There’s no cookie-cutter solution for trauma - opinion

Upon arriving in Majdal Shams, the thick air of grief is undeniable. Everyone wears black. People stand close to one another, ready to place a steadying hand on a shoulder. IsraAID, the humanitarian aid organization that I work for, arrived with an emergency response team to offer our expertise in trauma support as the community begins its long road to recovery. As with everywhere we work, our job is to offer our resources to strengthen the local organizations and authorities that know their community best.

Saturday’s attack had the highest death toll of any single rocket strike since October 7. Twelve children and young people were killed on a soccer field in the Druze town in the Golan Heights. At least 30 were injured. Dozens more young people were present at the gruesome scene. There was a rocket shelter just a few feet away, but most couldn’t make it there in time. The ripple effects on the wider Druze community are only beginning to be apparent.

One man told me that there had been a rocket alert just a day before, but the community had started to get used to them. There had been a communal effort to get the kids back outside, to let them be kids again after so many months of fear and staying indoors. That’s why they decided to have a soccer tournament.

“They were everyone’s children,” he said. “Every member of this community lost a child that day.”

A local youth movement leader explained that their main concern was for the children and teens who witnessed the scene. He was worried about them closing themselves up at home with their grief. “We need to help them through this,” he said.

No one living here is a stranger to grief and trauma. Dozens of communities are deep into their own recovery process and struggle with ongoing uncertainty. Not least among them the kibbutzim and moshavim that were attacked on October 7, especially as many still await news of hostages. There was an enormous outpouring of empathy and communal grief from the entire country.

Empathy is crucial

That empathy is so important. It creates a basis for shared grief, shared hope, and for an exchange of information and road maps to recovery. But it also runs the risk of ignoring the specificity of this tragedy and the unique needs of Majdal Shams and the wider Druze community.

All the people I spoke to in Majdal Shams, rather than defining the attack as a national tragedy, spoke of a tragedy for the global Druze community. Many said that the Druze community is like a copper tray – if you strike it in one spot, it resonates across the whole surface.

While Israelis see this as another attack in a brutal war, for the Druze, this is the worst tragedy to strike their community in memory. For them, this is not just another iteration of our shared trauma, it is something new and horrible that affects the entire Druze community. This perspective – the uniqueness of Druze culture, religion, identity, and communal structures – is essential in any attempt to offer support.

THERE IS no cookie-cutter answer to trauma. There is no cure-all or one-size-fits-all solution. This is the most important lesson from our 20-plus years of supporting communities in crisis around the world. To create effective, sustainable programs that answer actual needs, we need to work closely with communities and let them lead us. We must strengthen existing communal structures, rather than coming from the outside and forcing our perspective.

This may seem more obvious when speaking about crises in places far from home. IsraAID has responded to over 100 emergencies in more than 65 different countries. It’s easy to understand that what works in Israeli communities may not be culturally appropriate or helpful in a displaced persons camp in South Sudan, Venezuelan refugee communities in Colombia, or tribal communities in Papua New Guinea – just a few places we have worked this year.

But even in Israel, where we have been working to support evacuated and vulnerable communities since October 8, no two communities are alike. Each kibbutz, moshav, and community needs a response that is custom-fit to its needs. Beginning in the hotels that hosted evacuees in the first months of the war, we quickly learned how important it was to work closely with local leadership to find the most effective solutions, and that we needed to be constantly reevaluating and adapting.

By creating schools and kindergartens, we saw that some communities needed such frameworks right away, while others needed more time before reintegrating children into activities. For some communities, it was most important to create a regional school, where kids could see their friends from other townships and regain a sense of belonging. For others, they had to be in the hotel because parents and children weren’t ready to be parted.

We identified additional communities that had different needs. We worked to provide healing retreats in Cyprus for survivors of the Supernova music festival. That community needed to process their trauma in a new setting, with other people who understood. We made that happen and ensured that they had follow-up treatment.

In the Bedouin community, we provided rocket shelters in unrecognized villages. More importantly, we partnered with local organizations to ensure that there was a support system around the new shelters, promoting communal ownership, and helping children deal with anxiety.

Today, we continue to accompany 10 evacuated communities as they navigate their exit from evacuation centers, move to temporary housing, and eventually back home. Even though there are many shared aspects to their experiences, each community is unique, and our responses must reflect that.

Across Israel, our shared grief can and should help us recognize our shared humanity. Our uniqueness and differences should guide us in creating the support structures that work for each community.

Majdal Shams and the entire Druze community have been dealt a devastating blow. Supporting them means supporting local leaders and offering our expertise as an additional resource at their disposal.

The writer is the coordinator of psychosocial support in emergencies, at IsraAID. She has been a part of many of the organization’s emergency missions, including in Israel, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine, Turkey, and more.