How believers are responding to trauma in Israel

JERUSALEM—A local organization has opened a center in Israel that will provide professional counseling and mental health care to help deal with the wave of PTSD that is expected to flood the country in the coming years. 

The CBN Israel Community Support and Resilience Center was officially dedicated last month.

“An important mission of the center is to alleviate the burden on the mental health care system which has been overwhelmed,” said Yonatan Almeida, a psychologist who serves as the center’s director.

The Christian Broadcasting Network is an Evangelical media organization known for the 700 Club and Regent University in Virginia. In Jerusalem, CBN Israel is comprised of a news bureau and a humanitarian outreach that assists the needy – from Holocaust survivors and victims of terror to new immigrants and the Arab sector. 

The Community Support and Resilience Center formalizes and expands CBN Israel’s existing work with a curated network of believing therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors who have been instrumental in the organization’s humanitarian work. 

The timing for the center’s opening is critical. After the Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, 2023, in which some 1,100 people were killed and 250 abducted into Gaza, reports emerged of massacres, rapes and torture by the terrorists. The ongoing war has resulted in nearly 500 soldiers killed and tens of thousands dead in Gaza – and wars within this war, including the 12-day clash with Iran in June.

All of this – and without a clear end in sight – means the healing process cannot begin. 

“If we can compare trauma to a wound, this is an open lesion that is getting injured over and over again,” Almeida said. “The event itself hasn’t ended and no one knows when it is going to end. That destroys hope.”

The Community Support and Resilience Center, based in a Jerusalem suburb, will act as a frontline for Christian and Messianic believers, serving as both a hub for training and equipping therapists and as a referral system for people who want treatment.

Arik Pelled, CBN Israel director of project initiatives, explained that creating this database of Christian and Messianic therapists enables the center to best match clients with suitable caregivers according to need and language and, possibly, provide subsidies for treatment.

“We want to work to reduce stress, empower and impart practical tools for processing difficult experiences with the aim of building sustainable personal and community resilience based on the local culture, our values and our faith,” Pelled said. 

This type of work had begun even before the center was built. Immediately after the war started, CBN Israel hosted a workshop on EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy. Earlier this month, Olya Zaporozhets, Ph.D., a professor in psychology at Regent University, led a workshop for Russian-speaking therapists on trauma counseling methods she uses in Ukraine – the third of its sort in the past year.

Drawing together believers in the field of mental health from around the country represents a significant milestone, said Ruthy van Duijvendijk, a clinical social worker for 15 years, treating individuals, families and couples. 

“We are spread out around the country and there was no organization that united us,” she said. “So this is the first time that there is an organization that brings us all together – all the therapists and all kinds of therapists. There are a lot of needs and this is answering the needs of the Body of Messiah.”

CRUELTY, SUDDENNESS OF OCT. 7 COMPOUNDED TRAUMA

Van Duijvendijk noted a particular urgency since the war began. 

“Most of the people can manage it very well, but because it's so long, it has become a chronic situation. That’s why we see the stress consequences piled up,” she said. “What I realized, especially among couples and families, the war is a source of stress. It can be an emotional stress, it can be a functional stress.” 

Therapists from the center are also counseling hostages’ families.

“I’m seeing that family members of the hostages, even distant relatives, cannot get out of this cycle of trauma,” Almeida said.

As of the center’s opening, 50 hostages are still being held in Gaza.

The cruelty and suddenness of the atrocities, along with the high number of victims from Oct. 7, have compounded the trauma.

“There is also a difference in the depth of the wounds,” Almeida noted. “You can see it reflected in the soldiers that are committing suicide. During regular military service, a soldier might see one or two of his comrades killed. But this time, soldiers and first responders saw hundreds of deaths and very different types of injuries. This wasn’t a car accident and not a normal murder with a weapon.”

“There is a pervasive feeling of a lack of answers,” he said. “No one expected something like this could happen to us. We have an image that we are a strong people, we are a strong army. All of these beliefs were shattered. The army, the police – it didn’t take them minutes to respond, it took hours.”

CBN Israel’s center will attempt to do its part to bring healing amid such overwhelming challenges. 

“We can integrate our faith and help our own people view mental health as and receive professional help as a blessing from the Lord,” he said.