2023-10-28 13:45:25
War has been killing thousands of people on both sides MOHAMMED ABED/AFP – 28.10.2023 Ella Ben Ami, 23, has the same nightmare almost every night: her mother, kidnapped on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, lying down on the ground, with their hands tied, without water or food. • Click here and receive news from R7 on your WhatsApp • Share this news via WhatsApp • Share this news via Telegram The young woman was taken, like the other 900 members of kibbutz Beeri, in southern Israel, to a hotel on the Dead Sea , and says that, since then, she has lived “like the living dead”. Both his mother and father, who lived on another street in the kibbutz, were kidnapped. “Since October 7th, it’s been like a day that never ends. I’ve never felt so helpless”, confesses the girl, with a lost look. See also International Israel strikes back at Lebanon after missile launches on the border International Hospitals and morgues in Gaza are full, says WHO International Drone crash leaves 6 injured in Egyptian village on the border with Israel Barred with her boyfriend for 18 hours in the anti-missile shelter From her home, she watched live, helplessly, through messages sent by her father, the kidnapping of both. “Almost every family has lost someone. No one can understand that there are many people we will no longer see,” she says. According to the management of kibbutz Beeri, 85 people died there, whose bodies were identified, and 32 people are missing, including alleged hostages. Nearly three weeks after the attacks, during which several Hamas commandos infiltrated Jewish communities bordering the Gaza Strip, killing men, women, children and babies, survivors are struggling to regain their psychological balance. These massacres, the largest single-day loss of Jewish civilians since the Shoah, were accompanied, according to Israeli authorities, by torture, mutilation and rape, and left more than 1,400 people dead. In response, Israel’s bombings in the Gaza Strip have already left 7,326 people dead, according to Hamas. Despite their experience with emergency situations, Israeli mental health experts are overwhelmed by the amount and extent of trauma. So the Israeli Ministry of Health launched a recruitment campaign to address what it called an “unprecedented mental health event.” “We were not prepared for a tragedy of this magnitude. We had to act very quickly to respond to multiple needs”, explains Merav Roth, psychoanalyst and professor at the University of Haifa, who supervised the interventions of volunteer psychologists with the survivors of Kibbutz Beeri. “All different age groups have been affected, from babies to the elderly, and the traumas are extremely diverse, from the person locked in a shelter for 20 hours with incessant gunfire, to the person whose loved ones have been kidnapped, or whose wife and children were massacred”, he adds. In the case of the kibbutz, “in addition to the individual trauma, there is the collective trauma of a community that trusted the State and the Army and felt abandoned,” she says. Residents of Kibbutz Beeri wander around with nothing to do in the hotel, which has been completely converted into a care center staffed by dozens of volunteers. “It’s difficult to restore a sense of security while we’re all still in the middle of a war,” confesses Celina Rozenblum, a psychotherapist at the Israeli NGO IsraAid, which specializes in emergency aid. Many take refuge in their rooms most of the time, like 14-year-old May, who along with her mother, 46-year-old Shahar Ron, survived the attack. Although Shahar was shot in the hip area, she says she does not want to receive psychological help because she feels “misunderstood” by those who did not live through the massacres. “Psychologists tell us that (…) we will rebuild ourselves, but we are not really alive,” she says. “I feel like an empty envelope inside. It’s impossible to comprehend the extent of the atrocities that people have experienced. I want to wake up from this nightmare,” she adds. Huddled on a bench in the hotel lobby, she says she is especially worried about her daughter: “They hurt her mother, they burned her house. She almost suffocated to death in the flames. For 20 hours, she only heard people shouting in Arabic. who came to kill us. Three of her friends were massacred. How can a 14-year-old girl get out of this situation unharmed?”, she asks, with tears in her eyes. Read also After bombing Hamas tunnels, Israel continues attacks on the Gaza Strip Why does Hezbollah support Hamas? Understand the role of the Lebanese group in the war Israel says it killed the head of Hamas in an attack on underground targets in the Gaza Strip
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