Trauma specialist Mooli Lahad aids thousands of evacuees

The center is in Kiryat Shmona, mere kilometers from the Lebanese border, in an area now declared a military zone whose inhabitants have been ordered to evacuate.

How has Mooli Lahad been helping evacuees?

“We are spread like seeds in the wind,” says Lahad. The seeds have taken root, and Lahad’s team has grown into a far-reaching help network for the thousands of distressed evacuees. “Israel is facing the most difficult period in its history,” says Lahad. 

The organization filled a critical gap in the government’s response to the crisis. 

“Besides talking and making havoc, the government hasn’t done almost anything for these people,” says Lahad. “The government originally allocated six shekels per person per year for our work. We are struggling and juggling to cover these projects.”

The program’s operational costs run to NIS 800,000 monthly, primarily covered by donors. 

“I don’t know how long the donors will feel they need to cover for the Israeli government,” he adds.

Lahad’s research has led to the BASIC Ph Model, a groundbreaking framework for understanding and leveraging human coping mechanisms. This model has been embraced globally, with hundreds of thousands of practitioners. With a prolific output of 35 books and dual doctorates in psychology and human and life sciences, Lahad has significantly contributed to understanding trauma and resilience. He identified people’s natural coping mechanisms and divided them into six categories. Facilitators trained in the method help traumatized individuals recognize the categories that best enable them to regain a sense of control of their lives. 

The center’s current mission in Israel is threefold: build leadership to help the evacuees take responsibility for themselves; create healthy daily routines; and provide one-on-one and group therapy for those who need it.

“We can operate very quickly,” says Yiftach Benbenishti, the center’s CEO. “We have tens of thousands of professionals that we have trained, and we know very quickly to call for action. They are working 18-hour days.”

Dorit Elmaliach had already evacuated her home in Kibbutz Snir in the North when she got the emergency call from Benbenishti. She was once the CEO and now coordinates the nationwide network for the evacuees. 

“It’s not my responsibility to ensure there is a towel in every hotel room, but I am responsible for finding psychosocial solutions for their needs,” she says. “We hired social workers to be a heart and a soul, to listen to them.” 

The evolving nature of the crisis necessitates flexibility and creativity, she says.

“At first, it was fear that the same thing would happen in the North as in the South,” she says. “Then, it was uncertainty and a sense of not belonging. People are not working, so they get bored, and that can create violence, alcoholism, and sexual abuse. To deal with trauma, one needs professionals who have been trained for it. It’s like a general practitioner as opposed to a surgeon. This is our specialty.” 

Ahuva Lipman, a retired social worker from Kiryat Shmona, received a call from Lahad’s staff right after October 7. 

“When do you need me?” she asked.

“Yesterday.” 

She now coordinates health professionals working with 70 hotels in Tel Aviv, responsible for some 4,000 evacuees.

“In the beginning, there was panic. People didn’t understand what was going on. They were in shock. After three months, people are feeling suffocated in the hotel. They want to return home to their garden, friends, neighbors, and grocery store. A hotel is cold and impersonal. It takes time to create a community.”

On a recent afternoon at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Tel Aviv, a group of women gathered for a knitting event in one of the meeting rooms that earlier that day had served as a fully equipped kindergarten for evacuated children. The towering skyline of Tel Aviv’s high-rises was visible through the many windows. The colorful wool was donated, and the idea was for the women to knit items such as woolen hats for soldiers or soft comfort dolls for children as a way of giving back.

The women sat in a circle.

“We are frustrated, and the uncertainty is suffocating us,” said a teacher from Sderot, a town in southern Israel near the Gaza border, while knitting a small bag in light-colored wool. “Nobody knows to give us any answers. Are we returning home? When? So, in the meantime, we are here, and I can’t fall asleep at night.”

She meets weekly, free of charge, with a social worker for a personal session.

“I feel like I’m in a golden cage,” said a woman from Kiryat Shmona, a town near the border with Lebanon.

Although the women are from opposite ends of Israel, a sense of community and bonds have formed after four months in the same hotel, sharing the same fate.

“We will stay friends after we return home,” said the teacher. The two women hugged.

One of Lahad’s innovations is his unique “cascade method,” a training model that amplifies the impact of his method by requiring professionals who receive the training free of charge to commit to training 20 others. Thus the method grows in ever-widening circles into what Lahad calls “islands of resiliency.” 

“My center’s philosophy is generosity: Give, and one day you will receive. Don’t ask for an immediate reward.”

Lahad and his team took time from the events in Israel to fly to Warsaw, Poland, for several days for the graduation ceremony of more than 100 mental health professionals who had undergone training to work with Ukrainian refugees.

After she took the training, Iga Pietrusinska, 36, a Warsaw psychologist whose foundation partners with UNICEF, designed a curriculum for Polish teachers. 

“The training made a great impression on us because it’s very new; it puts things into context and simplifies intervention,” she says. “It gives you tools to work with patients. People under stress can feel better instantly if you know what coping mechanism to suggest,” she explains. “The silver lining is that the training we provide to help the education system is also beneficial for Polish kids, and it’s building the overall resilience of the two nations that are living together, the Polish and Ukrainian, to make us more resilient as a people.” 

Khaleda Naseer, an Afghani refugee in Poland now an English teacher at the Janusz Korczak School, says she still suffers trauma from the Russian bombardments during her childhood. 

“I feel quite emotional when I talk about war,” she says. “For me, no one is a winner unless it’s the weapon factories. Otherwise, we are all human. Geographical borders and religions should not separate us. I’m happy to be equipped with such a brilliant certificate, which will enable me to be helpful to other people.”

Grief and bereavement have no borders, says Lahad. “How you express them may be different. For example, in the East, they don’t have the words for it in their vocabulary, which is not to say they don’t suffer.” 

Lahad has intimate, first-hand experience with trauma. At age 39, he was severely injured in a car accident, hospitalized for seven months, and lost his left foot. Some nine years later, his first wife died of cancer, and his son, Omri, on a post-army trip in South America, was bitten by a snake in the Amazon jungle; his body was found a month later. 

“My life has not been a bed of roses,” says Lahad. “When Ormi died, I told people my motto is that we must organize happy events, but troubles come on their own.”

Observing Israeli society during this crisis, Lahad has come to several conclusions. 

“One obvious thing in Israel is the immense volunteerism and desire to help each other,” he says. “In the current situation, we saw it even more so because there was such a void from the government. The social system and civic society stepped in. Strangers opened their homes for people to stay in as a haven.”

He says that Jewish tradition plays a role in Israel’s resiliency and ability to bounce back from trauma. 

“Because we feel like a fortress in this crazy neighborhood, we’re very clear that if we don’t support each other, we will find it difficult, if not impossible, to survive. All my research over the years points to the fact that Israel has always managed to recover. 

“Other places have fallen apart, but we recover. After what we went through 80 years ago, we established our state. We don’t have another one.

“It moves me each time to say, but not many people remember, that we are a miracle and that there is no other like it in human history – a people who, after 2,000 years, returned to its land with the same identity and resurrected its language.”■