Retraumatized by Iran war and back in shelters, northern families struggle through the days

WESTERN GALILEE — As darkness fell on a recent day, Hagar Amor, 36, nursed her two-month-old baby in one of Shavei Zion’s public shelters while her husband, Tal, tried to reassure their two-year-old daughter, Gaia.

“Soon there will be booms,” Gaia said.

“Unfortunately, she knows the booms very well,” Amor told The Times of Israel, speaking in English so that Gaia wouldn’t understand.

The Amor family has slept in the shelter since Operation Rising Lion began on June 13, as Iran has fired barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel, killing 24 people and wounding thousands.

On Tuesday morning, shortly before a ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump was to take effect, Iran launched more missile salvos, killing at least three people in Beersheba.

While there are no figures to measure the psychological damage done to young children, there are deep concerns among parents and professionals that the latest conflict sets back kids across the country. In the north, just as children were starting to readjust to ordinary life after the 13-month war with Hezbollah ended with a ceasefire on November 27, 2024, parents now agree that their children are dealing with a traumatic situation all over again.

“We’ve seen children regress since Operation Rising Lion began,” said Rotem Ravet Hirsh, an educational psychologist in the town of Shlomi, on the Lebanese border, speaking to The Times of Israel by telephone.

“Small children have returned to their pacifiers, bed-wetting and wanting to sleep with their parents,” Hirsh said. “They might seem to be doing okay, but the smallest things set them off. They’re in survival mode.”

‘Every boom, airplane or sudden noise scares her’

During the 13-month war with Hezbollah, the Amor family stayed in place in an apartment in their parents’ house in Shavei Zion, 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the northern border with Lebanon.

The community, just south of Nahariya, was not evacuated, but there were often barrages of Hezbollah-fired drones and rockets falling nearby. In an August 2024 drone attack there, an Iron Dome interceptor missile malfunctioned, killing one man and wounding 19 people.

Amor said Gaia happened to be outside the protected area during one of the barrages. Since then, “every boom, every airplane, or sudden noise scares her,” Amor said.

There is a small protected room in her parents’ house, but there are now seven adults, a toddler and a baby. It’s no longer “comfortable.”

Each day, the family goes to the public shelter for Gaia’s afternoon nap and then returns after dinner to sleep the night. Another family with two children also sleeps there, occasionally joined by several other residents.

“We put on a Disney movie and try to get the kids to sleep,” Amor said.

Bomb shelter #8 in Shavei Zion, Western Galilee, on June 17, 2025. (Diana Bletter/Times of Israel

On one of the shelter’s walls, Amor has hung up drawings of flowers and candles that Gaia and her mother painted together.

During frightening moments, Amor encourages Gaia “to smell the flower and blow out the candle,” so that she inhales and exhales as a way to breathe deeply to calm herself down.

They have also brought many of her toys to the shelter that “help her focus on positive activities, including toys that require movement to release adrenaline.”

Professionals agree that physical activity, such as dancing and exercise, is crucial during stressful times.

Amor said she added Gaia’s name to a waiting list for a child therapist, but that won’t start until she is three.

Until then, Amor reached out to a therapist who told her that as long as Gaia is “sharing and talking and not freezing,” then we are on “the right track.”

She explains her fears very well and also says that if there are booms, we will hug, Amor related.

‘Everything is so crazy’

Even for children who don’t have any noticeable trauma, the instability, lack of routine and structure has made “everything so crazy,” said Shir Zecharia, 34, a product manager in a tech company, who lives with her husband, Niv, and their two daughters, age four and two, in nearby Kibbutz Shomrat.

Since there is no school, no informal education and no kindergarten, the girls have to stay at home.

With both parents’ workplaces closed because of Home Front Command instructions, they take turns babysitting. But Zecharia said that the girls are still more likely to call for “Imma!” (“Mommy!”).

“My company is understanding when we have a teleconference call and one of the girls might be climbing on my lap,” Zecharia said. She set up her computer in the hallway because “if I go into my bedroom to work, they’re knocking on the door and crying, so it’s worse.”

“It’s impossible to focus,” she said. “I try to work at night when the girls are asleep but that’s when I also need to cook and clean up.”

Sometimes, when it seems quiet, she takes the girls outside during the day but it is challenging.

“Whenever we go to a new place, my four-year-old will ask where there’s a safe room,” Zecharia said.

The Health Ministry’s website stresses the importance of maintaining a routine because that helps children feel safer.

“It is important to get dressed, brush our teeth, and allocate specific times for games, meals, and rest,” the site says.

Zecharia tries hard, she said, to follow a routine and to do things to help her daughters feel safer. During one alarm signaling an incoming Iranian ballistic missile attack, she encouraged her daughters to do yoga.

However, without an educational framework, each day is a struggle, she said in her living room, apologizing for the clutter of children’s toys, games and books.

“My patience doesn’t reset every day. They have an attention span of 10 minutes. It might be quiet for five minutes and then they’re fighting.”

Zecharia said that she can see that her daughters’ “outsides and insides are not in sync.”

Hirsch, the child psychologist, suggested that to decrease children’s anxiety, parents with young children limit their exposure to news programs on television and the internet as much as possible.

“They don’t understand everything and they imagine the worst,” she said.

She also emphasized that parents shouldn’t try to talk their children out of their feelings and say, for example, “It will be okay.” Instead, they should “legitimize their emotions.”

“If an event is canceled because of what is going on and a child is upset or angry, they have the right to feel that way,” she said. “It is perfectly legitimate for them to feel afraid.

“Children had made advances after the war with Hezbollah ended, and now they are lost again,” Hirsh said.