For many months now, we have been talking about northern Israel through numbers: evacuees, returns home, damage, recovery, and budgets. We talk about the communities that were affected, about the children and teenagers who have lived through sirens, displacement, uncertainty, and disruption to their daily lives.

But amid all of this discussion, there is another group that rarely receives attention: the frontline workers who continue to show up day after day to support those same young people.

Even as the security situation drags on for months and becomes part of everyday life, some people remain there. Present. Listening. Guiding. Carrying burdens for others that are often difficult for them to bear themselves. As the war continues, the pressure on these frontline professionals only grows. They are expected to be a source of stability for others while living under the same reality of threat and uncertainty.

"They arrived with pounding hearts. They asked for water and a cigarette. It took time before they were able to talk. Then the siren went off. We ran to the shelter. Suddenly I could see the magnitude of the fear in their eyes. Not just a little fear — absolute panic."

This wasn't written by a journalist or a researcher. It was a WhatsApp message I received from one of ELEM's managers who had gone on an outreach visit to a heavily bombarded city in northern Israel. It was a raw, unfiltered moment when reality broke through without any barriers.

We are used to talking about the youth; about their anxiety, about the increased risk on the streets, about the lack of responses/solutions. But we are less occupied with the simplest and most painful question: 

Who is helping those who are helping the youth?

The prolonged war in the north makes this question more urgent than ever. As the months pass, the burden on professionals who are expected to be an anchor for others continues to grow, even as they themselves live amid the same threats, anxiety, and uncertainty. Young people are not the only ones carrying the emotional cost of this period. Those who meet with them every day carry it as well.

Our teams do not operate in a vacuum. They drive on roads that are under threat, and they are frightened just like everyone else. They enter exposed areas without adequate protection. They listen to stories that cannot simply be "left at work" when they return home. And when the sirens catch them, the armor of the "professional" begins to crack. In those moments, they are not experts or counselors — they are simply people who want to make it home safely.

In those seconds inside the shelter, when one staff member says, "I can't do this, I'm heading home," and another struggles to slow their racing heartbeat, a heartbreaking dilemma emerges: stay for the teenagers waiting outside who need an adult to be there for them, or listen to the most basic instinct urging them to stop and protect themselves?

This is not a theoretical question from an ethics class. It is the question ELEM's frontline teams face every day.

It is a personal question, but also an organizational and moral one. If we demand that staff continue at any cost, we will lose them. But if we allow them to stop, who will remain for the young people?

The war has taught us that resilience is not the absence of fear — it is the ability to make room for it. Our responsibility, therefore, is not only to provide debriefing sessions or resilience workshops. It is also to create an environment where frontline workers can say, "This is hard for me," set boundaries, and ask for a pause when they need one.

Because our most valuable resource is the people who choose, despite everything, to keep showing up.

At the end of that visit, the team still went out to meet with local teenagers. They heard stories of panic attacks and homes without protected shelters. They saw how meaningful it was for those young people that someone had simply come to ask how they were doing.

That is the moment when you understand why these professionals stay, but it is also the moment when you understand why we cannot take them for granted.

Because ultimately, a society's ability to withstand a crisis is measured not only by how well it protects those who have been harmed, but also by how well it protects those who are there for them.

Frontline workers, social workers, youth counselors, educators, and therapists are not an endless resource. They are human beings.

The ongoing war in northern Israel reminds us again and again that the front line is not only at the border. It is also in the shelters, on the streets, in youth centers, and in the long late-night conversations with a teenager searching for one adult who will stay.

Because if we do not support those who support others, next time there may simply be no one left to show up.