'Everyone not dead or injured is mentally damaged': Israeli army hit by silent crisis

News Desk

OCT 21, 2024

After a year of committing genocide in Gaza, more and more Israeli soldiers are quietly refusing orders to return to the strip to fight, saying they are depressed, worn out, psychologically damaged, and unmotivated, according to a report by Ha-Makom magazine published on 20 October. 

The ultra-Orthodox-oriented magazine interviewed multiple soldiers and parents of soldiers who refuse to return to Gaza. When a platoon of 30 soldiers of the Nahal Brigade was recently ordered to enter Gaza for the latest of several tours, only six reported for duty.

“I call it refusal and rebellion,” says Inbal, the mother of one of the soldiers in the platoon.

“They return to the same buildings that they cleaned, each time trapping them anew. They have been to Al-Zaytoun neighborhood three times already. They understand that it is futile and pointless.”

Although they had only a fifth of their personnel, the commander still insisted they enter Gaza.

“Because they were a small team, they couldn't go out on missions. They just stayed there and waited for the time to pass. It was even more unnecessary.”

In addition to battling Hamas fighters, Israeli soldiers have been demolishing residential buildings with explosives, sniping children, shelling hospitals and schools housing displaced people, and destroying Gaza's water and electrical infrastructure.

One parent of a soldier in Nahal said that according to her son, “The wards are empty. Everyone who is not dead or injured is mentally damaged. There are very few left who returned to fight. And they're not quite right either.”

After Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, in which many soldiers have already been killed and injured, her son told her, “I don't know what army they're thinking of entering Lebanon with, but I'm not going back to the battalion.”

According to those interviewed by Ha-Makom, there is no movement among the soldiers to refuse to serve.

Instead, one goes quietly to his commander and says he is unable to fight. He is then removed and placed in a non-combat position elsewhere.

“Things are resolved within the unit. It happens all the time. There is an incessant covert drop from fighting,” one parent explained.

Among mothers, the phenomenon is called “silent refusal” or “gray refusal.”

Soldiers feel demoralized having to return to places in Gaza where they fought months ago and supposedly defeated Hamas.

“When the return to the places we were in, such as Jabalia, Al-Zaytoun, and Shujaiya, began, it broke the soldiers,” a parent named Eidit explains.

“These are the same places where they lost their friends. The area was already clean. It had to be preserved. It frustrated them a lot. What kills them is the conditions and the duration of the fighting, which has no end in sight. You never know when you will get out, and it's been like this for a year. Not to mention the loss and the difficult sights they see in Gaza.”

Yael, the mother of a fighter in a commando brigade, said that her son told her, “We are like sitting ducks at the range. We don't understand what we're doing here. The abductees don't come back a second and third time, and you see it's endless, and soldiers get injured and die on the way.”

In March, four fighters of the unit were killed, and dozens more were injured in three different attacks.

After returning from Gaza, the soldier's unit was converted to a reserve unit and sent right back to fight in the enclave.

“He told his commander that he wanted to remain a fighter in the reserves but that, at the moment, he is unable to because of his parents, whom he does not trust and does not think there is any point in continuing. He was released but did not receive an order 8,” which is an order call up to fight in the reserves.

Their commanders shame them for abandoning their fellow soldiers and try to convince them to fight, but ultimately take no action against the soldiers.

“Two months before him, two fighters from his team refused and that is what gave him the courage. At the moment, most of them have not been put in prison, and the phenomenon is just kept quiet.”

Ha-Makom added, “After 12 consecutive months of a war that goes nowhere, the soldiers are ‘black.’ In military slang, this means that they are depressed, worn out and unmotivated.”

“In the beginning, he was very determined,” says Ofer, the father of a sniper in one of the infantry units. “He said: 'Our job is to return the kidnapped, our job is to take revenge,' and he went there.”

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/27360