Rabbi Dov Benyaacov-Kurtzman shares emergency mental-health interventions with terror-traumatized Britons while prime ministerial candidate Jeremy Corbyn is sending chills down the spine of the Jewish community

"Parents were very nervous and apprehensive and were extremely grateful for people there like us to talk to” Rabbi Benyaacov-Kurtzman told Mishpacha. “We had a force of over 20 therapists and we reached hundreds of people letting them know the services we can offer them.”

The services are based on techniques for emergency mental health interventions developed during the course of 20 years by a team headed by Dr. Moshe Farchi the head of Stress Trauma and Resilience Studies at Tel Hai College in Kiryat Shemona (see sidebar). The concept of the “pop-up” center is based on Dr. Farchi’s research proving that rapid intervention at a disaster scene can prevent the onset of more severe psychological symptoms.

“If you make the intervention where the event happened it takes between one to two minutes to shift the person from a sense of despair and helplessness to a person who is collaborating with you and helping others ” said Dr. Farchi. The IDF has integrated his system into soldiers’ training programs enabling them to acquire the skills to helping their fellow soldiers during any crisis.

Ironically in Britain where the BDS (Boycott Divest Sanctions) movement against Israel has been particularly strong especially in academic circles it has been noticeably absent in the wake of the Israeli volunteer effort.

“Everyone here knows the protocols we are using come from Israel. It’s been an overwhelming positive process for the people we are training and for Israel too ” Rabbi Benyaacov-Kurtzman said.

Enough is Enough

While Britain’s Jewish community was not the target of this latest outbreak of Islamic jihad for which ISIS has now claimed responsibility it has required Britons to draw on all their reservoirs of resilience.

“It’s a phenomenon that existed in England before the Second World War. People took the attitude then they were not going to be cowed by Hitler nor will they let terrorist cow them now ” says Rabbi Avrohom Pinter principal of Yesodey HaTorah Senior Girls’ School and a leading spokesman for London’s chareidi community.

Britain has been hit by three separate Islamic terror attacks in the last six weeks which has killed at least 37 people and injured more than 200.

The most recent attack occurred Saturday night at the famed London Bridge and Borough Market where terrorists rammed passersby with their vehicle and then emerged with knives on a stabbing rampage before police responded and killed them. The terrorists claimed the lives of seven people and injured 50.

This last attack occurred just five days before Britons go to the polls in a snap election called by Prime Minister Theresa May in her effort to win a larger mandate to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union known as Brexit.

The attacks are not expected to have a major impact on the decision-making process in a campaign that has focused on Brexit and other domestic economic issues and where many voters already cast early ballots by mail.

But May’s once sizable 20-point lead in the polls has dwindled to as low as 1% in one poll at press time even though more optimistic polls show her Conservative Party (the Tories) with a more comfortable 8–14% lead over Labour led by the controversial Jeremy Corbyn. British pollsters are still smarting from their failure to predict the Brexit “leave vote” last June as well as the wide margin of victory of May’s predecessor David Cameron who stepped down after voters rejected his entreaties to remain in the EU.

Pollsters insist they have tinkered with their systems this time around and attribute the wide variation in the numbers to uncertainty over the volume of young first-time voters and if those voters will turn out in force to vote for Labour and their promises of free university education.

In an effort to hang onto or pad her lead May has been talking tough on terror admitting that Britain has been soft on Islamic extremism.

“It is time to say enough is enough ” said Prime Minister May. “We cannot and must not pretend that things can stay as they are. The recent attacks are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by a single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred.” (Excerpted from Mishpacha Issue 663)