Dawn broke over the detention facility in Damascus. Inside, dozens of Israeli soldiers who, on their last day in captivity, had a heated debate, almost imaginary, over the situation: whether to wash dishes before releasing them, or leave them dirty. Before a decision was made, they found themselves on a bus on the way to the airport.
In the center of the bus, by the window, sat Arik Avnery. With his gaze, he tried to capture the views of Damascus for the last time. He knew he wouldn't set foot there anymore. When the Red Cross plane got into the belly, he hurried to take a seat in the front row, to ensure that on landing, he would be the first passenger to disembark.
Descending from the bustling Lod airport is a great feature. "My eye was caught by the sign 'Welcome back, heroes of Israel.' I was sure that a sports delegation had arrived in Israel. Many people crowded around the plane, and I didn't see any of my relatives. I was sure my family wasn't alive," recalls Avnery, 71, then a 20-year-old soldier in the Air Force's electronic warfare unit, who was captured for eight months in the Yom Kippur War. He is now a senior clinical psychologist who has been treating prisoners and people coping with post-traumatic stress disorder for years.
Only after a few moments of searching, Avnery's brother pounced on him with hugs, and from a distance he located his parents, well-educated PAs, who were waiting patiently behind fences erected at the airport. "It was a huge excitement to see them, but to be honest, I didn't understand what the commotion around me meant. I didn't feel comfortable with her."
This gap, which Avnery describes between the silence of captivity and torture and the chaotic return, also applies to the current return of prisoners. "You have to keep them away from the hustle and bustle. They need a warm, strong, embracing family unit, not a festival."
What is the problem with the festival?
"Because after it comes a fall. For people who have been in the tunnels and asked for permission for every basic operation, the transition to a reality saturated with stimuli is difficult, challenging and frustrating. I don't remember fondly the media hype and general commotion around us captives, nor the extreme quiet and decline that followed. I remember after the rehearsal, my sister-in-law, who was murdered on October 7 along with three other members of my brother's family, told me that 'this festival won't be forever, you have to think about what you do with yourself next.' That's how I decided to study psychology."
IDF Spokesperson
The person who reinforces the gap thesis between the silence of captivity and the bustle of return is Dr. Idit Gutman from the School of Psychology at Tel Aviv University. "In captivity, there is usually no sunlight, the number of stimuli is limited, and there is no exposure to current events or to many masses of people. The people in captivity live in a kind of abscess, isolated from the rest of their psychological existence. Many times some said they tried not to think about the people close to them because it was too close. So they thought about the people at the bank, the technical arrangements.
"But when you come back, there's a shock of stimuli – people, lighting, cameras, and that's before we even talked about the interrogations they'll go through. This shock also explains what the study found: Prisoners feel fear before returning home. The fear is accompanied by a great sense of guilt - why didn't they run away or shout, how it happened to them in the first place, specifically to them. These things are objectively not true, but there is an inevitable tendency to engage with them, and then the repetition becomes frightening."
This confrontation is extremely complex. In the literature, there is talk of an initial stage of technical reference to repetition, almost superficial, a kind of emotional detachment. But what happens next?
"Only after they acclimatize can we begin to think of the event as something that is over. Then you can also start trying to understand what was lost, and look at things from a broader perspective. The difficulty here is not only that of those returning from captivity, but also of their relatives. Sometimes they encounter people who are different from those they knew before their captivity."
Be helpless
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian-Jewish psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who documented his life in the Nazi concentration camps in his book Man's Search for Meaning, opined that "a special virtue is in a person who cannot exist unless he looks to the future. It is the source of its salvation in the most difficult moments of its existence..." But sometimes the future is fraught with emotional complexity.
Dr. Idit Gutman, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
"Absurdly," explains Gutman, "often the difficult stage is not necessarily captivity, but rather liberation. Captivity is terrible, but it mobilizes strength because there is a need to deal with acute trauma. On the other hand, liberation has something more amorphous, unclear, and it introduces people to their previous lives, which have changed in the meantime, sometimes beyond recognition, as in the case of the October 7 prisoners."
"When I was studying for a bachelor's degree in psychology," Avnery continues, "one of my friends told me in my first year, 'You know, sometimes I miss captivity.' It really surprised me, but on the other hand - in captivity there is a certain certainty, a routine and clear agenda. In captivity, you don't have to make decisions."
"The whole experience of captivity is a regressive experience," reinforces psychologist Dr. David Senesh, who was captured by the Egyptian army in the Yom Kippur War. "You're being turned into a baby. In terms of your ability to control what happens, you are really helpless. Breaking the wind and limiting you totally. You're actually functioning on a childlike level, but you're still who you are, mentally and developmentally. Even an elderly person who returns from there, including the soldiers who will return from there, come from a very childlike, dependent, helpless position. Whether it's children or adults, the gap between captivity and freedom shakes the soul."
The goal is to try to bring them back to a world that will be clear to them, understandable.
"And it's a challenge because they're coming back to a completely different world. At the right time, help them understand what kind of world they have returned to – because most of them have lost homes, family and friends. They don't know anything about it, or they've been exposed to various manipulations. They need to be returned to the world very carefully, and this is critical in my opinion. When I came back, I put the pieces of the puzzle together in a few hours - I understood what happened, when and to whom. It was complicated and difficult, but it's nowhere near the state of affairs now."
Even those who are far from the line of fire still find it difficult to process things.
"And even more so those who were kidnapped. I think they are still far from digesting what happened."
How do you tell the captives who have repeated that their loved ones are gone?
Gutman: "It's complex, and there's no one right formula here. It depends on the age of the child, of course. In some cases, the older and more understanding the child, the more it is possible to clarify in clear words, not metaphors, the finality of death. The younger the child, the more basic the choice of words - 'there is no more', for example. Sometimes it is also made clear that it is not his fault or the fault of the parent, who did not want to leave him."
Grow, despite everything
The horrific events in the envelope, in which Arik Avnery's family members were murdered, took place exactly 50 years after the day he was captured. "It's just shocking, creepy," he says. He looks at events and identifies similarities between them. "I was on Mount Hermon for three days, and I told my parents that I was in the safest place in the world. Only later did it become clear, just as on 7 October, that the Syrians had accepted the plans for the Hermon bases, just as Hamas had plans for the surrounding communities. I remember the knocking on the door of the post to this day."
Redeemed in captivity, 1974, photo: Saar Yaakov, GPO
Over the years, he has indeed rehabilitated, but it seems that the struggle does not stop. I try to delve deeper into it and understand the internal process that prisoners go through upon release. "The return was characterized by great joy for me, and to this day I am of course happy to have returned, but there are complexities. 30 years ago I contracted a malignant disease that characterizes very old people and is characterized by excessive aging. Internal processes obviously have many factors, genetic and environmental. I had a supportive family, for example. Of course, there are also events in each person's personal history that affect them. But one thing is important and true for everyone - surveillance, psychological and social. Those returning from captivity can be seen as patients at risk, at least initially, and as such they need to be monitored. Not necessarily treatment, by the way.
"Everyone who returns from captivity will have their own complexity. Children were kidnapped to Gaza, there must have been adults who 'adopted' them in captivity, and were parental figures. When they return, it is not certain that the same characters will continue to accompany them. Some have parents, and others have lost their parents. I hope their caregivers will have a mapping to know how to touch on the theme of abandonment."
The abandonment you describe doesn't have to be objective.
"Even if the parents have not abandoned, the child does not always have an objective point of view on the matter. That is, even a dead parent is in many ways abandoning. It is reminiscent of the children of the Holocaust, and we can only hope for a positive continuation, just as some of the children of the Holocaust managed to build themselves in Israel and established beautiful families and beautiful businesses."
"Parents of children are a very painful point," Gutman explains. "If it's a parent who hasn't been able to protect the child, it could be a fracture in the family unit. But if there's a community and support agencies in captivity, and a parent can continue to be a parent, it can be a resilience factor."
David Senesh, Photo: None
In contrast to resilience, Gutman explains that a possible direction after returning from captivity is the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. On the one hand, it is important to remember that only about a third of those who have experienced a severe traumatic event will develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but a longitudinal study by Prof. Zehava Solomon of Tel Aviv University on prisoners of war from the Yom Kippur War showed that 43% of them suffered from depressive, anxious and post-traumatic symptoms, including flashbacks, emotional detachment, depression and nightmares.
"During captivity there are no nightmares, because waking is the nightmare. The nightmares can start when you get home," Gutman explains. "Nightmares are an attempt by the system to repair the fracture, to overwhelm it to some extent. And the hope is, even in therapy, that there will be movement in the nightmares, that they will improve over time.
"Some people also report anhedonia, an inability to enjoy things they loved. They feel that their vision of the future has disappeared. They don't feel the possibility of rethinking themselves as people who will live for years to come, do things, love and be happy. There's something about post-traumatic stress disorder that gets you stuck in the worst moment of your life."
Do we also see cases of post-traumatic growth?
"Absolutely, and hopefully that's what we'll see more. By the way, we as a society can help with this. Our job, as I said, is not to kick them, and that includes the media. We must give them the time, the professional accompaniment, so that they can return to us in the full sense of the word, after collecting the wounded parts.
"The people who have returned, in my view, should be treated as people in intensive care. They should be given time to acclimatize, to rise back up from the deep dive they were in, from the tunnels and from the parallel universe they experienced. It is important that it is not too quick and overwhelming, and it is important that we do not aggravate the difficulty. We took them out of the burning house, now we have to find the light again and make sure there are no infections. On a personal level, many people look at optimism and hope as a cliché, but optimism and hope were most correlated with personal resilience. Higher age is also correlated with resilience."
For some of them it will be very difficult to maintain optimism.
"On the one hand, we have inspiring stories of Holocaust survivors. On the other hand, captives experience, for example, great feelings of guilt. Some believe that they have done terrible things to survive, and if anyone knows about it, they really will not be able to go on living. Because of this misconception, they feel that they cannot share, that they need to stay away from the company of others, that there is something stained about them, something unclean, and this is a mistake. We can say today that in these cases it is the trauma that speaks, and these thoughts and feelings are irrational."
"Don't pass them from hand to hand"
Senesh explains that the time spent in captivity also has an impact on the continuation, depending on the number of incidents in captivity. "It's important how many vicissitudes and hiding places go through there. Incarceration in a closed place negatively affects the ability to cultivate hope, and to this is added an equally important question - whether they are together or separately, as has been said. In Egypt we were apart, but in the last two days I was joined by other prisoners and it felt like we had returned to Israel. The difference is huge . In that sense, everyone in captivity has their own course of pain."
"It's important to remember," Senesh explains, "that those who were taken prisoner usually fell at a breaking point, where one might think that the state ceased to exist. In captivity they also sold us this idea, and it could be similar to what is happening in current captivity. We also felt in captivity that the state was missing, and even after 50 years this thing does not pass. Some prisoners find it difficult to believe in human nature again, they find it difficult to restore trusting relationships with people after encountering evil, torture and violence.
"But what we went through is, to me, just a preview of what a child goes through in captivity. Meanings of trauma, abandonment, pain of not having an attachment figure - they are quite different at young ages. The foundation of basic trust in people is damaged. At home, it is very difficult to restore the trust that has disappeared, and they try to restore it through in-depth work, treatment. Distrust of the state can also spill over into therapy – meaning that the feeling of disappointment and betrayal can also rise for the caregivers, who are part of the state that has disappointed."
You, too, felt disappointed with the state and the systems that treated you. Do you believe things have changed?
"I would like to believe that lessons and insights were learned from working with us 50 years ago. Personally, but I also speak for many others, the Ministry of Defense has never given the feeling that it understands the particular type of POW trauma. I got the impression that he didn't understand this dynamic, and he hit, at least me, in very painful places. Today I hope that things will be handled more professionally. The security establishment is captive to a national ethos, in which captivity has no place, but those who return now are not military prisoners, and this is to their credit. Soldiers encounter harsh bureaucratic treatment, lack of trust in the system."
What, in your opinion, should the state do today in order to deal more correctly and humanely with those returning from captivity?
"First of all, I hope there will be someone who will integrate things. Citizens mobilize in an unusual way because there is a void. It seems to me that the whole system looks like post-trauma, and you can't treat PTSD when you're still in shock yourself. I would suggest to all those involved to take a very inclusive, humble, empathetic stance. It's important to be humble and understand that we don't understand what they went through.
"From a social point of view, it is important to see who surrounds the people who have returned from captivity, who is holding them. After all, for some or most of them, the feeling is that there is no state, no army, and no kibbutz, because it must have been wiped off the face of the earth. Some also have no family. So it's important for everyone to locate anchors, and work with them. I don't know what people will say in 50 years and if their trust will be restored."
"What is important," Avnery continues, "is that right from the beginning there will be one factor, one therapist, someone who will continue with them for a long time. Psychological, social accompaniment. In my time, this was not the case. I have some suspicion that the parties that will deal with them will not necessarily do so in the long run. These prisoners underwent unimaginable upheavals. The last thing they need is to keep moving them from hand to hand, from treatment to treatment.
Arik Avnery, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
"It's so important, and I say this both as a professional and as a redeemer in me. I looked at my history and found all kinds of inquiries, some of which don't even see a connection between my situation then and what I went through in captivity."
That's a tough challenge in itself. With all the guilt you feel, and the processing of events from captivity, also go and explain to the state and the responsible bodies that you suffered real suffering there, which affects you to this day. I don't want to imagine what will happen to people who will have to go through such a ordeal even today.
"It's hard, sometimes terrible, and I really hope they don't have to go through it. Sometimes the Ministry of Defense didn't approve the treatments I needed. These things must not happen now, either. There is also a need for congruence between the different systems and with the different families.
"It is also important to prepare the families for what they are going to go through, not to expose themselves too much to current events, to embrace those redeemed from captivity, and also to emphasize that abnormal reactions in normal situations are normal. Beyond that, it is important for caregivers to have a connection with the family. This is the basis for the success of treatment. The prisoners of captivity sometimes return differently from what we knew – and we must recognize this as well: that is, not to look for the people to whom we have become accustomed, but to adapt to the new situation, and not to be alarmed by it."
What else is important to do now?
Avnery: "We need to rehabilitate all of us – the captives, the society, the fracture in society. I think human forces are stronger than we know. When we marked the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, I said that I should rejoice at the 50 years I was given to live. Captivity sharpens the difference between good and evil, and more than that, it urges people to realize life and our potential and seek the good."
Gutman: "The abductees became famous against their will, with many erroneous beliefs that go along with it that it is impossible to recover and live a full life after traumas. If we, as a society, insist on defining them only by the difficult event they have undergone, we may interfere with their full liberation from it. I hope that we can unite in solidarity of one human tissue, to become one big family for them. It is also very important that the public climate is adapted – sensitive, inclusive and not heated."
Senesh: "The main motif is to give them back the feeling that they have come home. Even though the house no longer looks the way it does, and they are no longer the way they were. Therefore, the system must be tuned over time. Physically returning home is just the tip of the iceberg. They return to something unknown. That's the essence of working with PTSD – they don't go back to what was, but to what will be. And this is true both for the families who receive the prisoners, and for the prisoners themselves. They asked for help and she didn't come. This is a fracture that could be forever devastated and therefore requires the safe presence of the close and caring environment."
* * *
During his time in captivity, Arik Avnery suffered death threats, torture with beatings and electrocution, and endured many more hardships. After ten days in captivity, the Syrians took him and other soldiers off in an abandoned field. "I was sure they would kill us like in the Holocaust. When the blindfolds were taken off our heads, I opened my eyes and saw photographers from around the world. I realized that this was my insurance card, and you can see in the pictures how I try to catch each photographer's gaze. It was an anchor of hope for me, and in captivity, with all the difficulty, you have to find such footholds. Many times they are not realistic at all, but their strength lies in the fact that they give subjective hope and resilience to the captive."
Now it seems that the great challenge of the captives who are about to return is just that: to find anchors of hope and optimism in their new lives, points of grip in the suffering forced upon them, points of meaning, large and small, that will make sense of their new lives, just as Nietzsche described it and was also quoted by Viktor Frankl: "Whoever has something to live for can endure almost any how."
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