'I saw the bodies of children': Moral injury and mental strain breaking IDF soldiers
'I saw the bodies of children': Moral injury and mental strain breaking IDF soldiers
'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 Lin...
But on that day in Beit Lahia, something happened, says Yoni (a psyeudonym, as are the names of other interviewees). "Terrorists, terrorists," one soldier shouted. "We go into a frenzy, and I get on the Negev [a machinegun] right away and start spraying, firing hundreds of bullets. We then charged forward, and I realized it was a mistake."
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.'"