War trauma comes home as suicides shake Israel’s military

According to the official figures, seven active-duty soldiers died by suicide between October 7 and the end of 2023. In 2024, 21 cases of suicide were recorded among soldiers. Since the beginning of 2025 up to now, at least 20 soldiers have attempted or died by suicide.

According to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, before the war the average number of suicides among Israeli soldiers was about 12 cases, indicating that the rate has nearly doubled over the past two years.

The Israeli army has linked this increase to the significant expansion of troop deployments, including reserve forces, as well as the exposure of many soldiers to intense combat in Gaza.

In this context, military sources stated that internal analyses show that suicide cases linked purely to personal circumstances have decreased, while cases likely resulting from intense combat experiences or battlefield trauma have increased.

On Thursday, the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz reported the suicide of a reserve officer from the Givati Brigade who had been suffering from psychological problems after participating in the Gaza war.

The newspaper wrote that 28-year-old Tomas Adzgoskas was discharged from service in 2024 due to psychological injury and had been undergoing procedures to diagnose post-war psychological trauma. His body was found in one of the parks in the city of Ashdod. In a note, he wrote:

“I can no longer go on. I have done unforgivable things. A demon has possessed me since October 7. Please forget me.”

Haaretz reported that he had been struggling with psychological problems for about two years and had been undergoing both psychiatric and pharmaceutical treatment. Experts believe that the case of Tomas Adzgoskas is not an isolated incident but rather an example of the expanding scope of psychological disorders among soldiers who participated in the Gaza war, especially as operations continue and battlefield and moral pressures increase.

Families of former soldiers and specialist therapists continue to warn that official statistics do not reflect the full reality. Organizations that treat patients with post-war trauma estimate that the real number of suicides is far higher, especially among discharged soldiers whose cases are not directly counted in military statistics.

According to Haaretz investigations, at least 15 discharged soldiers have died by suicide since the start of the war due to service-related psychological problems. In addition, five police officers have also taken their own lives during the same period. The newspaper adds that many of these cases remain “in the shadows” and are not officially recognized as service-related deaths.

With U.S. support, Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, which has so far resulted in the killing of more than 70,000 Palestinians and the wounding of over 171,000 others, most of them women and children.

A ceasefire agreement that came into effect on October 10 was supposed to bring the war to an end, but Israel violates it daily, leading to the killing and injury of hundreds more people. The regime also continues to block the entry of sufficient food and medicine into Gaza.