Israeli military bulldozer driver Eliran Mizrahi and bomber pilot Asaf Dagan both died by suicide in October. (Via X\/Haaretz)<\/p>\n
Is the Israeli army on the verge of collapsing? That\u2019s the question many families of soldiers recently returned from Gaza seem to be asking.<\/p>\n
A series of interviews with more than 20 combat soldiers and their families for an article published last month<\/a> by Tel Aviv news site The Hottest Place<\/em>, suggests that the Israeli army is suffering from a potentially terminal crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cThis may be a quiet and hushed-up phenomenon,\u201d writes journalist Revital Hovel, \u201cbut [it is] one that is continuously increasing. Many soldiers are refusing to continue fighting in Gaza and are voting with their feet.\u201d<\/p>\n A year of armed resistance to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is taking its toll. Many Israeli soldiers are now refusing to fight.<\/p>\n Some are even dying by suicide rather than return to the field.<\/p>\n \u201cThe platoons are empty,\u201d said \u201cRona,\u201d the mother of one soldier. \u201cAnyone who isn\u2019t dead and wasn\u2019t wounded was emotionally damaged. Very few remained who came back to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n Like everyone else quoted by The Hottest Place<\/em>, \u201cRona\u201d used a pseudonym for fear of retaliation from the Israeli army.<\/p>\n Despite the unprecedented horrors the Israeli occupation army has been inflicting in Gaza and Lebanon for the last year, many of the surviving soldiers have been mentally scarred by their experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a constant hidden dropping out from fighting,\u201d said \u201cIdit,\u201d a second mother. \u201cThis is not a conscientious objection, but rather dropping out due to burnout.\u201d<\/p>\n According to \u201cRona,\u201d the army\u2019s morale was already catastrophically low even before Israel carried out a series of assassinations in Lebanon<\/a> ahead of the attempted ground invasion that began on 1 October.<\/p>\n Her son told her that, \u201cI don\u2019t know what army they\u2019re planning to go into Lebanon with, but there is no army. I\u2019m not going back to the battalion.\u201d<\/p>\n This might help explain why, one month on, the Israeli military has failed to advance any significant distance into South Lebanon, and almost 100 soldiers have been killed in the attempt.<\/p>\nBurnout<\/strong><\/h2>\n