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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is an Israeli author and psychologist based in Tel Aviv, her recent novel is ‘The Wolf Hunt’
Translated by Jessica Cohen
Balloons in all colours of the rainbow welcomed shoppers at the mall in Eilat. Over 30,000 evacuees from along Israel’s border had been relocated to the southern resort city, and shops offered them special discounts. But when one of the balloons popped — as balloons do — the reaction was severe: passers-by shrieked in alarm, dropped to the floor or sprinted frantically to the doors. One woman fainted. The massacre of October 7 is playing out before our eyes as a prolonged, collective trauma, and its costs are far from being understood.
More than 1,400 people were murdered in the surprise attack by Hamas on what is now known in Israel as “Black Saturday”. Tens of thousands were locked in their homes for many hours under a barrage of rockets. But even those not in the line of fire found themselves bearing direct witness to the atrocities, which Hamas live-streamed. Israelis desperate to know if their relatives or friends had been injured logged on to Hamas media channels and found pictures that will haunt them forever. Mental health support centres are struggling to cope. Symptoms vary: hyper-vigilance and extreme anxiety; fear of leaving the house; nightmares; depression. But when I went to Eilat with a delegation from the Shalvata psychiatric hospital to help survivors, there was another symptom that presented over and over again: guilt.
People ask themselves how their children could have been taken hostage to Gaza, while they themselves are still here. How could their spouse have been murdered, while they survived? How could they have failed to protect their family, their friends, their community? Some can’t stop imagining what they could have done differently, and hating themselves for surviving. At one shiva, I heard of a father of two who hid in a safe room with his children. The terrorists set the house on fire. He grabbed his little girl and jumped out the window, but left the boy behind. There are no words to describe the horror and guilt.
The guilt gnaws at survivors and keeps many from seeking treatment: some feel they deserve to suffer, a sort of punishment for staying alive. Others feel they have no right to receive mental healthcare when so many others are suffering more. Survivor guilt is not limited to people who physically survived the massacre. It is a contagious disease, no less than Covid-19.
I met with a woman who had fled after a rocket hit her building. She had not left the home she was staying in for three weeks. At nights she watched fearfully from the window. When I asked how she used to relax, she told me about how much she loved music, especially Taylor Swift. I asked whether she’d be willing to try going for a walk and listen to music. She looked at me in astonishment. “There are 239 kidnapped Israelis, and you’re telling me to listen to Taylor Swift on the lawn?”
As far as this patient and many others are concerned, resuming normal life is a desecration, an abandonment of the hostages and the dead. Even people who survived the inferno are thereby confining themselves to a psychological cell. They permit themselves bread and water, but no more, out of a profound and painful identification with those whose worlds have been destroyed. With the entire country bleeding, how can you sip your coffee, go to work, walk in the park?
To be happy, to laugh, to make love — all these seem impossible now. But in order for civic society to recover, it must accept and nurture every spark of life it can still find. When we refuse to live, we give those who attacked us what they wanted — a reign of terror and sorrow. It turns out that even listening to Taylor Swift can be considered an act of choosing life. If we are to keep supporting survivors, we must, before anything else, stand back on our own two feet.
Collective trauma has a mental price, but also an economic one. Communities far from the front lines have completely suspended their fabric of life: many are keeping their kids home from school. Shops are bare, cafés are empty, commerce and traffic have all but ceased. Clothing stores and restaurants have put their employees on leave without pay.
Huge billboards along the highways used to advertise products. Now they display smiling faces: Yahel Shoham, three years old, kidnapped by Hamas. Raz Asher, five years old. Aviv Asher, three years old, kidnapped. Tal Goldstein, nine years old, kidnapped. These faces are tattooed on our hearts. So many civilian lives have been lost, first in Israel and now in Gaza. The trauma is so profound, on both sides of the border. It is incredibly difficult to imagine that healing will ever be possible, but bringing home the hostages is the first step for Israelis.