Category: human nature

[from Ha’aretz, April 2026]

Some of them killed civilians in Gaza; others just looked on, or witnessed abuse and cover-ups in the name of revenge. Now they’re trying to cope with something a bit different than PTSD

Yuval sits biting his nails, his legs fidgety. It’s noon in Tel Aviv and the street is full of people. Sometimes he looks around, anxiously scanning the people passing by. “Sorry,” he says. “My biggest fear is a vendetta.”

But Yuval (an alias, as are all the names in this article) wasn’t born into a crime family. And he’s not a criminal. He’s 34, grew up in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon, and became a computer programmer. Until recently, he worked at one of the world’s biggest high-tech companies, but he hasn’t gone there for months. “I was in hell, but I wasn’t aware of it,” he says.

The hell he’s talking about took place in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza back when he was a soldier in December 2023. “There were airstrikes all the time. A one-ton bomb falls not far from you and makes your heart jump.”

His unit was moving west toward the center of the city. “There was heavy fighting. … You function on autopilot. You don’t ask questions,” he says.

The questions will only come and haunt him months later. “I don’t have good answers; I don’t have any answers at all. There’s no forgiving what I’ve done. No atonement.”
Continue reading “‘I felt I was a monster’: IDF soldiers talk about the ‘moral injury’ – and the silence”