Psychologist Muli Lahad Says Northern Israel Needs Support, Not Slogans
Professor Muli Lahad, a 73-year-old clinical and educational psychologist, says residents of Israel’s north are not lacking “resilience,” they are suffering from exhaustion after nearly 1,000 days of war of attrition. Speaking from his small office in Kiryat Shmona during alarms over Hezbollah drones, he argues that telling people “you are strong” is effectively telling them to get out of sight, because real resilience requires safety, community, education and economic backing.
Lahad has spent decades working around the world, advising the UN, leading aid missions after disasters in Japan and Sri Lanka, supporting communities affected by the Russia-Ukraine war, and developing response models after 9/11. He also kept his personal losses private for years, including a severe car crash that led to the amputation of his left foot, the death of his wife Vered from cancer in 2001, and the killing of his son Omri at age 23 in South America in 2009. He says those experiences taught him that people can rise from the lowest point, but only if they are not left alone.
Lahad has worked in Kiryat Shmona since 1979 through the “Masa’im” center he founded 45 years ago. Since October 7 and through April, his organization’s resilience centers in the Upper and Western Galilee provided more than 104,000 hours of individual treatment. He says demand has risen sharply, but many people have stopped asking for help because they no longer believe it will change anything. In his view, therapy alone cannot solve an ongoing war, and long-term stress creates “emergency burnout,” not routine resilience.
He warns that middle-class families are leaving the border area, businesses are not returning, and children and parents are paying the price in sleep problems, anxiety and worsening functioning. He cites Kiryat Shmona’s mayor saying 40% of pupils in grades 1 to 8 do not know how to read or write, and says the state’s response must be faster, simpler and more concrete, with local authorities and schools strengthened now, not after the fighting ends. Lahad will receive the 2026 Tel Hai honorary award later this month.
