Is the level of violence higher in Israel than in other Western countries? The answer is in the affirmative, says Dr. Shimon Kornitzer, the chairman of the Israel Psychotherapy Association and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Medical School. Kornitzer, a clinical psychologist, encounters expressions of anger and violence daily. He point out the findings of studies published in the last few years. The World Health Organization, for example, in 1997 conducted a comprehensive study of youth and exposure to violence. There were 24 countries in Europe and North America that participated in the study, including Israel. Some 8,000 Israeli teenagers and younger children took part in the study. According to the findings, in comparison to other countries, Israeli youths are exposed to a high level of physical and verbal violence in their day-to-day lives.

In another study, Prof. Avi Degany, the director of the Geocartography Institute, reviewed the phenomenon of violence among sixth- to 12th-grade students in Tel Aviv. The study was conducted in 1995 at the behest of the Tel Aviv Municipality.

Some 60 percent of the students who took part reported that there was violence at their school and near their homes; 30 percent were hit at least once a year; 19 percent were victims of plotting against them and humiliation; 14 percent had experienced some settling of accounts on the way home or had been provoked by a group of students; some 8 percent were injured; and 6 percent were the victims of blackmail.

The school yard, is still the site of serious incidents. For the most part, parents and teachers do not know anything about the students' abuse of their friends. Only when one of the students complains, do the incidents begin to surface. In most cases, the victims do not report what happened to them. When those who do speak up are asked why they hesitated or waited, the answer given is that tattling is forbidden.

The result is a cumulative trauma that creates fertile ground for developing chronic psychiatric symptoms. In Israel, over the last two decades, there has been a large increase in the appearance of phenomena such as anxiety, depression, aggression, along with psychosomatic phenomena such as feelings of helplessness, suspicion, difficulty in maintaining self-control and damaging of property and the natural setting.

Psychotherapist Dr. Arnon Levy, however, disagrees with Kornitzer's claims. He says that anger, hatred and violence are not anything new, but rather entrenched in human nature. Anger and violence are the result of feelings of helplessness, frustration, a severe blow and weakness, and also a result of psychopathological situations.

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Nisan 5761 - April 2001