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How Israeli Society Reacted to Oct. 7
(Ha'aretz) Yana Pevzner - Micha Popper, 78, professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Haifa, said, after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, "We were going crazy, thinking: What can we do? So we drove down to [Kibbutz] Kfar Azza [a few days later]. This was during the early days. Everything was in ruins, they had just removed the bodies. We started to clean the refrigerators in the dining hall, to work in the fields - we helped physically with whatever we could, and we were in contact with the army personnel who were in charge of the work there. We decided to go anywhere where help was needed." "I saw that there are masses of people here who simply couldn't stand by. That wherever there is a problem, they are there. It floored me....Everything worked excellently, without the need for meetings, through spontaneous activity that was carried out by talented, take-charge people who came up with ideas of their own." "And they did it masterfully, with the aid of other skillful individuals: locating missing people; establishing schools and daycare for the people evacuated from their homes; farming; providing psychological assistance to and employment for the evacuees; helping businesses." "Israelis are problem solvers. Give them a problem and they'll know how to handle it. And then there is the ability to improvise, implement and be creative. That has to do with our history, with survivability. And then there is familyhood, which is part of the willingness to step in and carry the burden together." "There was a woman who understood algorithms, data, and she suggested an idea to locate missing persons with the aid of photographs taken by the [Hamas] terrorists, who filmed everything with their body cameras. To look for all sorts of signs - like a stain on a shirt. She brought in a high-tech person and a few other people, and together they created things that don't exist anywhere in the world. After three days it was already up and running. The Israel Security Agency called; they wanted what the group had invented." "There were plenty of initiatives like that, of people with vision, creativity and knowhow in their fields. No one waited for anyone. I saw people coming in private cars to transport equipment to wherever it was needed. I saw CEOs, well-known people who had already retired, companies that donated money. It was like they were all on steroids; people didn't sleep. Having so many go-getters is something you don't see anywhere in the world."