Psycho Army: Unspoken stories of the tsunami of suicides among Zionist soldiers

On an April afternoon, the military cemetery in the Kiryat Shaul settlement in Tel Aviv was filled with hundreds of Zionist soldiers and their families, and six soldiers were carrying the coffin of one of their comrades and placing wreaths on an empty grave.

The Hebrew newspaper Haaretz reported at the time about this funeral that the identity of the fallen soldier whose funeral was held was not known; not because his identity had to remain secret due to, for example, his membership in secret units of the Zionist army, but because he had committed suicide.

According to Haaretz, while the Israeli army, under a policy of strict military censorship, prevents the disclosure of any statistics on its casualties, at least 35 Israeli soldiers have committed suicide while on duty since the start of the war, 28 of which occurred at the end of last year. The Tel Aviv army refused to provide detailed information on suicides among its forces earlier this year.

In most cases, when the Israeli army is asked to account for the circumstances of the suicides of its soldiers and the circumstances of their deaths, it usually gives vague answers, such as that it is a complex incident, and more often than not, it says that there were no prior indications that the soldiers intended to commit suicide.

However, there were several warnings in the files of the army and the Ministry of War about the reservist who committed suicide last April. Like many of his colleagues, the Israeli soldier was forced to join the army on October 8, 2023, and serve in one of the reserve armored brigades.

The brigade in which the Israeli soldier, whose identity was not disclosed, was active was based in the city of Nahariya in the northern Western Galilee, and over time, the brigade was deployed to the Gaza Strip, where he most often had to fight in the Khan Yunis area in the southern Gaza Strip, before leaving Gaza in February last year. According to the Haaretz newspaper, a quick look at the soldier’s medical file shows that he attempted suicide several times during his service.

The Israeli soldier’s mental state worsened after leaving Gaza, and he was hospitalized in a mental health center. He contacted the Israeli Ministry of War last November and requested referral to a rehabilitation unit due to psychological trauma as a war-wounded soldier. The Israeli soldier, while in a very bad mental condition, was called up to the army in March to be deployed again to Gaza.

The Haaretz newspaper reported that one of the soldiers' friends said: "During the training before the operation, my friend told me that he was in a mental health care center. Apparently, I was the only one who knew about this, and I felt that my friend was getting better, and I did not foresee that he might commit suicide. While we were on the battlefield, one day, when he was on leave, he called his commander and said that he was feeling very bad. The commander did not resist much and informed him that as soon as he arrived at the military base, he would be immediately relieved of duty. While we all saw how bad my friend was feeling, no one took any action to take back his weapon or send him to a mental health center, and finally, a few hours later, the 25-year-old Israeli soldier took his own life with his weapon.

The Israeli army's mental health

The Hebrew newspaper Haaretz stated: The Israeli army considers this incident a single mistake and has promised to learn from it, but a source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense admitted that the issue of suicide is not an exceptional or new issue in the army, and among the tens of thousands of soldiers who have been called up to the army as reservists in the past two weeks, hundreds, perhaps even thousands, have contacted us with severe mental health problems. No one knows the exact number; neither in the human resources department, the army, the mental health department, or the rehabilitation unit.

According to this report, the Israeli army admitted that it does not have information in its records about all the mentally injured people who are being treated in the rehabilitation unit of the Ministry of Defense, and this is especially true for soldiers suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mental health experts interviewed by Haaretz said that no systematic information is provided on soldiers who are recognized as mentally disabled.

An armored battalion commander in the Israeli army reserve forces told Haaretz that the Tel Aviv Defense Ministry is afraid of disclosing the personal information of soldiers undergoing psychiatric treatment. Therefore, we have no choice but to hire more mental health officers so that if a soldier is in a mental crisis, they can talk to them.

According to dozens of interviews, the Tel Aviv army not only forces soldiers who are undergoing treatment and are recognized as wounded or disabled in combat, but also soldiers who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for years. According to the war-disabled soldiers who were called up as reservists, no one had met with them before, neither mental health specialists from the army nor anyone else.

In an interview with Haaretz, disabled soldiers in the Israeli army said that some of them still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since the July 2006 war with Lebanon, but they are forced to serve in the army. One of them said that no one has asked about our mental health and that we cannot talk about it.

Eyal Bruchter, head of the Internal Council for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and former head of the Israeli army’s mental health department, said: “The participation of troops with mental disorders in war will have serious consequences, especially for those with PTSD.”

Tel Aviv usually prides itself on its ability to return troops to the battlefield after showing signs of psychological trauma. Still, the reality is that returning a soldier to the battlefield in such conditions will lead to more widespread mental disorders.

He added: “It seems that given the severe shortage of manpower, the army prefers to ignore the risks and send people with mental disorders to the battlefield.”

Professor Yossi Levi-Baals, head of the Suicide Research Institute at the Ruppin University Center, said that exposing soldiers with mental disorders to threatening events is associated with greater casualties and psychological trauma, and significantly increases the risk of suicide among them, especially since these troops have easy access to weapons.