The Shame of Survival
Mike* is a survivor. But
first he was a victim. In Mike’s case, he
was the victim of hatred - not that he knew the perpetrator of the crime
against him - just that when Mike was driving home one day, the man who released
the entire contents of his fully loaded machine gun into his face, simply hated
who Mike was. You see, Michael is Jewish.
Some bullets pierced Michael’s brain. He lost his sight for three weeks. Today he still has shrapnel in his brain and
the agony of glass in his eyes. But he
doesn't complain about it. Instead
Michael spoke of his Abba b’Shemayim, his Father in Heaven. “He is enough for me. With the help of God we now have two
children. It took us 8 years and then
God healed. We have children thanks to
God. We lack for nothing. We have food on the table. We trust Him.
It will be alright in His time.
He is our King. He is good. We believe in miracles.
“My wife is a righteous woman. I wish that I could give her more. But she understands. She does not complain. We have food.
That is enough.”
Underneath the physical impact of Michael’s ordeal, lies a
deeper and more difficult scar to respond to.
He
lives with the memory of the attack against him. He lives with the fear, the inability to
leave the house, to drive, to sleep without waking up screaming. And he also lives with the shame. Michael
could have received benefits and help, but he did not register himself as a
terror survivor. Wouldn't one be happy, if not proud
that they had survived despite the odds against them?
It seems strange to us that someone who survives should carry
such a burden - why shame? Arnold Roth, a
speaker at the Walk With Me forum in
Jerusalem, shared the experiences of his own family after their daughter was
murdered by a ‘human bomb’. He spoke of
the silence in his home, the difficulty of coming to terms with the loss of
your child. He spoke of the impact it
had on his neighbours, how some of them crossed the street when they saw him
coming. His neighbours did not know how
to respond, so no words were better than the wrong words. Arnold began to feel isolated from his
community, as people avoided contact for fear of coming too close to the terror. They were afraid of contamination by
association, of having their own loved ones ripped away from them, as if terror
attacks were a disease that could be ‘caught’.
“A victim has to ask themselves the morning after the event,
“What do I do now?””, said Roth. “What
must you do if you are trying to get back to normal life? This is something all victims have to face
and experience. We can’t respond in kind
and blow yourself up somewhere. You
cannot try to ‘understand’ the terrorists who were so angry and full of hate. The people we loved who were murdered, are not
statistics to us. For the victims, the
world will never be the same. As
onlookers, this takes time to realise."
It is very rare to find a victim of terror enraged and
wanting revenge. For the most part they are
concerned with greater things, like how to care for and protect their family. Roth highlighted the point that when convicted terrorists
are released by Governments because of prisoner swaps and other political
agendas, they are not upset because they want vengeance like the media reports. They are afraid for their families now that the
one who murdered their daughter, their husband, their mother, is free to do so again.
“Terror is not a political struggle”, Roth continued. “ It
is driven by hatred, where one wants to destroy the other, rather than build
something good. The usual response by
families I know who have suffered loss through a terror attack, is to do
something to reduce the level of hatred, not increase it.”
And this is the very mandate of Springs of Hope, to reduce
the fear, the shame, the trauma, by bringing hope and healing to terror victims’
families and terror survivors. In March
this year they hosted a special banquet for the Feast of Esther, the annual
Purim celebration. And this year,
Michael came with his wife and family.
It was the first time they have gone out
together in 8 years! “We had such a wonderful time. We did not think about the problems. We ate.
We sang. We danced. I did not feel the pain in my eye. We celebrated life. We celebrated deliverance. We have the King of the Universe, our
Heavenly Father on our side. He will
take care of us! Thank you for inviting
us. Thank you - the first time in 8
years. Thank you to all who made that
night possible. Thank you!”