Two years after Oct. 7, we cannot look away Naomi Nussbaum

Mass trauma is no longer the exception. It has become the reality of our time. Two years after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, Israel is still carrying wounds that in some ways have deepened and worsened after two years of war. The brutality of that day — families slaughtered, children kidnapped, entire communities destroyed — reverberates through every corner of Israeli society. Israel is a nation of trauma survivors.

I know this firsthand. I am the executive director of OneFamily, an organization born out of terror and built on love. OneFamily’s story began more than two decades ago when a terrorist exploded himself in a busy family restaurant in Jerusalem.

Twelve-year-old Michal Belzberg, the daughter of OneFamily founders Marc and Chantal Belzberg, originally from Riverdale in th