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Since October 2023, over 50 Israeli soldiers have died by suicide, an unprecedented spike compared to recent years.

By comparison, a total of 14 soldiers died by suicide in 2022, and 11 in 2021.

The latest case was Ariel Meir Taman, a reservist who killed himself on July 27 at his home in southern Israel.

While mental health challenges are not new in the Israeli army, experts say the scale and context of the current wave are deeply tied to Israel’s ongoing genocidal war and horrors in Gaza, which have killed at least 60,000 people in less than two years.

Among the killed, at least 17,000 are children, many of them pulled out from the debris, burned or with missing limbs. Mass graves are dug daily as families are wiped out in their homes. What remains of Gaza is a wasteland of broken bodies, starvation, and mourning.

“In the Gaza war, Israeli soldiers are not just dealing with combat trauma, but with deep moral wounds from participating in or witnessing harm to civilians,” says Dr. Seyda Eruyar, a trauma psychology expert and associate professor at Ibn Haldun University.

Eruyar describes this as moral injury—a condition related to but different from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“While PTSD is rooted in fear, flashbacks, hypervigilance, and emotional numbing, moral injury stems from guilt, shame, and moral disorientation,” she tells TRT World.

The Israeli military rarely discloses details of such deaths, often labelling them as “suspected suicides.”

However, a clear pattern is undeniable.

Most of those who died were reservists, who were called back into service and redeployed to Gaza, sometimes despite existing PTSD diagnoses.

One of them was Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old reservist with extensive service in Gaza, who died by suicide days before redeployment, according to the Israeli media.

According to Israel's public broadcaster KAN, nearly 3,770 soldiers have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Losing manpower

The army is also struggling to maintain manpower and “legitimacy” among its citizens.

Many reservists are refusing to return to duty.

While Israeli officials claimed an 80 percent attendance in March, KAN reported it may be closer to 60 percent—a sharp drop from the post-October 7 mobilisation. If accurate, that means over 100,000 reservists have stopped showing up.

Some are not just refusing to serve, they’re also speaking out.

In April 2025, nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed a letter calling for an end to the war.

In May, hundreds of Israeli army officers signed an open letter calling the war “immoral” and politically motivated. Published by Haaretz, the letter accused the government of pursuing a war “that doesn't serve Israel’s security” and warned of war crimes and lasting psychological trauma.

The letter warned of the long-term psychological toll on soldiers “We are confident that the chief of staff will refuse any order that waves a ‘black flag’ and that could cause soldiers to carry out orders whose consequences will haunt them for the rest of their lives,” the letter read.

The military swiftly announced it would dismiss any active reservist who signed it. But the protests only grew.

According to Eruyar, for many, whistleblowing or protest becomes a way to reclaim moral agency after doing things they can no longer justify.

She notes that this is “not a political act, but a way to heal,” for those soldiers. But the culture in the military often stigmatises mental health struggles, especially when they stem from ethical concerns, says Seyda Eruyar.

“Soldiers who question orders or express distress may be ridiculed or silenced. So, this adds a second layer of trauma (in addition to what they’ve endured related to Israel’s actions in Gaza). Not only are they suffering, but they are told not to.”

Israeli media now reports growing morale issues and a lack of faith in the war effort.

Dehumanisation as a coping mechanism

Some soldiers, Eruyar notes, cope in darker ways: by emotionally detaching from or dehumanising Palestinians.

“They stop seeing them as people. But eventually, that defence breaks down, leaving soldiers with psychological collapse, identity conflict, and in some cases, political disillusionment.”

She stresses that these mental health struggles do not exist in a vacuum.

“They are shaped by a broader system of asymmetrical violence and occupation,” Eruyar says and adds that these suicides aren’t just individual tragedies but rather a systematic failure.

“They reflect a broader systemic failure—one that fails to protect both civilians and soldiers from ethical collapse.”

While acknowledging PTSD among Israeli soldiers, Eruyar believes that it cannot come at the expense of recognising the far greater and ongoing trauma endured by Palestinian civilians; those living under siege, displacement, and daily threats to their existence.

According to Dr. Eruyar, addressing soldiers’ psychological wounds requires more than therapy. It demands confronting the ethical consequences of the war, holding systems accountable, and ending cycles of violence that harm both victims and perpetrators.

“True healing,” she says, “begins when we confront the human cost of war—with honesty, humility, and justice.”