For years, a quiet, almost subconscious thought had settled in my mind: missiles are harmful, sure, but less dangerous than the alternatives. Compared to terror attacks and the other bleeding traumas Israel has endured, a missile strike felt like a statistical event — something we knew how to absorb. And then last Sunday happened.
The missile that hit Beit Shemesh shattered that equation completely. With nine people killed and nearly sixty wounded, the event crossed every threshold of the imaginable. This reality crashed down exactly 100 meters from my home. In the first moments, inside a mamad — a reinforced safe room that every Israeli home is required to have — shaking from a deafening blast that resembled nothing like an object falling but rather a shockwave tearing through space, we were certain the impact was inside our building. Only when we stepped outside slowly and hesitantly did we discover the epicenter was farther away, a few houses down the street. And yet, our home looked as though it had suffered its own severe physical and psychological trauma: windows ripped from their frames, walls cracked, a blast wave of staggering force that's hard to wrap your head around.
Out of that wreckage, as the dust began to settle, a few new thoughts emerged in me — sober, rational reflections on how we cope with disaster.
1. The Darkly Amusing Paradox of Religious Thinking
I can't help but start with an anecdote that, in my eyes as a secular person who doesn't share this faith, contains something grimly amusing to the point of pain. The missile struck a synagogue and obliterated it. People who had been sheltering in the mamad beneath it were killed there. Rationally, you'd expect a safe room located directly under a house of God to enjoy "double protection" — physical and spiritual. That God would spare the place and those within it. Reality proved otherwise.
What's even more incomprehensible to me is the cognitive dissonance that develops afterward. While the synagogue lay in ruins and people had lost their lives, the discourse that surfaced focused on a single prayer shawl — a tallit — that remained intact among the rubble. The fact that people cling to a surviving piece of fabric as proof of divine providence, while human lives were lost in that very same spot, illustrates just how far religious thinking operates as a mechanism that simple human logic cannot contain.
2. The Passive Failure of Mental Health Response
When we were evacuated to hotels, I encountered another puzzling phenomenon. The lobby and common areas were teeming with psychologists, social workers, and representatives from volunteer organizations. They sat there on the couches, smiling with empathy, waiting for someone to approach and pour out their heart.
The truth is, this approach is completely disconnected from how the human psyche actually works during a crisis. A person who is wounded or in the grip of trauma tends to withdraw and shut down; the last thing they'll do is initiate contact with a total stranger just because that person wears a "social worker" badge. This setup may satisfy the system's rational resource-allocation needs, but it fails on a human and emotional level. When I eventually allowed myself to go over and talk, it felt partial and unsatisfying.
In my view, mental health professionals in these situations must adopt one of two proactive approaches:
- "Psychological triage": Just as an initial physical examination is performed, a short check-in conversation should be initiated with evacuees. Ask how they're doing, examine what's troubling them, and document it all in an orderly fashion — so the affected person feels their pain has been registered and validated, rather than evaporating into thin air.
- "Hallway psychology": This is a more demanding but essential approach — care professionals who simply move among the people naturally, strike up casual small talk, draw them out indirectly, and in doing so manage to identify distress in real time. Only through this kind of proactive engagement can you offer genuine help to those who need it — not just to those bold enough to walk up and ask.
3. From Managing Tasks to Managing People
The last insight concerns the bureaucratic system. On one hand, it was staggering to see the enormous support envelope that materialized immediately: donations, food, clothing, volunteers of every kind. But when it came to the most critical, most basic needs of my home — the system collapsed in on itself. No engineer showed up, the house remained without electricity, and coordinating with the insurance assessor was impossible.
Every call to some official ended with a referral to someone else, with the excuse: "That's not my responsibility."
In unprecedented extreme events, the system must shift direction: from subject-based responsibility to personal responsibility. Professionals need to work as case managers. Each one responsible for a set number of families, serving as the single node that connects them to every solution — engineer, assessor, or power company. When everyone is only responsible for their narrow slice in a chaotic situation unlike anything seen before, the real needs of the citizen simply fall through the cracks.
I don't know if these "two cents" of mine will help anyone, move them, or maybe just draw a bitter smile — but I felt the need to say them.
And to close, two very practical recommendations for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation:
First, talk to an AI. It's available, unbiased, thinks clearly, and serves as an enormous rational aid for offloading thoughts, processing information, and personal growth amid the chaos.
Second, get out, change your surroundings, do something. After a day and a half straight at the evacuation hotel, I felt like I was suffocating. It was physically and mentally hard to drag myself out of there, but I forced myself to go to a café just to break the routine. That moment — breathing fresh air outside the disaster zone — was critical to my sanity. I encourage you to do the same: get out, breathe, change your scenery. Don't let the mud swallow you whole.
When a missile forces you to rebuild your story from scratch, you realize that every life is a work of narrative engineering — whether you do it consciously or not.
