'I saw pictures of dead children. In the Israeli army, <b>they told us we only kill terrorists</b>'

Yael dreams of being a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit, dedicating her life to newborns fighting to survive. "I realized I want to help as many people as possible," she explains, "to atone for everything I did, for all the dead babies." Yael, who asked not to use her real name, is 22 years old. She enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in August 2022. She says she was highly motivated. She wanted to contribute, to do meaningful combat service. The army listened and granted her wish. She did a preparatory combat training course, then basic training, and was assigned to one of the Artillery Corps battalions. She also trained as a medic. The female combat soldiers, she explains, serve in a "Forward Fire Command Center" – a bombastic name befitting the army. In practice? "It's a kind of armored personnel carrier with systems to guide the artillery fire." Yael says her role "was to calculate firing data, prepare targets and send them to the soldiers." "I have nightmares. I see inside my head dead children, crying mothers. I imagine how the bodies are removed. The guilt doesn't leave me. How can it? I killed an innocent child, I was the one who fed the targets, it's on me." Yael In normal times, operational firing is a rare sight, but her service fell during different times, when a day of quiet was rare. She served in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, assisting soldiers with firing thousands of shells. Only after her discharge did she understand the consequences. "I left the army and saw the number of children killed, and I was shocked. I started searching obsessively for information online. I looked for the neighborhoods we attacked, the villages," she recounts. "I saw that many innocent people were killed in these places, I saw pictures of dead children. In the army, they told us we only kill terrorists, but that's a lie. Artillery fire is imprecise; the army considers a hit within a 50-meter radius to be a good hit." The impact radius is not just a military statistic for her. "I have nightmares. I see inside my head dead children, crying mothers. I imagine how the bodies are removed. The guilt doesn't leave me. How can it? I killed an innocent child, I was the one who fed the targets, it's on me." She was discharged from the IDF a year and a half ago; the realization of the consequences of the reality she was part of became more tangible with each passing moment. "She experiences unbearable psychological pain," wrote one of the psychiatrists treating her. "She exhibits significant symptoms from all diagnostic criteria of post-traumatic stress disorder.... Her mental state continues to be complex and difficult." 'I see inside my head dead children, crying mothers. I imagine how the bodies are removed.' Yael Palestinians carrying a body after an Israeli air strike on Khan Yunis, August 2024. A mass grave in Rafah, August 2024. Jehad Alshrafi/AP; Said Khatib/AFP Since October 7, Haaretz has spoken with more than 300 people suffering from mental injuries caused by the war. Some of them reported suffering from PTSD due to exposure to intense combat experiences. Others described extreme guilt due to the deaths of their comrades in combat or of civilians on October 7. Recently, the barrier of shame has broken. More and more soldiers talk about moral injuries they suffer, often related to exposure to or participation in war crimes prevalent in the Gaza Strip. In Yael's case, all these injuries together caused her PTSD. Nevertheless, the process of recognizing her PTSD at the Defense Ministry was stuck in its initial stage for many months. Consequently, she was only eligible for basic medical treatment. There were neither financial or welfare benefits nor alternative treatments (medical cannabis was out of the question). In fact, the Defense Ministry only changed her status this week, just hours after Haaretz inquired with the army and the ministry. The Rehabilitation Department then informed Yael that her request for recognition had been accepted, after a clear causal link was found between her mental state and her military service. The emphasis is on a "clear causal link" because receiving recognition from the ministry requires military documentation of all her hardships. However, the army had provided incomplete records. In principle, commanders are supposed to fill out reports for every unusual incident, but the procedure is often neglected. This is especially true in cases where commanders erred, exceeded authority, or worse. "They prefer to sweep things under the rug, to keep everything within the unit," says an officer in the Manpower Directorate, "which makes it very difficult to review events, to verify reports." Close Yael, this week. "In the army, they told us we only kill terrorists, but that's a lie." Credit: Tomer Appelbaum Yael, this week. "In the army, they told us we only kill terrorists, but that's a lie." Credit: Tomer Appelbaum In such cases, the collection of statements and evidence falls to the injured soldiers. For Yael, she was unable for about a year to approach anyone. "I didn't want to come to terms with it. I wanted to have a normal life," she recalls. "I thought it was just a passing phase, but it didn't happen." Just before Haaretz's inquiry, she sent photos and videos documenting what she experienced during the war's first days. Three statements from her commanders were also submitted to the Rehabilitation Department offices. Among other things, they recounted what she went through at an outpost on the Lebanese border. "There was chaos, real fear," she recalls in a conversation with Haaretz. "While this was happening, I was communicating with a friend who was in Nahal Oz . After a few hours, contact with her was lost." She later learned that a terrorist had thrown a grenade at the friend, killing her on the spot. The mourning for her death only began later; meanwhile, there was only terror. "There was a real threat to the outpost. There was an assessment that they would try to shoot," she recounts. "When terrorist infiltration warnings also arrived, they moved us out of the outpost into the field." Haaretz Election Podcast with Nagham Zbeedat and Dahlia Scheindlin: Could a Jewish politician joining an Islamist party shake up Israel's elections? A day and a half later, Yael and her comrades returned to the outpost, but not because the warnings had ceased. "They sent us back because the outpost has an Iron Dome facility, and it cannot be abandoned," she explains. "It must be guarded." After about another week, the battery she served in was redeployed to the Gaza periphery. Yael and three other soldiers were ordered to remain and guard the northern outpost. Only one commander, from a different battalion, stayed with them, but she, too, had to leave after a few days. "We were four soldiers left alone at the outpost, on the Lebanese border, facing the threat of infiltration and rocket and drone fire," she recounts. "We were so scared that we started collecting stones in case we ran out of ammunition. We each had only five magazines, and we thought that if Hezbollah's Radwan Force terrorists came, we'd run out in a second." "I had only been in the army for eight months, and I was the most senior of the four of us and the only medic," she says. "I kept thinking, what am I supposed to do if there's an attack? All the medical equipment was sent to Gaza. I didn't even have a stretcher. From all the stress I was under, I started to harm myself because I didn't know how to cope with what I was experiencing, with the danger to my life, with the fear. I would scratch myself, pull out my hair, I would hit myself until I had bruises." 'We were four soldiers left alone at the outpost, on the Lebanese border, facing the threat of infiltration and rocket and drone fire.' Yael The area along the border with Lebanon, October 2023. Fadi Amun The concern, she stresses, wasn't exaggerated. They were in real danger. One rocket fell near the outpost. "It was so close that I felt the blast," she recalls. "I was sure I was going to die." No commander called to check on them after this incident. When did a call from the battery commander arrive? After her mother messaged him because Yael had alerted her about her mental state. In response, the commander called Yael, but not necessarily out of concern for her well-being. Rather, he threatened to punish her, allegedly because she had revealed the soldiers' location to her mother. He provided no help, certainly no support. "We were completely abandoned," says Yael. "Even the food ran out." Only thanks to a division reserve officer, who arrived at the outpost almost by chance, were the four soldiers evacuated and sent to join their battery comrades near Gaza. Straight into combat. No one offered them psychological support, nor assistance in processing their experience. Then the situation deteriorated further. "There were very difficult days, very intense incidents. We didn't stop fighting," Yael recalls. "There were very serious incidents where we used suppressive fire to save forces inside the Gaza Strip who were in immediate danger. I heard the screams, the gunfire, the cries over the radio. All the while, I had to function, to feed targets. I did it with tears in my eyes." Back then, the sounds she heard etched in her imagination the nightmares still to come, whether after hours, or after weeks and months. "Waking up in the morning and constantly hearing screams. I didn't know how to cope with the reality I was living in, that soldiers were being killed and wounded, and that I had to come to terms with their lives depending on my hands, that I impacted their odds of survival," she says. "This gave rise to guilt feelings. To this day, I live with it. I remember the screams. I have nightmares. I'm afraid to see soldiers in uniform because I immediately imagine them bleeding, with wounds, with severed limbs. That's how my mind reacts when I see soldiers." In retrospect, even what she didn't see or hear became tangible in her thoughts. The enemies she feared, who in real-time were no more than targets, retroactively became human beings, victims. When she was in uniform, she didn't deal with it. She barely managed to deal with the daily, intensifying psychological pressure. 'To this day, I live with it. I remember the screams. I have nightmares. I'm afraid to see soldiers in uniform because I immediately imagine them bleeding, with wounds, with severed limbs.' Yael Military funerals in Israel, this year. Tomer Appelbaum; Itai Ron Then she was returned to the north, to the border sector with Lebanon and Syria. It was at this time that she realized she needed treatment and began meeting weekly with a mental health officer at an outpost. Most of her trips to him went smoothly, but not all. "I traveled to him, and there were insane rocket barrages," she recounts. The orders, she explains, forbid walking from the bus stop to the outpost, and she had to wait to be picked up. "While I was waiting, five rockets fell right in front of me. I had no shelter. There wasn't a single car on the road, just me, alone. I was so scared, I thought I was going to die. This caused a crazy fear of noises; even a door closing can trigger a panic attack. But my officer didn't care." A little later, in late September 2024, Israel invaded southern Lebanon. A few days after that, one of the war's toughest battles took place. It began routinely. A small force from the Egoz unit entered a house in the town of Aadaysit Marjaayoun, when several Hezbollah terrorists ambushed them and opened fire at close range. One of the combat