14 Shares 0



14

0







In 2014, 15 soldiers serving in the Israel Defense Forces killed themselves, more than doubling the number of suicides in the IDF in 2013.

Yet upon releasing these statistics, military officials denied a connection with the summer 2014 Gaza War, or Operation Protective Edge (Tzuk Eitan in Hebrew), which killed approximately 2,100 Palestinians, in the Gaza Strip, the majority civilians, along with 7 Israeli civilians. 66 Israelis serving in the army were also killed.

“We have not noticed any link between cases of suicide and army operations,” a source told the Jerusalem Post. The senior official in the IDF Personnel Directorate also added that the army is preventing suicide by “doing all it can.”

The latest Gaza War caused massive controversy, with confirmed cases of Israeli soldiers bombing hospitals and shooting civilians. Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence published a damning collection of soldier’s testimonies in July 2015, the consensus stating that soldiers were encouraged to ignore the rules of war as they launched the incursion on Gaza.

Breaking the Silence is a platform for past Israeli soldiers to speak candidly about their time serving and upholding the occupation.

An Infantry staff sergeant stationed in Northern Gaza in 2014 describes the mindset.

“Earlier that day one of the companies was hit by a few anti-tank missiles. The unit went to raid the area from which they were fired, so the guys who stayed behind automatically cared less about civilians. I remember telling myself that right now, the citizens of Gaza, I really don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t deserve anything – and if they deserve something it’s either to be badly wounded or killed. That’s what was going through my mind during those moments,” the soldier’s testimony reads. It then goes on to describe a story in which a Palestinian man was booby-trapped with grenades, so if Israeli paramedics went to treat him, they would be killed.

Going on this assumption, the soldier recounts another story from Gaza. “So this old man came over, and the guy manning the post – I don’t know what was going through his head – he saw this civilian, and he fired at him, and he didn’t get a good hit. The civilian was laying there, writhing in pain...It was clear to everyone that one of two things was going to happen: Either we let him die slowly, or we put him out of his misery.”

The man was eventually covered by the load of an armored bulldozer.

While this testimony is gruesome, its narrative does not vary much from other soldiers describing their roles in the Gaza War.

Even so, speaking about the high suicide statistics, an IDF source insisted that the overall trend showed a drop in suicides over the years.

“It wasn’t long ago when the average number of suicides would reach 30 per year,” the source said.

Service in the IDF is compulsory, though as the occupation slogs on, more and more past soldiers and pre-soldiers are objecting to the mandatory service in what they consider an unjust mission--upholding the occupation of Palestine.

Profiled in +972 Magazine, 19-year-old Israeli woman Tair Kaminer has chosen to be a conscientious objector. For her decision, Kaminer was sentenced to 20 days in an Israeli military jail, after which time she will be expected to enlist and should she object, the process will repeat itself.

But Kaminer says that she is less concerned with her own incarceration than with an oppressive society. “They convince us that the army has nothing to do with politics, but serving in the army is a political decision. Military jail frightens me less than our society losing its humanity.”