Israel and Gaza should be preparing for a tsunami of mental health crises

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 14, 2023

When responding to your citizens being slaughtered by terrorists is being protested, this world has gone insane.

Last week people in Israel were minding their own business when they were attacked, dragged out of their homes, gunned down at a music festival for peace, and children were decapitated. It has been reported that the terrorists were ordered to target schools to kill as many children as possible.

The people of Gaza did not order it but the terrorists running their country did. Israel responded by targeting places they knew were occupied by them and those places included being among civilians. Many of the innocent people have been killed in the process of killing the terrorists.

The people of Israel want to live in peace. The people of Gaza want to live in peace. Their leaders have to defend their people. So what is the answer when it is not an army against an army? No one knows.

Israeli people cannot allow what happened to them to be forgotten about because it was committed by terrorists. Yet the people of Gaza should not be punished for what the terrorists did. What's the answer?

No one knows what the right answer is unless it is finding a way for both to be able to live in peace but hatred has taken over too many. The terrorists are like well-armed bullies intimidating everyone else to the point where they fear standing up to them.  The terrorists are outnumbered but the citizens do not have the weapons to fight against them. What's the answer?

When you live in constant fear, can you heal from the terror you've already survived? How do you heal when the threat never ends? How do you heal when you've spent your entire life living with it? If you have #PTSD you don't have to wonder too hard because you know what the result can be like. For me, I was only able to heal from the worst that was done to me when the threat died. The only way for the people of Israel and Gaza to begin to heal is to have the threat to their lives die. The problem is hatred does not die. It spreads. It doesn't have to be allowed to spread unchallenged if people refuse to surrender to it. If they find enough hope for peace, they will refuse to give up on achieving it. Who can deliver it when both sides want vengeance?

This is happening in Ukraine too. We cannot forget about what they're going through. What happened here on September 11 only lasted a day but what if it kept on happening? We responded by starting a war in Afghanistan that lasted 20 years and another one in Iraq. Our military was responding with the rules of warfare while they were playing by their own rules. The terrorists did the act but the people of the nations paid the price. It was not military against the military but with terrorists living among the people. Our response did not work. How does the Israeli government think it will work in Gaza?

No matter how it ends, Israel and Gaza should be preparing for a tsunami of mental health crises that will vastly outnumber the number of wounded bodies.

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