Schrödinger's Trauma
As 59 hostages remain in Gaza's tunnels, Israelis are trapped between hope and grief. Living hostages are chained and starving and the murdered cannot be buried.
On February 22, I watched as a helicopter transported hostage Avera Mangistu across the sky above Hostages Square to an Israeli hospital (video below). Mangistu and Hisham al-Sayed are Israelis who each spent a decade held hostage in Gaza. Both men suffered from significant mental illness and crossed into Gaza on their own — Mengistu in 2014 and al-Sayed in 2015. Both men’s families reported that the released hostages were “barely communicating.” Al-Sayed’s father said the former hostage, who is schizophrenic, is “destroyed, emotionally and cognitively.”
In Tel Aviv, I have been meeting with trauma specialists in order to learn about the psychological effects of the October 7 large-scale terrorist attack and mass hostage-taking event. Below is a preview of an article I wrote for Psychology Today. Click the link at the button to read the whole piece.
Below that is another Psychology Today piece I wrote about the LA fires.
The first sign that Israeli hostage Yarden Bibas was alive in Gaza came when Hamas released a video taken on November 30, 2023. On that day, a Hamas terrorist informed hostage Nili Margolit, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, the same ravaged community from which Bibas and 70 others were kidnapped, that she was going home. But first, she told me, the terrorist instructed her to tell Bibas that his wife and children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. After learning of their deaths, Bibas was to perform in a propaganda video. If he didn’t, the terrorist warned Margolit, she would not be released.
At the time, they couldn’t know what was true. But Margolit told me she was afraid Bibas would not survive if he thought Shiri and the boys were dead. Courageously, she refused to participate in his psychological torture. In the end, a terrorist told Bibas that his wife and children had been killed (which was true) by an Israeli airstrike (which was a lie). Then, the terrorist filmed the sobbing Bibas blaming Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister.
As soon as the video was captured, Margolit was released. She had spent 50 days in the tunnel. Yarden Bibas was held hostage for 484 days.
Twenty-five living hostages recently returned to Israel, bringing news that some of the roughly 60 remaining hostages were alive. But for many of the young men still held in Gaza, “It’s as if they have disappeared.” Moshe Or, brother of Avinatan Or, whose kidnapping was filmed by terrorists in the viral video of his girlfriend, Noa Argamani's abduction, told an Israeli reporter that this is “the most terrifying part—there are no details, no updates. Just silence.”
Across Israel, people have been trapped in a version of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, holding in mind both the possibility that hostages are alive and that they are dead. Now that phase one of the ceasefire is over, they face the uncertainty of the remaining hostages' fates.
Rising From the Ashes: Navigating the psychological effects of the Los Angeles fires
It's common for people affected by natural disasters such as wildfires to feel anxious, unmoored, angry, and distressed. According to clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, a cognitive behavioral therapist, while primary disturbances such as nightmares, intrusive thoughts, difficulty concentrating, and fatigue are common, for most people, even their home being destroyed by a fire will not result in long-term negative psychological effects.
Given our cultural overuse of the term “trauma,” this may seem surprising.
More to come…