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On October 7, the mental health officer of the Southern Command, Major Lior Torhansky, was at her home in Shadi Avraham in the Shalom region, not far from the border of the Gaza Strip. the house," she recalls.
"My eldest daughter, 8.5 years old, and my husband are sleeping. While I went to make coffee, suddenly I hear a rocket launch, and I say to myself: 'What's the matter?'
I thought it was a mistake, sometimes it happens that they have such a wrong one...".
A few moments after she called her children to the emergency room, she already realized that this was a bigger event. "The excitement was crazy.
My little one, which doesn't suit her the most, went under the bed.
I turned up the music in the room so the kids wouldn't hear the noise outside.
It worked."
A short time later they left the MMD to get the mobile phones there, and catch up on what was happening outside, because the launches went on and on.
According to her, it quickly became clear to them that terrorists had infiltrated the area.
"We started receiving messages from the emergency room. My husband went out to get a weapon and fight with them. We divided roles, he goes out to fight - I look after the children. He was close to the Rabbinate all day.
I remember when he told me: 'If a few terrorists come, it's fine, if dozens come, it's a different story,'" she says.
While looking after her children alone, Lior didn't waste a single unnecessary moment, and took up her duties. "At about 07:00 I realized what It happens, and I talked to my veteran, who was jumped. I gave instructions. Even though no one asked me, I jumped reservists," she says.
Major Lior Torhansky/IDF spokesman
The terror and anxiety that the terrorists were on her doorstep did not let her down: "We heard gunshots really close, which we are not used to hearing. There was a certain stage when I thought it was over. I was sure that the terrorists were already outside the house. I put up with it."
She tried to call her husband, but he did not answer.
"The children were quiet."
And despite that all the time, when she was receptive, Lior made sure to organize her teams.
"At one point I asked myself: 'Am I really messing with my reservists when I'm going to die?'
On the other hand, it's something that has kept me really well," she admits.
"I think that I was in my life's duties. Also as a mother. There is no more important role than this: to look after your children and as a commander of the Southern Command"
. Preparing the citizens in the besieged houses, that a secure operation will be carried out to rescue them from the area.
"It was stressful to receive this message. It created even more pressure," says Lior.
"My husband explained to me that it is difficult for the standby class to fight knowing that their families are at home. At 18:00 they started to take us out.
"I got in the car, we drove in a convoy.
We were escorted with drawn weapons up to a certain point, where the forces accompanying us were replaced.
While her husband returned to Shadi Avraham, we went to Kfar Oriya, about three hours' drive from home, and at that time there were alarms.
A nightmarish trip."
It wasn't until 10:00 p.m., when they reached their destination, that Lior passed a TV and saw 'about 150 dead'. She couldn't believe it. "I didn't think there was fighting in the settlements.
I didn't imagine such a drama." The next morning she put on a uniform and arrived at the command. "Since then I have been at war."
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No one prepared the Kabanim for such difficult events. The Gaza border in the morning of October 7/Flash 90, Abed Rahim Khatib
The mental health officer of the Southern Command explains that no scenario prepared them for such difficult events of murder, rape, destruction, occupation of settlements, and horrors deep within the territory of the State of Israel.
"There is no such scenario. My officers arrived at the area already on Saturday, and began to respond.
Teams to handle combat reactions have started work.
Because there were still terrorists in the field, they could not reach the Gaza Division, so they opened offices in the Yemen field."
The shock that gripped the entire country accelerated the recruitment of mental health officers in the reserves and the various therapists in the mental health system. "Most of them were in Operation Rock Ethan for more than fifty days.
They arrived before anyone asked them to.
Their commitment was insane.
They immediately understood the magnitude of the event," notes Lior.
Already on the first day, the question arose of where to place the team, since the Gaza Strip was occupied by terrorists and there was significant destruction, including in the clinic. "Questions arose such as: How do you send us to a place where we feel not Sure, but I told myself we had to be ahead.
After all, how can I tell the soldiers to return to the Gaza Division headquarters if we can't be there?
I mention that there was a fear of terrorist infiltration not only in the Gaza Division in the following days but also in the Yemeni field.
I have photos of the security guards securing the entrance to the offices. We were not prepared for this."
Roots in Egyptian captivity
The story of the life of Major Lior's family is fascinating. Her grandfather Shalom and grandmother Tsila immigrated as a couple from Argentina as part of the youth immigration and were stationed at Kibbutz Nitzanim. A few months later, in June 1948 during the battle for Nitzanim, they were captured by the Egyptians and were imprisoned in Egypt for nine months. Later, as part of The roots work on her family, Lior found out how her grandparents behaved in captivity, and how they used to exchange letters in cigarette boxes to convey messages. Once the grandfather decided to pull a single tooth just to see his girlfriend, later his wife, who was working at the Egyptian clinic at the time.
After signing the deal to release prisoners , and their release, her grandparents became the founders of Kibbutz Ein Hasholsha in the Eshkol Regional Council.
These are feelings that are difficult to express, especially when you were one of the founders of the kibbutz," said Lior, whose family lives there to this very day. According to her, a friend of her grandfather was murdered in the settlement on Black Sabbath. "The story of my grandparents accompanies me all the time, and takes on a different expression in this period.
I am connected to this land in my soul.
We are very connected to this land."
Hello, Lior's grandfather, middle below/courtesy of the family
Tsila, Lior's grandmother, in the middle of the row/courtesy of the family
After Lior finished her service as an instructor in the Air Force, she studied social work.
Upon her return to the military system as a mental health officer, she served at the Hazor base, and experienced Operation Tzuk Eitan as a female officer in the Gaza Division. According to her, at that time there were unusual events that needed to be dealt with, and even then she realized that mental health officers must be as close as possible to the fighters and commanders on the front , and this is to reduce the treatment phase from the moment of exposure to the scenes of horror or the images of the battle.
"At Tzuk Eitan we did things that had never been done.
People arrived from the battlefield during all hours of the day and received treatment on the same day, and not at the end of fighting.
It's never happened that we did a group intervention in a gathering area," she says. "Most of the interventions are very simple.
Most people want to normalize the event, i.e. give them back hope that it will probably be fine in days or weeks.
Because that's what happens most of the time," she explains. "On the solid cliff I felt very significant.
Without much effort in relation to what is perceived, we can do good.
We influenced hundreds."
Although the scope of work during Operation Protective Edge did not come close to the horrors of October 7, it also had moments of breaking. "I met a reserve officer who entered the Strip and came back with very graphic scenes," she recalls. "That's how post-traumatic people are. coming up with very graphic descriptions of what they saw.
He opened the door... and I felt all the weight he brought with him from the battlefield stayed with me.
It kept costing me.
This is called secondary traumatization.
You don't experience the trauma, but someone imagines it on such a level that you imagine and experience it."
"His story accompanies me all the time, and takes on a different expression in this period."
Lior and Seva Shalom/IDF spokesman
After the operation, Lior advanced in ranks and positions, including the mental health officer of the recruitment bureau in Be'er Sheva.
In October 2022, she took up a position in the Southern Command, speeding up preparations for war and treatment of the generation that experienced Corona.
"Many recruits asked for treatment and it increased in large percentages. On the social side, they were not used to being together," she says.
"This war gave them a 'crash course' in how to be together all the time. Before that, they were used to communicating with each other on the phone, on WhatsApp. In combat, they don't have a cell phone. It's very intense 'being together'. The way the war started made it clear how important this is , how much it builds resilience, there is no greater encouragement."
Lior is proud of the activity of its soldiers since the beginning of the war and with an emphasis on October 7.
"We made a clear decision. My people will be everywhere. Commanders, observation posts, battalions.
Three commanders for the brigade, including a readiness to go inside and respond to the medical teams who will experience difficult moments. In preparation for the ground maneuver? We have started conversations with commanders and fighters."
About the difficulty of providing an answer to everyone, she says: "Every night I thought: 'God, how do I reach everyone I need to reach?', and this fear accompanied me. And I want exposure and care for everyone. We come down to the resolution of a commander who heard about difficult events, Like in the two weeks after October 7, when you drove in the area and saw the burned vehicles and the bodies. It's a difficult experience."
The next issue was the treatment of "refreshers", when the forces went out to the rear.
"We were prepared to receive people with a combat response from maneuvering. It's classic. They decided that the snipers would be deployed everywhere.
in the fronts of the brigades, in the rear in the assembly areas, and in groups in the outposts.
I never had a case where I had no one to send.
We have accumulated a team of therapists. The commanders in the field are trained in this way - reporting symptoms. They know that if they were unable to treat a soldier themselves in the field, they report to us and we treat them."
According to her, the ground maneuver increases the mental pressure, and many requests are received from commanders asking for help.
As a result, she says, the Rabbis asked her to enter the Gaza Strip and start working. "I'm always afraid of something that has no clear boundaries.
I was afraid that a colonel who came in would sit there and open a clinic... one has to go in and know very well what he is doing. Therefore, at first they went in to assist the MMMs, MPs, MGAs and generals in the field. A day later, an appeal came deep in the area. Reserve officers offered to go in to take care of a reserve unit whose chain of command had been damaged.
They were sitting in a dark room, a Palestinian house, with headlamps, and it was really crazy.
"If we hadn't done that, maybe they wouldn't have completed the task," she explains.
"The fighters experienced great hardships. What are the chances that I will be able to bring them back to fighting? And with what narrative will they follow this, 30 years from now? They needed the intervention of the Security Council and it worked.
In the end, they continued to fight." The mental health officers also provided assistance in the disaster in which a building exploded and collapsed in the center of the Gaza Strip, resulting in the death of 21 soldiers.
"I want to reach the soldiers before they realize they need me"
From the beginning of the maneuver, the mental health officers of the Southern Command treated approximately 4,000 soldiers individually.
1,700 group calls were transferred, with 15-20 soldiers in each of them.
700 fighters came out of the maneuver with disturbing symptoms and 82% returned to combat.
"It is possible that someone will experience many combat events and show resilience, and in the end there will be one event that will 'attract' all the events that he has experienced, or there will be one shocking event, like the one on October 7 and the maneuver. And it doesn't matter who you are. The event is a difficult event to deal with. The question is, will anyone carry this all their life? It depends very much on what we do. My main effort is to find those who have not applied since the beginning of the war. I can't wait for them to reach me, symptoms can settle in the meantime. My flexibility will be less at a later stage Too much. I want to reach them before they realize they need me at all."
She describes the treatment method: "I work with a soldier to fill in the holes in his memory, because that's what a traumatic memory looks like. It's very necessary, otherwise he carries these holes with him for years. Trauma works like this, we don't want to remember a fragmented memory, so not to flood us."
Regarding the refresher camps for soldiers leaving the Gaza Strip, she says, "We put a lot of military personnel in them.
We went down to small details.
We designed the complexes ourselves.
Not to look too detached but still with a military color.
We scheduled treatment as part of the brigade's schedule. We teamed up with the commanders and then the soldiers. There were emergency rooms and, if necessary, there were individual operations."
Major Lior, mental health officer of the Southern Command/spokesman for the IDF
She refers to the reservists and their care: "A soldier who comes to the reserves feels lost. The house continued to run, but you weren't there. In front of the soldiers, we practiced as if they were going home. I told them in conversations: 'You will feel that suddenly you are not tied down, suddenly the children are placed on you, that you want to go back to the team, that only the team understands you, that the wife doesn't understand you. And they told me that they don't understand how I know all this. Not because I'm smart, but because that's how it works. There's something in common there for everyone."
In this context, she also refers to the fear that the war will lead to an increase in the divorce rate: "I hope it won't. We told the reservists: make contact. Talk to the woman. Avoid saying anything at all, since there is no conversation. By the way, he also doesn't understand what she went through during this time We put out a message page for the reservists and their families. We held a Zoom for the sons and daughters of the family. Emphasis on the units that went through an incident with many casualties. I am not responsible for talking to a family, but we did it, because we realized that if we do not take care of the family home, then the resilience of the soldiers will be damaged. I also ask commanders Senior officials, if they talk to their parents. Everyone answers me something different. For example, tonight I'm going to talk to the parents of the fighters of a patrol that was hit."
In Lior's eyes, there is no anger at all that the public returned to normal after October 7.
"I am evicted from Abraham's breasts," she mentions.
"On Friday, I went with Tietz to the mall to buy my daughter a notebook before entering a new setting. Why are the fighting forces there? To give others a routine. There is an expectation to return to full function. This is the most important. Return to function is a lifesaver."
According to her, an event of the magnitude of October 7 may add to resilience.
"It increases the scope of the righteousness of the way and the task. Then the other difficulties are dwarfed at the end. The thing is proportion," she reveals.
"The blow we received is very great. So - when you are cold in Gaza, and it is hard for you, you remember that you are here because of kidnapped civilians. The commanders tell the fighters to leave the Strip, but the fighters ask to go back to return to their friends, and that they talk about the importance of the war."
Finally she says, "When a soldier returns home, I tell the families that he will not return the same. But within a few days or weeks, in most cases, he returns to normal. The message is: The soldier will not return the same, but that is a reasonable thing. Did we have moments of breaking ? Of course yes. I think that if you don't break down, you can't continue. I want to believe that the person for whom we closed the event will be able to overcome and continue."
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