Israeli soldiers are emerging from the depths of Gaza, haunted and broken, their minds twisted by the nightmare they’ve lived. Some have found the pain so unbearable that they’ve taken their own lives, their silent screams speaking to horrors that words barely touch. The accounts they’ve shared with CNN offer a chilling glimpse into the brutal, unspoken truth of Israel’s ongoing military operations—an inferno that’s leaving deep scars on those who survive.

Soldiers returning from Gaza describe scenes that make the blood run cold. They tell of the relentless crush of war, the smell of death lingering in the air. Some confessed to “running over” the bodies of Palestinians, both living and dead, as they pushed forward, a task that now haunts them day and night. For many, the sight of raw meat is unbearable, a grotesque reminder of the blood and flesh that stained their memories. One soldier, struggling to convey the depth of his trauma, whispered, “When you see a lot of meat outside, and blood… both ours and theirs, it really affects you when you eat.”

Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old reservist, became one of the war’s quiet casualties. After being deployed last October to operate a hulking, 62-ton D-9 bulldozer—a machine of destruction designed to carve through the chaos of battle—he returned a shell of the man he once was. His friend, Guy Zaken, who operated a bulldozer alongside him, spoke with a tremor in his voice, recalling the unbearable memories they shared: “We saw very, very, very difficult things. Things that are difficult to accept.” Mizrahi’s mental state unraveled rapidly, plagued by relentless flashbacks, rage, sleepless nights, and a desperate need to shut out the world. To his family, he repeated over and over that only those who had been there could ever understand the horrors he’d endured. His mother’s voice cracked as she recalled his words: “He saw a lot of people die. Maybe he even killed someone.”

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The Israeli army is now grappling with a mental health crisis it can no longer ignore. The Defense Ministry’s rehabilitation division reports that 1,000 soldiers are being withdrawn from combat roles each month, their minds too fractured to continue. By year’s end, an estimated 14,000 will need treatment, with nearly half facing severe psychological disorders.

For bulldozer operators like Mizrahi, the trauma is visceral. They are the ones tasked with clearing the bodies—removing the dead from the rubble, witnessing death’s raw reality up close. Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and former soldier, emphasized the toll of Gaza’s urban warfare. “How do you put your children to bed,” he asked, “when the faces of dead children in Gaza haunt your nights?”

Yet, Mizrahi’s agony did not end with his death. Even in his grave, controversy followed. The military initially denied him a soldier’s burial, only to backtrack amid a wave of public outrage—a final, bitter twist to his tragic story.

The crisis is not confined to the battlefield. In Israel, over 500 people take their lives each year, with more than 6,000 making an attempt. These numbers, health officials fear, barely scratch the surface. Within the military, suicide stands as the leading cause of death among soldiers—a shadowy epidemic that continues to claim lives long after the battles end.