A TESTIMONY ON THE MOMENT BEFORE THE (POSSIBLE) OCCURRENCE OF A MASSACRE - ON A POSSIBLE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE ABILITY TO ADJUST WHICH MEANS MENTAL-HEALTH AND THE MAINTAINING OF HUMAN MORAL VALUES

Alongside the political dispute which is dividing the country today on the question of the administered territories-how and whether it is possible to militarily suppress a semi-violent conflict-(specifically, the Palestinian uprising) there is discussion among psychologists about their professional duty: can they contribute to a solution of the problem in more ways than through their political positions? One of the questions which psychologists are dealing with is the problem of psychological damage that may or may not be caused to soldiers participating in the suppression of the Intifadah, how it is possible to determine such damage, or whether it exists only in the imagination of those who wish to "prove" such damage because of their political stand. In order to further the discussion of this problem this paper will present the complete testimony of an officer in the reserves as it was presented orally ill a work-shop in group-dynamics and later written down by that same officer. Upon analyzing this testimony according to the method of narrative analysis (Rosenthal, 1988), we find that the soldier acted correctly but the event he witnessed caused him to recall what had happened to him in the Lebanon war and had almost caused him a latent 'shell-shock.' This memory sharpened his sensitivity in the present event which held the possibility of losing control and taking part in a massacre of unarmed civilians. The testimony helps us address the question of what the normal reaction is in a situation like this; we support the position that the soldier's reaction was normal in an abnormal context. This leads us to suspect that other soldiers who, unlike in our case, do not develop a similar sensitivity to similar abnormal events in which they are involved, will develop a delayed reaction (PTSD-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) as was found among soldiers in the Vietnam War. Our paper is part of a wider theoretical discussion: perpetrators of acts which are normative in one particular context but are later determined to have been immoral, tend to develop a discrepancy between their morality and the need to maintain their mental health. This discrepancy can only be bridged by a paradoxical morality.