The Gaza border is quiet now. It’s hard to even imagine that two months ago Hamas was preparing for war with Israel, readying rockets in underground bunkers that lined its “Metro” system of tunnels spanning the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip.
Much of that arsenal, some 15,000 or more rockets, were being prepared for a conflict that would begin on May 10 with a salvo aimed at Jerusalem.
Leanne Manshari, a therapist and sex education supervisor at the Education Ministry, was concerned because she was preparing a pajama party sleep-over for one of her children. One of her children was also going to be in Jerusalem for the flag parade.
Two months later, she looks back and says the conflict didn’t surprise her. “We expect it in the back of our minds all the time, while living a normal and happy life here." She recalls the tensions up until Operation Guardian of the Walls began. “We know there will be a conflict, just as all Israelis know,” she says.
Manshari is one of many millions of Israelis who found themselves under rocket fire during the last war in which Hamas used massive barrages of rockets, more than 100 at a time, to saturate southern and central Israel. Hamas fired more than 4,000 rockets, sending thousands running for bunkers and safe rooms in each assault. The Iron Dome air defense system intercepted most of the rockets that would have impacted urban areas.
Nevertheless, dozens of rockets made it through and caused casualties. Even if they hadn’t impacted and harmed people, the interceptions and sirens have left a lasting trauma.
JUDITH SPANGLET, who has lived in Israel for decades and has seen the challenges people face after numerous conflicts with Hamas in Gaza, is a body-oriented psychotherapist. She has produced a book and a unique program for aiding people affected by conflict and trauma. Now she runs a program called Connections and Links: From Trauma to Resilience. Over a plate of fresh fruit and fizzy water on her balcony in Ashkelon, she discusses her experience in working with people suffering trauma such as PTSD and shell shock in Beersheba and in Tel Aviv.
Spanglet now uses the tools from the therapy she provided in the past to help people. She notes that not everyone who needs therapy can afford it or is willing to even admit they need help, “because they want to say they are strong. There are tools you can use to be grounded and people can calm themselves down and get rid of the energy stored when there is trauma. It can be their own trauma or someone else’s.”
She came to Israel when she was 19 years old and is now almost 70. “I grew up with [knowledge of] preventative medicine and if you try to prevent the trauma, if you build resilience, then they might not experience that event in such a traumatic way,” she said. “There are ways to strengthen the community and combine things, it’s not just one way.”
In 2008 she went to Sderot at the height of the rocket threat when the town was being emptied of its people. There was no Iron Dome in those days, only the “red alert.” Houses suffered impacts and people had to run for shelter with only 15 seconds to make it to safety.
Today, Sderot has new model homes and apartments, parks and playgrounds and even a small posh shopping center. It has pretty public shelters, painted so they are part of the fabric of the city. But in 2008 the bunkers were concrete slabs dropped in various places.
Spanglet recalls doing a research project back then about what kept people from leaving. She helped organize groups of women who came to sessions to learn about the tools they could use in the face of adversity as they suffer from the rockets. They focused on helping people cope through their bodies and mind. The project also developed a program for children.
Eventually, these programs became part of a network of Resilience Centers across the Gaza border communities affected by the conflict. There are now six of these centers, with the latest opened in Ashkelon.
TODAY ON her balcony in Ashkelon, the soft winds from the sea are a constant fan, keeping an otherwise hot city from being too hot in these early summer months. Ashkelon is pretty and modern, and people who call it home adore the city.
But the war was jarring for some; this is because the rockets are getting larger and stronger in their impacts. Hamas has shifted from when it used to target Sderot to targeting cities like Ashkelon. Some families here and in Sderot took their kids out of the city during the recent conflict.
“We have a program of 14 sessions and now they asked us to do it for the kindergartens. They wanted us to start in June, and it came right after Guardian of the Walls – and they asked me how to choose the kindergartens [to assist],” Spanglet said. She discusses the challenges facing children and also the parents who are concerned about raising kids under this threat.
Manshari has lived in Ashkelon since 2010 and brought her kids up here. They are used to the sirens and threats, but her youngest child has been more anxious after the recent operation, she says. Two days into it, she and her family left Ashkelon, only returning after the ceasefire.
She recalls the pajama party for one of her kids the first night of the war. It was surreal, she remarked. “There was a huge amount of rockets fired and this is the reality; you can’t even conceive, how can this be.”
“Everyone who lives in this reality is traumatized,” she says. “You need to survive, you do what you have to do. When we came back it was like everything came back to normal. I’m five minutes from the beachfront; we came back on Friday with the ceasefire and the next day we took a walk on the beach.”
Flags had been placed in areas where rockets had impacted. It showed the extent of the rockets that fell. “It’s scary. On the other hand I love Ashkelon and it’s a thriving city. I don’t want to be felt sorry for. People are happy and the city is developing really nicely. It’s packed here – the beach is great!”