All Israelis were appalled by the Hamas atrocity in the Jewish state on October 7. Psychologists and psychiatrists around the country have been working both directly and indirectly to assist the victims.
Our phone discussion was only cut off for a few moments. “An alert!” Everyone in Tel Aviv understands that you hang up when you hear the siren. Every day, there are up to three or four alarms. Then you have to flee to a shelter or a parking lot, or if you’re on the highway, stop on the hard shoulder, jump the guardrail, seek refuge beneath a bridge, or lie down in the ditch with your head between your arms.
We heard the tremendous “boom!” sound generated by the Israelis a minute later The Iron Dome anti-missile defense system intercepted a rocket fired from Gaza by Hamas. Everyone then stood up, brushed themselves off, and went about their business.
we resumed our conversation almost as if nothing had happened. The person we were speaking to, Reuven Dar, was about to leave for Hotel David, on the shores of the Dead Sea, where some of the refugees from the kibbutzes attacked by Hamas on October 7 had gathered.
Usually, this Tel Aviv University psychology professor specializes in treating patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders. His patients smoke several cigarettes at the same time, wash their hands up to 20 times in a row or endlessly check that they have turned off the electricity.
Since the killings on October 7, the nightmare of pogroms that plagued the first generations to arrive in Israel has resurfaced, and, he said with a wry sense of humor, “my patients are better because all they think about now is war. Their fears have finally joined those of others, and their pain has become normal.”
It has to be said that, apart from the anguish caused by the alerts, the war seems to have invaded the entire mental space of this country, which is so used to it. In homes, cafés and grocery stores, screens broadcast images of the conflict as seen by Israelis: the pleas of the families of hostages, fights between former army generals, Benjamin Netanyahu’s warlike speeches and a deluge of criticism of the prime minister himself. Also, in recent days, there have been the images of soldiers advancing.
