"50-60 every day... I've stopped counting how many children I've killed" - IDF soldiers say genocide is breaking them

[east]

turns out committing genocide isn't good for the soul, they're deserting by the thousands/committing suicide en masse and israel's hiding the data

this is the exact same thing that happened to the nazis, their einsatzgruppen death squads started developing ptsd from committing mass shootings so hitler established death camps to stop them from killing themselves

"Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, inspected his first and last mass shooting. He became very uncomfortable, very quickly. As the firing squad started, Himmler was even more nervous. During every volley he looked to the ground. When two women could not die, Himmler yelled to the police sergeant not to torture them. Their commander, Eric Von dem Bach berated him saying, 'Look at the eyes of the men of this Kommando, how deeply shaken they are. These men are finished for the rest of their lives!'" (Christopher P. Davey, Bullets and Burdens)

rest of long article without paywall at: archive.ph/J8Knf

'I saw the bodies of children': Moral injury and mental strain breaking IDF soldiers

Long Stints in Gaza's Combat Zones Is Leaving Many Mentally Exhausted. Others Can No Longer Take the Arbitrary Killing. Sources Estimate Thousands of Conscript Soldiers Have Already Left the Front Lines With No Intention of Going Back, With the Numbers Constantly Rising

www.haaretz.com

A group of soldiers walks between houses, or more accurately, dilapidated structures once used for dwelling. Walls remain in place, remnants of life. Soon, a bulldozer will arrive to destroy a little more of the destruction. The soldiers will surround it and provide cover, trying not to fall asleep. "I never imagined this is what I'll be doing during my service," admits Yoni, one of the soldiers. "That I would become a security guard for heavy machinery."

But on that day in Beit Lahia, something happened, says Yoni (a pseudonym, as are the names of other interviewees). "Terrorists, terrorists," one soldier shouted. "We go into a frenzy, and I get on the Negev machinegun right away and start spraying, firing hundreds of bullets. We then charged forward." There were no terrorists there. "I saw the bodies of two children, maybe 8 or 10 years old, I have no idea," recalls Yoni. "There was blood everywhere, lots of signs of gunfire, I knew it was all on me, that I did this. I wanted to throw up. After a few minutes, the company commander arrived and said coldly, as if he wasn't a human being, 'They entered an extermination zone, it is their fault, this is what war is like.'"

This was late last May, but the scene has not faded, nor has what happened afterward. Yoni told his commanders he wanted to see a mental health officer, but didn't reveal why. At the end of the meeting, the officer recommended that Yoni not return to combat, and he was transferred to a support role. "I suffer from flashbacks to that event," he shares. "Their faces come back to me, and I don't know if I'll ever forget them."

For Benny, a Nahal Brigade sniper, changing roles is no longer enough. The wound he describes is already too big, it has penetrated very deep. "It started about two months ago," he testifies. "Every day we have the same mission: to secure the humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip." His and his friends' day begins at 3:30 A.M. Accompanied by drones and armored forces, they set up a sniper position and wait. According to him, between 7:30 and 8:30 A.M., the trucks arrive and begin to unload their contents. Meanwhile, the residents try to move forward to get a good spot in line, but there's a line in front of them that they don't notice.

"A line that if they cross it, I can shoot them," Beni explains. "It's like a game of cat and mouse. Civilians try to come from a different direction every time, and I'm there with the sniper rifle, and the officers are yelling at me, 'Take him down, take him down.' I fire 50-60 bullets every day, I've stopped counting kills. I have no idea how many I've killed, a lot. Children."

He says there have been many times when he did not want to shoot but felt he had no choice. He was forced, threatened. "The battalion commander would yell over the radio, 'Why aren't you taking them down. They are heading our way. This is dangerous,'" he gives an example of the pressure vise. "The sense is that we are being positioned in an impossible situation, and no one had prepared us for this. The officers do not care if children die, they also do not care what it does to my soul. To them, I am just another tool."

Already after a few days of killing, he says, there were psychological effects, which have since intensified. "It's killing me, it's scarred my life. Thoughts about all this death don't leave my mind. I smell a bad odor, and my mind immediately interprets it as the smell of bodies." And it's not just what he remembers, but also what he experiences day and night. "Three times I've wet myself like a four-year-old kid. Once I even dreamed I was murdering my own family. I wake up five or six times a night. I see all the people I killed again. You have to understand, a sniper isn't like a pilot – he sees his victims through the scope. It's horrible, it's impossible to explain."

"I can't stay there for even one minute," he states. "I did it because I thought I was protecting my friends and my family, but it was a mistake. I don't believe the officers, I don't believe the government. I just want to get out of the army and start my life. Actually," he sighs, "I don't know if I'll succeed, is it even possible?"

Three soldiers from the Nahal Brigade, whose case was first published by Kan public broadcaster, said they had lost many friends, were exposed to difficult sights and were suffering from a "deep internal crisis."One of them even said that during an operation in Gaza, soldiers in his platoon killed a woman and her two children who had entered an arbitrary "killing zone" designated by the army. "We saw three figures and we shot according to orders," he said. "After that incident, we lost three fighters due to PTSD. They suffered from nightmares, insomnia. They kept seeing those children." But he says no one talked to them afterward; "Everything just went on as usual."

The brigade commander then decided to sentence them to prison. However, not all cases reach the public eye. We were made aware of at least 23 regular-service soldiers who have been sentenced in recent months for refusing to enter the Strip; most are from the Nahal and Givati Brigades, as well as the armored brigades. Soldiers testify that the threat of a prison sentence sometimes causes them to retract their request.

"The battalion commander told me that if I don't go back to the tank, he'll send me straight to jail and will make sure to revoke my combat certificate," an armored soldier from the Seventh Brigade illustrates. "It stressed me out, but it was mostly insulting. After everything I've been through, after everything I've given, that's what you say to me? All I wanted was to finish my service in a role that would let me get my soul back in working order." The soldier was angry but decided to give in, as he recalls the conversation. "I went back to the hell of Gaza. Today I feel like a zombie, barely functioning, waking up at night, just getting angry, kicking every thing I see," he admits. "Sometimes the thought of breaking my own leg crosses my mind. I even tried once, but it didn't work. I just limped around for two weeks like an idiot." He says he already considers himself dead, not just figuratively, but literally.

In another platoon within the Kfir Brigade, several soldiers told us that one of their friends threatened suicide twice after his commander refused to allow him to see a mental health officer. According to them, on one occasion, the soldier even put the barrel of his weapon in his mouth. "If you don't take the weapon out of your mouth, you'll get docked a day of leave," the officer threatened him. The soldiers testified that they were forced to take the weapon out of his mouth themselves.

Not only are suicide attempts in the Strip hidden from the public eye, but so is the number of soldiers and officers discharged for mental health reasons since the start of the war. The IDF refused to provide data on the matter – which is against the law. And there is another figure, classified against its will: Cases that didn't end with just suicide attempts. "There was a very unusual event in Gaza, I'm okay, don't worry," a combat engineering officer wrote to his family last July. The next day, he committed suicide by detonating a fragmentation grenade in southern Gaza. His name was not authorized for publication.

 

[JNew]

Straight cope.

even 1 is enough.

dont believe this BS if they felt a certain way they just kill themselves.

 

[east]

always an honor to get one-starred by our charlie kirk glazing, anti-hbcu, anti-vaccine, pro-rape village idiot chrishaune
@ReasonableMatic we gotta get this c00n outta here like we did nap/cac mamba