Helping the victims and survivors of the Hamas attacks recover from trauma

On October 7, 13-year-old Noya, a child with special needs, was visiting her grandmother Carmela, 80, in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community near the Gaza border. Her mother, Galit, with her other daughter, had decided not to join them and stayed in the nearby village of Kissufim, where the family lived with Galit’s partner.

“The last time I heard from them was around noon that day,” Galit said. “They said there were terrorists in the house. I heard noises of shooting. Then the call was disconnected.”

For some days, Galit thought that Noya and Carmela had been kidnapped. Eventually, the Israeli authorities informed her that the girl and her grandmother were killed during Hamas’s murderous rampage that started on that dark day, leaving 1,400 victims dead and thousands wounded.

The fate of approximately 200 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas remains unknown. “When a family member is murdered in a terror attack, the life of the entire family changes,” said Dina Kit. “In the same way that a baby needs to learn how to walk, it is with a family that has lost a loved one. The family needs to learn how to live again.”

Kit, who is in charge of logistics and the volunteer program at OneFamily, the Jerusalem-based organization that supports victims of terror and their families, lost two sons – one to cancer and one in a terror attack. OneFamily came into being in the wake of the deadly terror bombing at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, in which 16 people were killed, including seven children and a pregnant woman.

No one can better understand the trauma of the survivors of the massacre in Israel’s South than those who have survived terrorist attacks in the past, and those who have worked to alleviate their suffering. Since its inception, 22 years ago, the organization has assisted 1,704 bereaved parents, 422 widows and widowers, 2,157 bereaved siblings, 1,571 orphans who lost one parent, 74 orphans who lost both parents and 1,682 people who were injured in terror attacks.

Source of funding for OneFamily

Virtually all the money raised for those in need – some NIS 275 million – has come from private donations. “We have discovered that the best methodology in all these groups is not financial assistance or psychiatric care,” explained Marc Belzberg, chairman of OneFamily, which he founded with his wife, Chantal.

“It is forming a new family of the people who went through what you went through, forming your support group in a warm familial context, where they can be themselves. They become friends for life, and that friendship is more valuable than anything else we do.”

In the aftermath of the attack on October 7, countless Israeli families will need to learn how to live once more. When she was killed, Tiferet Lapidot, 23, was attending the music festival at Re’im. Her body was recovered and returned to her family a week after the massacre.

“She always had cuddles for everyone, and she was such a good listener,” her aunt Galit said of her, adding that the young woman had spent two years in Sherut Leumi (national service) helping at-risk youth before traveling to South Africa where she volunteered with local children. “Tiferet would light up a room wherever she went,” she said.

Thirty-two-year-old Hayim Katsman was murdered at Kibbutz Holit where he lived. “The story of his death was nothing short of heroic,” his uncle Aaron Katsman, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, wrote in the paper. “After learning that the Hamas terrorists had entered the kibbutz, he hid in a closet with a neighbor, Avital Alajem. He protected her, and as the terrorists opened fire, he took all the bullets and died. The terrorists then opened the closet door and took her out. They handed her two of her neighbor’s small children and proceeded to kidnap them and walk to Gaza. “In her own harrowing story, she survived and saved the two children,” he added.

OneFamily is currently initiating a campaign to mobilize its constituency whom the organization has assisted – orphans, parents whose children were murdered in other terror operations, and children who lost siblings – to visit and help those in Israel’s southern communities.

“People are bewildered,” Kit said. “Many haven’t been able to bury the dead. The situation is very complex. We will visit the families, hug them, give them strength, and tell them that we are with them.”

Nahar Neta grew up on Kibbutz Be’eri and moved to California five years ago. During the terrorist attack, he was on the phone with his mother, Adrienne, 66. “Saturday morning, my mom was sitting on the porch of her house, having her coffee, when the shelling began, something not that unusual in that area,” he said. “When it happens, though, we usually call and talk to make sure everything is okay, and that time, it was clear this was not like any other time.” Adrienne started to hear shouting in Arabic and shooting.

“All my siblings joined the call. We told my mother to stay in the safe room,” Neta added. “Around 9:45 a.m., we heard terrorists entering the house. My mother was a nurse in Beersheba for many years and had picked up some Arabic. We heard her shouting back, and then the call got disconnected. This is the last thing we heard from her.” For days, the Neta family hoped Adrienne was alive and believed she had been taken captive. Eventually, the woman, “a peace-loving person,” as her son described her, was confirmed dead.

Kit came to OneFamily after her son Ofir was killed in June 2001 in a suicide-bomber attack near Dugit in northern Gaza [before Jewish residents were evacuated from Gaza in 2005 and it was given over to the Palestinians]. Encouraging families and helping those who have lost loved ones to terror has given her strength and the ability to move forward, even though the wound never fully heals.

“We learn to live with it; and we want to live and not become broken,” she highlighted. This is especially true for children who are orphaned in terror attacks. “I work with children who have lost both parents,” said Kit. “They grow up, marry, and have children, but it is still difficult for them. They miss their mothers, and they miss being in their parents’ homes during the holidays. Their children miss their grandparents who aren’t alive. It never ends.” The massacres in Israel’s south have added dozens of names to the list of Israeli children whose parents were killed, often before their own eyes. On October 7, nine-year-old Michael, a resident of Kfar Azza, called the Magen David Adom to inform them that his parents had been shot. “

In an attempt to assess if there was any hope of saving them, I asked him where they had been shot,” paramedic Linoy Al-Ezra told The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Maariv.

“From his description, there was no chance of saving them.” Al-Ezra said that Michael remained admirably calm. “He told me he was with his six-year-old sister Alma,” she said. “I advised them to go to the shelter and lock the door. He initially hesitated, but then did it. I asked if there was a closet inside the shelter, and I instructed them to get into the closet, remain quiet, and not come out until soldiers arrived to rescue them.” Itai and Hadar Berdichevsky also decided to protect their children, 10-month-old twins, by hiding them in the closet of their safe room. As they heard the terrorists breaking into their home in Kfar Azza, they waited for them outside the room so that they would not look for the babies. They were both killed.  Helping the families recover from the tragedy of loss after the terror attacks of October 7 is a daunting task, according to Belzberg.

“That one day in the South has doubled the size of the population we [OneFamily] have to serve,” he said. OneFamily and other similar organizations that help those who have experienced loss after terror attacks will have their work cut out for them. “When an entire family is wiped out, what can one say?” Kit said. “Good people give me strength. People don’t always realize what they need. Sometimes, smiling and saying, ‘I am here for you’ is enough.”

The Jerusalem Post and OneFamily are working together to help support the victims of the Hamas massacre and the soldiers of Israel who have been drafted to ensure that it never happens again. 

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