Parental Discourse and Activism as a Response to Bereavement of Fallen Sons and Civilian Terrorist Victims

ABSTRACT

This study is a phenomenological exploration of bereavement among a population of Israeli parents who became demonstratively activist following the death of their offspring either as soldiers in the line of duty or as victims of terrorism. It illuminates how an anger-forgiveness continuum gives a politically charged significance to the bereavement experience regardless of party or ideological orientation. Strong nationalist identification with the armed forces is overlaid with intense personal emotions of guilt and blame assignment. Mourning as a career may follow pathological or normative courses. Political leaders emerge who mobilize similarly situated mourners to protest against military and civilian policy related to the perceived nexus between security matters and the personal loss. The dynamic between factors which assuage personal needs and simultaneously endanger national consensus regarding the performance of leading state institutions–the government and the defense establishment—is underlined in the conditions which both facilitate and impair any transition from anger to reconciliation.

The authors express their gratitude to the bereaved parents who consented to reveal and relive their pain; to Sheli Koshilevitz-Gefen, who assisted us with our research; and to the Tel Aviv University School of Social Work's Fund for the Bereaved and Interdisciplinary Center for Study of Children and Youth for their partial financing of this study.

Notes

¹The bereavement discussed in this article pertains to the specific circumstances of parents' loss of children through enemy action, military accidents, and terrorist attacks. The first two cases pertain to soldiers in uniform, whereas the last case involves civilian casualties. All three categories relate to bereavement that is identified with national security and discourse.

²Studies addressed reactions to loss, grief processing stages and the intensity of difficulty experienced in coping with these phenomena, as well as social support, implications of personal mourning history for behavior following loss, and so forth (Rubin Katz-Dichterman, 1993).

³Another model refers to these developments as a third stage of grief processing (Weiss, 1993).

⁴In the Israeli context, this is epitomized in the phrase “By their death they granted us life,” relating to those who fell in battle and promising parents and families that there is significance in the loss of their child (Doron & Lebel, 2003).

⁵Kornhauser's findings (cited in Wilson, 1974) support this observation, indicating that political innovation develops only among those who have suffered a social trauma personally, such as unemployment, war, or bereavement

⁶This creates an additional trauma for those whom Dasberg (1987) calls “secondary victims.”

⁷Experts in international relations are now paying increasing attention to the reconciliation process. Unlike other studies that address reconciliation as a leadership-guided process at the broader group level, this study exposes the relevant individual aspects of personality, thereby complementing contemporary research and enabling assessment of the entire range of aspects, factors, and variables involved in the dynamics of reconciliation.

⁸The choice of forgiveness also preserves the community (and society) in which the bereaved live. This community is adversely affected by feelings of guilt toward the pathologically bereaved, their estrangement and isolation, and the bitterness and anger that the bereaved direct against the community. As such, forgiveness releases the community from negative situations and encourages its healing (Andrews, 1999).

⁹A phenomenological study of forgiveness found that the process begins at the initial anger stage with a powerful desire for revenge, in which victims even imagine harming the perceived aggressor as part of their aspiration to carry out justice and eliminate their sense of victimization (Rowe & Halling, 1998).

¹⁰In this context, see studies on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

¹¹Apparently, the leadership now realizes the power opinion formers wield in reinforcing and entrenching social conceptions. They are capable of shaping the cultural atmosphere and the “spirit of the times” required as a platform for the growth and acceptance of political-social initiatives such as forgiveness and reconciliation (Doron & Lebel, 2003).

¹²Various methods were employed to locate participants for this study. Our initial acquaintance with several of them was the result of their being relatively well-known figures who received press coverage. They, in turn, referred us to others (the snowball effect). Parents participated in one or more intensive interviews conducted according to our own guidelines. Interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed. Data were analyzed according to phenomenological methods (Giorgi, 1975; Polkinghorne, 1989), including an included initial reading of all theoretical material, from which we derived a “sense of the whole,” addressing the various aspects of the experience of bereaved parents, the subject of our study: the pain of bereavement, defining the guilty party or “enemy,” and the significance of guilt, anger, and forgiveness. In another reading, we identified additional, distinct categories that we termed “quests”: seeking meaning in the correlation between guilt, anger, and forgiveness in coping with bereavement and social-political-media behavior; determining how the various categories are related to one another; and translating the various categories into scientific language and relating them to parallel professional concepts and integration of insights obtained in a consistent description of the significance of anger and forgiveness in coping with individual bereavement individually and in social-political and media activity among bereaved parents.

¹³All victims' real names are withheld.

¹⁴Without anger, there is no forgiveness. Anger, rage, and resentment constitute the inception of a continuum that is likely to lead to forgiveness and reconciliation (for example, see Haber, 1991; Rowe & Halling, 1998).

¹⁵We sensed most parents' anger as early as our first interview. At times, it remained dominant throughout the interview as a means of crying out one's pain. Just as pain is a key element of the parents' experience of bereavement, anger controls and shapes the behavior and coping methods adopted by most parents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Udi Lebel

Udi Lebel is a lecturer in the Political Science Department of the University of Beer Sheva in the Negev and a lecturer at Sapir College in Sderot, Israel. He is also a fellow of the International Counter Terrorism Institute, at The Interdisciplinary Center, Hertzelia, Israel. Lebel's research interests are political psychology, politics of bereavement, memory and commemoration, and civil-military relations.

Natti Ronel

Natti Ronel is a lecturer in the Department of Criminology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Ronel's research interests are social empowerment, addictions, and prisoner rehabilitation.