An Israel Defense Forces reservist, of Ma’ale Adumim, tragically took his own life earlier this month after serving for a long period in Gaza, getting a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), undergoing treatment that was not successfully concluded and being called up prematurely for additional reserve duty. Psychiatrists asserted that he was unfit for additional reserve duty. He had been called up soon after Hamas’s October 7 incursion into Israel and was told to help collect the bodies murder victims at the Supernova music festival.
From there, the combat engineer was assigned for months to fight on a Gaza battlefield. His family, who maintained that he had returned from war as a broken man demanded that Mizrahi – married and the father of four – be and have a military funeral in an army cemetery. After initially refusing, the IDF finally agreed.
But the IDF and Defense Ministry have not yet learned a lesson from this catastrophic, preventable case. Now, therapists at the National Clinic for Traumatic Stress & Resilience Tel Aviv University (TAU) – the largest PTSD clinic in Israel – warn officially that “some of our patients, deeply committed to their country, unit, and comrades, leave everything behind and go back to reserve duty in the midst of . In this they risk aggravating their own psychological condition, and since they might not be fully fit for active service, they also endanger their comrades.
” As the war is almost nine months old, cl.
