‘I killed lots of terrorists, but it didn’t make me feel better’: The trauma haunting Israel's elections

In Afula in Israel’s north, the Clalit-HaEmek Medical Centre has been overwhelmed by a non-stop flow of patients suffering from severe psychiatric problems.

Psychiatric services director Alon Reshef said he believed the worst was yet to come.

“The waiting list for hospitalisation are getting longer and longer and longer. And not only that, but the cases that we meet are much more complex, much more severe. And it's not only PTSD. If you have a mental health problem, let's say depression or schizophrenia, it's also affected, because all these disorders react to what’s happening in society. The number of forced hospitalisations has risen dramatically. So all the signs show that the mental crisis is not only a problem of the practitioners like me or the patients, but a problem of society – and particularly among those soldiers who fought for a long time in Gaza.”

Reshef hopes that whatever government emerges from the October 27 elections will take the issue of Israelis’ mental health seriously.

“Society in Israel is ill,” he said. “It has lots of vital powers, but right now it is sick. Too much hate, too many confrontations. And nobody listens to the other … It will take years to heal.”

His colleague, Ronen Sidi, has begun carrying out the experimental treatment of severe forms of PTSD with MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy. By releasing serotonin and dopamine, this synthetic party drug can help patients work through their trauma, learning to live with the feelings that threaten to overwhelm them.

Sidi, a psychologist specialising in psychedelic treatments, said that the treatments were so far yielding positive results, noting a decrease in the intensity of his patients’ symptoms.

Trauma and resilience

Himself a former member of the special forces, Sidi is all too familiar with the trauma that can follow the savage acts that soldiers are often exposed to. But he said that an army’s cohesion in wartime stemmed first and foremost from the legitimacy of the government that sent it to fight.

“There's a lot of studies about PTSD, but there are also quite a few now about resilience,” he said. “What seems to have a lot to do with resilience is a sense of meaning – if you have a reason to do what you do, you can endure a lot of difficulty.”

For the Israeli reservists who have served for sometimes up to 600 days since the October 7 attacks – up from a baseline of 15 to 20 days a year – this point remains fundamental, he said.

“Three years after the October 7 attacks, and with a government that a lot of people don't agree with what they're doing, a lot more soldiers are saying, ‘I have to fight, it's hard – it might even be less hard than it was two and a half years ago – but what am I doing here? Where is this leading?"

‘I want to get better so I can keep serving my country’

In the port of Jaffa south of the sprawling city of Tel Aviv, Or is enjoying a few days of rest between two stretches of military service. A few months ago, the 32-year-old social worker asked to be treated for PTSD.

Serving as a medic in an infantry unit, he has taken part in several missions in war zones and racked up more than 400 days of military service since October 7. Beer in hand, he says, calmly enough, that he is starting to crack.

“It’s a very long war, every soldier has seen horrible things. Sometimes we feel hate. A few months ago, I asked to be treated for PTSD. Many of my friends are doing the same,” he said. “No one comes through three years of war unscathed. Like a lot of people, I feel in control when I’m in the army, but when I get home, I don’t feel well.”

His request for treatment came after an experience that left him badly shaken. Four months ago, his combat unit was on patrol when they were surprised by Hamas fighters near a tunnel entrance. The resulting shootout killed one soldier and left several more wounded.

“It was horrible. People told me after that I was screaming, I had lost my mind,” he said. “The soldier who was killed had his face torn off, and it was me who put his body in a jeep. I did everything like a robot, but I remember images, smells.”

Since then, the young man has continued to undertake stretches of military service, but has been assigned to surveillance rather than frontline combat. He is also seeing a psychotherapist.

“I need to take care of myself. I need to get better so I can keep serving my country,” he said.

Like many reservists, Or says that he no longer has confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and its conduct of the war. But as with many Israelis, fear of Hamas rides roughshod over all other considerations.

“I was shocked by the orders that I was given in Gaza, I didn’t think it was the right way to do things. But we had no other choice. We were scared. We knew that Hamas wanted to kill us all, whatever happened, because they hate us. I don’t agree with everything my country has done, especially against civilians, but it’s war,” he said.

“War is bad for Israeli society – it only encourages the extremists,” he added in a resigned tone.

Or doesn’t understand the hostility the rest of the world has towards Israel’s determination to raze the Gaza Strip to the ground, seeing the war in the narrow Palestinian territory as fundamentally defensive in nature. The social worker identifies as a left-wing voter, though he says that the October 7 attacks have shaken his convictions.

He says he hopes that the coming elections will bring about a government that has solutions to the problems facing Israel.

“I don’t want to keep fighting wars,” he said. “I often think that I’ve reached the limits of what I can endure. But they always ask more of me, and I’m able to push those limits back a little further.”

This article has been adapted from the original in French.