The interview with psychiatrist Prof. Yoram Yovell on Channel 12 News, in which he presented the war as a "deluxe war" and called on the public to stop being "spoiled prima donnas," has caused us deep concern. The current reality poses immense psychological challenges, yet the dominant discourse on "resilience" in the Israeli mental health world—which Yovell's words expressed in a particularly blunt and direct manner—is increasingly translating into an anomaly of immunity that is detrimental to our ethical functioning and mental well-being.
הפרגוד: הפסיכיאטר פרופ' יורם יובל תוקף את אברי ושרקי ואת המתלוננים על ההתראות באולפן 12: "אני יושב פה ומקשיב לכם ומתחרפן! אל תעלבו – חבורת פרימדונות מפונקות! יושבים שם אנשים, 'ההתראה קצת ארוכה לי, ההתראה קצרה לי' אתם צריכים לנשק את הרגליים של חיל האוויר, אין מלחמות כאלה, אין… pic.twitter.com/lAQPSaLQsi
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Yovell opened his remarks with blatant contempt for the natural distress of those under threat. The denial of vulnerability and the experience of weakness in the face of danger turns the recommended "resilience" into a constriction of mental space, in a way that makes it impossible to feel fear, worry, pain, or sorrow. Instead, military power is glorified, and the "resilience" of civilians is co-opted to strengthen it. Not only is the connection to our emotions damaged in this situation, but also the capacity for thought and the ability to raise questions. As Dana Amir warns, the state of emergency creates a "cognitive safe room" where the sovereign thinks for us, and critical thinking is abolished in favour of a "negative solidarity" that erases differences, diverse opinions, and our ability to recognize the suffering of the other and our own private distress. Thus, the "resilience" that Yovell preached, which has recently gained growing traction in public discourse, actually restricts the ability to be in touch with reality, rather than enabling us to cope with it.
Furthermore, the stance Yovell expressed suffers from a profound blindness to social gaps, as it ignores parents who must juggle working from home with running to a safe room, alongside children with no educational frameworks. Moreover, the accusation of being "spoiled" ignores those who do not have safe rooms, those who sleep in neglected public bomb-shelters, and those living in Arab communities where the state has provided no protected spaces at all. As Dr. Ameer Fakhoury and Adv. Hanan Al-Sana warn, the neglect to provide shelters in Arab society and unrecognized villages in the Negev is a direct continuation of overall civic abandonment. For them, and for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza who lack any kind of shelter or protection, there is nothing "deluxe" about this reality.
Beyond this, treating the war as an existential condition for which we should be grateful is a devastating blow to reality testing and constitutes a form of Gaslighting: it presents aggressive political choices as a natural and benevolent decree of fate, thereby weakening our ability to see the war as the result of decisions made by a leadership acting aggressively on multiple fronts and bringing disaster upon the people living there—from starvation and death in Gaza, through the legitimization of pogroms and killings in the West Bank, to the disproportionate bombardments in Lebanon and Iran.
Yovell confidently claims that "at some point this is going to end, and after it ends, our situation will be better." However, we warn that as long as the worldview continues to be schizo-paranoid, utilizing mechanisms of splitting between "good guys" and "bad guys," things here will not be better. Without aspiring to shift to a path of dialogue and negotiation, we are liable to continue living from attack to attack. Our role as mental health professionals is to refuse this splitting, to remain attentive to the voices of the psyche within us and to human beings of all identities—in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran—and to recognize universal human vulnerability.
We refuse to cooperate with a "resilience" that amounts to moral blindness and emotional detachment. Distress is our compass; it is what allows us to protest against injustices and demand a reality in which we will not need to be "immune" to our own humanity.