OCTOBER 2010 – NATAL VISIT TO U.S.

Judith Yovel Recanati, NATAL’s Founder

and Chairperson and Orly Gal, NATAL’s

Executive Director are planning to visit the

United States (East Coast) between October

24th – 30th. They will be very happy to meet

with anyone who may be interested. Please get

in touch with Orly orly@natal.org.il

Read our Autumn 2009 Newsletter!

This year as you light your chanukah candles, please think of the thousands of Israeli citizens who have been emotionally scarred by acts of terror and war and cannot experience the joy of this beautiful festival.
NATAL is working tirelessly to bring the light back to these people’s lives again. Please help us to help them by making a

this Chanukah.

NATAL's Chairperson and Co-Founder, Judith Yovel Recanati

In 1998 Mrs. Yovel Recanati co-founded NATAL: Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, and is involved in the center on a daily basis as a chairperson and volunteer.

Mrs. Yovel Recanati is the Founder and Chairman of the Gandyr Foundation,  Family foundation she established with her husband and three daughters  in 2004 for the purpose of strengthening Israeli society. The Gandyr Foundation places special emphasis on supporting civil society organizations that champion social causes and national values of the State of Israel. The Gandyr Foundation supports special projects for young people between the ages of 18-25 and helps youth movements in Israel. Judith serves as a board member of the The Yahel Foundation – the Recanati Family Foundation (since 1963) whose projects include the Recanati Science Museum in Haifa, providing scholarships to demobilized soldiers and new immigrants, establishing two business administration faculties, a medical research fund, a school for public health, cancer research and energy, building a seniors’ home and a synagogue among many others.

She is a registered art Psychotherapist, and received a Master’s degree in the Expressive Therapies from Lesley College at Boston. She also studied Psychotherapy at Bar-Ilan University and is a graduate of the Fay Ratner two-year program in Gestalt Studies at the School for Social Studies at the Tel Aviv University. Prior to that she graduated with a B.A from Tel Aviv University in Archaeology and is also a photographer

Before establishing NATAL, she conducted individual and group treatments through the arts, worked with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients at Beit Levinstein Hospital, the National Institute for the Rehabilitation of Head Injury Patients and the Neurological Rehabilitation Center, Sheba Medical Center

Ms. Yovel Recanati is married and the mother of three daughters. She is grandmother to three grandsons.

NATAL's Executive Director, Orly Gal

Colonel (Res.) Orly Gal, the Executive Director of NATAL, was born in Tel Aviv, and comes to the organization with 25 years of hard work and dedication to the IDF and a Masters Degree in Public Policy.  After serving in a number of prestigious positions, Orly was discharged from the IDF in 2005, with the rank of Colonel. 

Orly’s last position in the Army was that of Deputy IDF Spokesperson, where she was responsible for the entire Public Relations Department of the IDF. There, she oversaw the Army’s public relations in Israel and the foreign media and was commander to over 1,000 soldiers. In 2005 Orly represented the Army in the Prime Ministers Office, as a member of the Coordination and Strategy Team, which initiated and developed the information campaign for the disengagement plan. In addition she served as Secretary to the High Command. Between 1998 and 2003 she served as Head of Public Relations Office and Head of Information and Publicity Office in the IDF Spokespersons Office. Additionally, Orly served as a Jewish Agency emissary in Columbus, Ohio and in England with her family.

Since joining NATAL in March 2006, Orly successfully led the organization through the Second Lebanon War, the crisis in Sderot and Operation Cast Lead. As a result of her extensive PR experience she has helped to significantly increase NATAL’s presence in the national and international media.  She has had an incredibly positive impact on NATAL’s growth as the leading trauma center for victims of terror and war in Israel. Orly resides in Yavne with her husband and three daughters.  

 Uri: It’s Saturday afternoon. I am standing at the gate wearing sandals. Yes, like all the rest I acquired the local habits very quickly. You know, you pick up these kinds of habits in no time.

Not much effort is involved. So I stood there wearing my sandals, and it’s afternoon. And suddenly it is like an earthquake. The sky is falling down on you and there’s a terrible bombing at the post.

And I remember asking to be replaced because I was not properly equipped. I did not have my bulletproof vest on, my equipment belt was lying on the side, I did not have a helmet and I was wearing my sandals.

I asked to be replaced. So someone came to replace me. I ran to the bunker where all my equipment was and I was getting ready when I heard a message on the radio. I remember this. It was absurd, well, maybe not absurd, but something so strange. I think I heard someone on the radio asking if it was OK to drink water. We were in the middle of a bombing for some time now, and it was Yom Kippur and we were fasting. And it seemed to me so out of place, so unrealistic. If you want to drink, you can, you do not need any permission to do so. You are in the middle of a bombing, and people…
We considered that it was the first time we went through such a thing and people get panicked and scared and you don’t know what to do. It was the first time we were in a situation like this.

I did not go through it…I did not go through it, nor did the others.

And it seemed so pointless. Who do you ask permission from?
There is no Rabbi… if someone wants to drink. Most of the guys were religious. If someone wants to drink, then they can.

That’s it. I remember this one thing.

And then I went to the observation post again and I was there for a couple of days.
Therapist: Did someone send you there?
Uri: Someone sent me, I do not know who. I mean, everything was done through the radio. I arrived at the observation post and…
Therapist: What did you feel, what did you think at that time?
Uri: Look, I divide it. I think that to a certain extent I wasn’t really thinking. I mean, most of my actions during the war were very instinctive. I did not put too much thought into it, but to some extent my actions actually originated from the training I went through and from my capability and will to stay alive. But …I acted first and I only thought about it later.

Each person responds to traumatic situations in different ways. On one hand, the way in which an individual responds to a traumatic event depends on the type of event, its intensity and duration; one the other hand, it is dependent on the individual’s personal history, the amount of social and familial support he has and his natural ability to cope.

 

“National trauma” is the term that NATAL uses for trauma that occurs to an individual as a result the Israeli-Arab conflict in all of its various manifestations. 

>>Enter Natal’s research

Not every unpleasant or even difficult experience is traumatic in the professional sense of the word. A traumatic event is when a person experiences a combination of:

In addition, the influence of the traumatic event is intensified if we were not prepared for it. In most cases, a traumatic event occurs suddenly and unexpectedly.

According to this definition, the traumatic experience does not necessarily have to happen to me.
Correct. If we are observers of the difficult event or even just hear about it – we can still be flooded by feelings of fear and helplessness. This kind of experience can be traumatic for us.

If so, anyone in this country could experience trauma.
Any person, anywhere might encounter or hear about a traumatic event. In Israel, because of the Israeli-Arab conflict, we are more exposed to traumatic events caused by situations of terrorism and war. In other words, in Israel we are more exposed to trauma with a national background.