On 05/06/2006, Nini Manoach kindly wrote:

Dear Evelin.

I'm glad to tell you that my book Words That Kill (whose sub title is : When a Daily Dialogue Turns into Deadly Weapon) has come out this month and is arousing a great deal of interest in the mass media – radio, television, internet sites, daily press, women's magazines etc. The book is selling well and the publishing house has been investing a lot in its public relations, believing it's worth the effort. Also the many readers' reactions are highly favorable.

I am receiving very good reactions from women telling me: "Thanks for having written the book", "…such a book should have been published six years ago, twenty years ago, and even… forty four years ago…" A young woman called me and said that after having read about the book in the paper, even before reading the book itself, she understood that she was "there" and asked her father to put off the wedding's date which had been set for July and which a place had already been reserved for… she has decided to look into the matter seriously.

You, Evelin have received an honorable place in my list of cknowledgements.
If you wish, I'm willing to send you the book, or would you rather wait for your visit in Israel, or wait for the translation…?

I would like to remind you that although the book deals with the relationship of couples, I have emphasized it repeatedly all along the book that mental and verbal violence/abuse might be present in all kinds of relationships: women – women, men – men, parents – children, adolescents – parents, employers – employees etc.

Enclosed to the letter, I am sending you the translation of the passage in my book that deals with your study - Humiliation Caused by Peoples – and the brief in English for my book's possible translation.

I have integrated the passage that deals with your study in the chapter in which I am explaining the existence of social and cultural filters which disguise violent messages, thus stressing the important role violence plays within the family.

I find it important to mention that my book doesn't study the influence of Israel's political situation on the family, however, I believe it's impossible to be an Israeli writer dealing with violence within the family without touching on wider circles. The fact that Israel has been occupying the Palestinians for nearly 40 years is significant to the lives of the two peoples, including their personal lives.

I would like to thank you for your proposal to write about the book in "your" internet site – Humiliation, which I am very much familiar with, and which is included in my book's bibliography. The site is mentioned twice in my book: the attempt to giving a measurable weight to the notion of humiliation and dividing it into separable behaviors according to their severity (Linda Hartling).Through it I also reached Thomas Sheff's and Susan Hartling's work dealing with the role of violence in inter-personal disputes.

I believe that the book is important for many reasons because of its many innovations such as the verbal patterns that reveal concealed violence (which I referred to as "silencers"), in particular. In addition, the book deals with the significant role language and words play in peoples' lives and how they can be used to define the external and internal reality in which we live, the way language and words are interpreted and the way these construct our insights and conduct. Consequently, changes in language lead to changes in life.

I am also sending you the passage where I deal with the Israeli reality since I think it's important that people read it and acknowledge the Other Voice of many Israelis (perhaps most of them), mainly of whom are educated, but there are also others. I would be happy to know what you think about them. The passage belongs to the chapter dealing with the question why society in general and the Israeli society in particular relate to mental violence/abuse forgivingly. I referred to several filters such as those prevalent in education at school, the media and commercials, and I dealt very seriously with those that are relevant to the issue of the occupation.

You may have noticed that I did not refer to the question: "What does the occupation do to the Palestinians?". I did it deliberately. 1. There's consensus as to the effect of occupation on the occupied people. Unfortunately, not everybody is concerned about it in the same, but this exactly is the issue here. 2. This is not the subject of the book, and it will lead me into the Israeli political debate that is constantly going on here –
Whether the occupation is essential for Israel or not – and this is not my aim here. 3. And this is the most important thing – I wanted to stress it that it is our interest, Israel's interest, to stop being the occupant, because it is us that are affected so badly, it is bad for our Israeli society.

I will be glad to know if you are familiar with a good publishing house in the U.S.A that might be interested in the subject and that has good public relations for promoting the book later on. As you know, a foreign writer is a serious drawback… If you know somebody, I could send him/her a brief in English.

Love, Nini

POWER AS A CORRUPTIVE ELEMENT

In her new book, ‘Words That Kill,’ Nini Manoach analyzes certain forces of aggression and humiliation that can arise in families. The following discussion previews one part of her analyis; it focusses on the link between behaviors established when one society oppresses another and social abuse patterns that later appear within the oppressing society.

In every one of us, it seems, a dark side is hidden. As far back as the times of the Biblical storytellers, it was known that “sin croucheth at the door; and unto thee is its desire, but thou mayest rule over it (Genesis 4:7).” Yet apart from this potential for aggression that characterizes humanity in general, there appear to be circumstances in which control over such dark urges is made more difficult for certain groups in particular—even for people who have no special inclination towards violence. This typically occurs when man accumulates sufficient power to deprive his fellow man of freedom. Such situations lay the foundation for violence and abuse within a society.

In the summer of 1971, a team of researchers from Stanford University investigated the characteristics of human nature under conditions of heightened vulnerability to abuse. One Sunday morning, a Palo Alto police car rounded up student volunteers from their homes. As part of a study undertaken by Stanford’s psychology department, the students were brought handcuffed to a cellar that had been set up as a mock jail. The purpose of the study was to examine two questions:

• What happens when good people are placed in an evil environment?
• In such a situation, which will prevail, evil or humanity?

The experiment was based on a simulation in which the students were arbitrarily assigned to one of two groups, “prisoners” or “jailers.” The plan called for both groups to remain in the jail for three weeks, a duration the researchers considered to be long enough to bring demonstrable changes in the behavior of the participants.

As it turned out, the experiment brought out a surprisingly sadistic side in the students of the jailer group. Members of the prisoner group, on the other hand, began to evince extreme depression, stress, and rage. At night, when the students thought the cameras and microphones of the researchers weren’t operating, outbursts of crying were heard from the cells of the prisoner group. In a dramatic outcome, the experiment was terminated after only six days. This study, authored by Professor G. Zimbardo of Stanford, returned to the news after four decades following the intense controversy in America over the treatment of Iraqi detainees following the deposition of Saddam Hussein .

The treatment of Palestinians by soldiers in Israel’s Occupied Territories has also generated controversy. While a full discussion of the Israeli occupation itself would be beyond the scope of this research, we consider it germaine to examine the influence that the events experienced during a tour of duty in the Occupied Territories has upon the individual Israeli soldier who serves there. Imposition and humiliation are fundamental to every scenario of conquest, and (whether we like it or not) this harsh reality leaves its mark on soldiers returning home from occupation duty.

It is a law of nature that hatred and violence thrive in circumstances of imposition and humiliation. Conquest requires violence, and violence in turn requires the elimination of humanitarian sensitivities rooted in the soul. Conquest brings with it that unhappy emotional crossroad where the fear of the conqueror and that of the conquered meet and intertwine. The conqueror must naturally fear the numbers of the conquered, their endurance, their determination, their potential for revolt, their burning hatred, their pain and infinite despair. The conquered, for their part, are full of fear of the conquering soldiers, their weapons, and their overall military superiority. Fear and danger form the only common ground between the two camps.

It is precisely at the intersection between the fears of the respective sides that hatred germinates. As a soldier serves a tour of duty in such an environment, he or she is necessarily changed forever. The Stanford experiments described above, together with our every day life experience, prove that there is something intoxicating, addicting, and blinding in the exercise of power. Exposed to these phenomena at an impressionable age, and in adversarial circumstances, the soldier becomes callous.

Violence does not materialize from a vacuum. It propagates (in its many forms) throughout all the circles of society—national, military, cultural, social, personal, spiritual—forming an unbroken ring around us. Ideally, a soldier serving the Occupied Territories might perhaps confront violent situations while on duty, but then later leave all the resulting negativity behind when it is time for him to rejoin civilian society. In reality, however, such emotional compartmentalization is never so tidy. The violence witnessed, suffered, or perpetrated by the soldier during his tour stays with him, and its effects continue to ramify long after enlistment is over.

In Israel these effects are easily observable. They can be seen on the road, in schools, in the streets, in clubs, and in soccer stadiums. Their influence can be sensed in the way that many citizens regard new immigrants, in the way that the government treats the weak, and in personal relations within families. Within this context, the emotional aspect of violence is to be emphasized over the physical. The common thread through all these areas of life is the violent mindset itself, the all-too-prevalent mental disposition that allows one human being to humiliate another.

We thus extend the concept of “violence” to include all manner of abuse suffered within a family household. The topic of domestic abuse in general, of course, has received able treatment at the hands of researchers worldwide. Yet certain specific aspects of it have not—in this author’s view—gotten proper attention to date. It is the purpose of Words That Kill, my new book, to explore one of these.

Words That Kill focuses on subtle forms of verbal abuse, devoid of profanity or overt aggression, that cumulatively result in severe humiliation. They are forms of abuse most often suffered by female members of the household. The words chosen in the context of such abuse can appear innocent, say, if one were to read them on a transcript; but their actual delivery and undertones can take a devastating emotional toll on the victim over time.

Of course, compulsory military service in the context of territorial annexation is not a prerequisite for a society to develop cases of this kind of abuse; indeed, examples of it abound all over the world. But it is the contention of this author that, in each case of violence, a common element is discernable as a root cause: the fostering of a covert culture of humiliation.