Social work with young women in security emergencies: An autoethnography of epistemic resistance

In this article, I reflect on my practice as a social worker with young Jewish and Arab Bedouin women from marginalized groups in Israel during security emergencies. I use the autoethnography of a reflective story from a program for girls and young women in which I was working at the start of Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008–January 18, 2009) in Israel. I discuss epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance as they concern girls who are coping with conditions of distress, and relate to the complexities involved in social work with them.

Palestinians and Israelis tend to depict themselves as victims of the conflict.Each side describes its violence as retaliatory, and the other side's as motivated by aggressive intent rather than external attacks (Haushofer et al., 2010; for a more detailed overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, see Chaitin et al., 2022).Since I am telling the story from the point of view of a researcher, social worker, and author from the Israeli side, it is important to point out that this is a partial perspective.
Since 2001, there has been an ongoing violent conflict between Gaza and Israel.The continuing political conflict is manifested in the launching of innumerable Grad and Qassam rockets and incendiary balloons from Gaza into Israel, and strikes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the Gaza Strip (Alhuzail, 2021, p. 488).Chaitin et al. (2022) noted that in the 2009 "UN Report on the First Gaza War/Operation Cast Lead," it was estimated that 1,400 Palestinians were killed.Thousands more were wounded-most, innocent civilians-thousands of Palestinian homes and buildings were destroyed, and the Gaza infrastructure was severely damaged.On the Israeli side, four Israeli citizens and nine soldiers were killed.The report noted that in the Gaza Envelope, an area in southern Israel that borders the Gaza Strip, 72-94% of the civilian population suffers from posttraumatic symptoms due to the large number of rockets fired over the years.Qassam rockets were launched for the first time from Gaza in 2001 by The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and landed in Israeli territory (Dolnik & Bhattacharjee, 2002).While the Qassam is a rocket, a violent weapon used in war, it is also used to elicit emotional, social, and political effects.
Several years ago, I worked in the Girls for Girls mentoring program at a college in the Gaza Envelope area (Malka et al., 2021).The training program was for young Jewish and Arab 1 women (aged 17 to 25) from marginalized groups in Israel who were coping with conditions of distress (Krumer-Nevo et al., 2015).During the program, the young women came once a week to study at the college.In the program's framework, they learned about issues of concern in young women's lives, examined their life stories and lived experiences of coping with situations of distress, and received information regarding assistance from social workers and various agencies.The program aimed to provide a space where they could learn to use their knowledge in their future roles as mentors working with girls and young women in similar situations.Since the late 1960s, the Israeli Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs has shown a growing interest in the needs of girls and young women.According to an overview of the social services in the ministry (Nachshon Glick & Orly, 2019), the characteristics of the risk situations of Arab and Jewish adolescents and young people (aged 13-25) are numerous and varied.They include poverty and social exclusion, being in abusive relationships or suffering from difficulties in relationships with their families, and growing up in families that face multiple challenges.They are victims of neglect and sexual, physical, mental, or financial violence in the family, the peer group, and the community.They experience difficulties in communicating with their peers and drop out of educational and employment frameworks, or are at risk of dropping out of them.They ran away from home or suffer from housing instability.They may be involved in abusive or sexually exploitative relationships or prostitution.They suffer from eating disorders and depression, abuse drugs and alcohol, engage in self-harm, and may attempt suicide.They experience struggles and difficulties associated with sexual and gender identity.In this overview, life in dangerous security situations or ongoing conflict was not included as a risk situation.
A systematic review (Dimitry, 2012) of children's and adolescents' mental health in areas of armed conflict in the Middle East showed that girls have higher subjective exposure than boys-that is, higher prevalence of PTSD, depression, separation anxiety, and psychological symptoms-while boys have more behavioral problems, aggression, and hyperactivity than girls.An emotional response to distress from a girl and an aggressive reaction from a boy correspond with the cultural roles ascribed to each gender and the expectation that women take on caring responsibilities and men provide for and protect their families (Dimitry, 2012).
In this article, I present an autoethnography of a reflective story of my practice as a social worker with young Jewish and Arab Bedouin women from the program, at the start of Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008-January 18, 2009).First, I address the three theoretical frameworks that stand at the foundation of the article.Next, I address the autoethnography method and provide the background story and the story itself: "the external Qassam and the internal Qassam."Last, I analyze the story using three theoretical frameworks.

Theoretical framework
The article is based on three theoretical frameworks: intersectionality theory, decolonization of trauma, and epistemic injustice.Intersectionality theory (Collins & Bilge, 2016) is an analytic tool for understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world, people, and human experience.Many factors shape the events and conditions of social and political life and the self in diverse and mutually influencing ways.Regarding social inequality, people's lives and the organization of power in a given society are best understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division-such as race, gender, or classbut by many axes that work together and influence each other.Intersectionality theory is both a critical inquiry and a praxis.Intersectional analysis helps us solve real-world problems, and problem solving helps us refine our intersectional concepts and methods (Ciurria, 2019).One of the central aims of contemporary feminism is to incorporate a diversity of perspectives, interests, and normative objectives into feminist thought.Thus, an intersectional feminist approach aims to foreground intersections of injustice, oppression, and adversity; actively combat axes of injustice, oppression, and adversity; and use ameliorative, relational, and nonideal theoretical methods (Ciurria, 2019).
Second, I use the decolonization of trauma.Decolonization of trauma is an ongoing process of moving away from the Eurocentric tendencies of theories based on Freudian psychoanalysis and its emphasis on melancholia and stasis.And at the same time, there is a movement towards expanding the theoretical field and a greater openness to culturally specific modes of addressing and negotiating trauma.Consequently, trauma is recognized as a complex phenomenon.It is not only understood as acute, individual, and event-based, but also as collective and chronic; trauma can weaken individuals and communities or lead to a stronger sense of identity and renewed social cohesion (Visser, 2015).
Contemporary theories of violence and trauma argue that accounts of trauma that do not engage in sociopolitical analysis are limited in their explanatory potential (Thompson, 2021).In addition, they offer the theoretical concept of "continuums of violence," that is, a constitutive relationship between different types of violence in public and private spheres, not as separate categories of violence but as reflective of gendered social processes that form a "chain of violence" (Yadav & Horn, 2021, p. 105).Thompson (2021) has proposed a critical feminist psychological analysis of trauma, and argues that we must address the complexities of trauma not as personal but as institutional.She claims that while traditional theories view trauma as deviance or aberration, an institutional analysis articulates trauma as a product of institutional power and views institutions as producing trauma (Thompson, 2021, p. 113).Thus, institutions influence knowledge, histories, ideologies, practices, structures, and power methods, not only environments and settings.
The third theoretical framework addresses epistemic injustice.Epistemic injustice refers to the wrong done to someone in their capacity as a knower (Fricker, 2007), and to forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices (Kidd et al., 2017).Miranda Fricker (2007) refers to the unjust ways in which credibility is distributed as the "credibility economy".Epistemic injustice-primarily distributive injustice-is a form of discrimination in which someone receives less than their fair share of an epistemic good, such as education or access to expert advice or information (Fricker, 2017).Fricker (2007) identifies two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a giver of knowledge; and hermeneutical injustice, in which someone is wronged in their capacity as a subject of social understanding.In the face of epistemic injustice, we find epistemic justice.Epistemic justice involves hearing the testimony of others, or expanding our hermeneutical resources and dismantling the structures through which we objectify epistemic agents to suit the purposes of capitalist, ableist, White supremacist patriarchy (Haslanger, 2017, p. 288).The rationale for employing these three frameworks was the need for a complex theoretical framework that could provide a broader understanding of issues concerning young Jewish and Arab women from marginalized groups in Israel, who were coping with distress in security situations and mental health in areas of armed conflict.

Method
The story I use in this article, "The External Qassam and the Internal Qassam," is a reflective story I wrote, a work of autoethnography, although I was not aware of this fact when I wrote it (Witkin, 2014).Autoethnography is a research approach in which researchers draw from their own experiences in telling stories of life events, producing personal narratives to reach a deeper understanding of how the personal relates to the cultural context (Crossley, 2009;Defrancisco et al., 2007;Diversi & Moreira, 2017;Singleton, 2021).Autoethnography is a tool used by individuals to identify and resist internalized oppression.Through self-reflexivity, people can examine their deep-seated fears aloud with themselves and others (Defrancisco et al., 2007).Diversi and Moreira (2017) see hope in autoethnography.For them, autoethnography is a way to create texts and performances of possibilities for a world that can find itself united in the common cause of survival, joy, and the easing of pain (Diversi & Moreira, 2017).Bringing personal troubles to living history disrupts essentializing representations and interpretations of lived experience, and decolonizes trauma (Visser, 2015).The theoretical framework that accompanies autoethnographic analysis resists epistemic injustice by focusing on the production of knowledge through the discussion of voice, silence, and listening; and the interaction between speaker and hearer in society (Fricker, 2007).

Autoethnography: Background
The Girls for Girls program's routine reflected the procedures necessitated by the security situation and the uncertainty of everyday life alongside the "code red" alerts that warn that an incoming missile (Qassam rocket) from the Gaza Strip will land within 15 seconds.When this happens, a recorded voice announces "code red" over loudspeakers operated in the entire Gaza Envelope area, including the college, signaling citizens to seek cover (Diamond et al., 2010).Immediately afterward, come the explosive sounds of the missiles' impact and then silence.This scenario recurs on a regular basis.The escalation of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in late 2008 led Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead (Hebrew: ), also referred to by Hamas as the "Battle of al-Furqan" (Arabic: ), which began on December 27, 2008, and ended on January 18, 2009.Just as there are different names for the military operation, there are different perspectives on it, its goals, and achievements, and diverse political and civilian meanings are attributed to it (for further reading, see Cordesman, 2009;Flibbert, 2011;Haushofer et al., 2010;Meir, 2009;Schweitzer, 2013).For the present discussion, it is essential to note that the military operation lasted approximately three weeks.During this period, life in the Gaza Envelope area became life within a military conflict.Citizens were required to stay close to protected areas, and hundreds of Qassam rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, challenging routine life in the area even more than usual.
In 2010, at the request of the program director, I wrote several reflective memories from one of the days of the program at the start of Operation Cast Lead.The director noted that she was giving a presentation at a conference on the unique experience of working with Jewish and Arab girls in a security emergency during a military operation.She asked if I could write something about what had happened during Operation Cast Lead.From the reflective stories I wrote, she chose to use the one titled "The External Qassam and the Internal Qassam," which described the program routine during Operation Cast Lead.The rest of the reflective stories described moments from the days we traveled with the young women to Tel Aviv, in the center of Israel, to take a break from the difficult security situation.An hour's drive away in Tel Aviv, life was completely different, since Operation Cast Lead took place within the borders of the Gaza Strip and the surrounding area, in particular the Gaza Envelope.
The years passed, and the story became an important tool for the program.It was used in the program on various occasions, and many people, some of whom I am not acquainted with, know about it or have heard or read it.In 2018, I suddenly received an email from the program director addressed to the new program team: "Hi, everyone.I'm attaching the story that [author] wrote following Cast Lead.I'm CCing [author] … so she can remember her work again.I invite all of you to express yourselves in writing."I smiled to myself.Suddenly, a memory floated up from the past.I opened the email, maybe read the story, then closed it.Recently, a friend and colleague who worked in the program requested to use the story in a lecture she would be presenting.In her message, she asked if I had any "articles on the security emergency and internal situation, something about the Qassam from the outside that illuminates the Qassam from the inside … could it be?"I sent her the story.After reading it, she wrote back: The way I see it, you talked about the external Qassam that evokes the internal Qassam while working with Jewish and Arab girls in the program.I'm going to use your claim that the external Qassam may trigger the internal Qassam but makes it possible to talk about things that are not supposed to be mentioned.
I understand that the story offers different meanings to different people.It serves as a living memory of the only programs in Israel that worked together with Jewish and Bedouin girls and young women during the ongoing conflict.It aims to inspire the new program teams and encourage them to document their practice in writing.In addition, it offers an understanding of the psychological experiences of girls and young women in ongoing conflicts and security emergencies.At the same time, it includes other voices and commentaries that I want to share, especially since I was born and raised in an area of ongoing conflict in Israel, and have lived and worked as a social worker in a situation of political insecurity.Thompson (2021) claims that we have much work to do on "trauma pedagogy," that is, knowing and learning about trauma by living with it in and through institutions, using autoethnography, through which, those who survive trauma develop accounts of situated experiences and shared social realities.
I left the program several years ago and moved on with my professional life.The distance of several years has placed me in the role of a reader of the story.I observe it now from the outside.But at the same time, from the inside; every line I read immediately brings me back to those familiar moments as if 12 years had not passed.While writing this article, I was on a postdoctoral fellowship in England.The physical and cultural distance have allowed me to observe and think in ways I could not have done previously.As Carol Gilligan notes, "Fish don't know they are swimming in water until they are fish out of the water" (2011, pp. 15-16).Rereading the text and using the methodology of autoethnography, that is, constantly asking myself what I had to say about the cultural and political context, revealed additional layers of meaning.Along with me, my teenage self, who grew up in Kiryat Shmona-a city on the border with Lebanon that was subjected to rocket attacks for years (Lahad, 2017)-reads the text.Only after several readings did I notice her presence through the emotions that rereading the text evoked in me-anxiety, anger, and great sadness about the violent reality that continues to exist, sadness that more and more girls and young women will have to live in a political conflict zone and carry with them the pain and difficulty that trauma brings with it.
The story: "The External Qassam and the Internal Qassam" A voice from the literature: A socially situated account of a human practice is an account such that the participants are conceived not in abstraction from relations of social power (as they are in traditional epistemology) but as operating as social types who stand in relations of power to one another.(Fricker, 2007, p. 3) The baptism of fire was today.A code red alarm sounded during the program session.We knew it might come.We just did not know when.The girls are hysterical, even the experienced ones from Sderot. 2 It is a shock and a surprise for the Bedouin girls.We try to calm them down.The word "mommy" is spoken aloud by many now in a different context than usual.Saying "mommy" is a cry of anxiety.The missile alarm catches us all unprepared, although preparing for such situations is impossible.
The first moment is a commotion-girls shouting, pushing chairs and tables, and running out of the classroom to the shared protected space.At noon, when the girls arrive, we meet in this space; there is food and drink, and we conduct experiential activities in small, mixed Jewish and Bedouin groups.It is a transitional space between life outside and the program.
But now, the staff and the girls support each other, embracing.The geographical and social distances do not exist, as if they had disappeared in a split second.The code red alarm sounds again during the small group activity.In the small groups, they talk about their life experiences and recognize their knowledge.Anna, 3 one of the girls, reacts more seriously this time, experiencing an anxiety attack.An expert in stress and anxiety who is nearby comes and tries to help, to calm her down, but fails.Next to Anna, sitting very close to her, not leaving her for even a second, is Danielle, a friend of hers.Danielle will become a mentor in the program one day in the future.She seems to have forgotten to be afraid and gives Anna all her attention and support.
Danielle approaches me and Eve, a social work student who is doing her training in the program.She tells us what to do.She knows Anna well and knows what will help her.We join her and do what Danielle has suggested, keeping everyone away from her and taking Anna to a quiet room next door, just the four of us, where she slowly manages to pull herself together, to breathe.Danielle does not move from Anna.She hugs her and holds her hand.Anna talks about the anxiety attacks she suffers from the drug addiction and the illness she has been diagnosed with-bipolar disorder.She speaks and cries, and Danielle stays close and hugs her.
The program session ends.We send the girls home after determining how they are traveling and with whom.Eve and I are still with Anna and Danielle.We ensure the rest of the girls are okay and stay with them.I offer to take them back with me to Beer-Sheva (a 45-minute drive).It's clear to me that even if Anna feels better right now, the last thing Anna and Danielle need is to be alone.I ask Eve how she will get home, and suddenly it becomes clear she has missed her ride to the kibbutz.She hadn't noticed the time."It was essential to stay and support Anna," she says.I suggest we take Eve to the kibbutz and then go to Beer-Sheva.Everyone agrees.
When we leave the college, it becomes quiet.The road is empty and dark, and it feels like we are the only ones on it.Everything we pass floods Anna and Danielle with memories.A bus stop on the side of the road brings back memories of a friend who left one of them there in the middle of the night.The memories surface, and we are all attentive, containing them-she is no longer alone hitchhiking in the middle of the night.Now we are the four of us together.I tell them about laughter yoga and suggest they try it, and we all burst out laughing.Something loosens up in all of us.The peals of laughter are contagious.The topics of conversation change.Anna, who could not stop crying, asks Eve about the kibbutz.It turns out she has never been to a kibbutz.Eve offers us a little tour of the kibbutz, and everyone agrees.The four of us agree that what we are doing-a tour of the kibbutz in the middle of the night-seems unreal.Outside, everything is thundering.Outside, there is a war.
In Beer-Sheva, I drop Danielle off last.Before she leaves the car, I ask, "How are you?""You know," she tells me, "I will be fine.I took care of Anna.I forgot about myself.It was important for me to be with her." "Yes, I know," I whisper.
The next day, I call the professionals who had referred the girls to the program to share with them what happened and ask them to check on the girls.The staff and I call all the girls.Some of them say they are fine.After we ask them how they are, some of them let us into their internal Qassams.Everything emerges.One of the girls shares with us that she is pregnant and wants to have an abortion.Another tells of her father being arrested after beating her mother.Bedouin girls who until now had kept quiet manage to say to me, "We are not like you, the Jews.With us, it is not acceptable to talk.With us, everything stays inside."But now, they share their difficulties-issues with a boyfriend no one knows about and a father who is addicted to drugs and has been removed from the home.I think to myself, "Did we need the external Qassams to meet the internal Qassams for the young women to start voicing their pain?The internal Qassams are increasing in number.The internal Qassams are becoming stronger.Girls call and say, 'Listen, this girl has nothing to eat at home.' 'And this girl, something happened, so how can we help her?'" They're volunteering to help each other, support each other, and keep in touch by telephone, via messages.I no longer know how to explain that.Are the telephone contact groups we tried to create between them at the beginning of the program working?Or is it the security situation that has led to this development?It no longer matters.It seems that we have switched places.They are teaching us what it means to be a mentor, and we do not oppose them.On the contrary, we encourage them.For a moment, the program's ideas encounter reality and live in peace.The girls bring their knowledge, knowledge that has great power and value in helping other girls.

Analysis
Voice and silence among girls and women have been one of the main issues explored and addressed in feminist theory, research, therapy, and activism (Gilligan, 2011).Voice and silence are dominant in the story.Once the external Qassams enter the picture, the young women's internal Qassams appear, and they begin to voice their pain.The analysis focuses on voice and silence in the first section, and listening in the second.

Voice and silence
In the story, I asked, "Did we need the external Qassams to meet the internal Qassams for the young women to start voicing their pain?"But I realize that this is not the right question, because it implies that we need more violence to be able to talk.The relevant question should address the voice and silence of the young women.They spoke of the private places and kept quiet about the political places, that is, the security emergency.As I will now show, their silence on the security emergency was the result of epistemic injustice experienced by young women from marginalized groups in Israel who are coping with conditions of distress.
In a study focused on young women from marginalized social locations in Israel conducted at the Rotem Center (Refaeli et al., 2019), where the mentoring program took place, the researchers examined the factors that contribute to the prevalence of personal risk situations faced by marginalized young women in their transition to adulthood.They used four elements of risk and protective factors to predict risk situations among young women: demographic factors (ethnicity and motherhood), human capital (education, employment, and economic situation), personal characteristics (self-esteem and exploration of identity), and social characteristics (support networks and relationships with family, friends, and neighbors).Although the study participants lived in an area with a difficult security situation, and the Rotem Center was situated in the Gaza Envelope, the study did not address the security situation as a factor contributing to the prevalence of personal risk situations.Not addressing the conflict or security situation in developing a theory for analyzing risk situations among marginalized young women represents an epistemological weakness.The lack of attention to security emergencies meant that these situations were not taken into account as a risk factor.Security situations omitted from the knowledge regarding marginalized young women become cultural silences.Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at a disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences (Fricker, 2007).
"We found love in a hopeless place," Rihanna sings.These lyrics made me think about how times of security emergencies and war present opportunities for different kinds of personal and professional encounters between social workers and young women.In general, these encounters are far from easy.They involve power relations based on social position between professionals and young women who are coping with distress and risk situations.What I call the internal Qassams are the issues about which girls and young women from marginalized social groups cannot speak in everyday life.They cannot talk about them among themselves, in the public sphere, or with social workers, because it is culturally unacceptable for Bedouin and Jewish girls to do so.Revealing their problems poses a risk that they or their families will be blamed for their problems and what has happened to them, and will be judged for their actions (Harris, 2004).They worry about the possibility of the welfare services becoming involved in their lives and, if they are minors, fear being removed from their family homes.They are anxious about the possibility that their labeling as girls in distress will be reinforced, and concerned that no one will believe them.And finally, there is the fear of the painful knowledge that they face their lives alone.These are not the girls that society cherishes and encourages-the optimistic, self-inventing, and success-oriented can-do girls (Harris, 2004).They are the at-risk girls who are rendered vulnerable by their circumstances-living in poverty; in unstable homes; and in communities known for violence, drugs, crime, and other dangers (Harris, 2004, p. 24).Society sees them as failures.They are marked as different from the norm and pathologized, criminalized, and punished (Harris, 2004, p. 34).This labeling places them within a group that suffers from negative prejudices and hermeneutical marginalization (Fricker, 2007), and they participate unequally in the practices through which social meanings are generated.
The girls and young women do not speak about the political, about life under constant tension on the border with Gaza.Can they question or support government decisions?Can they ask questions about the struggle between Jews and Arabs that has been ongoing for over 120 years?Scholars have shown that several cultural mechanisms underlie the norm among some Israeli Jews of silence surrounding Israel's role in the Gaza blockade or the occupation of the West Bank.Among these are apathy, unwillingness to address an open secret publicly, avoidance of political criticism, and the misrecognition of power grounded in the taboo that surrounds the betrayal of intimate relationships due to the intertwining of national identity with families and local communities (Sa'ar et al., 2021).
Bedouin women and girls are doubly silenced (Abu Rabia, 2019).First, as members of Bedouin society, they are subject to institutional silencing processes.Arab girls and young women in Israel are part of an ethnic minority that suffers from social and political exclusion, discrimination, and oppression (Elias et al., 2019(Elias et al., , p. 2074)).Second, in the patriarchal system of Bedouin society, where male norms and values dominate, silence is imposed on them (Abu Rabia, 2019).These adolescent Arab girls in distress are part of a collectivist and traditional society (Azaiza, 2006;Bitton & Hawa-Kamel, 2020) in which it is common to cope with problems within the nuclear or extended family.As a result, those among them who experience familial, social, personal, emotional, or abuse-related problems face isolation and have no one to turn to when they need help (Azaiza, 2006).
Moreover, the difficulties of Arab girls stem from the social inclination to deny and conceal problems from the public eye to avoid the severe social stigma that may be attached to them and their families in such situations (Bitton & Hawa-Kamel, 2020;Elias et al., 2019).Another reason that young Arab women are reluctant to share their difficulties with care providers is their sense that no one listens to them or understands them (Elias et al., 2019).Nevertheless, the voices of the Bedouin women in the Negev (in Israel's south) are heard in private spaces unsupervised by men-spaces men cannot enter due to gender segregation and the patriarchal social structure (Abu Rabia, 2019).A program based on gender segregation, such as the one described above, allows young Bedouin women and girls to be heard and treated with respect.
For young Arab women in Israel to be able to speak about their difficulties or request help, they must overcome sociopolitical, sociocultural, and interpersonal barriers that reflect the cumulative and intertwined effects of macro-and micro-level barriers (Elias et al., 2019).After the external Qassams landed, some of the girls shared more details of their private lives.Faisal Azaiza (2006) explains that the Bedouin girls' conflict between commitment to the value systems of their culture and their self-development, or in this case, the dangers inherent in the security situation, may well form the basis upon which they begin to seek professional help as individuals.Nevertheless, the political aspects of the security situation are never discussed.Alhuzail (2021) describes the political complexity and social perceptions that lead to her being perceived as representing the conflict: For me, being an Arab lecturer teaching Jewish students in Israel is not a neutral encounter in times of war and regional conflict, especially because I have a grandmother and uncles on the other side of the border.I have often felt that I represent this conflict, even if I did not choose to do so, (p.490) Representing the conflict, or being constructed as part of it, reflects what Fricker (2007) recognizes as "structural prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource" (p.158).How can young Bedouin women speak when they embody the conflict in Israeli culture and there is no room in Israeli culture to talk about it?The self-identity of young Arab women is rooted in the broad political and social context of an identity crisis manifested in a conflict between their sense of belonging and loyalty to Palestinian identity and their loyalty as citizens of Israel and the realization of that identity (Alnabilsy et al., 2022).For them, talking about it requires even more effort than it does for young Jewish women.Can they talk about the political?About the external Qassam?The war outside-to whom does it belong?Who has the right to be part of the security trauma?Who has the right to talk about it?It is very difficult to answer these questions because we are faced here with an intersection of identity and national conflict.In this senseless context, the legitimacy and recognition of suffering are taken away from young Arab women.
This reality of living in an ongoing dangerous security situation, and the silence regarding it, was very familiar to me.As mentioned above, I grew up in Kiryat Shmona, a city on the border with Lebanon that was subjected to rocket attacks for years (Lahad, 2017).I was one of the children who earned the stigmatizing nickname "shelter kids."Most of my childhood was spent in a bomb shelter or security room.For many years, the sound that accompanied my life was an ascending and descending alarm signaling that one should run to a protected space or lie down on the ground or floor, followed by the loud explosions of the Katyusha missiles launched from Lebanon.Then it was quiet, sometimes for several minutes, and a public announcement was made that one could leave the shelter or protected space.While working in the program near the Gaza Strip, I reconnected with these old, familiar experiences.
My memories of life in a war zone are in constant motion.Sometimes they are repressed, and sometimes they suddenly return.Often, external triggers bring them back.As Gilligan notes, the brilliance of dissociation as a response to trauma is that what is dissociated, split off from consciousness, and held outside of awareness is not lost (2014, p. 96).I knew that the young women in the program were responding normally to the extraordinary situation.This knowledge, which has been part of my body since birth, helps me to refrain from labeling their responses negatively.As Eve Ensler puts it: I am an emotional creature.Things do not come to me As intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas They pulse through my organs and legs And burn up my ears.(2011, p. 134) I have forgotten many things about the stressful security situations through which I have lived.But I will never forget the social responses I received as a teenager every time I told someone I was from Kiryat Shmona.People gazed at me with pity.Living with a fixed social label when an external narrative has been constructed for you without you having much ability to control it, contributes significantly to trauma from the security situation.The external narrative that has been constructed reduces reality to a one-dimensional description.At the time, I felt that talking about the security situation undermined national resilience.I lacked the ability to articulate my complicated feelings, so I remained silent.Embodying the stigma of being a "pitiful girl from the North" was difficult enough.I did not want to be seen as a traitor as well.
With time, I have learned that talking about life in a dangerous security situation in Israel is based on one dominant narrative: a narrative of overcoming, of resilience.Any emotion or thought inconsistent with this narrative is buried deep inside.Perhaps in this way, the epistemology of injustice is further strengthened in that it is not only external but also internal and personal.A gap was created between me and the world.As a young woman who grew up in a dangerous security situation, I was perceived by society as resilient, but in reality, I was not.I was 29, traveling in India, facing the snowcapped Himalayan mountains, when the internal layers that buried my narrative cracked.This happened in a workshop where we were practicing the Subbody Butoh dance method.The subbody is a subconscious body.The dance aims to unveil a truly naked body, a body that precedes language and thought (Dind, 2016).It was towards the end of the workshop, during a joint dance, that a voice suddenly erupted from me, the sound of the alarm calling out loud, "All residents of Kiryat Shmona, please enter the shelters."For several minutes, I repeated the sentence.I laughed, burst into tears, whispered, and shouted.I felt that layer after layer were erupting; the inner barrier between me, myself, and the world had broken down.It was as if the long silence on the political issue had also silenced emotion; now, for the first time since childhood, I had a place to express feelings that did not involve resilience, power, or ability.
It appears that the lived personal and political experiences of Jewish and Bedouin girls coping with conditions of distress are absent from the collective body of knowledge on trauma and security emergencies, and their capacity as knowers remains unacknowledged.As Thompson (2021) has argued, accounts of trauma that do not engage in sociopolitical analysis are limited in their explanatory potential.A critical feminist psychological analysis of trauma must address the complexities of trauma not only as a personal experience, but as an institutional phenomenon.
Furthermore, marginalized individuals are denied the opportunity to develop the conceptual resources needed to make sense of their own experiences.Fricker (2007) uses the term hermeneutical injustice to describe this obscuring of one's social experience from collective understanding due to hermeneutical marginalization.In the case discussed here, the girls were struggling with marginalization and the intersectionality of age, gender, race, class, and disabilities (Krumer-Nevo & Komem, 2015).But insufficient attention has been paid to the constant stress of coping with political tension and security emergencies, which are crucially important elements in the process through which these girls make sense of their experience, how professionals understand young women's problems and act to solve them, and how social stigma affects young women from marginalized social locations in areas with dangerous security situations.

Listening
What does it take for social workers to listen to the political?Can a Jewish social worker listen to the Bedouin girls' personal-political concerns?Or is this possible only within the boundaries of what is thought of as the legitimate trauma of violence, sexual assault, or poverty?Is there only a particular political space within which girls and young women can move?On a Post-It note, I wrote myself some answers: I understand now what I hadn't understood at that time.
Epistemic injustice is a big concept for social workers and girls.It's too much to deal with in a security emergency.If you don't have the words in everyday life, in what language will you speak in a security emergency?
You don't speak; you act.
The most important action I could take was to listen to them, recognize their knowledge, and act through it.Gilligan's words echoed in me once again: "Listening in a way that creates trust is essential to hearing a 'different' voice, meaning a voice that didn't make sense according to the prevailing categories of interpretation" (2014, p. 91).This means listening in a way that resists hermeneutical injustice, that is, exerting epistemic friction against the normative expectations of established interpretative frameworks and assisting dissonant voices in forming alternative meanings, interpretations, and expressive styles (Medina, 2017).Putting epistemic justice into action requires the listener who practices testimonial justice to listen attentively and nonjudgmentally to a person's lived experience, and not view it through the lens of professional metanarratives and expert knowledge (Johnstone & Lee, 2021).Hermeneutic justice requires an even higher level of skill, as the listener must be able to appreciate that the interlocutor may be attempting to express something they have not yet fully understood themselves (Johnstone & Lee, 2021).I argue that the practice in the story embodied epistemological resistance and justice (Fricker, 2007) in three ways.First, the program staff and I listened to the young women, recognized their knowledge, and did not dismiss it, oppose it, or confront them with expert knowledge regarding intervention in times of crisis.There was such an attempt, but it failed.In accordance with bell hooks's ideas regarding margins as a site of deprivation and resistance, we resisted rewriting their pain, their story, or their knowledge (2015, p. 152).Second, we were attentive, believing the participants and containing and responding to the internal Qassams that emerged.We did not ignore them or prevent the young women from addressing and engaging with the external Qassams.When they told us that a girl needed help, we responded to their knowledge and requested assistance for that girl.We did not disregard the information they gave us or wait for the girl to contact us.We adopted what they knew to help other girls.Third, the responses to what happened were constantly addressed within the context of the program.We did not refer the young women to private treatment or assistance from other expert organizations.We provided help in a holistic, connected, and ongoing way that included the community and the program.In Gilligan's (2011) terms, we acted out of connection and care rather than disconnection, resisting the dichotomy and social dissociation that characterizes patriarchal societies.
Last, the reality of security emergencies demands the expansion of professional boundaries (Alhuzail, 2021).I took the participants home in my car.I used an intuitive idea-laughter yoga-to cope with the anxiety that had gripped us all.We went for a tour of the kibbutz in the middle of the night.I broke down the one-on-one traditional therapeutic response.I created a multiparticipant intervention (two young women, a student, and a social worker).This therapeutic group worked together for and with the young woman who had experienced the most extreme response.The boundaries between us-the social workers and the young women-expanded.We worked for her, but also for each of us.Once boundaries expand, there is room for more lived experiences to emerge.

Conclusions
According to Emma Tseris (2015), using "old and new" feminisms is necessary to produce decolonized trauma narratives.In her view, modern feminisms enable us to "name" oppression, and postmodern feminisms require us to "un-name" it (Tseris, 2015).These practices can help us understand and commit to "not knowing," and invite uncertainty into our professional and personal lives.Autoethnography that uses epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance has shown that listening from the standpoint of epistemic justice can be a therapeutic practice when decolonized trauma narratives are being addressed.Moreover, this kind of listening attributes credibility to the knowledge of marginalized people more justly and can comprise one of the ways in which we reveal the relationships between the external Qassams and the internal Qassams on a continuum of violence, rather than in a dichotomy between spheres.In some cases, young women voice their pain using the external Qassam that meets the internal Qassams.Thus, decolonization of trauma is embodied in a way that recognizes what is necessary for young women to address in security emergencies during and after a military operation.This recognition resists epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) by acknowledging young women's capacity as knowers, attending to their knowledge, and listening to their voices.