Soldiers committing suicide and recruits failing to report: War fatigue undermines Israel

Special Envoy to Tel Aviv"He left Gaza, but Gaza didn't leave its leader," explains Jenny Mizrah, showing this newspaper a photograph of her son Eliran (40 years old), dressed in combat fatigues, sunglasses, and holding a rifle. He fought for 187 days in the Strip and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. However, he received a new recruitment order. Two days before he was due to return to Gaza, he committed suicide. He had a wife, four children, and a good salary in a public works engineering company.

"He didn't say anything; I didn't realize what was happening to him. The only thing that surprised me was that he never took off his sunglasses. He had lost his patience with the children, but he never explained to us what was going on in his head," says his wife of his psychologist, who is creating a foundation with the founder.

Mizrah was the commander of a bulldozer unit dedicated to destroying homes in Gaza. He and his comrades filmed themselves smiling and singing while carrying out demolitions or against the backdrop of the bombing raids that devastated the Strip. According to the UN, the Israeli army destroyed 90% of Gaza's homes in these two years.

Suicides among soldiers

The Israeli government does not provide figures, but the media have reported at least 50 cases of military suicides since October 7, 2023, half of them in recent months. Thousands have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and the army has had to increase the number of officers responsible for troop mental health. Active commanders admitted on condition of anonymity that many of the reservists they receive are not mentally fit to fight. There has also been an increase in the recruitment of young people under 20 with no military experience, and increasingly, mothers are speaking out who are unwilling to see their children killed as soon as they leave their teens. Tel Aviv universities will begin the school year at the end of this month with a call from student unions to strike to protest the law that maintains the exemption from military service for many ultra-Orthodox members.

In a Tel Aviv café, sitting at a table hidden from the eyes of other customers, David (a fictitious name to protect him) agrees to explain to the ARA what he saw in Gaza and why he decided to declare himself a conscientious objector. He fought in the Strip for two weeks in the winter of 2024. His unit was assigned to a neighborhood that the army had already cleared of Gazans: "We didn't find anyone, neither civilians nor combatants, nor any weapons: our mission was to maintain the no-go zone, and that's what we did." But then he saw how low-ranking commanders, on their own initiative, requested authorization to burn dozens of buildings: "They made it very clear that the objective was only revenge." A few months later, he read in the press that the neighborhood had been completely razed. "I know it could be captured without destroying it: that's what we did!" he says in a whisper so as not to be overheard. He is convinced that "once the army had achieved its military objectives, it was ordered to continue the war with no other purpose than the destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure and institutions."

No sanctions

When he was called up for recruitment again last summer, David had a long conversation with his commander and explained that he had no intention of returning to Gaza. "I told him the problem is the how and why of this war. A crime is being committed, and the goal of this war is to destroy Palestinian existence," he denounces. His conclusion is clear: "The goal is neither to replace Hamas nor to free the hostages, but to inflict punishment on the Palestinians that threatens their existence in Gaza." David was not punished for not responding to his country's call to go to war: he was simply not put on the recruitment list. "Rather than repressing us, the army wants to minimize us, and they know that putting people in prison stirs up trouble," he adds. Two of his comrades have spent only a few days behind bars.

War fatigue is also evident in recruitment, which has dropped significantly. The Israeli army declined to say how many soldiers responded to the latest draft of 60,000 men and women to carry out the final mission of occupying Gaza City. Few reject the draft out of empathy for the Palestinians or a desire to avoid committing war crimes, but many believe this war is not worth the price of the lives of the hostages or the soldiers.

The economic impact

Some don't report to the barracks because their families can't afford for them to keep abandoning their businesses and jobs to go to war. "If they don't fight, it's not because of a moral issue, it's because of fatigue. Given this, any other government would have stopped the war a long time ago," explains Tel Aviv University professor Gadi Alghazi, who in the 1980s was the first conscientious objector imprisoned in Israel.

Macroeconomic data currently withstands the increase in military spending, the decline in tourism, and the labor shortage caused by conscription and the withdrawal of work permits for Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank who commuted to Israel every day to work. But the pockets of families and small businesses do feel the impact. Given that many recruits struggle to balance civilian and military life, the commanders have been given a free hand. The leaders of each unit have a budget and can hire soldiers who are listed as mobilized reservists, but who don't actually work the entire shift. "This is how 16th-century armies worked, something that had never happened in Israel," the professor explains.

Some military tasks are also being outsourced to private companies, often to West Bank settlers. The army doesn't have enough bulldozers—most were damaged during the war over the past two years and couldn't be replaced—and demolishing a house with bombs is very expensive. They have turned to private contractors, as their official website states: "Today, every commander wants a specialized operator and a powerful bulldozer at his side on the battlefield." According to the newspaper Haaretz These workers earn up to 1,800 euros a day, with incentives if they meet the quota of houses they demolish. And the owners of these destruction companies act like sheriffs, shooting any Palestinian who approaches their location.

Not everyone feels war fatigue. G., a soldier in the engineering unit—in charge of demolishing tunnels, garages, and houses, who also asks that his name not be revealed—remains in high spirits. He has fought 300 days in Gaza over the past two years. Asked about the civilian death toll, he says he's "had enough" of Gazans. "They can end up as refugees anywhere in the world, except in Gaza. They can go to Europe, Africa, or the Arab countries, or wherever they're accepted." He also doesn't believe Trump's plan will bring an end to the war. "Unfortunately, it will take time," he predicts. "It's true that we're tired of fighting, but in my unit we have confidence, and the vast majority of us are willing to keep fighting. It's dirty, but we understand that we must do it every time we come across a tunnel entrance in Gaza." Some still haven't had enough of the war.