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Israel's army is warning of imminent collapse among some of its units because of an extreme shortage of troops, including among Israel's reservist army. Hundreds of reservists have publicly ignored summons for duty. Experts say that Israel's multiple war fronts are putting a huge mental and financial strain on fighters. NPR's Emily Feng has this story.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Frustration boiled over into anger among Israeli veterans this past July. They were in Israel's parliament to protest a proposed enlistment exemption for the country's ultra-Orthodox community.
SHAMIR BENITA: (Speaking Hebrew).
FENG: "We were your bullet shields," former soldier Shamir Benita complains.
BENITA: (Speaking Hebrew).
FENG: "And upon our return, you allowed our families to bear all the punishment of the war," Benita laments.
OREN TENE: I think that Israel is very much a post-traumatic nation.
FENG: Dr. Oren Tene is a psychiatrist whose specialties include treating soldiers like Benita, who now advocates for other veterans with PTSD. Tene treats people who go through repeated traumatic experiences, like reservists called up again and again in the constant wars that Israel's been in since a deadly Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
TENE: People find it hard to even connect to these basics of life after this terrible but very exciting experience they encounter for so long. It's not like a week of battle and going back. It's month and month and month.
FENG: More than a third of reservists are parents. Many are on duty for more than 100 days a year, and they leave families and businesses behind when at war.
SHARON LEVIN: We've had families who've contacted us because they didn't have - they didn't know what to do.
FENG: This is Sharon Levin, a director at Paamonim, which provides free financial counseling services. More and more of the people her organization helps are reservists and their families.
LEVIN: It's how to carry on life when you know that you're going to be in the reserves for, like, 60 days or 90 days a year, and you're in and out. So how do we deal with that kind of uncertainty?
FENG: For Levin, the work supporting reservists is also personal.
LEVIN: At one point, a couple of months ago, I had 4 out of my 5 kids in the army.
FENG: Israel is now cutting back the number of reservists it calls up. But the current military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, warned this spring of, quote, "red flags," - a shortage of about 12,000 full-time soldiers. Major General Uzi Dayan, once head of the military's planning branch, is familiar with mobilization issues.
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UZI DAYAN: OK.
FENG: First, though, he proudly shows me his lush backyard where one of his daughters got married last year right before the Twelve-Day War with Iran.
DAYAN: In 1 o'clock in the morning, we went to the shelter. And the groom is a pilot, and he went in this very night, he flew to Tehran.
FENG: So when I asked him about Israel's soldiers being tired, he says tough. Growing up, his fellow soldiers always asked, until when can we stop fighting?
DAYAN: And, you know, what was the answer of my generation? As much as needed.
FENG: At the turn of the millennium, Israel was withdrawing from war fronts. But over the past three years, Israel's conflicts and wars have expanded in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and this year with Iran. So Dayan believes Israel's army needs to grow - boost recruitment of full-time soldiers, forcibly enlist the ultra-Orthodox citizens of Israel who are exempted now from service. And he says this is all necessary because he wants to reoccupy Gaza.
DAYAN: The only way to deter terror organization is to threat its own existence, its basic existence.
FENG: There are critics in Israel of this war-first approach - influential ones. Among them, Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet Intelligence Agency. After years of surveilling Palestinians and Israelis, he came to believe that force cannot be the only answer to eliminating threats like Hamas.
AMI AYALON: You cannot deter a person or a group of people if they believe that they have nothing to lose. Unless we shall create a way for them to understand that they can achieve the end of occupation and a Palestinian state alongside Israel, they will not surrender.
FENG: But support for this view in Israel of a Palestinian state existing next to the state of Israel is vanishingly small now. Support for continued war against Israel's enemies in Lebanon and Iran is overwhelmingly high. But the question remains, who will fight these wars?
Emily Feng, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOLLY LEWIS' "CRUSHED VELVET (FEAT. THEE SACRED SOULS)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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