Glenn Cohen (psychologist)

Military and Intelligence Career

Before joining the Mossad, Cohen completed the Israeli Air Force flight academy and spent seven years as a search and rescue helicopter pilot. He then served three decades with the intelligence agency, ultimately becoming its Chief Operational Psychologist. In this role, he assessed and trained operatives and provided guidance on resilience and peak performance to commanders of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and YAMAM. He retired in 2015.

October 7 Hostage Crisis

After the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, Cohen was activated for IDF emergency reserve duty in the Hostage Negotiation Unit, where he served for more than five months. He became the first psychologist to greet returning hostages as they entered Israel. Cohen developed the protocol for their psychological recovery and debriefing and led the team that debriefed those freed from Hamas. He created the term 'humanitarian intelligence' for an intelligence-gathering method that prioritizes the well-being of trauma victims, unlike existing U.S. procedures that focus on immediate security debriefings.

Cohen argues that restoring a sense of safety and personal control comes before intelligence collection. The protocol included specific, rehearsed opening lines, such as saying "welcome back" instead of "welcome home," since many hostages' homes had been destroyed on October 7, and the word "home" had come to signify loss for those whose families were killed, kidnapped, or displaced. Cohen applied lessons from how Israeli POWs were received after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, who described their treatment upon return as one of the worst parts of their captivity.

He has publicly discussed the psychological aspects of the hostage crisis, warning against assuming all hostages shared the same experience and stating that misinformation can damage both the public and the returnees. He also challenged the idea that captivity is worse than death, noting that none of the hostages he debriefed said they would have preferred death. Cohen has written about post-traumatic growth, suggesting that national trauma can spark societal renewal.

Publications and Media Coverage

Cohen authored 'A Hostage Negotiator's Lesson in Listening' in The Wall Street Journal in January 2019. He was interviewed on the podcast Call Me Back with Dan Senor on the psychology of captivity.

He was quoted by Rolling Stone in a feature on the role of music for October 7 hostages, noting that music served as a coping tool for those abducted from the Nova music festival. He has been featured in The Genius of Israel by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, and in Israel 201. His forthcoming book Surviving and Thriving After Trauma, documenting findings from the October 7 hostage debriefings, is to be published by Simon & Schuster.

Did You Know?

• Cohen made aliya to Israel in 1982, forgoing a basketball scholarship at Brandeis University.
• He developed the E.L.I.T.E. method, a leadership and resilience framework based on his career as a special forces psychologist.
• Cohen earned his graduate degree in Clinical Psychology from Bar-Ilan University, specializing in combat-related PTSD.