PNN – “CNN” news channel in a report referring to the extent of Israel’s human crimes in Gaza wrote: The increase in the suicides rate among soldiers returning from the war in Gaza indicates the serious psychological damage experienced by people involved in the ongoing genocide in this strip.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, the report stated: The Israeli army is caring for thousands of soldiers who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the Gaza war. This is despite the fact that many of these soldiers commit suicide after returning from Gaza due to psychological trauma caused by the severity of crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Referring to the uncertainty of the exact number of people who died due to suicide in the occupied territories, this report added: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) does not provide official statistics on the suicide rate among its soldiers.
Criticizing Israel’s restrictions on foreign journalists’ access to Gaza, CNN emphasized that it makes it difficult to fully record the suffering of Palestinians or even the experiences of Israeli soldiers stationed in the Gaza Strip. However, soldiers returning from the war told the reporter of this network that they had witnessed violence that the outside world could never understand.
According to CNN, the account provided by these soldiers is an understated look at the kind of brutality that critics call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “perpetual war.”
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Aaron Bergman, a political scientist at King’s College London who served in the Israeli army for six years, including during the war with Lebanon in the 1980s, said the Gaza war is unlike any other war Israel has fought. He added: “It’s easier now than it used to be to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues because of the reduction in societal labeling pressures.” However, the soldiers who come out of Gaza will “carry their experiences with them for the rest of their lives”, because for many of them, the transition from the battlefield to normal life, especially after a war that has left women and children targets, it is very exhausting.
Bergen asked a shocking question: “How can they put their children to bed when they know they have killed children in Gaza?”
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that according to military information obtained by this newspaper, 10 Israeli soldiers committed suicide between October 7 and May 11 alone. Meanwhile, more than a third of the people who returned from Gaza have mental health problems.
The Department of Rehabilitation of the Israeli War Ministry announced in a statement in August that more than 1,000 new wounded soldiers leave Gaza for treatment each month, 35 percent of whom complained of their mental condition. And 27% have mental reaction or post-traumatic stress disorder. The organization added that by the end of the year, 14,000 wounded soldiers are likely to be hospitalized, with about 40 percent of them expected to have mental health problems.
In an interview with CNN, an Israeli army doctor said that a mental health officer was assigned to each army unit during and after deployment in Gaza, but despite this, the impact of the war continued. He added: 18-year-old Israeli soldiers especially suffer from major psychological trauma in Gaza; they often cry or appear emotionally numb.
Yozi Bechor, a psychologist and commander of the Israeli army’s combat response unit, said one of the ways the army helps traumatized soldiers rebuild their lives is by trying to “normalize” the horrific experience they had in Gaza. Pointing out that the situation of people returning from Gaza is not normal, he added: When Israeli soldiers return from Gaza with PTSD symptoms, they are unable to return to normal life after the violence they witnessed there, or even to communicate with their children. We try to make this violence appear normal and natural for them.
CNN wrote in the end: As Israel’s war expands to Lebanon; some Israeli soldiers say they fear being summoned to another war. One of the aid workers of the Israeli army, who served in Gaza for four months, said: Many of us are afraid of being summoned again to fight in Lebanon. Many of us no longer trust the government (Netanyahu’s cabinet).