced, as Socrates said, 'I know only that I know nothing,' of the extent of his ignorance, and stands before the world as an apprentice, there will be less tension through ideology, who believe this.” Possession of the truth. When man says, “I know a lot,” it means that he lives in what I call a studio universe, a limited universe of which he thinks he knows a very large part. Man should always have the mind of an apprentice and the conviction that he has no truth. This would free us from many conflicts and significantly calm the tensions in which we live.”
With a learning spirit, with the desire to win together, with children and adults less traumatized after so much pedagogical training, clowning and other similar initiatives, and with the experience gained in this very violent year 2023, perhaps one A more peaceful and constructive 2024 will be in sight, confirming an idea contained in an article by Christian Dunker published by UOL last October. “We understand that brutality and injustice, which have escalated to new levels in these unacceptable events of 2023, may be the missing pretext for peace.”
Editor: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
