1983 West Bank fainting epidemic

Poison affair of Palestinian schoolgirls was a fainting epidemic in the West Bank in late March and early April 1983 brought on by mass hysteria. Fainting and dizziness were complained of by about 700 Palestinian teenage girls, most schoolgirls, and a smaller number of female Israeli soldiers in multiple West Bank towns.

Before the cause was determined to be psychological in April of 1983, the fainting spells led to accusations and counter-accusations between Israelis and Palestinians. The New York Times reported that "Palestinian leaders have accused Israeli settlers and officials of using 'chemical warfare' in West Bank schools to drive Arabs out of the area" and that some Israeli officials "accused radical Palestinian factions of using gas or chemicals to incite demonstrations."

Investigators concluded that even if some "environmental irritant" had originally been present, the wave of complaints was ultimately a product of mass hysteria. This conclusion was supported by a Palestinian health official, who said that while 20% of the early cases may have been caused by the inhalation of some kind of gas, the remaining 80% were psychosomatic.

The lead Israeli psychiatric investigator into the incident found that the Israeli press and Palestinian medical community both fueled the mass hysteria. He said the Israeli press, by speculating that "poison" was behind the incidents in its early reporting and quoting unnamed Israeli army officials as saying nerve gas was being used to provoke an uprising, spread panic. He found the Arab medical community, in turn, decided that the "poison" must be coming from the Israeli side. “In the Jordanian West Bank epidemic, both the Israeli press and the Arab medical community, entrapped in their existing sociopolitical conflicts, expressed their viewpoints and feelings in their own particular way and, by doing so, gave momentum to the course of events."

The epidemic

The first fainting spells were on March 21, 1983 in the West Bank town of Arrabe. Schoolgirls between the ages of 15 and 17 felt sick, some fainted. At the time the girls were in a different classrooms. They were taken to hospitals but no medical causes for their complaints were found. Some female Israeli soldiers who escorted the girls came down with the same symptoms, including nausea, dizziness, headache and stomach pains.

A total of 32 girls were affected in Arrabe. Over the next two weeks, Palestinian girls complained of similar symptoms in Hebron, Jenin and other towns, with 943 people eventually hospitalized in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Albert Hefez, the lead psychiatric investigator of the epidemic for the Israeli Ministry of Health, found that it spread through the community much like the Tanganyika laughter epidemic, though he also said its spread was boosted by the reporting of the Israeli press and Palestinian distrust of Israel's intentions in the West Bank. "The social and historical context of this incident may throw light on the subsequent snowballing of events," he wrote. "The Djenin area is located in the Jordan West Bank region occupied by Israeli forces since the 1967 six-day war. The Arab population perceives the situation as a temporary occupation but some tend to believe that the Israelis would do anything to perpetuate the status quo."

Hefez writes that the outbreak really spread after a March 26 article in the newspaper Ma'Ariv headlined "The Mysterious Poisoning goes on: 56 High School Girls in Djenin Poisoned." "The headline regarding a ‘mysterious poisoning’ implied in Hebrew the presence of an unknown perpetrator. No mention was made of the fate of the first group of girls… This increased the fear and suspicion already existing among the Arab population,” he wrote. He also identifies a front page article from Haaretz on March 28 as feeding local hysteria. That article said Israeli investigators had found preliminary indications that nerve gas had been used and that "Israeli army sources suspected an attempt to provoke the Arab population in anticipation of the coming 'Day of the Land.'"

The psychiatrist writes that this reports spread panic. "Not only was the number of effected persons increasing rapidly, but some unknown agent was poisoning the public. The answer to the ultimate question of ‘Who is behind it?’ would obviously depend on ones political affiliation. Thus the accusational tone and statements became even more apparent." He points to a Ma'Ariv article from March 31 that put forth the hypothesis that Palestinian activists were putting out a false story to provoke an uprising. Some Israeli doctors theorized the girls were playacting.

The Palestinian counter-narrative emerged quickly. "The Arab league accused Israel of using chemical weapons to exterminate Arab people, and Arab doctors from Tul-Karem Hospital raised suspicion that the gas was intended to produce sterility in the affected girls.

The epidemic had peaked by April 1, Hefez found. "The official communiqué rejecting any poisoning etiology, published in the morning paper Haaretz on April 1, appeared at the peak of this final wave. Although several cases appeared after this report, the panic declined."

Accusations and political backdrop

Palestinian officials accused Israelis -- either the government or settlers -- of using "chemical warfare" to either drive them out of the West Bank or to sterilize their young women. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat alleged it was part of a "planned and systematic crime against our people." Some Israeli officials accused the Palestinians of using poison to provoke mass demonstrations.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that events earlier in March had "produced a pervasive atmosphere of distrust throughout the West Bank. West Bankers' fears are fanned by statements like that of Deputy Speaker of the Knesset (parliament) Meir Cohen... who said in mid-March that Israel had made a fatal mistake when it did not drive 200,000 to 300,000 Arabs of Judea and Samaria (biblical names for the West Bank) across the river Jordan in the 1967 war." The Monitor reported that "expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank has been advocated by the Kach Movement of American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, active on the West Bank" and that the outbreak came amid a "major Israeli settlement drive," creating an environment in which Palestinians were ready to believe they were being poisoned by Israel.

On 29 March 1983, the Deputy Permanent Observer of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United Nations Hasan Abdul Rahman sent a letter to the President of the UN Security Council in which he charged that the fainting spells were caused by Israeli poisoning. Rahman wrote that a "sulfurous powder" was found at two schools, and that a coke bottle containing a "noxious substance" and "emitting fumes" was found at a third school. He concluded "it is without question that a new phase in Israel's campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people has been launched."

Investigation - no poison found

Baruch Modan, Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Health said that the first cases could have been caused by an "environmental irritant". Yellow powder that was seen around some school in Jenin proved to be a common pollen. Though a trace of hydrogen sulfide was found, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta found that most of the fainting cases were psychological in nature. A Palestinian doctor from Hebron said "there is no sign of poisoning. Still, something has happened to these girls."

On March 31, 1983 the Permanent Representative to the UN from Iraq addressed the following formal request to the Security Council:

In my capacity as Chairman of the Arab Group for the month of March, I have the honour to bring to Your Excellency's attention and to the attention of the distinguished members of the Security Council the serious situation arising from the cases of mass poisoning which have affected more than 1,000 Palestinian schoolgirls and continue to affect Palestinian nationals in the occupied Arab territory of the West Bank. These poisoning cases were not coincidental. They were caused by a yellow substance containing sulphur concentrates which emitted poisonous gases with dangerous physical and psychological consequences as well as other possible consequences. These serious cases require that the Security Council discharge its responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations, in order to ensure Israel's compliance with the rules of international law relative to the protection of the civilian population in the occupied Arab and Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem. In view of the afore-mentioned, I have the honour to request on behalf of the States members of the Arab Group that an urgent meeting of the Security Council be convened to discuss the serious situation arising from the cases of mass poisoning in the occupied Arab territory of the West Bank.

Five days later, on April 4, 1983, the UN Security Council met and then issued the following statement, responding to the foregoing formal request:

The members of the Security Council have met in informal consultations with great concern on 4 April 1983 to discuss cases of mass poisoning in the occupied Arab territory of the West Bank as referred to in document S/15673. The members of the Security Council request the Secretary-General to conduct independent inquiries concerning the causes and effects of the serious problem of the reported cases of poisoning and urgently to report on the findings.

Israel invited The International Red Cross and the World Health Organization to conduct their own investigations, which they did.

On 25 August 1983 Yehuda Blum, Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, wrote in a letter to the UN Secretary General that the accusations of poisoning by Israel were false and "Israel medical authorities, who immediately instituted an inquiry into the matter, could not establish the existence of any organic cause." A World Health Organization inquiry also found no organic causes for "this ill-defined health emergency." The letter also cites Red Cross doctor Franz Altherr, who felt it "was a mass phenomenon without any organic basis."

Media coverage

In a 2005 article Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wrote that "it is not surprising that among the worst distorters of the truth were French dailies such as the Communist L'Humanite, the socialist inclined Libération, and Le Monde. None of these apologized after the facts became known." Dr. Gerstenfeld alleges that the New York Times was one of the few media outlets to apologize for its reporting of the affair. Dan Margalit of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz wrote in March 1983 that the accusations leveled at Israel over the fainting spells "may yet become a modern blood libel against the Jews." In an Editors Note, the New York Times apologized for its early coverage of the affair. "First reports suggested that the illness was caused by mass poisoning. But Israeli and American doctors later concluded that the symptoms, including dizziness, nausea and headaches, had been caused by mass hysteria. Articles on April 4, April 5, and April 26 reported on these medical investigations. But because of the positions and relative lengths of the articles, the overall effect was greater emphasis on the charge of poisoning than on the Israeli rebuttal." The New York Times also apologized for quoting an Arab doctor in the West Bank without giving equal time to Israeli officials. The doctor said that "Israeli officials had dismissed him as director of public health services there because he refused to agree that the illnesses had no organic basis. The article omitted the Israeli explanation for his dismissal: that he had allowed "leftists" to loiter in the hospitals, that he had discouraged the hospitals from releasing the schoolgirls after they had recovered, and that he was trying to inflame the situation. The coverage gave more weight to the Arab charges than to the American and Israeli explanations. There was no journalistic justification for the disparity."

Khaled Abu Toameh wrote that the girls were trying to avoid exams. They claimed Israel had put poison in the tanks that supplied drinking water to their school and began "fainting" in the school yard when photographers and TV crews arrived. When medical tests found there was nothing wrong with them, the girls were released from the hospital. According to Abu Toameh, "the exams were postponed indefinitely and Israeli 'occupation' was once again blamed for perpetrating a 'new crime' against Palestinians."

See also

• Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict‎
• Tanganyika laughter epidemic
• Poison affair
• Mass hysteria
• Tanganyika laughter epidemic
• Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict

External links

• The influence of newspaper reports on outbreaks of mass hysteria, Psychiatric Quarterly