Widespread Phenomenon: Thousands of Israeli Soldiers Exited Gaza Due to Their Mental Health

SadaNews - The Israeli army has suspended the service of thousands of its regular soldiers, including soldiers who have been discharged from military service due to their mental health, while others have been transferred to non-combat units. However, officers reported that the army's estimates regarding the number of these regular soldiers are incomplete, and the actual figure is more than thousands, according to a report published by the "Haaretz" newspaper today, Monday.

Soldiers who spoke to the newspaper said they realized in recent months that they could no longer continue serving in combat units. Most attributed this to being exhausted or their mental state, while a relatively small number of other soldiers stated that their decision to cease military service stemmed from "moral injuries that have scarred their spirit."

The newspaper noted that this phenomenon is widespread in army units, depicting a different picture from the military spokesperson's data. An officer in the command of one of the infantry brigades said, "In our unit alone, there were dozens of soldiers who requested to exit combat, and this is a phenomenon that has always existed, but it has never been at such numbers; this situation has gone out of control. Soldiers are exhausted, and they can no longer bear it. Not a day goes by when I don't hear about a soldier pleading to be transferred to a non-combat unit."

In some cases, transferring soldiers to non-combat units is "not enough", according to the newspaper, which quoted Benny, a sniper in the "Hanahel" brigade, stating that he and other soldiers perform the same task, which is "guarding humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip", starting at 3:30 AM, accompanied by small drones and an armored unit to establish a sniper position.

Benny added that aid trucks arrive at the distribution site between 7:30 and 8:30 AM, unloading their cargo, and in the meantime, residents try to stand in a more advanced position in the queue, but they face boundaries they cannot distinguish, "And this is a line; I can shoot them if they cross it. It's like a game of cat and mouse. They try to come from a different route every time, and I'm there with the sniper rifle, while the officers shout at me, 'Lower it, lower it.' I've shot 50 – 60 bullets a day, and I've stopped counting. I have no idea how many I've killed, many. And children."

Benny continued that he did not want to shoot many times, "but I felt I was forced to. The battalion commander screamed in the radio, 'Why aren’t you shooting them (killing them), they are advancing towards us, and this is dangerous.' The officer doesn’t care if children die, nor do they care what that does to my psyche; to them, I am just a tool."

He added, "This killed me and scarred my life. The thoughts about all this death don’t leave my mind, and I smell a bad odor, and my head analyzes it as the scent of corpses. I have urinated on myself three times in my sleep like a four-year-old child. I even once dreamed that I killed my family. I see in my dreams all the ones I have killed. A sniper is not like a pilot; he sees his victims through the rifle scope."

The report revealed that army officers put obstacles in front of soldiers requesting to cease their military service in the Gaza Strip. Soldier Aharon stated that he met with a mental health officer. "He listened to what I said, but he told me that I would lose everything if I stopped being a fighter and left the meeting angry because no one sees me, I'm just air."

Aharon added that he spoke with the battalion commander, "He told me that I would regret it for the rest of my life, and if something happened to my comrades, I wouldn’t forgive myself, and this would haunt me. But after I broke down in tears, he said he would transfer me to a logistics unit."

A soldier in the armored corps who requested to stop his military service stated, "The battalion commander told me that if I didn’t get back to the tank, he would send me to prison on a rocket, and he would take care of withdrawing my fighter card. I think from time to time about breaking my leg. I tried it once, but I didn’t succeed."