IDF reports sharp rise in soldier suicides • FRANCE 24 English

So this controversy Noa regarding uh the uh exemption from conscription for Orthodox Jews, it’s bubbling up at a time when for serving soldiers, there are increasing sounds of the strain that their service in the Israeli army is putting on their own mental health. Can you tell us more about this? Yes. Um there are almost a thousand Israeli soldiers who have been killed during this conflict. Um there are more than 12,000 gravely wounded. Um and what we’re seeing now is a spate of suicides. We have known for a while here in Israel that uh post trauma and trauma is really uh basically a plague among the soldiers who’ve served in Gaza. But right now I can tell you that in the last 10 days, three soldiers have killed themselves. the last one uh member of a very elite brigade yesterday. Um 15 have killed themselves uh since the return to fighting. And I can tell you just now in the last 15 minutes we’ve been informed of a fourth IDF soldier, a trainee uh in uh boot camp for the paratroopers. So again, an elite brigade who has attempted suicide just today. he uh is not dead, but he’s in critical condition. And this has been such um a plague in recent weeks and days that it’s become part of the public conversation for the first time in Israel. The toll that this is taking on soldiers who are 18-year-old conscripts in Israel. If you’re not ultraorththodox and not an Arab, you’re conscripted to the army, boys and girls alike. And so the Gaza wars being fought by young adults, very young, who have very little experience and had no say in the matter, um were simply conscripted and obliged by law to go and serve in what is turning out to be a brutal and unending war. The young soldier who killed himself yesterday had served for an entire year non-stop and apparently simply couldn’t withstand the pressure. So this is another issue that Netanyahu has to contend with these tragedies as de facto he’s negotiating an exemption to the draft for his close coalition partners. Locatana in Jerusalem as always thank you very much indeed for joining us.

As the Netanyahu government comes under pressure to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jews from mandatory military service, the Israeli army is reporting a spate of suicides among soldiers deployed on the Gaza front. FRANCE 24’s Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.
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29 comments

  2. They are the humans serving in the IDF. The others are no different from the dumbest robots robots humanity created with a soul talk less of empathy.

  5. You cannot send a boy or a traumatized girl with PDSM to fight in Gaza, he/she is exhausted, They must recover with psychiatric therapy and medicines more group therapies, with balanced veterans

  6. IN all US wars since 9/11 the number of US-soldiers committing suicide is four times as high as the number killed in combat. Brown University: Cost of War. Which makes this not surprising but inevitable. And if you see how this war is fought it is actually surprising that this isn´t a bigger problem. You just have to listen to soldiers who speak up what crimes they´re committing.

  8. What lovely people in that Israeli government. Can we please arrest Netanyahu and his entire cabinet and send them to some deserted island – maybe to North Sentinel? Then we can get some reasonable human beings on both sides to discuss a solution to this horrific mess?

  9. Remember what Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans are singing: « there is no need for schools in Gaza for there are no children anymore ». Those too could be haunted one day by their conscience…if they have one of course!

  10. these young lives died bc of nuttyahu. to save him in power. how can he breath, sleep and eat? he is so tremendously evil.

  14. The politicians who put these young men and women in harm’s way to further their political ambitions continues to sleep on their comfortable beds and warm rich food while these young men and women sleep rough, eat military rations and dwell on the thought that this could be the last minute of their lives.

  18. As awful as it is for anyone to feel like that, might be worth pausing for a second to consider how the Palestinians must feel if this is what its doing to the soldiers.

  29. Meanwhile some starving Gazan: I can't take it anymore but I must keep on living to tell this to the World. Maybe, this may also be redemption to a sin I commited. Allah, give me strength and patience to continue.

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