Since its establishment in 1998, NATAL, “The Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War,” has been propagating the notion of national trauma as a comprehensive category of suffering related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Against the shifting perceptions of PTSD in Israel, we explore recent undertakings of NATAL's experts to naturalize trauma among “pre-clinical” populations of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) veterans. The experts’ attempts to de-politicize the suffering of the veterans are constrained by the fact that in their clinical ideology, the apolitical language of the therapeutic is aligned with a somber national pathos that strikes a collective cord of common Jewish fate and identity. This alignment may account for the Israeli public's acceptance of NATAL's agenda, despite its subversive connotations.
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