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Alan Flashman

Hostages return while survivors are hassled

Anyone want to go though an October 7th experience?

Here’s how the State of Israel will treat you.

You were recognized as a survivor of terror and given automatic disability for PTSD for a year. A YEAR? A reminder that the Ministry of Health wrote a report — that I translated here — on October 18, 2023 saying that time heals all, won’t be much PTSD. Based on nothing except wishful thinking.

After a year, you have to apply to renew your PTSD disability. Well, disability is a public entitlement, in this case created by an enormous failure of our government to protect its citizens. Indeed, among the hundreds of survivors I have tried to help, a major part of the emotional trauma was the “where is the army?” feeling of dismay and helplessness that so many felt hour after long hour — between 14 and 48 — in their “safe rooms.”

Now these same people have to ask, “Where is our state?” There is practically no public sector that will provide “documentation” of continued PTSD. The Kupot Holim? Nope. The Ministry of Health? Nope. You have to scramble after the scarce private psychiatrists and child psychiatrists, and often need a lawyer to help organize this. And all this because someone set the default that PTSD is gone — despite the nearly complete lack of adequate treatment — in a year unless proven otherwise.

I have been volunteering with the survivors of Kibbutz Kisufim after they moved temporarily into my hometown, Omer, near Beer Sheba. Today I was informed that someone in the Social Security system has complained that my reports are just not detailed enough. Someone decided that a psychiatrist has to document a minute to minute report of 18 hours under terrorist attack, and has to provide more details of the suffering, and — final straw — it has to be authenticated by the family physician. So the public sector not only does not provide care, but is being used cynically to obstruct care. Guess how long it will take for all the survivors to get to their overwhelmed family doctors?

I suppose the Social Security system is swamped, no surprise there. I suppose they assume all private doctors are corrupt. Also no surprise. But perhaps we could peak at the customer side, something Israel at its worst is scarcely ever inclined to do, and ask how this management is experienced by citizens whose lives were threatened and disrupted? Would you choose to have your citizens feel “attacked by Hamas and screwed by Netanyahu?”

Yes, Netanyahu. Someone has to be responsible, and that someone is elected to be just that. What decisions are being made about funding for the victims? What decisions were reached about how to manage the huge disabled population? Who made these decisions and is responsible for them? Is all this also being purposely hidden from the PM?

We are seeing Israel at her best in so many spheres today. The management of the disability entitlements for victims of October 7 is approaching a nadir of Israel at her worst.

About the Author
Alan Flashman was born in Foxborough, MA, and gained his BA from Columbia, MD from NYU, Pediatrics, Adult and Child Psychiatry specialties at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx, NY. He has practiced in Beer Sheba since 1983, and taught mental health at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University. Alan has edited readers on Therapeutic Communication with Children (2002) and Adolescents (2005) in Hebrew, translated Buber's I and Thou anew into Hebrew, and authored Losing It, an autobiography, and From Protection to Passover. He recently published two summary works of his clinical experience (both 2022) Family Therapies for the 21st Century and Mental Health in Pediatrics and a short novel in Hebrew "NO WAY!" about the abuses of "parental alienation" in Israel.
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