An anthropological examination of how Israel’s psychological aid system failed as a response to the Israel–Palestine conflict

Israeli anthropologist Keren Friedman-Peleg was studying Israel’s state-run resilience-building program in 2023. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, this program, which intended to build a “psychological front,” or a “mental Iron Dome,” collapsed. The program, aimed at helping Israeli Jewish and Bedouin communities manage fear and stress from intermittent rocket attacks, failed on October 7. Indeed, many of the mental health practitioners who staffed regional “resilience centers” were themselves caught in the violence and unable to assist, and familiar tools such as breathing exercises and grounding techniques proved useless, even farcical, in the face of armed militants.

Through the stories of senior trauma specialists, Israel Defense Forcesofficers, local therapists, and residents—before and after October 7—the book reveals the longer history of “building a mental Iron Dome” and investigates how this coping strategy failed on October 7. This book situates ideas of individual and communal “bouncing back” and “moving forward” in the context of ongoing security failures at the state level, revealing how people challenged, reshaped, and sometimes rejected these ideas. When individuals processed the loss of life, the 2023–2025 hostage crises, and the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, they developed competing understandings of resilience. These new ideas, such as seeking a political solution to the conflict, led many to reject cyclical violence and to turn to the collective memory of the Holocaust, Jewish rituals, and values of sacrifice, solidarity, and renewal. Ultimately, Friedman-Peleg argues that the resilience-building program, designed to normalize a state of daily life conducted kilometers from the devastating humanitarian conditions in Gaza before and after October 7 instead sparked grassroots resistance and alternative community-based responses.