350 Israeli Soldiers Received Psychiatric Counseling After Gaza War: Report
Al-Akhbar | March 4, 2015
More than 350 Israeli soldiers who took part in last summer’s military onslaught on the Gaza Strip have since received psychiatric counseling for post-traumatic stress, an Israeli report has revealed.
The report, published Wednesday in the Israel Today newspaper said that soldiers had undergone treatment for symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress, including disorientation, low productivity and recurring nightmares.
The newspaper quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that the number of soldiers receiving psychiatric treatment following last summer’s onslaught on Gaza was higher than those who did so following previous operations.
For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip by air, land and sea. More than 2,310 Gazans, 70 percent of them civilians, were killed and 10,626 injured during unrelenting Israeli attacks on the besieged strip this past summer.
According to the UN, the Israeli military killed at least 495 Palestinian children in Gaza during “Operation Protective Edge.” The al-Mezan Center for Human Rights puts the number at 518, while the Palestinian Center for Human Rights puts it at 519.
All three figures exceed the total number of Israelis, civilians and soldiers, killed by Palestinians in the last decade.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 3,106 Palestinian children were injured in the seven- week assault. The UN estimates that 1,000 children will suffer a permanent disability as a result of their injury.
Moreover, the UN said as many as 1,500 children have been orphaned by Israeli attacks that killed their parents, while 6,000 children will have a parent with a lifelong disability.
The besieged enclave has also seen widespread destruction of its infrastructure, reaching levels of devastation that UN chief Ban Ki Moon called “beyond description” in a visit to the Strip on October 14.
Some 100,000 people remain displaced while 450,000 don’t have access to running water.
Meanwhile, the official, who holds a senior position in the Israeli military’s psychiatric department, said that “hundreds” of soldiers have sought psychiatric treatment for “severe stress.”
He said that 80 percent of the soldiers to have undergone treatment had since been “fully rehabilitated” and returned to service.
Treatment was carried out at southern Israel’s Re’im military base where affected soldiers received up to eight hours of treatment each day, the official was quoted as saying.
A report published in January revealed that at least 10 Israeli soldiers committed suicide in 2014, including four who took part in the onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
In September, Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that the three troops from the elite Golani Brigade had suffered psychological problems in connection to their participation in the recent offensive on the Gaza Strip.
Also in September, 43 reservists and former members of Israel’s elite army intelligence unit have announced in a letter addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they refuse to serve in the military, slamming “abuses” of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, annexed East Jerusalem and Gaza.
(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)
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How many Palestinian children have psychiatric problems with block buster bombs raining down. How many Palestinians will die from disease with poor water and sewer systems and no power.
The US has no casualties.
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Off topic, has anyone searched out who the owners of military manufactures are. It would not surprise me that there is a club of a few men around the world that sells to anyone and influences countries to war against them and sell more weapons to the invaders, they keep supplying weapons to both sides and influences countries to go to war.
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Richard, there is an international watch-organization that list all the individuals and nations that sell weapons to other nations, even the ones that are at war. The name escaped me at the moment, I do recall it has a female-sounding name, and that it is located/based in Sweden or Norway, the moment it pops back in I be back!
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Research/google McDonnell-Douglas, Raytheon, Boeing, “top ten world’s weapons companies”, “world’s largest weapons manufacturers”, “military-industrial-complex corporations”, “Pentagon defense weapons contractors”, “weapons corporation owners”, etc.
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There is a list of hundreds of manufacture of weapons on Wikipedia but I would like to know the names of owners and ceo’s.
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Search for “Lockheed Martin ownership”, Lockheed Martin CEO”, McDonnell Douglas stockholders”, McDonnell Douglas CEO”, McDonnell Douglas Board of Directors”, etc. etc. etc. Good luck with your research. The information you seek, and will find, would make for an amazing book. Once you get the list of CEOs and major stockholders, more research into each person’s background and connections, compiled in book form, would be revealing and important. If writing a book about the military-industrial-complex is your goal, try http://www.smashwords.com for publishing an ebook and download their free “Smashwords Style Guide”. Again, good luck.
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The state of Israel may provide mental support and help to its soldiers, but I think it is time that the state of Israel starts with providing mental support to all the victims that these same soldiers caused pain, suffering and serious mental problems!
Yes, the soldiers need help (before everything they should be debriefed from the social indoctrinations of anti-Palestinianism), before they go astray and cause havoc in and on Israeli streets and start killing their fellow-Israeli, BUT were the state of Israel is responsible for the thousands of Palestinian children and other Palestinian People, the state of Israel should and must be held accountable for all the mental pain and wounds that have been caused to and on the Palestinian People!
The world can not sit back now, and feel relieved that the active war-activities are over, the effects of these war-activities have created deep and more then serious wounds in the heads of those who were exposed to these activities of war!
America is co-responsible and co-accountable as they provided the state of Israel with the means to carry out the activities of war, and are in fact responsible for every effect that the American bombs have had and still have on the Palestinian People!
Providing weapons to murderers means being complicit to the murders as result of such providing!
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