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March 13th, 2021 
Awake Goy Northeastern University gave a panel on the psychological trauma that featured an Israeli discussing the trauma of Israeli combat soldiers, “our kids,” as a model for Americans coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel had nothing to say about Palestinians who suffer from Israeli soldiers’ activity.
The discussion took place on Northeastern’s Jewish Studies program in an annual lecture, funded by the Ruderman Family Foundation, which is dedicated to the inclusion of people with disabilities and to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship.
While the March 8 panel overall was a helpful exploration of the psychological aspects of the pandemic, its elevation of Israeli militarism was yet another sign of the extent to which Israeli hasbara, or propaganda, is routinely put forward in leading American institutions as a guide to American thinking and policy. Israeli soldiers are the heroes in this discourse — and Palestinians are the shadowy terrorists.
Danny Brom, the leader of an Israel psychotrauma center, was introduced by the moderator as someone who treats trauma survivors internationally, and works in Israel “to increase the capacity of Israeli society to deal with ongoing existential threats.”
What are those existential threats? “Israeli society has had to cope with a lot of different kinds of trauma and threat,” Brom said, and he spoke of treating more than 2000 Israeli soldiers from combat units.
“So one of the things we’ve been doing is looking at our soldiers, and I say, our kids, who go at 18 years old into the army for two or three years, and then into the Reserves,” Brom said. His center has developed a program called “Peace of Mind” to help the soldiers who experience post-traumatic stress disorder to process “their experiences in combat.”
Brom spoke about Jewish Israelis who “became more Israeli” by bonding under threats, from the Iraq missiles of 1991 to the Lebanon war of 2006 and on.
He said that army service had forged Israel into the “startup nation” because trauma drives “accelerated learning… you learn like crazy in a traumatic situation.”
“Why are we a startup nation? I see these young people after their army service and they just want to do something, they continue to be in the mode of What is the next thing I need to do!? And it’s with an energy that feels like survival energy…. Israelis sleep one hour less than Europeans. It’s fitting with our society and our culture.”
The propaganda that Israel is a “startup nation,” whose entrepreneurial gifts serve the world, has been a staple of pro-Israel groups for the last ten years.
Moderator Lori Lefkovitz, a professor in Jewish Studies at Northeastern, did urge Brom to speak of “non Jewish Israelis under the circumstances of pandemic and trauma, Palestinians and other segments of Israeli society.” He acknowledged that non-Jewish populations also suffer and spoke about Druze soldiers in the Israeli army.
The panel made no reference to the Palestinians whom Israeli combat soldiers are regularly interacting with, as they did in onslaughts in Gaza in 2009, 2014 and 2018.
The trauma inflicted by the Israeli military on Palestinians is manifold and cascading. Like the many Palestinians maimed by snipers during the Gaza protests of 2018. Like the children of 7 to 13 arrested while picking flowers on their occupied land earlier this week. Like the families who can’t get the bodies of their children back after they are shot at military checkpoints, a form of collective punishment.
This sort of information is just too hard for a Jewish Studies program at a major university, funded by Israel lovers, to take notice of.
Thanks to Dave Reed.
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