SUBHEAD Glenn Cohen, who oversaw the debriefing of all surviving hostages, says their fortitude should inspire Israelis who’ve been enduring challenges from the war with Iran and Diaspora Jews facing a different adversity

Given his up-close involvement with former hostages, starting immediately after their release from Gaza, former Mossad Chief Psychologist Glenn Cohen often thinks of how they’re coping, especially in recent weeks during the war with Iran, now in an uneasy, tenuous ceasefire.  He sometimes sees for himself how they’re faring as he’s in touch with many of them, some of whom continue in therapy with him.

Having overseen the initial debriefing of all the hostages upon their return to Israel, either personally or by fellow psychologists under his guidance, Cohen is extremely familiar with each of the 168 men, women and children who survived their nightmarish confinement.

“For some of the former hostages, the booms and explosions from Iranian and Hezbollah missile and rocket attacks have been a trigger, startling them and bringing them back to the scariest part of their captivity, which was the bombing of Gaza by the Israeli Air Force,” Cohen recently told me. “After their release, almost all of them described how they literally felt the earth shake under their feet while the bombs dropped, often fearing for their lives. Now that they’re free, many of them are able to regain their lost respect and admiration for the Israeli Air Force, no longer perceiving it as a potential threat, but as the protector.”

Just like the physical and mental rehabilitation hasn’t been the same for all former hostages following their release, such is the case with how they’ve handled challenges connected to the Iran war, including frequent air raid sirens and the need to quickly take cover.

“Spending time in underground bomb shelters reminds some of them of the time they spent underground in captivity, but some of them relate to it humorously,” adds Cohen. “A video on social media shows [former hostages] Ohad Ben Ami and Elkana Buchbut together in a bomb shelter during a missile attack, and they reminisce and joke about their time in the tunnels in Gaza.”

As former hostages have demonstrated, overcoming extreme adversity usually makes one better able to face new predicaments, even those potentially life-threatening.

“The ones who came out of captivity, viewing it as an experience of personal growth, describe how after surviving captivity, anything else seems so much easier to cope with,” says Cohen. “So they weren’t fazed by the present war with Iran.”

Of course, those not in Israel are the least affected by the situation.

“Quite a few of the hostages are still travelling the world, enjoying their freedom by living it up on exotic beaches, or others busy doing lecture tours,” adds Cohen. “They’re following the news from afar, but enjoying that they could maintain a safe distance from the war.”

For all the darkness in the agonizing story of those kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 – most tragically, the death of 83 of those brutally abducted – Cohen sees glimmers of light. A leading expert on how former hostages survived their hellish Hamas captivity and how they’re faring post-release, he speaks of them with great affinity.

After the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people and seizure of 251 others, Cohen began emergency reserve duty in the IDF Hostage Negotiation Unit, which eventually selected him as the first mental health professional to meet released hostages, affording him a unique perspective. In public presentations and in the book he’s now writing, Cohen shares reassuring, even uplifting, insights gained from engaging with those many feared would never return alive.

In speaking about them to Jewish communities abroad, he delivers a message of hope and resilience.

“My main takeaway from speaking with many former hostages and knowing intimately the stories of all 168, is that we’re capable of much more than we imagine,” says Cohen, during my earlier interview with him at the Israeli American Council’s recent annual conference outside Miami. The session he spoke at, titled Unbroken: Inside the Journey Back to Life, included former hostages Keith Segal and Omer Wenkert.  “What’s amazing is that while none of the returnees had any training, they did almost exactly what we teach our top commandos in POW survival training. It shows we have an inherent ability to cope, an innate resilience we’re not aware of until pushed to our limits.”

In his serious yet approachable manner, Cohen spotlights different ways hostages adapted to their captivity.

“Most of them adjusted to the difficult new reality they suddenly found themselves in,” he explains. “Despite being 150 feet underground in a dark tunnel, many obsessively kept track of the calendar and time of day, based on different clues, such as seeing when their captors prayed five times a day and when they went to sleep. Part of their adjustment was recognizing which captors........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)