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Israel Charts Unmapped Ways to Treat Trauma of Freed Child Hostages
Mia Leimberg, a hostage who was abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, holds her dog Bella while she and others are handed over by Hamas terrorists to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, in an unknown location in Gaza, in this screengrab taken from video released Nov. 28, 2023. Photo: Hamas Military Wing/Handout via REUTERS
Just days after Hamas kidnapped more than 35 young children and teenagers during its Oct. 7 rampage, youth psychologists and welfare experts in Israel began worriedly preparing for their return.
The war in Gaza was in its early stages and the fate of the hostages was not clear, but Israel wanted to be sure that treatment protocols were in place when they came home.
It was, however, uncharted territory. Few times in recent history had so many children either directly witnessed such violence or been taken captive. Similar cases, such as the mass kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram militants in 2014, had led to no written research on courses of treatment.
“We had some newspapers, items and clips and so on, but we couldn’t find any real materials about them,” said Asher Ben-Arieh, a specialist in child trauma at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and Haruv Institute.
Ben-Arieh was tapped by Israel‘s Welfare Ministry to help identify the possible emotional traumas endured and come up with written protocols to cope with them.
“It basically introduced new forms of trauma for children and their families that we never witnessed before,” he said. “How do you explain to a child that he is safe now, when he has seen his safest place, his bedroom, burned and his parents murdered in his house?”
Seven weeks passed before the first Israeli hostages were freed during a truce in late November. By then, Ben-Arieh and teams comprising a few dozen experts had drafted nine protocols for previously undreamed-of scenarios.
One was for kidnapped children. A second for children whose parents were killed. Another focuses on community-wide trauma. They include “practical recommendations, what to do, in what stage,” Ben-Arieh said.
“We went and trained the Shin Bet [intelligence agency] and the army soldiers who were the first ones to meet the kidnapped children in Egypt even before they came to Israel.”
Their recommendations are still being fine-tuned as more is learned. They may be simple, like asking the child first before giving a hug, or — more surprisingly — like letting children use social media as a way to regain control over their lives.
So far 33 hostages aged two to 17 have returned to Israel.
Details have slowly emerged about their time in captivity and the emotional scars. Relatives have shared how some children upon returning woke up crying overnight or clung to them throughout the day. Some spoke only in whispers.
Ben-Arieh said one child who had been held in darkness wanted to keep sunglasses on for a few days. And when a girl preferred sleeping under her bed instead of on it, her social worker was instructed not to interfere to avoid intensifying the trauma.
Schneider Children’s Medical Center in central Israel received 26 freed hostages — 19 children, six mothers, and a grandmother.
“We do have, unfortunately, in Israel knowledge about treating trauma, about helping kids overcoming symptoms of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder],” said clinical psychologist Avigal Snir, who heads the hospital’s PTSD unit.
“When treating kids coming back from captivity from Gaza we found ourselves dealing with a new situation. There is no documented research or clinical writing.”
The principles developed in Israel were helpful.
“We spent a lot of time reading, thinking about different aspects and also tailoring a specific protocol for our center to be available for us in this specific initial stage of welcoming the kids,” Snir said.
“The next stage, when kids are leaving the hospital and starting their journey in the community, seeing therapists, will be different. They will need different things and I think those protocols will be very helpful.”
The preparatory work has already helped the families.
“This was one of the therapeutic factors. Kids and families realized that we were waiting for them, and they were able to maybe start and rebuild trust and feel safe again, after what they’ve been through,” she said.
The post Israel Charts Unmapped Ways to Treat Trauma of Freed Child Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.