According to Israeli media, the IDF, once sold to the world as a tightly wound spring of strategic brilliance, is now a therapy queue at Rambam’s clinic.
You’d think an army with the latest fighter jets, tanks, drones, bunker-busters, and carte blanche from Western powers would be psychologically bulletproof. Instead, it turns out the only thing more fragile than the international order is the Israeli soldier’s psyche.
According to Israel’s own newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, a psychological apocalypse is sweeping through the the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Over 10,000 soldiers are currently undergoing psychiatric treatment. While starving women the children, the IDF has become a sprawling mental health epidemic wearing fatigues and hugging an assault rifle.1
We Bombed Ourselves – In the Mind
Among these soldiers, 3,600 have been diagnosed with PTSD, with another 9,000 requesting official recognition of psychological disability. Add to that the 54 suicides since October 7.2 The illusion of a gallant, stable military is starting to look more like a heavily medicated panic room.
In total, since the beginning of the Gaza campaign, more than 18,000 IDF soldiers have been physically or mentally injured. One in three patients admitted to military hospitals is dealing with a severe psychological disorder. Unsurprisingly, the rogues are also experiencing guilt, disillusionment, chronic anxiety, and a slow-burning identity crisis. Who would have thought that watching yourself bomb schools, starve babies, and bulldoze homes can do a number on your subconscious?
Israel’s Latest Occupation: The Therapist’s Office
“More than 12,000 soldiers have not been able to return to combat due to psychological damage,” notes the same report, meaning (in layman’s terms) that they’re now petrified of their own shadows.
The Israeli military, once sold to the world as a tightly wound spring of strategic brilliance, is now a therapy queue at Rambam’s clinic. Forget the Six-Day War; we’re now deep into the Six-Session Breakdown. And it turns out that these ‘elite’ fighters’ real battlefield isn’t between the river and the sea but between their ears.
The Most Morally Anxious Army in the World
This nervous collapse comes with a PR problem. The IDF, famed for its alleged ‘purity of arms’ mythology3, is now staring into a psychological abyss. The soldier who emptied a clip into a family home is now terrified of closed doors and loud noises.
Let’s not forget that these breakdowns are not happening under siege or famine—that’s what Israel is imposing on Gaza, not enduring. This is a well-fed, often incredibly fat, well-armed military under full Western protection. And yet, it is collapsing—not just physically through sandal-clad fighters dropping hotcakes into the hatches of their $10M Merkavas, but psychologically.
In a normal world, that would be incredibly embarrassing. In this world, it’s simply classified as “in need of more of your money.”
The real irony? The world has been told for decades that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” Apparently, the side effects of such morality include crippling anxiety, hallucinations, and suicidal ideation. It seems morality means slaughtering entire neighbourhoods and then crying about it in the psychiatrist’s office. Perhaps we need a new definition for these goons.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers and reservists are quitting en masse. The once-proud legion of colonial domination now appears to be held together by pills, trauma flashbacks, and international gaslighting.
Between Gaza and the Mental Hotline
Yedioth Ahronoth estimates that by 2028, Israel may have up to 50,000 psychological casualties, both soldiers and civilians -most from the Gaza genocide- a full-blown consequence of a military enterprise that eats itself from the inside.4
And maybe, just maybe, the human mind wasn’t designed to carry out genocide with such detachment. Maybe when you spend your days locking children in cages, calling in airstrikes on hospitals, and cheering as food trucks are turned away, your subconscious eventually rebels.
Not out of morality—don’t get carried away—but because the human conscience, no matter how repressed, leaves claw marks when you try to bury it alive.
If this is the price of Zionist supremacy; depression, disassociation, and institutionalised guilt, then perhaps Israel’s undoing won’t come from its enemies, but from within.
And so, we say with hope, may the breakdowns continue. May the trauma deepen. May every war crime carve a new scar. Because as long as the genocide in Gaza persists, the only fitting justice short of the ICC is this: that the perpetrators cannot sleep at night.
References:
- https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israeli-media-challenges-official-figures-of-army-casualties-in-gaza/ ↩︎
- https://trt.global/world/article/b5e60869908d ↩︎
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060430031938/http://www1.idf.il/dover/site/mainpage.asp?sl=EN&id=32 ↩︎
- https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israeli-media-challenges-official-figures-of-army-casualties-in-gaza/ ↩︎
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