Sitting at his office desk with the door closed, the man was crying uncontrollably into the telephone and feeling ashamed of his outburst.
“Why,” he asked between sobs, “am I crying?”
The question was not difficult for Miki Rahmany Yerushalmi, a clinical psychologist who helped answer emergency hot lines in Jerusalem after last week’s suicide bombings.
When the caller told Yerushalmi that he had suffered through a previous terrorist bombing, she immediately understood the problem.
“Each one of these incidents leaves a scar inside of you and they are bleeding,” she explained.
The anxiety many Israelis are feeling was heightened Tuesday by a leaflet issued in the name of the military wing of the Islamic group Hamas that promised a series of attacks in Israel. The leaflet cited Tuesday’s expiration of Hamas’ deadline for the Jewish state to free Palestinian prisoners.
Israelis typically view themselves as tough-minded, gritty individuals with the determination to persevere no matter the hardships or sacrifices. In its nearly 50 years of existence, this small nation has faced six wars, the Palestinian uprising and the relentless threat of terror with an outward confidence and boundless refusal to show fear.
More Top Picks Best Automatic Chicken Feeders
After the July 30 attacks, however, some found that they were bleeding emotionally and admitted it. For many Israelis, there is much more open fretting than in past generations about the dangers they and their children face. There is more talk about the horrific images of death and mayhem, the byproducts of terrorism, that they cannot erase from their psyches.
This does not surprise Reuven Gal, the former chief psychologist of the Israeli armed forces.
“There is an increasing burnout, exhaustion and perhaps vulnerability of Israeli society,” Gal said. “Certainly, we are no longer a pioneer society with people who readily sacrifice everything, not only life, but comfort.”
Israelis’ gradual shedding of this pioneer mentality is a normal process, Gal said. It marks their desire to live like everyone else. But, as they have softened their siege mentality, Israelis also have lost their willingness to hunker down and plow on, he said.
Gal also senses a “growing numbness” among Israelis to the waves of violence. “The reaction to the last incident was somewhat less dramatic and less critical” than in the past, he said.
Showing one face to the world and feeling quite differently inside has been an Israeli tradition, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University. “The things that Israelis most fear are the things most repressed,” he said.
The tough-it-out attitude was evident the day after last week’s attacks at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market. Throngs of Israelis flocked to the marketplace as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps symptomatic of the denial syndrome, Israeli newspapers were reluctant to print phone numbers of hot lines set up to assist those emotionally shaken by the bombings. The papers said most people had gotten over the attacks.
“Israelis feel that you have to move on, you have to advance. But this has a price,” said Yerushalmi, who volunteered on one of the hot lines.
“These emotional scars burn into our hearts or souls,” she said. The more scars, the more damage, the greater the buildup of pain, she said.
Among those who rushed to seek psychological help were average Israelis who quickly felt overwhelmed by the pictures and descriptions of the victims.
“How can we stand this? How can we take this?” they asked.
For those Israelis who had been exposed to previous terrorist attacks, the marketplace incident went off like an alarm in a hidden memory bank. They complained of sleeplessness, crying and feeling embarrassed that they carried the mental scars of their experiences.
One female caller said that on the day of the attacks, she screamed at another woman in the market who had shouted in fear when the bombs exploded.
The caller longed to find the woman and apologize for yelling at her instead of helping to calm her.
Hours after the bombings, Yigal Donyets, 40, was one of those drawn to the scene of the devastation. He stood silently, in deep thought, among dozens of others who said nothing to each other but simply stared.
He had refused to listen to the news on the radio because it upset him–yet he had to go to the market.
“There is a cumulative effect from all of these things,” he said. “What I feel mostly is sadness.”