The child in the community: Nursing makes a difference

Abstract

IT IS THE FOURTH DAY (September 15, 2001) after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, and I wish to reflect on how terror affects children and their families and how young people can develop the intentions and skills of a terrorist. People in my community are calling the day of the attacks “9-1-1 Day” and are displaying flags to show solidarity with the nation in grief; they resolve to unite against further terrorist activity in the world. They have bought every flag available in the stores, to the extent that one of my neighbors was robbed of a flag in her yard—one that had been in the family for many years and may have been given to her family during World War II to honor a fallen son or daughter. Media coverage of these attacks has been intense, and I believe that nearly all of the nation’s children have seen planes crashing into the New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon in Washington, as well as people suffering injuries and running for their lives away from falling buildings. They have also seen emergency workers and volunteers helping the injured and their loved ones. These images have been broadcast many times over and are likely to stay in our collective memory forever. But how can such violence and terrorism become widespread? What does it take for perpetrators to develop such hatred that they skillfully cause pain and death among innocent people? How is it possible for someone, or a group of people, to steadily, patiently fly a jet into a building, knowing that it is loaded with incendiary fuels that will explode into a fireball upon impact, or carefully position a car bomb and detonate it to envelop a busy street in flames? How can political extremists organize people into cells, fill them with the zeal to take their own lives, and train them to successfully destroy and maim so cleverly that government efforts to safeguard citizens fail? What history of community life contributes to cultural pathways that promote hatred and revenge so powerful that annihilation, even genocide, becomes a theme of life over many years? Perhaps the example of Arab extremists emerging after the partitioning of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 can be instructive. The United Nations (UN) statement on the Question of Palestine (Department of Public Information, 1994) notes that, after Britain exited from its Mandate over Palestine in 1948, serious hostilities broke out between the Jewish population and Palestinian Arabs almost immediately. The occupation of lands designated for establishment of a Palestinian state by Jewish settlers on the West Bank and East Jerusalem provoked a staggering crisis when three-quarters of a million Palestinians became refugees and moved to camps and surrounding countries. A 1948 Partition Plan for Jewish and Arab territories in Palestine with cooperative governance of Jerusalem was rejected by Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states on the grounds that it did not provide for the right of Palestinian Arabs to control their own destiny, a central provision of the UN Charter for all nations. The strong impetus for a Jewish state after the events of the Holocaust and the genocide of Jews and other groups added to the complexity of the political agendas of the region. Further hostilities and wars occurred over subsequent years, with burgeoning animosity among extremists on both sides of the Palestinian lands, exacerbating the will to exact revenge. Eventually, the West saw multiple assaults over the last half of the 20th century Dr. Monsen is an independently operating nursing education consultant. Address reprint requests and correspondence to Rita Black Monsen, DSN, MPH, RN, 119 Ledgerwood Circle, Hot Springs, AR 71913. Copyright 2002, Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. 0882-5963/02/1701-0009$35.00/0 doi:10.1053/jpdn.2002.30462