Navigating the Landscape of Trauma: How Israelis Are Finding Resilience

Mental health professionals mobilize to help Israelis deal with the aftermath of a devastating attack

In the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, more than 200 are held hostage, thousands are wounded, hundreds of thousands are serving in the military, and about 200,000 are internally displaced. Nearly every Israeli is facing some form of grief, uncertainty, or trauma, and Israel’s mental health professionals are faced with providing trauma care to an entire country.

Currently the entire nation is in grief, in pain

Prof. Ruth Pat-Horenczyk, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is working with parents seeking to explain the war to their children and with communities on the front lines who have been relocated to hotels in safer areas. “Currently the entire nation is in grief, in pain,” she told The Media Line. “Most people know someone directly or indirectly impacted. We are in survivor mode.”

Pat-Horenczyk said that most people are able to “cope with extreme situations” by leaning on family members. She also pointed to volunteering, which millions of Israelis have taken up since the war broke out, as a tool for dealing with difficult emotions.

The whole population is considered to be in trauma

Dr. Miriam Fink Lavi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and regional mental health director for Leumit, an Israeli health management organization, told The Media Line that “the whole population is considered to be in trauma” at the moment. She noted that the government is working alongside mental health professionals to formulate a trauma relief plan for the entire population.

Pat-Horenczyk said that parents of soldiers are one of the groups facing acute fear. These parents “have a severe feeling of lack of control,” she said. What helps many parents of soldiers to cope, she said, is finding social support from other parents in the same situation.

Survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks on the kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip and on the Nova rave party are dealing with particularly intense trauma. Many survivors witnessed indiscriminate murder and barely escaped with their lives.

Omri Lender, a 27-year-old who lives in Tel Aviv, attended the Nova rave party outside Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7. He told The Media Line that he and his friends had been excited to attend the festival. Around 6:30 a.m., he and his friends heard rockets and started driving away. Suddenly, they saw partygoers running from the direction they were heading.

Acting quickly, he and his friend jumped out of the car and started to run, hearing gunshots along the way. “We saw pickup trucks full of terrorists—a terrorist with a knife killing someone with the biggest smile on his face,” he said.

Lender saw people taking cover behind a tank protected by a soldier and joined, but quickly realized it may not be the best idea to stay. While looking for a better place to hide, he said, he encountered “bodies with knives in them, burned. … I came to a car door and a guy was dead, shot in the head with brains, blood dripping, and more cars with bodies.”

Eventually, he said, he dug a hole by a large tree in an attempt to conceal himself. While hiding, he heard screams in Arabic and footsteps getting closer, until they seemed to be only about two yards away from him. Lender then closed his eyes, silently thanked his friends and family “for giving me the best life ever,” and prepared for his death.

By a stroke of luck, the terrorist left the area and Lender survived. His friends were not all so lucky: two were murdered and another two were taken hostage and are being held in Gaza.

Now, Lender is faced with getting back to his life after a highly traumatic experience. He said that returning to work has been hard, “but sitting around watching the news isn’t so good either.”

Asked about how is coping, he said, “First of all, I am alive. … I am not dead and not in the Gaza Strip, so I am thankful I’m here and back to safety and sanity.”

I will never let the terror win

Lender described himself as “a strong person, an optimistic person, and someone who loves life.” He insisted that he must keep living. Otherwise, he said, “the terror wins. I will never let the terror win.”

As part of the response to the attack, the Israeli government has relocated the residents of affected kibbutzim to hotels in safer areas. Entire kibbutz communities were relocated together, which Pat-Horenczyk and Fink Lavi praised as a means of maintaining normalcy and social support for the survivors.

Pat-Horenczyk is helping those relocated from the kibbutzim learn to use coping skills, such as breathing exercises, music, and talking. She noted that, while talking is important, survivors must never feel forced to speak before they are ready.

“It is important to provide them with support and be patient with them at their own pace … not to be judgmental or in a hurry,” she said.

She said that the survivors in the hotels are “very frustrated and angry,” and that their “trust is severely impaired.”

One such survivor is Tal Maroodi, 29, from Kibbutz Re’im, who is currently staying at a hotel in Eilat. He described the horror of spending hours in the safe room of his house with his parents, praying to be spared as his neighbors were slaughtered next door.

He told The Media Line that he heard loud noises that he initially thought were from the nearby rave, but he quickly realized that was not the case. He spent hours in the safe room, receiving messages from kibbutz members in the community WhatsApp group about the ongoing terror. He was certain that he would be the next to die.

Maroodi was saved, but his community was decimated. The sight and smell of dead bodies throughout the kibbutz was something “no one wants to see in their life,” he said.

He described the atmosphere at the hotel with his fellow survivors as akin to “a giant shiva,” or Jewish mourning ritual. “You hear crying all the time,” he said. He noted that he had had trouble sleeping in the first few days after the attack, but that it had become progressively easier.

Maroodi said that some kibbutz members are in shock and still do not understand what happened. He credited the psychologists with the work they are doing for the community.

According to Pat-Horenczyk, two of the most important priorities are creating national cohesiveness and helping survivors overcome their feelings of helplessness.

She said that parents play a large role in helping children deal with traumatic situations. Children, she said, observe their parents in order to understand a given situation, and construct interpretations of reality based on that. In light of that understanding, she called on parents to maintain a regular daily routine, to explain the war to children in ways they can understand, and to offer reassurance.

Most people facing trauma are able to cope without professional treatment, Pat-Horenczyk said, calling this resilience a form of “ordinary magic.” Some people, though, will require treatment.

Currently, the Israeli public is not experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, but rather ongoing trauma, Pat-Horenczyk said. She explained that during the first 72 hours after a traumatic event, survivors experience an “acute stress response.” This stage tends to be the most extreme. During the first month after a traumatic event, professionals monitor survivors to gauge whether they are developing “acute stress disorder,” a continued level of elevated stress. Only after that period might a survivor be diagnosed with PTSD.

She said that in these early stages, getting extreme stress under control can be helpful. She also noted that psychologists themselves are going through stress and need to care for themselves as well.

Fink Lavi explained that trauma presents differently in children than in adults. Lacking the coping skills that adults have, children may regress to behaviors such as bed-wetting, and teenagers may turn to destructive behaviors such as drug and alcohol consumption, or, in extreme cases, attempt suicide.

Amid the trauma, Pat-Horenczyk said, Israeli society is also witnessing “post-traumatic growth.”

“Although we are in the midst of a traumatic event, although we are exposed to horrible scenes, we are also exposed to heroism,” she said. “People are already showing positive changes. New meaning in life, personal strength. … We are in grief. We are suffering. But we are also growing and able to do things we never thought we were able to,” she said.

Perhaps as a reflection of this post-traumatic growth, many of the survivors are committed to staying in Israel, despite the challenges. Maroodi said that his community plans to return to their kibbutz as soon as possible.

“The solidarity of the people is amazing,” he said. “You can’t put it into words.”