In a 1990 interview (partially incorporated into the painting), in the newspaper Ha'aretz with the Israeli Psychoanalyst Yehoyakim Stein, Stein explains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in psychological terms. He believes that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is different than any other occupation in history, because the Israelis, instead of seeing themselves as conquerors and occupiers, think of themselves as being themselves occupied and under siege, and therefore they are unable to end their occupation. Stein explains that the trauma of the Israelis in the aftermath of the Holocaust and other past persecutions and pogroms against the Jews, has put them in a position of fearing for their lives, for their very existence as a nation, even as they themselves are threatening the lives and existence of the Palestinian people. It is their inherited suffering and fear which prevents them from seeing the suffering of the Palestinians and having compassion for them enough to allow them to have their own independent state.