Lives That Make No Headlines

Among the countless victims of Palestinian terror, there are those whose suffering causes no headlines. These are the people who survive terror attacks, often with lasting physical and psychological wounds. Their fate is, however, no less tragic than that of the people who are killed.

For weeks, months, and years, the number of the Israeli victims of the intifada has steadily mounted. After each attack, the procedure is the same. First, the media release brief reports that an incident has occurred. If it turns out that “sufficient” blood has flowed, teams of reporters are dispatched to the site, where they remain for hours, delivering all available information to the Israeli public. Newspaper articles follow, with details about the victims, their families and friends, and, finally, the burials. Subsequently, the dead sink gradually into the dust of statistical analysis, and the conflict continues, with no end in sight.

Much less attention is paid to those victims who survive the attacks. Once the initial excitement dies down, the papers do not report on the thousands who have been injured, whose normal lives have been sacrificed along with the lives of those who died. Only family members, friends, and health care workers know how the lives of these individuals have changed so drastically.

Roberta Bernstein, a social worker for the organization ATZUM, works to help these people heal not only their bodies, but also their hearts and souls. Roberta and her husband moved to Israel from the US seventeen years ago. Now the mother of three children, she has worked for 23 years in hospitals, city administration, and homes for the elderly. Several months ago, she was hired by Rabbi Levi D. Lauer, founder of ATZUM, a private, non-profit organization that provides assistance for people whose everyday lives have suffered drastic, often irreversible change as the result of a terror attack. “Atzum” is the Hebrew word for “powerful,” but in this case it refers to the acronym for the Hebrew words “Avodot Tzedakah U’Mishpat,”–works, justice, and rights–or “Justice Works” in English. In addition to victims of violence, ATZUM also helps foreign workers in Israel, as well as many Righteous Gentiles, people who rescued Jews from the Nazis during World War II. Currently, 57 surviving Righteous Gentiles live in Israel.

Following the horrific attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya during the Passover Seder in 2002, explains Roberta, “Rabbi Lauer felt strongly that that he had to do something for the injured, and for people whose lives were damaged by terror in other ways. He sent e-mails to friends and acquaintances all over the world, and in a short time had raised $100,000.” Recently, in an appeal to the Jewish community in Los Angeles, Rabbi Lauer requested that each person forgo his or her daily cup of coffee at Starbucks, and donate that money instead to ATZUM. The amount raised was enough to pay the salary of a new social worker. Roberta’s salary is guaranteed for the next two years, and other anonymous donors cover the costs for an additional social worker. Thus, with all of ATZUM’s administrative expenses covered, 100% of the money now contributed is given directly to the victims. Last year, ATZUM’s total budget was about $300,000.

Much of Roberta’s work involves listening and caring. “I officially work 25 hours per week,” she says, “but in reality, I often work double that.” When working with people who have been traumatized, she adds, she can’t use a stopwatch. She describes her encounters with the terror victims as “very sad and painful. Each time I think I’ve seen the worst possible situation, I am confronted with someone else whose story is even more complicated.” The lives of some individuals are completely destroyed by the terror attacks. These irreparable changes will continue to affect them for the rest of their lives.

Although Roberta can’t heal the physical wounds that her clients suffer, she nevertheless sees a sense and a purpose in her work. “If I can light a small candle in a corner of their darkness, then I have done something important.”

Every time a terror attack occurs, Roberta knows, her clients’ emotional wounds will be re-opened. She calls as many of them as she can to offer support, and to listen.

“It’s very important to listen with patience, and with caring,” Roberta says. “One of the families I work with lost an eleven-year-old son in an attack. I remembered that the mother had told me when it would have been her son’s twelfth birthday. I called her that day, and she was crying. She said that she had been sitting at her son’s grave. ‘Except for you, no one remembered us on this tragic day,’ she told me. We spoke and cried together for a long time. At the end, she said that she felt that some of her pain had eased, and that she knew she wasn’t alone.”

Roberta’s many clients have been helped by ATZUM in various ways:

1. A woman who was injured in an attack 25 years ago recently underwent her 19th operation, and must stay in bed for months at a time. ATZUM provided her with a special orthopedic bed in order to help relieve her constant pain.
2. A 12-year-old girl survived when the Jerusalem bus on which she was riding was blown up by a terrorist. She suffered psychological trauma, and after the incident, was afraid to take busses. ATZUM is providing private transportation for this child so that she can attend school.
3. A 21-year-old woman from Israel’s National Service program (Sherut Leumi) was returning to her kibbutz from an outing to a pizzeria with three teenage clients. Terrorists opened fire on their car. One of the teenagers was killed, and the other occupants of the car, including the driver, were injured. Although the driver recovered from her physical wounds, she found it psychologically impossible to remain on the kibbutz, close to where the attack occurred. She moved to Jerusalem and is now enrolled as a student of Occupational Therapy at Hebrew University. ATZUM subsidized the cost of her tuition, in order to help her successfully make this necessary transition in her life.
4. A woman who was a leading executive in a Tel Aviv bank was a passenger on a bus that was blown up by terrorists. Since the incident, she has suffered severe psychological trauma and requires constant assistance. Her 21-year-old daughter, who attends law school, helps her get dressed every day, and takes her to the bank, where she now does only simple filing, as she is unable to resume her former responsibilities. ATZUM pays for the mother’s transportation home from work each day, and is helping to finance the daughter’s law school tuition.
5. An Israeli journalist, who was the father of a young boy, was killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His son lives with his Thai mother, and greatly misses his father, who was his idol and his example. He has had serious difficulty in school since his father’s death. ATZUM is providing a private tutor for the child, and will help pay for Bar Mitzvah lessons for him as he approaches his 13th birthday in the fall.

In all of these cases, and in many others as well, ATZUM was able to provide for many critical and immediate needs. But as Roberta’s work testifies, money alone is not a solution. “It helps to let people speak, and pour out what’s in their hearts,” says Roberta. She talks of one woman, who was present during a terrorist attack in which the flesh of other victims was splattered all over her. She told Roberta that she relives this incident every day in her mind. Before goes to bed at night, she must go through the physical motions of carefully removing these imaginary pieces of flesh from her clothing, in order to fall asleep.

Roberta’s work is emotionally demanding. Her family is supportive and understanding, but Roberta says it’s not easy for her to “hang my work on a hook, with my coat,” when she returns home at the end of the day. The sadness and the pain color the atmosphere in a subtle way. But in spite of this, and in spite of the demands on her time and energy that this work entails, Roberta knows that the work she does is valuable and helpful to others.

In her first four months of working with ATZUM, ninety-seven victims of terror were referred to the organization for assistance. Forty-eight families, totaling more than two hundred people, were given some form of social or financial aid. Another twenty-eight families were referred to other organizations that could help them.

Nevertheless, the demand for ATZUM’s services continues to grow, especially for victims from before the present intifada, which began in September of 2000, as almost no other organization is helping these earlier victims. Resources of many other relief agencies, and those of the Israeli government as well, have been severely strained. ATZUM tries to help those individuals who “fall between the cracks.”

Each terror victim’s situation is unique, Roberta emphasizes, but all the situations have a common denominator: terror attacks last a fraction of a second, but their effects will last a lifetime.