Palestine: a Family's Story

By Rasul

Ramzy Baroud left Gaza when he was a young man.  He departed with mixed emotions, knowing full well he might never see his father or Gaza again.  Once he left, his activities and the nature of the Israeli control of that piece of land made those fears come true.  Since he left, he has become a chronicler of the struggle for a free Palestine and an advocate for a genuine and just solution to the ongoing conflict in his native land.

His most recent addition to the aforementioned chronicle is a beautifully wrought memoir of his family.  Titled My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, the book takes the reader into the life of a man who was driven from his birth village during the ethnic cleansing of parts of Palestine by Israeli Zionist forces  That man was Ramzy Baroud's father, Mohammed Baroud.  Along with his family and much of the rest of his village, the teenage Mohammed eventually found himself in the refugee camp called Nuseirat.  Despite several journeys out of that camp to fight and to trade, he would die there some fifty years later.  Not only would Baroud's father never see the village of his childhood--Beit Daras--again, but the fate of Palestine was more uncertain than it had been ever since the creation of Israel.

I have to be honest.  Whenever I read a description of the travails of the Palestinian people since 1947, my human emotions kick in.  Anger and sorrow are the most common.   The description can be a personal memoir or a reasonably objective piece of journalism.  It could be written by a sympathetic soul, an observer or a member of a group supporting the continued expansion of Israel.  It doesn't matter.  The decades of suffering mirrored by a similar number of years opposing Israeli occupation; the uncaring response of a world seemingly numb to the actualities of Tel Aviv's Orwellian newspeak describing the situation; and the  seeming inevitability of more death and daily suffering always results in the aforementioned emotional responses.

Ramzy Baroud's text operates on several different levels.  Of course, it is an unsparing look at the political Zionist program to carve a homeland out of Palestinian lands for likeminded Jewish people.  It is also a critical history of the relationship between the Palestinians and established Arab nations.  He recalls the brief period of secular Arab nationalism after World War Two led by Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser.  While describing this bit of history, Baroud also relates the story of his father's enlistment into a unit of Nasser's army that defended Gaza.  This moment of his father's pride he describes is one that is both personal and political, like so many moments of a people struggling daily for their independence and against oppression. 

The author's ability to depict these types of moments is what makes this book such a worthwhile read.  Under Baroud's pen, history truly does become the story of a people.  Each individual whose story appears in My Father Was a Freedom Fighter embodies the story of the Palestinians.  The story stretches from the daily battle to feed one's family when there are no fields to harvest because the occupiers have destroyed those fields to meetings with leaders of the Intifada.  Ramzy Baroud tells a very personal tale in these pages underlined by an impeccably researched historical knowledge. 

In addition to depicting the relationship between Arab nations and the Palestinian movement, this text explores the nature of the Palestinian liberation movement itself.  Combining his father's political understanding and historical memory with his own knowledge, Baroud explores the reasons for the Palestine Liberation Organization's fall into seeming irrelevance in Gaza and its replacement by Hamas.  It is a story about organizing at the grassroots and corruption at the top.  It is also a story of one man's hopes in the organization he believed in being dashed.  Finally, it is also the all too familiar tale of a society striving yet failing to overcome the scourge of class, especially when those at the top are offered rewards for leaving their lesser-off brothers and sisters behind.

Perhaps the most emotionally difficult storyline that runs through Baroud's memoir is the story of his parents' love for each other.  Difficult, because it is a story like so many other love stories without hope for a happy ending.  When Ramzy's mother died of cancer at the age of 42, she was given a martyr's funeral.  This wasn't because she was a battlefield fighter or a guerrilla, but because she was a child, mother and sister of Palestine.  She died so young in part because Tel Aviv's brutal occupation refused her the treatment she needed.  Indeed, the incident that may well have exacerbated her illness was one where Israeli soldiers beat her while she pleaded with them not to break her sons' arms.  This practice was a common Israeli Defense Force tactic during the First Intifada.

My Father Was a Freedom Fighter is a perfectly nuanced combination of memoir and history.  Once again, Baroud has put the nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in human terms that describe not only the humiliation of the Palestinians as individuals and as a people, but also the struggle against that humiliation and the often brutal repression that accompanies it.

Anger



Faridah Mohamad Saad
Institut Pendidikan Guru
Kampus Teknik
Bandar Tun Razak Cheras, Kuala Lumpur
noniemsaad@yahoo.com



None of us is a stranger to anger. And while we may regret our anger at times, it can certainly be a warning that something is not right with our world. It can also be a useful power to right those wrongs if properly directed and controlled. Used appropriately and then dismissed, anger is healthy. But if allowed to control us and have its way, it can also damage us and those around us.

Throughout history anger and angry people have caused so much pain that today many believe that all anger is a mental defect to be rejected and avoided. Simply saying to someone, “You're angry!” is often used as a trump to end the discussion and win the argument—as if being angry is the ultimate evil in and of itself, and therefore overrides any subject being discussed.

And yet anger at genuine wrongs has led to much change for good. Repressions have been overturned as the result of “righteous anger.” Peoples have been freed, illegitimate regimes overthrown, women and children protected, and the situations of countless members of the human race improved.

But as we know, much of the world's misery can be traced to the unjust and unhealthy anger of individuals or groups—despots, megalomaniacs, politicians, false messiahs, competing religions and warring peoples on the macro scale; and the power-hungry, the dissatisfied, the controlling, the offended, the slighted and the ignored on the micro level.

We get the English word "berserk" from Norse raiders who were called berserkers in the Old Norse tongue, after their habit of losing their minds to murderous anger and blood lust.

Even in modern, and supposedly enlightened, times we have and do see horrific examples of leaders, peoples, cultures and religions promulgating unbridled anger to sacrifice hundreds of millions of individuals to their lusts for power: a force wielded against anyone who would stand in their way.

But, you and I don't have any such power or inclination. So why talk about something that doesn't affect us?

Since uncontrolled and unhealthy anger does cause terrible grief, it is important to understand how to express it properly and to take charge of our own anger so that we can use it as a catalyst for positive change.

It is easy to recognize extreme blood-in-the-eye rage when it shows itself in others, and perhaps we've even seen it in ourselves. But psychotherapists Ronald T. and Patricia S. Potter-Efron in Letting go of Anger (2006) list 11 common anger styles—some of them masked, some explosive, and some chronic. Some styles of anger are able to hide, even from the person exhibiting them. Some people claim that they never get angry, and indeed try not to do so. Others hide a sneaky, passive-aggressive anger by procrastination, forgetting or playing dumb or helpless. Some turn their anger inward and follow patterns that the Potter-Efrons describe as: self-neglect, self-sabotage, self-blame, self-attack, or self-destruction.

Men and women may express anger differently. In Western society women have been stereotyped historically as the nurturing sex and may therefore be discouraged from showing their anger, but both sexes have issues with this emotion. Although most books on anger management are written to men, Laura Petracek writes to women and says, “Most women in our society are either not in touch with their anger or feel their anger but don't know how to express it.” Petracek describes two styles of anger she sees in women: Anger In, in which “women direct their anger at themselves by overeating, becoming depressed, and hurting themselves;” and Anger Out, “venting your rage at another person, or attacking or blaming another person, possibly to the point of pushing, shoving, or kicking that person.” 

All of us have the potential for anger as part of our humanity. Ignoring or denying anger prevents us from using it appropriately and allows it to cause us hurt.

Like Father, Like...Daughter?

Baseball hard-hitter Harmon Killebrew tells a story that hints at the importance of fathers to boys: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard,” he says on his Web site. “Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’”

Obviously, Killebrew’s father was tuned in to the needs of his sons, an admirable quality that seems only natural in a man. We accept that every boy needs a father as easily as we accept the notion that he needs a dog. But while society is beginning to acknowledge that a father is more crucial than a dog to a boy’s well-being, the question of how important fathers are to the well-being of their daughters has all but been ignored.

A search through online journals on family studies using the terms “fathers” and “daughters” does not prove entirely fruitless, of course. An abundance of material is available, nearly all of it exploring the psychological effects of incest and other dysfunctions. Unfortunately, however, there is very little that would lead anyone to believe that more positive relationships even exist between fathers and daughters, much less that such relationships may also have a profound and vital effect on a woman’s mental health.

This gap has been addressed by only a few researchers, one of whom is Linda Nielsen, professor of adolescent psychology and women’s studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Nielsen has been teaching a “Fathers and Daughters” course there since 1991 and authored its current textbook, Embracing Your Father: How to Create the Relationship You Always Wanted With Your Dad (McGraw Hill, 2004).

“Do you realize how rare incest is between a biological father and daughter?” she asked rhetorically in a recent interview with Vision. “It is extremely rare. When we talk about girls who are victims of incest, that term, to psychologists and sociologists, covers being sexually abused by cousins, uncles, stepfathers, stepbrothers, brothers, half-brothers, men who live with your mother who are not related—that all goes into the category of incest victims. But when you look into the percentage of girls who were sexually abused by their biological fathers, it is very small. What this tells me, just as it told you—is that researchers have the wrong focus when it comes to studying father-daughter relationships.”

This wrong focus may contribute to the misconception that daughters don’t need their fathers after a certain age. “My students tell me that their fathers stopped doing things with them when they became teenagers—like going camping with them alone on the weekends—because it would look weird,” says Nielsen. “Once puberty hits, you aren’t supposed to spend as much time with your daughter. Once she’s a teenager, you’re supposed to back off and let Mom have the main relationship. If that’s the message you’re sent and you’re told that’s what a ‘good father’ does, then that’s what you’re going to do.”

This goes hand-in-hand with another stereotype that harms father-daughter relationships. “We portray fathers more negatively than we portray mothers in media,” says Nielsen. “Dad’s a blockhead when it comes to child raising—especially with his daughter. Mom is considered the expert. These messages discourage fathers from being actively involved.”

According to Nielsen, most men would like to be involved, and she adds, “Fathers do spend more time with their kids than in the past.” But she says some changes still need to occur. Although company work-life balance programs for men and women are becoming increasingly popular in Western nations, “men still spend an average of 15 more hours a week at work and commuting than their employed wives do, and American fathers spend about 70 more hours each year at work than do men in other industrialized countries. Dads still don’t have as much time as moms to be with kids.”

Clearly, as a society we remain unconvinced of how crucial fathers are to their children—particularly to their daughters. But would we be convinced if we read the research?

Vanderbilt University researchers have long known that girls who have supportive, involved fathers enter puberty later than girls whose fathers are distant or absent, and this is not as insignificant to a woman’s quality of life as it may seem. In 2003 researchers at the Cincinnati, Ohio, Children’s Hospital noted a link between early onset of menstruation and adult obesity. But there’s more. When early onset of menstruation was marked by early breast development, there was an associated rise in the risk for breast cancer. The accompanying factors may be complex, but there is certainly more to be explored in the association between good father-daughter relationships and a healthy future for adult females.

Beyond physical health, of course, the right attention from fathers can confer other benefits, as studies continue to demonstrate.

One such study was conducted in the United States and New Zealand in 2003, by Bruce J. Ellis, professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, and several of his colleagues. The researchers listed a variety of the negative outcomes adolescent girls set themselves up for when they have early sexual experiences. “Specifically,” they note, “adolescent childbearing is associated with lower educational and occupational attainment, more mental and physical health problems, inadequate social support networks for parenting, and increased risk of abuse and neglect for children born to teen mothers. Despite these consequences, the United States and New Zealand have the first and second highest rates of teenage pregnancy among Western industrialized countries. . . . Given these costs to adolescents and their children, it is critical to identify life experiences and pathways that place girls at increased risk for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy.”

After following a combined total of approximately 900 subjects from preschool to late adolescence, the researchers concluded that “father absence was an overriding risk factor for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Conversely, father presence was a major protective factor against early sexual outcomes, even if other factors were present” (emphasis added).

Ellis and his colleagues were not the first to make the association between strong father-daughter relationships and healthy sexual outcomes, of course, nor were they the most recent.

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, reported similar findings in February 2006. In a study involving 10,000 students between 7th and 12th grade, Regnerus reiterated that girls who had positive relationships with involved fathers waited longer to have their first sexual experience. He added, “Girls who have poor relationships with their dads tend to seek attention from other males at earlier ages and often this will involve a sexual relationship.” This surprising characteristic of strong father-daughter relationships was not duplicated between mothers and daughters.

Nielsen’s own research has been conducted among her college students over a span of more than 15 years, and like other researchers before her, she acknowledges that positive fathering produces well-adjusted, confident and successful daughters who relate well to other men in their lives. Unfortunately, she says, fathers tend to spend less time with their daughters than with their sons, and many do not see anything negative about this. Nielsen also points out that “most of these fathers and daughters do not communicate, share personal things, or get to know one another as well as mothers and daughters.”

One might wonder how she hopes her course for young college women will change this. Shouldn’t she be talking to their dads? What can a young woman do to close the distance if her childhood is behind her, and with it, seemingly, any chance of a good relationship with her father? According to Nielsen, plenty! Unfortunately, many women are held back by the belief that their father should make the first move, or that patterns of communication in their relationship are so entrenched that they cannot be changed. Or perhaps they’ve tried some of the strategies before, without result. Nevertheless, Nielsen assures her students, the strategies she outlines in her class and its textbook will bring about changes. Indeed, the greatest changes may occur in the daughters themselves.

“Let’s say that your pessimistic assumptions turn out to be right,” she offers in her textbook. “No matter how many of my suggestions you try . . . your relationship with your father doesn’t get any better. Yes, you’ll be disappointed, frustrated, and sad—and maybe angry. But these are the same feelings you had before you started. So you really haven’t lost anything. And I seriously doubt that you’re going to regret having tried. Every daughter I know who has reached out and tried again, regardless of the outcome, feels better about herself. It’s as if she has lifted a weight off her shoulders. Like these daughters, you can give yourself the gift of pride and respect that comes from being active instead of passive, from acting like an adult instead of a child.”

Acting like an adult, in Nielsen’s view, includes understanding that daughters may also have contributed to the stereotypes that keep their fathers distant. Daughters may keep things from their fathers under the assumption that their fathers would respond more critically than their mothers. Daughters may assume fathers aren’t as nurturing or intuitive as mothers are, and may avoid going to them for personal advice and comfort.

Mothers may also contribute to the problem through what some researchers call “gatekeeping” behaviors. A 2005 study by the National Council on Family Relations explains that maternal gatekeeping may take a number of forms, any one of which "either encourages or discourages fathers from acting on their paternal identity. . . . One path to changing fathers’ behavior may involve changing the way that mothers look at them. If mothers believe that fathers can and should be capable parents, they are more likely to allow fathers into the lives of their children.”

Nielsen agrees this can be a factor. Her recommendation to her students is “Don’t build a road to Dad through Mom.” Unfortunately, Nielsen’s study of the data collected from her students between 1990 and 2004 revealed that most daughters do go through their mother to reach their father, which has the effect of pushing him away and diminishing their odds of improving their relationship.

So then, does all of the responsibility for good father-daughter relationships fall on daughters? Of course not. Especially while they have young children, fathers carry the bulk of the responsibility for spending as much quality time as realistically possible with their children, whether girls or boys. But as they mature, sons and daughters can contribute to the effort too. Eventually there comes a time when the best way to turn the heart of a father to his daughter is for his daughter to turn her heart to her father.

Silence Is Not Golden

While silence may be a safety net—the true friend who never betrays—it may also lend a false sense of security. Francis Bacon called it “the virtue of a fool.” Most would agree with the ancient wisdom that, while there is certainly a time for silence, there is also a time to speak. In fact, it might be fair to say that our family relationships are only as strong as our communication skills. 

This is particularly true, according to a recent study published by the American Psychological Association, on those occasions when the opportunity to express gratitude presents itself. In a series of studies published in April 2010, researchers from Florida State University, Yale and New College of Florida examined whether expressing gratitude to a relationship partner increases communal strength, defined as “the degree of felt responsibility for a partner’s welfare.” While it seems obvious that expressions of gratitude would increase positive feelings in the partner receiving gratitude, it is not quite as self-evident that there would also be benefits for the expresser. Nevertheless, whether in romantic partners or friends, the researchers found evidence that the sense of communal strength was heightened for those who voiced gratitude—at least in the sample of college students studied. The researchers speculated that when people express gratitude, it reinforces and increases their own pleasure in the action that prompted gratitude. It also heightens their conviction that they care enough about the partner to be responsive to that person’s actions. “Finally,” say the researchers, “conveying to the partner that his or her actions were appreciated and valued ought to encourage additional and possibly larger or more costly supportive acts,” which would typically have a reciprocal effect, strengthening the relationship still further. 

The study is only the latest in a growing body of research literature investigating the benefits of gratitude. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California–Davis and Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami have analyzed the effects of this emotion extensively over the past decade, not only together but also in concert with other researchers. In a 2003 study they examined the effects of gratitude on both psychological and physical well-being by comparing three randomly assigned groups of subjects over nine weeks. One group was asked to report on five things they could be grateful about in their lives, another was to report only on hassles or irritants, while the third received neutral instructions to simply report on events that “had an impact” on them. 

Physical symptoms and well-being ratings were measured over the same period, with interesting results. Participants in the gratitude group experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness, spent significantly more time exercising, and reported higher levels of positive affect, more sleep, better sleep quality, greater optimism and a greater sense of connectedness to others than those in the other two groups. In addition, Emmons and McCullough noted that those in the group who were “led to focus on their blessings” rather than their hassles or complaints were “more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another.” In the view of the researchers, “this finding lends support to the hypothesis that gratitude serves as a moral motivator.”  

While the study focused on short-term rather than long-term effects of gratitude, the strategy used to produce the effects was so simple that it could presumably be added to any routine: taking time once a week to reflect on as few as five benefits could hardly be considered burdensome. And if practice makes perfect, who knows whether a year or two of regularly expressing gratitude might change one’s disposition permanently? Those who are not currently “dispositionally grateful” could have much to gain, as McCullough, Emmons and a colleague, Jo-Ann Tsang, found in an earlier study. Using a combination of self-reports, peer reports and well-validated assessment scales, the researchers found that people whose gratitude could be classified as “dispositional” were consistently more extroverted, more agreeable and less neurotic than their chronically less grateful counterparts. 

For those who prefer to remain chronically ungrateful, however, silence still may not be the best alternative. In fact, the existing research literature on the subject suggests there is ample reason to discount the traditional wisdom that “if you can’t say something nice,” you shouldn’t say anything at all. This was underscored by a 2009 study by Kira Birditt and Leslie Rott of the University of Michigan, who, together with Karen Fingerman of Purdue, examined relationships between parents and their grown children to assess strategies for coping with tensions in their relationships. 

The study’s most notable finding? 

“In contrast with constructive strategies,” the researchers write, “avoidant strategies [such as remaining silent or saying only what the other person wants to hear] predicted lower solidarity [emotional closeness, trust and respect] and greater ambivalence [conflicted feelings about the relationship]. This finding was surprising because we had expected that avoidance would be associated with greater solidarity and lower ambivalence.” Also surprising is the suggestion that avoidance could potentially be as detrimental to relationship quality as destructive strategies, which include the use of inflammatory or emotional language, accusations, yelling or criticism. Constructive strategies, on the other hand, were consistent with expectations. Understandably associated with greater solidarity and relationship quality, constructive strategies include working collaboratively to find positive solutions to disagreements, accepting one another’s limitations, and understanding one another’s point of view.

This last strategy would seem to be pivotal. When we take the time to understand another’s point of view, our eyes open to understanding the other’s limitations, and we may even gain insight into potential avenues for positive solutions. We may also find more reasons to express gratitude. 

Clearly this requires a level of communication that goes beyond the “small talk” that may take the place of silence for some. Fortunately there is nothing to fear from deep conversation. In fact, according to researcher Matthias Mehl and his colleagues, it appears there is much to be gained when deep conversations are the norm: a sense of happiness and well-being, for starters. In a study comparing the effects of small talk versus more substantive social encounters, the researchers found that the study’s happiest participants were those who not only had more conversations but also deeper conversations than their less social counterparts. The happiest participants spent about 25 percent less time alone than those who were unhappiest, and they spent about 70 percent more time talking. Further, twice as many of their conversations were substantive. 

“Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship,” say Mehl and his colleagues, “deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners. Therefore, our results raise the interesting possibility that happiness can be increased by facilitating substantive conversations.” 

How much of this happiness stems from the inevitable improvements in understanding, empathy and communal strength promoted by frequent, meaningful communication? A great deal, it would seem, when these studies are considered together. 

Rather than being found in silence, then, perhaps the gold—at least as far as healthy relationships are concerned—lies in appropriate communication set against a healthy backdrop of gratitude for the relationships we hold dear. The idea isn’t revolutionary. “A word fitly spoken,” wrote an ancient sage, “is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” It seems there may indeed be nothing new under the sun.