Since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, 44 Israeli soldiers have taken their own lives. The pace has accelerated significantly in the past 10 days alone, with three suicides reported in a single week.
The first was a soldier from the Nahal Brigade, who served in Gaza for a full year before being transferred to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where he ended his life. The second was from the Golani Brigade; he shot himself at the Sde Teman base in the Negev Desert after undergoing an interrogation that resulted in his weapon being confiscated. The third soldier had openly shared with colleagues the emotional torment and horrors he had witnessed during combat, before taking his own life with a bullet.
Suicide has become a disturbing phenomenon in the Israeli military, now the second-leading cause of death in the current war. This comes amid severe battlefield losses inflicted by Palestinian resistance fighters, who are conducting a sophisticated guerrilla campaign against the occupation forces. Some soldiers have refused to return to combat in Gaza, and the authorities have responded by imprisoning several of them for insubordination.
Many Israeli soldiers report severe psychological distress, driven both by fear for their own lives and the guilt of participating in widespread destruction and killing in Gaza. Among veteran troops, 75% have required psychological assistance. Thousands are currently undergoing treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), forcing the Israeli army to deploy approximately 800 mental health professionals to manage the crisis.
A Mental Collapse the Army Cannot Contain
Israeli media have repeatedly highlighted the government’s failure to address the plummeting morale of its soldiers or to meet soaring demands for mental health support. The veterans’ organisation Breaking the Silence has accused the army of covering up soldiers’ psychological trauma.
Haaretz reported that military authorities have deliberately misclassified many suicides as “accidents,” while Israeli social media users describe these psychologically affected soldiers as “the silent victims of October 7.”
An investigative report by Italian outlet InsideOver chronicled the tragic case of Daniel Edri, a reserve soldier haunted by images of charred bodies. During deployment in Gaza and southern Lebanon, he self-immolated near the city of Safed. In a final message to a comrade, he wrote:
“Brother, my mind is collapsing. I’ve become a danger — a ticking bomb.”
His mother confirmed that he was tormented by unbearable memories from the battlefield — plagued by the stench of burned flesh, sleepless nights, and the burden of retrieving the corpses of fallen comrades. He had lost two close friends in the war, and his trauma became inescapable.
The same agony was voiced by the mother of reserve soldier Eliran Mizrahi, who served only 78 days in Gaza before taking his life:
“He left Gaza, but Gaza never left him.”
Not Just Soldiers — Officers Too
The suicides have not been limited to enlisted troops. Several officers have also taken their own lives — including one permanent service officer who shot himself just two weeks into the war, a lieutenant colonel, a major, and a field doctor who repeatedly said he could no longer endure the sight of burned bodies and endless bloodshed.
This wave of suicides represents an unprecedented psychological collapse, deeper than what Israel has experienced in any of its previous wars. It raises serious questions about the erosion of critical traits once associated with combat readiness: confidence, courage, morale, and belief in the legitimacy of the war itself.
It also invites comparisons with suicide trends across global military history — cases driven by similar factors: feelings of defeat, inability to secure victory, futility of combat, fear of death or capture, detachment of military leadership from the realities of war, and being ordered to commit war crimes or inhumane acts in prolonged conflicts.
Historical Parallels: From WWII to Iraq and Afghanistan
These same conditions led hundreds of German soldiers to end their lives near the end of World War II. Hundreds of American troops in Iraq followed the same path, prompting the U.S. Department of Defence to acknowledge suicide as one of the most complex crises facing the military. The same patterns emerged among U.S. soldiers returning from the war in Afghanistan.
Reports and studies identify common psychological drivers of military suicides: PTSD, depression, alcohol abuse, bullying, sexual harassment, anxiety, and self-harming tendencies, often compounded by overwhelming guilt.
The Serbian-American poet Charles Simic once captured this moral anguish in his memoir A Fly in the Soup, questioning what a WWII pilot might feel while pressing the button that rains down bombs, burning buildings and bodies indiscriminately.
Israel’s Unique Psychological Breakdown
Several uniquely Israeli factors compound the crisis:
- Military bureaucracy has become harsher during the war.
- Neglect of individual soldiers has intensified.
- The state’s indifference to captives’ lives, underscored by early implementation of the so-called Hannibal Protocol, which permits the use of overwhelming firepower even at the risk of killing Israeli captives.
Field commanders have been pressuring soldiers to suppress their mental suffering to prevent morale from collapsing. Those who speak out have been court-martialed, fined, or threatened with prison.
Another emerging concern is that the Israeli army has begun recruiting individuals with known psychological vulnerabilities. Under wartime pressure, there’s no time for proper screening, and commanders fear that rigorous checks would eliminate too many from the pool, leaving the army with no one left to fight.
This has given rise to an unofficial doctrine:
“We fight with whoever is available.”
One officer admitted:
“We need as many rifles on the front as possible. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”
Fifteen per cent of active-duty troops who fought in Gaza and received psychological treatment have refused to return. Yet the army has deployed even those diagnosed with more than 50% psychological disability.
The Forecast: 50,000 Trauma Cases and Rising Suicide Rates
The mental and emotional breakdown now gripping the army is expected to worsen. Experts estimate that Israel will have to treat at least 50,000 psychologically affected soldiers in the years following the war, inevitably leading to a rise in both combat and post-combat suicides.
Although military suicide is not new to Israel — with approximately 1,230 cases recorded since the October 1973 war — the current war marks a shift.
In the past, soldiers typically ended their lives after the fighting had ended. In this war, they are doing so during active combat. This shift was highlighted by Yossi Tivy-Pelz, head of the Israeli Centre for Suicide and Psychological Pain Research, who said:
“It was shocking. The suicides occurred in the very first days of the war — not after the battles had subsided, as was previously the case.”
