"'There is a raid' are the two words that every observer in the envelope fears most, we prepare for it from the first second on the job, but nothing prepares you for the moment it happens," says Michal (not her real name), 20, an observer at Kissufim outpost.
Observer Roni Eshel, who served at the Nahal Oz base and lost contact with her
Saturday, 7.10, Michal was on duty as a lookout on the fence, with a clear mission: to identify any movement on the fence, and to warn. But that day, when she lost dozens of her friends after terrorists suddenly infiltrated the base, turned out differently than she had imagined, or could have imagined. In the early hours of the morning, the terrorists who broke into the base fired and shot down the cameras, and the observers were forced to find a hiding place and stay there for long hours of uncertainty, hearing from the outside the chaos of their comrades' screams, alongside the voices of terrorists.
By the end of the day, the surviving testimonies of the spotters began to pour in, and the Israeli public was exposed to the magnitude of the horror. For example, an observer described the incident in a post on social media: "We were all told to abandon positions and stand behind the observation posts. Hide, just hide.
"At first there was Golani's team and very quickly they were all wiped out, just killed one after the other [...] We were like that from 23:00 in the morning until about <>:<> P.M. Because our electricity went out, there was no air conditioner, no air, we died of heat, I peed into a glass and into a bin twice [...] I hid in a drawer, lay down in it, I was afraid for my life because the doors opened and the terrorists took over the entire operations room, and there were many dead and many wounded people shouting at us, 'My friend was killed, my friend died in my hands.'"
Yael (not her real name), another observer from Kissufim, was also on duty. "I looked at the cameras and it was the scariest thing I've ever seen," she tells Shabbat. "There were vans, motorcycles, terrorists in a quantity I never thought I would see. They just ran towards the residents of the envelope.
"As soon as we saw that they were too close, we abandoned and hid, we said Shema Yisrael and all that went through my mind was what goes through my mother's mind when she sees the news and doesn't hear from me. Comrades from the base started entering the war room wounded, everything filled with blood, and I just went in to man the post. At a certain point it became irrelevant, there were so many terrorists who entered the kibbutz that it was already clear that it could not be under our control.
Yael (not his real name): "There were vans, motorcycles, terrorists in a quantity I had never seen before. They just ran towards the residents of the envelope. As soon as we saw that they were too close, we abandoned and hid, we said Shema Yisrael and all that went through my mind was what was going through my mother's mind."
"Behind me I heard friends shouting that their friends had died in front of their eyes, the camera fell and then I abandoned the post again, because there was nothing I could do. So many of my friends were wounded around me, the entire floor of the war room was filled with blood, there was no air conditioning, water or food, the terrorists took over the base, and we tried to stop them with cupboards we had placed in front of the door. We sat like that for 16 hours, until a rescue force arrived."
The explosion of the "see-shoot" system on the Gaza border,
Traumatic service
Initially, public criticism of the work of the observers was harsh. The question of "where were they?" was repeatedly thrown around the web. As the hours ticked by and the picture began to clear, criticism was replaced by compassion. Still, for those who were observers in the past, the criticism heard flooded the forgotten.
"I thought I had a traumatic service, it turns out it could be worse," says Gili Yuval, 39, who was an observer at Kissufim post between 2003 and 2005, including during the disengagement plan. Following the recent events, she and other companies established the WhatsApp group "Observers for Observers." "As an observer, you direct forces in the field, tanks, fighters. You physically see the terrorists and hear the shooting. Once an operations officer told me that we are as professional as a chief of staff, with the poison of novices, which is the best thing that can be said about us. It's a very significant role, but it suffers from a problematic image, especially today."
In what respect?
"At the beginning of the incident, there was a lot of discourse online from people who didn't understand how it happened, and blamed the observers. In my feeling, the public image of observers is of girls sitting in front of the screen and not familiar with the area, and many times they are blamed for events over which they have no real control. I myself witnessed an incident in which soldiers entered the war room and told the observer, 'You were on duty when my friend was killed, it's your fault.' It's a terrible and wrong feeling."
Gili Yuval. Established a WhatsApp group for observers, photo: Yoav Pirecsky
And on this, according to Yuval, another layer was found. One that has to do with the potential mental damage. "People think the spotters are just sitting in front of the cameras while the soldiers are in ambush, but they undergo secondary trauma. I, for example, witnessed the infiltration of terrorists on duty. I saw them coming, I heard the soldiers shouting over the radio that they were shooting at the post, I heard a soldier shouting that he had a hold on his weapon, and then it was quiet. An observer told me that she saw a dog barking, and when she looked to see what it was barking about, she recognized a terrorist. We see crazy things.
"The whole service, I was afraid that this thing would screw up my mind. The reason we established this group, which is ultimately a support group, is because female soldiers started approaching me and telling their stories, and all we had to offer was a listening ear. We wanted to be like older sisters, to know that they were part of a family and that we spoke the same language."
Kissufim post on the Gaza border. A base that is like a second home, photo: AP
"Every time something happens, they blame the observer straight away, they ask how she didn't see," says Vicki Saker, 25, who served in the Gaza envelope as an observer from 2017 to 2019. "But when you dig deeper and investigate the cases, you discover that things are complex. Even in the events of October 7, they were bombed by all means, they could not identify what was happening."
Vicky Saker: "Kissufim was my home. You have to understand, being an observer is a role that enters the heart. You learn the decree from scratch. I know every tree, every house. The shifts are not simple and you need to be on peak alert. The feeling is that everything rises and falls on the observer."
Saker also set up a WhatsApp support group, which was immediately accessed by hundreds of past and present observers. Eventually, the two groups reunited, and the horror stories never stop flowing. "When I heard about the events, I understood that they needed to be helped. I've been to this place, longing. This base was my home. And you have to understand, being an observer is a role that enters the heart. You go through three months of training, and then you learn the cut from scratch. I know every tree, every house.
"The shifts are not simple and you have to be on peak alert, because you have to identify any approach to the fence. The feeling is that everything rises and falls on the observer, and this responsibility harnesses you even more to the role. On Saturday I couldn't stop thinking about them, I couldn't imagine what they were going through, and then we set up the group so that the girls could tell what they were going through. The goal was not to dig into it, but to send encouragement and kind words, but then they began to vent, and difficult testimonies began to accumulate."
"I was just thinking about the parents"
Michal, an observer at Kissufim outpost, also joined the WhatsApp support groups. There she reenacted the morning of October 7. "I got off my shift at four in the morning, and I woke up at <>:<> when the sound of a missile landing near my room," she tells Shabbat what happened. "I ran to the shelter and got a phone call saying there was a raid in the entire sector, and that I had to get to the war room."
And what was going through your mind in those moments?
"I couldn't stop thinking about my parents, who were going crazy with worry, and in the process I started running the scariest run I've ever run. I felt like I was fleeing for my life, I arrived at the war room in my pajamas, my friends were sitting there shaking. They all hid behind lockers, extremely frightened.
"I fainted from the pressure and my friend held me from behind and gave me water. At a certain point, we started doing a tourniquet for the wounded soldiers who entered the war room, shooting and explosions from outside. Fighters left and did not return, those who returned returned wounded. My phone, the only one with reception at the base, was lying outside covered in blood.
Michal (pseudonym): "There was a power outage, there was no water, there was no light. Suddenly, a fire alarm went off, everywhere people were bleeding and we were outside hearing terrorists speaking in Arabic. Then reinforcements came, there were shots fired and we didn't know if they were terrorists or soldiers."
"We passed it between our friends and lied to our parents that we were okay, so they wouldn't worry. In the end, we were left with seven other fighters, the only ones who survived. There was a power outage, no water, no light. Suddenly, a fire alarm went off, everywhere people were bleeding and we were outside hearing terrorists speaking in Arabic. Then reinforcements came, there were shots fired and we didn't know if they were terrorists or soldiers.
"Suddenly, someone came and took us out, and we left the base for the scariest walk I've ever had. I closed my eyes, didn't look at what was happening at the base because there were a lot of bodies there. I just wanted to get on the bus."
Yuli (not her real name), an observer at the Kissufim outpost, was also on duty when the Red Alert went off. "At 6:30 it started. There was red paint and incessant, deafening booms. It all happened in seconds. And suddenly we saw dozens of terrorists, I couldn't count. Motorcycles, a tractor that breaks through the fence, followed by vans. I saw an explosion, I was sure the air force was attacking, but then I realized that I had made a mistake, that the explosion came from them, from the terrorists, in order to breach the fence.
"The camera went down, I was on the phones, and then the phones came from citizens looking for their relatives from the party. The fighters who had just been with us in the operations room were called to Shag Gan to get a picture of the situation, because the connection had fallen, and there they were hit by a mortar shell and they no longer returned. The electricity went out, the generator fell, the electric door of the war room opened. There was nothing we could do."
Those observers who survived these moments, describe them very graphically. Repetitive, quick. Going into detail. It's like repeating what happened over and over again, when the pictures don't leave their heads.
"My base turned from my second home into a cemetery," says Noa (not her real name), an observer from Kissufim. "At six o'clock in the morning I woke up from booms I had never heard before, and the girls sitting on shift were screaming that there was a raid from every direction. I called everyone to the war room, and then on the way we saw rockets exploding very close to us. We saw that they had sniped at all the positions, and there were no cameras anymore. We hid in the war room with the battalion sergeant's wife and his eight-month-old baby daughter, and we all have to pretend that everything is okay, so as not to stress the baby.
"In my heart I thought these were my last minutes of life and I urinated on myself, and in the process the baby couldn't stop screaming. At night, after hours, Egoz came to rescue us, after half their crew had been wiped out there. And from there we started walking, from the war room out, the longest seven minutes I've ever had. The whole base is the bodies of my friends, with the smell of corpses, and we have to walk in two columns, quietly, we must not utter a word."
"Need mental help"
"The girls who survived, like all the survivors of the October 7 events at all locations, need initial emotional help and treatment as close as possible to the event, in order to reduce post-traumatic symptoms," says Iris Alter Lieberman, 36, a social worker who served as an observer in Qalqilya and as a sergeant in the observation room in Tulkarm from 2005 to 2007. "Usually, these cases will be accompanied by 'survivor's guilt' (a syndrome in which survivors of life-threatening trauma experience feelings of guilt for their survival, B.A., M.S.). This is a feeling that almost all PTSD victims feel when they look back at their behavior during the traumatic event."
As a professional, Iris calls for emotional help to be given to all the soldiers who were present at these events, and not to leave them without help. "The work of the observer is Sisyphean, repetitive and abrasive, and the greatest difficulty lies precisely within the repetition – to maintain high alertness, to be the eyes from above of the soldiers in the field. Every observer knows her scanning area like the back of her hand, it's not a cliché, even if she is woken from sleep she will be able to describe the route of the fence, the arrangements of stones and the bends in the dirt road of her territory.
Observer at the Zarit outpost. The eyes of the country, photo: Ancho Ghosh - Gini
"Anything I didn't see yesterday in the scan, and today I did, raises a question and will bring an observer to warn. From the stories that came out, it appears that the observers warned at the moments of infiltration and did everything they could, until they blew up their camera in the field and infiltrated the base, and from there on everything that happened sounded like an ongoing horror film and trauma of unimaginable proportions."
Traumatic exposure
Dr. Assaf Caspi, a psychiatrist and deputy director of the psychiatric division at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, talks about the emotional involvement of the observers. "Today we no longer talk in terms of secondary trauma," he says.
"Either there's trauma or there's no trauma. In the past, psychiatric classification defined trauma as a condition that arises after a person was in danger to their physical or mental well-being, or someone next to them was in such a situation. But the definition has expanded, giving room to a person's subjectivity and feelings, so that even someone who has not been directly exposed to trauma can be considered to have experienced trauma. In the case of the observers, this is certainly relevant, because the emotional involvement of the observers, even if they are in front of computers, is high."
In what respect?
"They don't see a historical war movie. They are emotionally involved, personally know some of the people they see on screen, and have a heavy responsibility for what happens in front of their eyes. It is impossible to separate and say that because it is on the screen there is an emotional disconnect. Therefore, even what these observers experienced on Shabbat is a difficult experience of helplessness. The realization that they are taking part in a very large event, and cannot do anything about it because the system is not working properly, is a very difficult feeling that has long-term effects. And we also have to remember the girls who were not there, but went home to sit. They, too, are at risk of trauma. After all, they know what their friends went through and they couldn't do anything about it. Therefore, it is very important to provide a family support system, and to provide professional help even remotely."
Dr. Assaf Caspi: "The observers don't see a historical war film, and you can't say that because it's on the screen there's an emotional disconnect here. The understanding that they are taking part and being emotionally involved in a very big event, and can't do anything about it, puts them at risk of trauma."
"The trauma can be likened to a stone thrown in a water passage, drawing the impact through the ripples," says Israel Prize laureate Zehava Solomon, professor emerita at Tel Aviv University's School of Social Work and Lieutenant Colonel (res.), who previously served as head of the research branch in the IDF's Department of Mental Health. "Anyone who is on the front line, and whose life is a direct threat, is extremely vulnerable. But even those who watch shocking and traumatic events, such as those observers, and cannot take any action to help those who are harmed, are inevitably at high risk."
According to Solomon, trauma and the feeling of helplessness are compounded by a sense of functional failure. "The role of observers is to warn, and here they couldn't do that. So beyond vulnerability in the face of a very great danger, there may be a sense of functional failure, whether imagined or real. People with responsibility, who have a role and fail to fulfill it, experience a sense of failure that can lead to the development of shell shock."
Prof. Zehava Solomon: "The observers could not warn, and here a sense of functional failure may arise, whether imagined or real. People with responsibilities, and a role they can't fill, experience a sense of failure that can lead to shell shock."
And what do we do from that point when it happened? Do those observers have to come back and deal with these sights every day?
"Intuitively, you might think that if someone gets burned, it would be better to keep them away from the source of the fire, but that's not necessarily true for everyone. During my service in the IDF's mental health department, we examined a common doctrine whose principle was not to cut off soldiers from the environment in which they were wounded, but to return them to that environment, with the help of the unit and the commanders. We found that even after twenty years, those who were returned to the front were in good condition and the treatment helped them. On the other hand, there are situations in which a person says, 'My strength is exhausted, I can't do it anymore,' and that's the kind of thing that needs to be respected.
"If any of the observers who attended the event say that she no longer wants to return to this place, I have reason to assume, based on my familiarity with the mental health system, that no one will oblige her to do so. I am sure that they will conduct a screening process in which they will find out if the girls want and can return, and accordingly they will determine the continuation, with each case here on its own merits."
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us