Media Coverage
By Dr. Orli Peter
Dr. Peter’s article responding to the denial of the October 7 atrocities has been published in a Swedish news outlet, carrying the voices of survivors into the international conversation. Drawn directly from the Israel Healing Initiative’s work with survivors, the piece reflects what is being seen every day in treatment. That denial is not abstract. It makes recovery more difficult by keeping trauma active, harms Palestinians by obscuring the cruelty inflicted on them by Hamas, and creates moral confusion among many compassionate people in the West.
By Dr. Orli Peter
Dr. Orli Peter writes an open letter to Mamdani’s wife after she publicly endorsed posts describing the October 7 attacks as “collective liberation” and dismissing documented sexual violence as a hoax.
Drawing on her clinical work with survivors, Dr. Peter makes clear that these are not abstract narratives, but lived experiences carried in the body and nervous system. She describes patients who cannot sleep, who remain in states of constant vigilance, and in some cases, who cannot speak at all after witnessing acts of extreme brutality.
The article argues that when public figures legitimize or sanitize such violence, the impact does not remain online. It deepens the injury for survivors and distorts reality for the broader public.
At its core, the piece is a call for moral clarity: public gestures matter, and acknowledging what was done is essential for both recovery and human dignity.
By Andrew Fox
In December, policymakers and experts gathered in the UK Parliament for a discussion hosted by The Henry Jackson Society on a growing shift in trauma care: treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) not only through psychotherapy and medication, but by directly regulating the nervous system.
During the event, clinical and neuropsychologist Orli Peter, founder of Israel Healing Initiative, presented a treatment model that integrates trauma-informed psychotherapy with gentle forms of neurostimulation. These approaches, including vagus nerve stimulation, pulsed electromagnetic fields, and photobiomodulation light therapy,
aim to help stabilize the nervous system while trauma is processed in therapy.
PTSD occurs when the brain and body remain trapped in a prolonged state of threat after experiencing severe trauma. Survivors often face flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, sleep disruption, emotional numbing, and anxiety, symptoms rooted not only in psychological memory, but also in dysregulation of the nervous system.
By Dr. Orli Peter
We’ve just heard reports of another suicide by a young Israeli impacted by the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing war. His name is added to the list of Nova survivors and frontline soldiers we’ve lost.
The death of the Israeli soldier echoes the life of a young man I am pseudonymously calling Raphael, who walked into a trauma treatment program I was leading in the city of Petach Tikva in central Israel for survivors of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. He gave us permission to share his story with his real first name in the hope his witness might help others. I chose a pseudonym to protect him from the disbelief campaigns that often target survivors.
By Dr. Orli Peter
At 96, my father is one of the last living Holocaust survivors. He also has Alzheimer’s. The disease has not brought him the forgetting that would be a gift to him.
Alzheimer’s progresses in a pattern that erodes the mind in reverse, stripping away recent memories first, then advancing into the regions that regulate emotion and suppress fear. Early memories, especially those charged with deep emotion, tend to last the longest.
So now, with his brain’s defenses weakened, the horrors he experienced as a child in a Jewish ghetto in Poland surge through him unfiltered. They come without warning, intruding even in moments of joy, as if he’s reliving them.
By Dr. Orli Peter
Dr. Orli Peter, a trauma psychologist and founder of the Israel Healing Initiative, authored a powerful firsthand essay for Jewish Journal detailing her experience treating survivors of the October 7 Hamas attacks. In the article, Peter recounts how she arrived in Israel to offer trauma care—only to find herself navigating missile sirens, bomb shelters, and the shared psychological weight of war. Her reflections shed light on “functional freeze,” the fine line between provider and survivor, and the profound power of presence and shared experience in the healing process. Peter writes with raw honesty about how trauma lives not only in memory, but in the body, the air, and the silences that follow sirens.
By Jake Wallis Simons
In one of his final columns as editor of The Jewish Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simons examines how Hamas employs psychological warfare to manipulate global perceptions, citing insights from Israel Healing Initiative CEO, Dr. Orli Peter. He writes: “As the neuropsychologist Dr. Orli Peter pointed out in these pages last year, while the West is saturated with ‘emotional empathy,’ allowing us to easily feel the feelings of others, Hamas has a surfeit of ‘cognitive empathy,’ meaning that they hold a coldblooded understanding of what makes us tick."
By Dr. Orli Peter
Dr. Orli Peter, a neuropsychologist and founder of the Healing Initiative in Israel, spoke with journalist Andrew Fox about how Hamas has manipulated Western empathy to distort perceptions of the Gaza conflict. In the interview, Fox explored the psychological impact of media narratives and Peter’s innovative approaches to treating trauma survivors. Her analysis of cognitive empathy highlights the alarming effectiveness of militant propaganda in shaping global public opinion.
By Andrew Fox
Former British special operations officer Andrew Fox interviewed Israel Healing Initiative CEO Orli Peter in Los Angeles about her work. In the course of the interview, Andrew shared the impact of trauma on his life and participated in treatment. He wrote a moving column for the Jewish Chronicle.
By Brian Fishbach
Soon after the launch of the Israel Healing Initiative, writer Brian Fishbach published an article in The Jewish Journal, based in Los Angeles. He chronicled our important work, writing, "A legion of mental health professionals are putting their practices aside to assist trauma victims in Israel."
By Amy Klein
Writer Amy Klein chronicled the journey of the Sharabi brothers, Nova Music Festival survivors, as they built their organization, The Association for Survivors and Wounded, and discussed treatment plans and collaboration with the Israel Healing Initiative.
By Susan Eisenstein
Reporter Susan Eisenstein interviewed Dr. Orli Peter about the neurostimulation treatment that she gave to the Sharabi brothers, survivors of the attack on the Nova Music Festival. Dr. Peter told her: “Severe trauma survivors, who show limited response to conventional trauma
treatment, see better and quicker progress because this therapy directly targets the underlying cause of their trauma symptoms."
