No-one comes back the same
Israel is in denial about the effects its brutality has on its own citizens.
A topic I do not believe has received enough attention, is how one can serve in the IDF, sniper babies and children, blow up tents with families inside, machine gun women and teenagers from 10 meters away, run over pregnant women with tanks, watch teenagers you have just shot, bleed to death while standing over their body chatting, shoot 355 bullets into a car sheltering a terrified 6 year old girl, blow up schools and hospitals (with patients still in their beds), abandon newborns to die and rot in incubators, turn entire neighbourhoods into moonscapes, and then return to society as if nothing happened. That is exactly what is happening in Israel and while the political and media classes may remain silent, the effects on the human psyche are enormous and cannot be hidden.
According to their own statistics, nearly 2 million Israelis, roughly one third of the population, are suffering mental health issues to the point where they need professional help. In the military, this figure exceeds 40%. Indeed, more than 80,000 IDF soldiers have been treated for psychological disorders and mental health issues since Oct 7. God knows how many more suffer in silence or find solace in a bottle.
According to the Israeli Center on Addiction, the rate of addiction in Israel has climbed to 25% - one in four. A society cannot force its citizens, whether via education, indoctrination, social pressure, ostracisation or legal penalty, to commit heinous crimes, and then expect them to walk away unscathed.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it like this: “In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed.”
To make things worse, the problem is not just an Israeli one. It is not just Israelis who serve in the IDF. It is American, Canadian, Australian, British, Italian, German, French, Greek and many other Jewish and non-Jewish nationals, who voluntarily enlist. They commit murders, rapes, torture and other horrific war crimes, and then return to their host nation as if it was totally normal, even honourable. They go about their lives as if they are mentally in tact. They are not. They are aggressive, violent, anti-social and cause mayhem at every turn.
These people should not be allowed to return without consequence. In most countries, it is a crime to fight for a foreign military, but as always, there are exceptions and work-arounds when it comes to Israel.
In Australia for example, the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995, bans citizens from traveling overseas to join rebel groups, militias, or non-state armed actors. However, because the IDF is the official, recognised, military force of a sovereign nation state, serving as a dual-national conscript or an official volunteer is generally exempt from foreign incursion laws.
This is something western governments, can easily, and should, rectify immediately.
Is it any wonder then, that an ethno-supremacist state that is so extremist, so murderous, so sadistic and genocidal, a state that was founded, and can only exist, on violence based racial discrimination, and has enjoyed 8 decades of impunity, would produce people who mirror such uncivilised behaviours?