Issues in the Treatment of Children Who Have Lost a Family Member to Murder in the Arab Community in Israel

Blood Revenge: Cultural and Traditional Influence

Children who have experienced a loss as a result of murder of a close relative may experience severe traumatic symptoms, often expressed in emotional and developmental difficulties. Children exposed to cases of murder related to blood feuds are also exposed and subject to the phenomenon of blood revenge (Al Krenawi, Slonim-Nevo, Maymon, & Al Krenawi, 2000). For the Bedouin and Arab communities in Israel, this is a tradition that ensures the honor of the tribe and the family. Blood revenge is not a matter in which the individual acts for personal reasons; rather it is considered a collective responsibility, a commitment or unspoken contract between the individual and the extended family, which demands the individual’s absolute loyalty and obligation toward the family (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1999).

The discourse on revenge is accompanied by discourse on the concept of honor.

The Concept of Honor

Honor, according to the studies of Pely (2011), is an essential component of the Arab culture, whereby the need to maintain honor precedes other needs such as security, financial aspects, legality, loss of income, and pain. When someone in the extended family kills a family member of another clan, the need to reclaim the honor is a part of the traditional culture of the victim’s family, and they seek revenge in order to restore the clan’s honor, without consideration of what this entails (Pely, 2011). This action places all clan members in danger, since all of the men are expected to prevent harm, on the one hand, while restoring the offended honor, on the other hand. Blood revenge actually developed out of the need to provide protection for the groups of Bedouin nomads, who lived in the desert (in tents or huts) without solid walls, and were vulnerable to attacks from the outside. From an early age, the young Muslim learns that murder is an unforgivable act, and so each member of the perpetrator’s clan could potentially become a death target. In effect, the murderer turns his own nuclear and extended family members into death targets (Al Krenawi et al., 2000).

This phenomenon exposes the children to the existence of a constant threat and an unending cycle of pain and violence. At times, the children witness the act of murder itself and are exposed to weapons and chaotic, frightening scenes (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 1999). The collectivistic society provides support for the children, but it does not shield them from the horrific effects of violence. They are fearful, knowing that at the right age they may become a target themselves or may be called upon to avenge a death, and that their beloved fathers and elder brothers have become targets as well (Al-Krenawi, Slonim-Nevo, Maymon, & Al-Krenawi, 2000).

For example, a father whose son was murdered describes a bloody cycle of which he himself was a part: when he was a baby, his father was murdered. His grandmother rolled him in his father’s blood, as a reminder that he must recover the family’s honor when he reaches adulthood by avenging his father’s murder. In adulthood, he sought to distance himself from the bloody cycle and moved away from the village to a large town. There, he unwillingly returned to the cycle of violence when his son was murdered in a dispute with neighbors. Another example illustrates the exposure of children to a constant threat: in a small village near a large town, the father of the family was murdered during the night inside his home. To this day, the children live in constant fear, and the bullet holes in the walls remind them daily that this violence is liable to recur.

Alongside this perception of honor, there is also a misleading aspect inherent in the use of the word honor. Sometimes, the press or the police are hasty to declare a murder that took place in Arab society as an honor killing, especially if the victim was a woman. Ostensibly, the concept of family honor grants men the permission or the justification to murder a woman whose behavior dishonored the family or was perceived as dishonorable by the men.

An article by Hilo Glazer (2019) describes a therapeutic meeting of a group of prisoners who had all murdered their sisters, which took place at Rimonim prison in Israel. The prisoners meet for a weekly group session with the unit’s director, Capt. Maya Ofgang, who is a female social worker. In the previous meeting, the prisoners watched Women of Freedom, a documentary from 2016 by Abeer Zeibak Haddad that depicts the stories of women who were murdered in the name of family honor. Now Ofgang asks them to share their experiences after viewing the film. The first prisoner to speak is one of the longest serving prisoners in the unit. He has been incarcerated for 17 years for murdering his sister and has recently joined the therapeutic program. At the beginning of the film, I just wanted to get up and leave, he says. Since then, I can hear my sister pleading: Don’t kill me. The next prisoner to speak also murdered his sister, and he rejects the concept of honor killing. He says,

It wasn’t like this for me. I was frustrated with life, and I thought I could only achieve things through violence. I felt insecure compared to my sister. She was lively, knowledgeable and had friends, and I was withdrawn, shy.

One of the prisoners agrees to describe his decision to murder his sister, allegedly due to dishonorable behavior (Glazer, 2019). By murdering his sister, he left her daughter alone, orphaned.

I never had good communication with my sister. In our family, girls tend to stay at home, and we have the role of telling them do this or don’t do that. It’s a relationship of violence and control. Still, I have one good memory of her: I was sick for 3 days with high temperature and she took care of me. Every half hour she would bring me tea, soup, and she was there for me 120%.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the therapeutic dilemmas that emerge or arise from the changes which the Israeli Arab society is currently undergoing.

Referral for Treatment

The Arab society in Israel is undergoing changes in their perception of mental illness and its treatment (Abu Asba, Ryan-Gra, & Abu Nasra, 2014). The Israeli Arab community is exposed to the Western world and the legitimacy of mental-health treatment; hence the rise in the number of people seeking psychological treatment and counseling (Masalha, 2004). Uneducated and religious individuals seek out traditional treatments, while intellectuals seek out professional experts. With that being said, some among the Arab population in Israel are combining both traditional and modern treatment methods (Abu Asba et al., 2014). Some of the families of murder victims are traditional families, struggling with financial and social difficulties. Providing an explanation of the importance and benefits of seeking professional treatment, and the recognition that seeking treatment following a difficult event such as murder does not entail social labeling or shame, may change the patterns of treatment seeking. The referral of children to treatment is complex: for example, in the Arab community, it is unacceptable for the widow to leave the village unaccompanied by family members. The geographical location of the populations, which mostly reside in rural and remote areas, make it difficult for the children to arrive for treatment in a continuous and orderly fashion. Therefore, the therapists in the program, in some cases, provide treatment in the family home. Rubin & Zaher Nassar (1995) describe the treatment of a grieving Muslim family where the treatment outside the home took place at irregular intervals, thus impairing the ability to assist them. The treatment of the family in the comfort of their home, while surrounded by familiar intimacy, in the place in which the murdered loved one had lived, dramatically improved the treatment, which then became effective and brought relief and solace to the family.

In the family described earlier, in which the father was murdered right in front of his children, their mother, the widow, refused to leave the village so that her children could receive emotional treatment. For many months, the director of the assistance center searched for an Arabic-speaking therapist who would agree to treat them at the family’s home in the village, and only recently a suitable therapist was found. The complexity lies in recruiting therapeutic experts who agree to visit the family’s home; otherwise, these children will not receive the emotional treatment they need.

The director of the assistance center is the first to enter the grieving family’s home. She tells the family about the center and about the legal and therapeutic aid they are entitled to receive. She meets the family, assesses their needs, and arranges the meeting with the lawyer who will accompany the family in the legal aspect, and with the therapists who will treat the family members.

Collaboration between the welfare, education, and educational guidance systems at the schools is of utmost importance, in order to provide emotional aid and support for children who experienced a murder in the family, rather than abandon them in their distress and loneliness.

Exposure of the Children to the Bloody Cycle of Violence

Some of the children described coping with a family decree that expects them to avenge the blood of the deceased. For example, a 5-year-old boy whose father was murdered while he was still in his mother’s womb plays war games with swords, while expressing his wish to grow up and avenge his father’s murder. Adolescents reported that while being disinterested in taking revenge, they experienced social pressure to do so, due to the risk of being considered cowardly: You’re not a man, because you did not take revenge. Other children of a murdered father, who are undergoing treatment, continue to desire revenge. From a report to the directors of the assistance center, it appears that at times, while children who are compulsively preoccupied with revenge are in emotional treatment, their need to act on this desire subsides, influencing them to search for alternative coping mechanisms. The timing of the children’s treatment, as close as possible to the occurrence of the traumatic event, is of great importance in order to prevent the intention of avenging (the death) at an early stage. The study of Al-Krenawi et al. (2000) examined elementary school children in Ramla who were exposed to a prolonged conflict between two clans. It was found that the children reported high levels of anxiety, psycho-somatic problems, aggressiveness, and other emotional problems. In the examination of the differences between boys and girls, the researchers found that boys reported a willingness to continue the cycle of blood vengeance. It seems that the teenaged boys internalized the message that it is their future responsibility as men. At times, the victim’s family does not want to continue the blood conflict, but in order to prevent being perceived as weak and vulnerable, they choose to leave their home and relocate to a different place of residence. Families who are in a bloody conflict usually live in the vicinity of the killer’s family, or the killer is even a family member; therefore, the family and the children are in a prolonged and high state of alert. Awareness must be raised to address the emotional needs of these children, who have been exposed to bloody conflicts and murder. Moreover, additional tools for mediation and conflict resolution must be provided, alongside mechanisms for coping with the stress, the trauma and the loss (Al Krenawi et al., 2000). It is imperative to maintain a sensitive intercultural context and cooperation with the traditional mediators, in order to bring the conflict to an end. The Sulha (forgiveness) ritual is a respectable way for the restoration of honor. An effective resolution for the conflict is an emotional process that transforms revenge into forgiveness (Pely, 2011), which will hopefully take place in the therapeutic process. Families with a social support system and high status will have greater sway in the Sulha process than weak, socially isolated families.

Last year (2018), a Sulha ritual took place in a village in the north of Israel, after a 4-year blood feud within a single clan. The feud led to the murder of six family members, with the last two being a father and son. The remaining family members refused to accept condolences which, according to their customs, implied that they were postponing their mourning period until after taking revenge. Dozens of the family’s children have been exposed to this conflict, and even felt they might get physically hurt by the adults’ violence. Staff members from the educational system told the center’s director that these children were often absent from school for long periods, because they felt it was too dangerous to leave their homes. The therapeutic center offered emotional and legal support, but struggled to maintain treatment continuity because of the state of emergency in which these families lived. One of the symbols of this feud was a baby who was born after her father had been murdered, leaving her an orphan from the day she was born. Only after the intervention of the Sulha Committee, a truce was achieved: the ceremony, which was reported in the local press, included a request for forgiveness, a mutual signing of a written agreement and a pledge to end the prolonged blood feud, to maintain peace and to prevent any further bloodshed within the family.

Just as forgiveness has a place in the therapeutic process, there have been voices in the past few years calling to look at the thoughts of revenge that awaken in response to an offense (Urlić, Berger, & Berman, 2013). The common attitudes regarding wishes of revenge are condemnation or concealment, whose central source lies in the lack of differentiation between wishes of revenge and acts of revenge. According to these authors, wishes of revenge play an important emotional role in avoiding unbearable feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. When feelings of revenge are given a legitimate place in the treatment room, it will become possible to talk about them, thereby alleviating the suffering attached to the offense and attempting to go back and repair the relations (Urlić et al., 2013). Feelings of revenge that transform into direct and explicit discourse during treatment aid in achieving a mutual understanding and allow for hope and a shared reality with the other side; they also assist in avoiding a senseless and devastating act of revenge. We propose that wishes of revenge be allowed within the therapeutic discourse with children who experienced the homicide of a loved one, alongside the possibility of forgiveness.

There are cases in which the mediation attempts fail, or in which the child is in treatment, but the message from the family conflicts with the one being conveyed by the therapist or educator. We would like to present two case studies that illustrate both scenarios: the first describes how the therapeutic experience with the child and his family lessens their discourse on blood revenge, whereas, in contrast, the second scenario describes the failure of the treatment in superseding the message received from the family, which is ultimately to avenge the murderer’s family.

First case: H, now 10 years old, began emotional-psychological treatment at the age of 6½, following the murder of his father. At a late hour of the night, while all the family members were asleep in their home in an Arab village in the northern Israel, three of H’s family members were murdered, his father and two of his brothers. H, who happened to be staying with relatives, was saved from the brutal murder, but witnessed the discovery of the bodies and the horrific spectacle in the family home. H had survived the massacre along with his mother and two elder brothers. Since the night of the murder, the family’s life proceeds in the shadow of the event. During H’s treatment, the therapist noted the existence of posttraumatic symptoms, such as intrusion of painful memories from the night of the event (thoughts, images, and sights), dreams and nightmares of the event, feelings of distress as a result of exposure to a trigger that reminded him of the event (i.e., an unlocked door), avoidance of entering the room where the event occurred, insomnia, anger, and finding it difficult to concentrate.

At the beginning of treatment, H did not cooperate with the therapist and objected to the treatment altogether. He exhibited anxiety and refrained from forming a connection with the therapist. His mother’s presence was necessary in the treatment room, and it helped create a safe environment in which H started making some progress. He began connecting with objects such as toys, the sand box, and figures of humans and animals inside the sand box, where he played in solitude, while refusing to speak with the therapist. During the sessions and through symbolic games, H began forming a bond with his therapist, who served as a receptacle for the pain he was carrying inside. Initially, he played in a lonely, desolate world, in which there was a lone figure; gradually during treatment, when H felt safer, more characters were added, dug up in the sand and buried by him. Later, H built a house in the sand box. The front door carried meaning for him. He was busy straightening and reinforcing the door, while inside the house lay three figures, whom he covered with paper. During the meetings, H grew closer to the therapist, loosened up and displayed more extroverted behavior. A change occurred in his silent game, as he began to add a gun and savage human and animalistic characters to the sand box. Difficult emotions emerged during the game, such as shame, anger, and a desire to avenge, as well as an existential fear that he himself may get hurt. Later H began asking for help, relying on the therapist, and being assisted by her. In his game, H asked the police for help and protection. In one of the meetings, H passed from the symbolic game to the reality of his life, blamed himself for the death of his family members, and exhibited a desire to avenge their death. His mother, who was present in the treatment room, was instructed to intervene and explain to H that he is not guilty that other people had invaded their home and hurt their family. This outburst enabled H to mourn the death of his beloved family members, reminisce shared experiences, and even celebrate birthdays and play with his neighborhood friends. H’s therapy lasted 3 years, following which H progressed in his studies, with a notable improvement in his social situation. According to the therapist, the treatment aided H, his mother, and two brothers in obeying the judicial system, believing that justice will be served through the law. They did not allow the anger and the desire for revenge to destroy their lives. The treatment made room for growth and progress, while also coping with the pain of the loss.

Second case: On the backdrop of a long-standing, violent conflict between two families living side by side in a small village, N’s husband was murdered 4 years ago. N and her two small sons, aged 3 and 5 years, had witnessed the murder. N remarried her husband’s brother. N and her children sought psychological treatment, but while in therapy, N refused to voice her feelings of sadness and grief. According to N, her thoughts and actions were directed in an entirely different direction: revenge. Although she stopped her own treatment, she agreed for her sons to continue. Following the intervention of the welfare department in the village, and a fear that another violent episode could erupt between the families, a few meetings took place attended by N and the director of the SNEH program. She was late for the first meeting, because the previous night her family members had been arrested following a fire that broke out in the murderer’s family home. The Sulha Committee, which attempted to impose a truce between the families, requested that the murderers’ family move elsewhere, but they refused. After this refusal, N’s father realized that his grandchildren could become a target for revenge when they came of age, or that they themselves may avenge the murder of their father. He also understood that remaining in the village without showing intentions of revenge could be perceived as weak and cowardly. Therefore, he proposed that N and her family leave their home and move to a different place of residence. It quickly became apparent that N’s father was the only one to hold this moderate approach. N and her brothers refused to relocate to another village. A few months after the murder, her 5-year-old son was threatened by a member of the murderer’s family. This small child began developing rage and declared his intent to take revenge. He started speaking of his desire to grow up and avenge his father’s blood. According to the therapist, the treatment was unsuccessful in preventing the cumulative psychological damage of the two brothers, and both live to this day in an atmosphere of threats, fear, rage, and violence.

Complex situations such as these illustrate the question of the effectiveness and the goal of the psychological treatment of children who have experienced a traumatic loss and remain in a life-threatening situation. Awareness of complex situations such as these will encourage an intervention, for the extended family, too, in order to convey a clear, unified message to the children and improve the family’s functioning in the wake of the murder.

The issue of religion and grief: The Muslim religion and culture address the return to daily life following only 3 days of mourning but do not define to what extent the mourner should long for their loved one and experience the mourning process on a private, psychological level (Rubin & Yasien-Esmael, 2006). Although the psychological and legal aid offered by the directors of the assistance centers focuses on the topics in which Islam emphasizes the need to return to functioning and everyday routine, it does not eliminate or interfere in such internal aspects of the grief as the longing and the memories of the deceased. There are families who grow closer to, and find comfort in, Islam and abandon the psychological treatment following the murder. This traditional, religious perception adopts time-honored values, and therefore looks for religious, traditional treatment. In these cases, the relationship with the center is maintained by the victims, especially with regard to legal aid.

One example is a mourning mother whose son was murdered. She welcomes the director of the assistance center when she arrives for a visit, shares her feelings, but refuses emotional therapy. In her view, her religion provides all the support she needs. The legal aid, on the other hand, is meaningful for her, since the lawyer who accompanies her provides information that is important for her in dealing with the legal language and the judicial court proceedings.

In conclusion, the grieving youth and children of the Arab community are compelled to deal not only with the trauma of the murder and the loss of a loved one but also with social and religious decrees that only add complexity to the bereavement process. Availability and flexibility on the part of the therapeutic entities will better allow for the provision of treatment for those children whose world was turned upside down as result of the murder in their family, and which will undoubtedly influence the course of their lives in one way or another. It is possible that the therapeutic entities in the community should cooperate with civic leaders and highly respected religious figures in the Arab community, in order to reinstate the Sulha tradition and put an end to the bloody conflicts to which the children are exposed. We must continue to develop and draft a policy for the comprehensive treatment of children in the Arab society, providing knowledge to schools and welfare workers who could, in turn, be better equipped to assist children in dealing with the experience of loss.