One-year anniversary of Oct. 7 attacks arrives with lasting trauma for Israelis, American Jews: expert

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Jewish nonprofit director explains lasting trauma in Israeli life one year after Oct. 7

Dr. David Fox, a director at Chai Lifeline International, spoke to the lasting "traumatization" of Oct. 7 survivors and the families of victims, as well as the lingering impact on civilian life, one year after the attacks.

Life in Israel one year after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks is far from a return to normal, as one expert explained to Fox News Digital what it's like dealing with the psychological fallout of the massacre while living near an active war zone – and even the lasting consequences for American Jews 12 months later.

Dr. David Fox, director of crisis and trauma services for Chai Lifeline International, a Jewish nonprofit and network supporting families living with illness or loss, said he’s traveled to Israel multiple times over the last year to meet with hostages' families and consult with survivors' families on the ground. 

"I think Oct. 7 will remain seared into the consciousness of Jews and of Israelis," Fox told Fox News Digital. "It's sometimes just referred to as ‘the seventh’ or as ‘October.’ October is not an Israeli or Hebrew word, but that's what it's been called. So I don't think it will ever be forgotten as an infamous day of what has become an ongoing battle for survival."

The Los Angeles-based rabbi described to Fox News Digital how daily life in Israel remains uprooted: Tens of thousands of Israelis are internally displaced, and Israeli families must adjust as parents who were in the Army Reserves are tapped again for active duty. With a cease-fire and hostage release deal still yet to actualize, Fox also explained the lasting trauma and constant fear of another attack — especially in border areas. 

ISRAELI FAMILY AND CIVILIAN LIFE?

Fox said he spoke to one of the country’s most prominent infertility specialists who transitioned from his day-to-day life as a gynecologist and obstetrician back into military service.  

The doctor now spends his days crawling onto the battlefield to rescue soldiers who have been hit and carry them back to ambulances to be transported to hospitals. 

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"The families of those reservists who have now been activated and deployed, they may not see daddy for weeks or sometimes months at a time. Spouses may not see one another for a while… and there is that apprehension. Will he or will she return? So that has been a crisis for many individuals," Fox explained. "On the other hand, those who serve in the IDF and the armed forces, they do it with a strong sense of conviction that we're doing the right thing, and we're doing really what God wants, but we're doing what our families need us to be doing right now. So those unfortunate separations don't end up fragmenting the family." 

Heavy smoke billows from an Israeli air raid on the Lebanese southern border town of Khiam on Oct. 2, 2024. (Getty Images)

"But I believe in most situations, the children will look up to that parent who has to be away," Fox said. "They'll look up with love and admiration. But this has definitely been a change in what goes on on the ground, that family life has been changed." 

A heightened threat environment is especially palpable in moshavs, which are cooperative Jewish agricultural settlements in Israel. Fox cited a recent conversation with members of one moshav, which was "surrounded by villages which were hostile," where settlers could hear messages broadcast from prayer towers or minarets calling out for attacks against Jews. 

"Some of them are armed and many of them are not," Fox said of the Jewish residents. "The army and security guards may not always be available at this point to shelter, to protect civilians. So there is a feeling of fluidity. The situation is changing." 

Over the past year, Fox said Chai Lifeline worked to expand its crisis hotline to provide "around the clock" support, as well as Zoom counseling, trauma intervention and other materials to Israelis or people who had family in Israel who witnessed the horrors of Hamas terrorists slaughtering approximately 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, the rabbi said he observed another societal change among young Israelis "who are politically conscious" as they look at the "response or non-response of other countries, of the Red Cross or the United Nations" and are "rethinking their confidence in who we trust." 

Israeli soldiers stand guard in the Old City of Hebron, West Bank, on Sept. 14, 2024. (Mosab Shawer/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

"An ally who's with you in peace time, but who ignores you or turns against you in times of strife is not an ally," Fox said. 

"The world does not expect the Jews to fight back," he added. "The world does not expect a small country who has faced massacre and slaughter to get up and protect itself by going on the, let's say, the avenging offense. And we do have to face the condemnation of many of the sanctions of others. But I think a groundswell of understanding from still others that we are fighting to survive, and we are doing what any other country would do. If citizens were attacked and raped and mutilated and butchered, and their homes desecrated, I think we are doing what virtually any sovereign nation would do if its people were attacked." 

TENS OF THOUSANDS DISPLACED FROM BORDER COMMUNITIES?

The trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks, Fox said, has remained for Israeli civilians and the families of hostages, including those who are still held in Gaza and are subjected to deprivation and torture. 

Yet, Fox said there’s also a bolstered sense of support among the Israeli people in supporting each other as the Jewish state continues its war effort. 

"We know that there is a constant punctuation of the reactive grief by an intensification of horror and feeling terrorized," Fox told Fox News Digital. "The attitude of the Jewish people historically and of the Israeli nation since its inception has been to react to oppression by displays of resilience coming together." 

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The rabbi told Fox News Digital that he has been directly in touch with Israeli families who’ve retreated from their homes in the north along the Lebanon border amid the Israeli military’s escalating skirmishes and exchanges of rocket fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists, as well as people who have fled their homes in the south along the border with Hamas-controlled Gaza. Fox spoke to the continued need for intervention services, as people "out of familiar territory" have been finding "it’s very difficult to feel grounded emotionally and spiritually when you're not sure what's going to happen next, when you're not sure where to go." 

Relatives and friends mourn by the grave of Israeli soldier Eitan Itzhak Oster, killed in fighting in the northern border area with Lebanon, during his funeral at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on Oct. 2, 2024. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

"There are families uprooted from their homes, nothing to go back to. All their belongings vanished," Fox said. "But the country and its people, its blessed people, have absorbed those who have nowhere to go. And other communities have welcomed those in need of shelter. And we're finding ways to get them into schools with their children and to give them some type of financial support or even employment if that's needed." 

"There's also an upsurge in the principles that really have defined the Jewish religion in terms of loving kindness, charitable loss, compassion and caring for one another," the rabbi added. "So there is this resounding feeling that we're in this together. We're going to help each other. Nonetheless, there's traumatization."  

"There's the abject traumatization of those who were part of the targeted massacres, who still have the imprint of what they saw, what they heard, what they witnessed, and some of them what they endured physically and mentally themselves," Fox explained. "So there has been a definite need for trauma intervention services. We've been providing some of that." 

AMERICAN ANTISEMITISM ON THE RISE?

His work also extends to supporting Jewish Americans experiencing rising antisemitism in the United States. 

Anti-Israel protests reached a fever pitch last spring at U.S. college campuses. With the return of the fall semester and the Oct. 7 anniversary approaching, Fox said there’s a lot he unfortunately can’t control. 

"I think there's a lot we can't do," Fox said. "Despite the fact that we're offering support, we can't get away from the fact that there is a new fear in the air, and it's based on a credible threat. And how that will pan out in the course of time, whether the bigotry and the prejudice will skyrocket again or whether it will come down. I don't think any of us can predict." 

Fox also pointed to attrition, as more Jewish students opt to transfer to Jewish institutions and out of major elite American universities. He made a parallel with what happened in Germany leading up to the Second World War and noted that, in the present day, leadership at universities seem to "close their eyes" or "at times seem to condone" antisemitism, causing Jewish students and parents to no longer feel safe. 

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"We saw this in Germany in the 1930s, where professors were fired from their positions if they were Jewish and students were, if they were Jewish, might not be admitted into the medical school or into the graduate school. So we've seen this before. That was because of the political governing of the state of Germany. What we're seeing here is not coming from the White House," Fox said. "It's coming from other influences, other attractions. And the government or the police in some cases are just tolerating, and as I said earlier, at times, are condoning this. So it has some parallels, some echoes of pre-World War II."

"There is a sea of change, I believe, in the attitudes shown toward Jewish people. We didn't think it would happen in America," he added.