Israel Soldiers in Nightmares Over Gaza Atrocities

• CrossFireArabia
• June 3, 2024

The Israeli army is in a state of shock and worry despite the carnage they meted out on Gaza in the past eight months. Soldiers and officers are fighting with their arsenals but they are not feeling well about the state of the army bogged down in the different areas of the devastated enclave and whose civilians and Palestinian fighters show no signs of submitting to the Israeli bombardment and slaughter.

The slaughter they carried out on Gaza, now standing at 36,000 killed and rising, not to mention the mutilated babies, children bombed to pieces and shown on TV and social media with pictures, may have created a series of “psycholgical” disturbances among Israeli soldiers.

Its being termed as the Israeli gaza genocide. In the killing of civilians, Israeli pilots and those in the control room directing drones to shoot, kill and bomb swaths of housing may be starting to disturb the Israeli psychology and psyche with mental trauma setting in.

Israel soldiers have been turned into rabid heathens in this ugly war, ready to do anything, kill, maim and shoot while they watch with the mind playing up no matter how much you hate your enemy!

And as a result, different manifestations are beginning to show in the army’s rank-and-file. Israeli officers no longer want to serve in the army, voters are confused with many no longer believing in Israeli politics. The soldiers, many of whom experiencing massive injuries, are becoming psychologically disturbed and turning to psychiatry and therapy.

‘No army for me’

Only 42 percent of polled military officers say they intend to continue to serve in the Israeli army once the war on Gaza is over. That effectively means over 60 percent of the soldiers want to quit once this war is over.

This was recently reported by the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth based on the manpower directorate of the Israeli occupation forces.

Further, Israeli officers’ requests to take early retirement has doubled in the last eight months of this war that began soon after 7 October 2023. As the ferocity of this war continued, more and more officers have opted out for early retirement. 

The 42 percent figure has disturbed and shocked the Israeli military leadership who stand aghast as to what to do about this statistic that plummeted from a similar poll taken in August 2023 which stood at 49 percent. 

Many on social media reported the recent poll. One suggested “the officers are haunted by a feeling of failure and they do not want to serve in a failing apparatus.”

This feeling may be because the Israeli ground troops have been fighting in Gaza since 27 October with much manpower and material losses since with soldiers being killed and tanks and armory destroyed.

This is in addition to the thousands of injured including those with permanent disability. Israel’s Channel 12 revealed 20,000 were injured since 7 October. Of these 8,298 have been classified by the Israeli authorities as having permanent disability.  Such figures are being prized out because the Israeli army follows a strict policy of censorship.

Meanwhile, and in another poll conducted by Yedioth Ahronoth and Reichmann University, it showed most Israelis believe, broadly speaking, Hamas has won the war so far. On a political perspective, 37 percent of rightwing Israeli voters believe the Islamist organization has won while 16 percent of Israelis believe Israel is winning. This is while 40 percent of those voters – the middle and left of politics – say Hamas won hands down compared to only 4 percent who believe Israel won in the war in Gaza.

The poll was carried out on 810 Israeli voters. Noticable also – and this is despite the fact that America has been the main supplier of weapons in this war – 63 percent of the Israelis polled believe the United States has become less safe to travel to. This may be because of the ongoing student protests across American universities who want the Israeli war on Gaza to stop.

Further to that, and in another poll 85 percent of Israeli voters expressed little or no faith in their government. This is a view almost daily articulated in the protests on Israeli streets, in Tel Aviv, Haifa and west Jerusalem which either call on the government to make a deal with Hamas to release the hostages – now down to around 125 – and/or for the government to resign.

Real figures on the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the war on Gaza are carefully messaged by the Israeli army and not at all in keeping with what is happening on the ground. The Israeli army states since the start of the ground operation on 27 October, 293 Israeli soldiers were killed and 3,657 were injured whilst the condition of  568 soldiers is described as critical, 957 moderately injured, and 2,132 with minor injuries.

This is far less than what is happening on the battlefields of Gaza where soldiers are being killed by the day. Military expert Major-General Fayez Al Dwairi said the announcements of Israeli spokesman Daniel Hagari have no relations to what is happening on the ground in Gaza. He added on Al Jazeera the number of Israeli soldiers that killed in Gaza stood last March and based on Hebrew calculations, was already at 16,000.

That figure has continued to increase as the Israeli army stepped up its aggression on Rafah, and now in north Gaza, in places like Jabalia, Biet Lahia, Biet Hanoon and Tal Al Zaatar and Al Zaitoun in Gaza City. More Israeli soldiers are killed daily, with forced acknowledgement by the Israeli army despite messaging the actual figures.

Israeli soldiers have not had it easy in Gaza despite their planes, guns, tanks and machine guns. The psychological impact of the war on individual soldiers have been devastating.

The number of soldiers who are in need of psychological treatment is in the thousands and going up all the time.

Its been reported that in just one case more than 1,890 soldiers were sent to the Natal Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center because of psychological traumas and many of those enlisted are seeking mental health treatment all the time.

But more shocking is the fact that it has been reported that a soldier with severe psychological problems, and who had been fighting in Gaza, went to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and threw a grenade outside its headquarters.

Yedioth Ahronoth stated that since the outbreak of the war more than 6,400 injured soldiers required treatment 21 percent of which reqired psychological therapy. Further to that, since 7 October, 2023 around 30,000 soldiers called up a mental health hotline.  

The Gaza war is tough for everyone. Whilst the Palestinian genocide can’t be compared, Israeli soldiers are feeling the heat of death, permanent injury and psychological problems coupled with anguish and contradictions.

Hamas Rockets Jolt Israelis Back to Reality

• CrossFireArabia
• May 28, 2024

Its almost a reminder of the old days! The volley of missiles on Tel Aviv from Rafah, the first in four months, is sending shivers down the spines of Israelis who fear the worse is yet to come from Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

The launch of 12 rockets on 26 May, 2023 by the Izz Al Din Al Qassam Brigade fighters and which landed on different parts of greater Tel Aviv comes at a time when the Israeli army is immersed in east Rafah and about to wage a full military camaign on the city under the pipedream slogan of eradicating Hamas.

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But the timing of the firing of the rockets  – a reach and distance of 140 kilometers from Rafah, the longest so far – is designed to send a strong message to the Israeli political and military establishments that the Palestinian resistance movement remains in top fighting form despite the bunk busters, dumbs bombs and missiles hurling down Gaza’s housing estates for the past eight months.

A mad number of 75,000 tons of explosives have so far been dropped on the 364-kilometer enclave. This is the equivalent of 37 atom bombs. But in spite of this, the Palestinian resistance are still strong with thousands of fighters, rockets, guns, machine guns and ammunition in their depositories across Gaza. As Hamas officials keep warning there is still more of that to be unleashed on Israel.

The fired rockets are a message that such weapons, bombs, and sniper rifles will continue to be used against the Israeli army, its soldiers, tanks and troop carriers for the forseeble future and if they insist on staying in Gaza.

The fired rockets show Hamas will continue to use them when the need be and as the battle requires. Now, the fight is against Israeli soldiers in Gaza but are fired into the Israeli depth now and then as a warning.

The rockets – unleashed after a tense calm – and all the way to the north of Tel Aviv, the major political, financial, economic, industrial and knowledge capital of Israel is devastating, jolting the Israelis back into sobering reality. Politicians, military officers, economic leaders and the ordinary are asking what more can be done by the way of the devastation the Israeli armed forces have carried out on Gaza since 7 October.

Videoclips on the social media show the timing when the missiles were heard in Kfar Saba, Herzliya, and Raanana, north of Tel Aviv were sirens blasted off to the panic of ordinary Israelis, quickly trying to move out of harms way whilst senseing fear and instability back into their lives. 

The surprised rockets are expected to rattle the psychology of Israelis especially since they were fired 100s of meters away from Israeli troops in  Rafah which means Palestinian fighters are actually amongst them incognito.

This should of deep concern to the Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi who worries about the state of his soldiers in Gaza, having been in daily battle for the last eign months, in turrain that is alien to them and aginst fighters who know only too well the nooks and cranies of the towns, cities, alleways, and roads of Gaza and where soldiers are being killed and maimed by the day to ghost Palestinian fighters. 

Indeed, although a full scale invasion is yet to materialize in Rafah, the Israeli army is already bombing different parts of the city and has been doing so for the last 18 days. So the war there has already started.

The missiles into Israel, over Tel Aviv, cities in the center and in settlements around 

Gaza are an addition and pressure to the real fight inside the enclave being helped by Hezbollah missiles penetrating into Israel, the Houthis from Yemen firing most at Eilat and the occasional firing, from islamists groups from deep inside Iraq.

Finally, the rockets are a warning by Hamas to Netanyahu not invade Rafah for the cost of doing so will be greater than you think, for the city will be the final graveyard of Israel soldiers and the over 100 hostages who are still held in captivity there. 

But Netanyahu may not be thinking at all about that since he wants the war to continue to lengthen his time out of prison and play into the hands of the extreme right wing while claiming to want to eradicate Hamas. What he wants are unattainble objectives explained by the bad Israeli army situation in Gaza.

Whatever happened to the Israeli Psyche?

• CrossFireArabia
• May 24, 2024

The slaughter of Gaza has shown the world that Israel, those circle around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no longer function rationally. Their daily acts of ordering mayhem and destruction on a defenseless people in Gaza to get to Hamas, is surely signs of deep psychological disturbances. If not stopped, such atrocious behavior will lead to unforeseen instability in the region and the world. After all, Israel has the nuclear bomb and everybody knows it.    

I see the Israeli government and the war cabinet on my television set daily, in fact at least few times a day. I see Netanyahu and his ministers and military officers around the table nonchalantly discussing the war on Gaza. 

Unbelievable is the fact, and over the past eight months, they have assembled in unison, as if this is a series of business meetings discussing among themselves which parts of Gaza they should bomb today, what type of American missiles they should use and which homes harm should be inflicted on. 

These are supposedly top Israeli leaders reduced to a genocidal state of atrophy and political degeneration. Up till now they have not been able to get to the crux of the Hamas fighters and/or their whereabouts.

So, one can imagine them talking about which communities, blocks of flats, housing areas their so-called top brass and elite soldiers would bomb on that particular day. Is it fathomable? Its like George Orwell’s 1984 but in deadly style; here its Big Brother with flying machine guns, tanks on innocent civilians and so-called soldiers with pointed rifles ready to shoot men, women, children and babies.

Its madness, but statistics show it. The number of children that have been killed through Israeli barrel-bombing stands at 15,000 according to international statistics provided by the United Nations.

And the Israeli cabinet meetings go on today, next day, the next and the next, plotting what madness to carry out and follow. it’s a parody of massacres, while the world cheers on and justice is served. Its an odd form of confused chaos, staring from Israel to the White House and different capitals of the world. Who is playing the tune and who is listening to it?

But it’s willful, wonton, determined destruction and bloody killings, all for the sake of ending shady, terrorism and ghost-like terrorists.  

How do these people feel about themselves. Can they be called people, maybe humanoids in suits, shirts, slacks, shoes. How do these so-called politicians look at each other when they order the bombing of a row of houses in downtown Gaza, Khan Younis, Dier Al Balah, Beni Suhaila or Rafah. Where are the Hamas operatives. They are starving children and women, the mighty Israeli war machine is bombing at full speed and with no compunction!

 Don’t they watch their Godless bloody-infested handiwork? Surely, Israeli government leaders, if such an expression can be used, must see television images of those sprawled devastating photos and videoclips on the social media.

Human hatred per excellence. Maybe they are so blinded by rage and are prepared to see the worst kind of genocidal atrocities even if they are innocent babies. This war on Gaza has shown the distorted Israeli psyche of the mad people in power which means their indifference to human lives, including Israeli, is just a matter of collateral damage.

Human lives become worthless and with a machine-gun in one’s hand, they become mere figments to be shot at.  Israeli soldiers have seen it as their moral duty to kill Palestinians running on the Gaza beaches in search of food dropped from the skies to block their insatiable hunger.    

We see horror of death everybody, bodies and torn limbs amidst debris and wreckage. We see women and children pulled from under concrete blocks in cement and blood with gashed heads and torn torsos and legs.

I think to myself, isn’t Netanyahu moved. The passion to bomb and destroy has become irrevocable. There is a twist in the mind of a man who gets up every morning and sees his bloody objectives can only be achieved by bombing more, displacing more, setting Palestinian on a circle of movements to be dictated by his vicious army in an opiate terror-mode.

Then there is his agent Herzi Halevi, the so-called Israeli Chief of Staff who willingly obeys a sinister man in power. What kind of a person is a man who tells his soldiers to bombs houses regardless of who is in them: men, women, children, the old, sick and the infirm?

Israel has lost all sense of direction. The people in power have no interest in political deals. Today, it’s about the perpetuation of war that is becoming permanent because the stomping out of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance lies in the realm of imagination than reality.

Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East affairs.