Long after leaving Gaza, some Israeli soldiers say they remain trapped there.<\/p>\n
They speak of sleepless nights, shame, panic and memories that refuse to fade: an elderly Palestinian and three boys shot dead in the street, a helpless detainee humiliated in a cage, homes looted and destroyed, a prisoner tortured during interrogation.<\/p>\n
In testimonies published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, soldiers who concealed their identities recounted acts they said they witnessed or took part in during Israel\u2019s war on the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Together, their accounts paint a picture not only of what Palestinians endured, but of how the war shattered some of those who carried it out.<\/p>\n
\u2018I felt like a monster\u2019<\/p>\n
Yuval, a 34-year-old computer programmer from near Tel Aviv, said he entered Gaza in December 2023 with a unit advancing through Khan Younis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in hell, but I didn\u2019t know it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Near Salah al-Din Road, Gaza\u2019s main thoroughfare, his unit identified what were described as \u201csuspects\u201d through a drone camera and opened fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shooting like crazy, the way they taught us in training,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When the soldiers reached the scene, he realized those killed were not fighters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were an elderly man and three boys, maybe teenagers,\u201d he said. \u201cNone of them were armed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their bodies were riddled with bullets, he said, and one soldier later spat on the corpses and insulted them.<\/p>\n
Yuval said he stood in silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in shock, but I said nothing because I\u2019m a coward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Months later, after being discharged, friends organized a party in his honor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey called me a hero,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I felt like a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Humiliated in a cage<\/p>\n
Another soldier, Maya, said she served in a reserve armored battalion and witnessed an incident that never left her.<\/p>\n
According to her account, troops spotted five Palestinians walking toward northern Gaza after crossing what the army had declared a forbidden line.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone lost control,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A commander ordered troops to open fire even though nobody knew whether the Palestinians were armed.<\/p>\n
A tank fired hundreds of rounds, killing four of them, Maya said.<\/p>\n
Hours later, she said, an armored bulldozer buried the bodies in the sand.<\/p>\n
The fifth Palestinian survived and was taken to a military post, where he was placed inside a cage while soldiers waited for an interrogation officer from Israel\u2019s Shin Bet security service.<\/p>\n
The man was handcuffed, blindfolded and shivering from the cold, Maya said.<\/p>\n
Then, she recalled, one of the soldiers urinated on him while others laughed.<\/p>\n
Later that day, a Shin Bet interrogator concluded the Palestinian was not affiliated with Hamas and had simply been trying to return home. He was released.<\/p>\n
But Maya said the image never left her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt filthy,\u201d she said. \u201cThe image of his helplessness has stayed with me ever since. Why did I stand there and do nothing while pretending to be moral?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018This is murder\u2019<\/p>\n
Another soldier, Yehuda, described an officer he said shot an unarmed Palestinian without reason.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian approached an Israeli position one night and immediately raised his hands, Yehuda said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was obvious he was unarmed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The officer waited a few seconds, then shot him dead without asking a single question.<\/p>\n
Back at the operations room, officers watched drone footage of the killing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them said: \u2018This is murder, simply murder,\u2019\u201d Yehuda recalled.<\/p>\n
No investigation was opened, he said, and the officer remained in service.<\/p>\n
\u2018Every time I close my eyes\u2019<\/p>\n
Other testimonies describe the war continuing long after soldiers returned home.<\/p>\n
A sniper from the Nahal Brigade said he can no longer sleep without seeing the faces of Palestinians he killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look through a sniper scope, everything feels close, like a video game,\u201d he said. \u201cBut afterward, you never forget the faces.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he now suffers from nighttime urinary incontinence and spent a month in a hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I close my eyes, I see someone taking a bullet in the forehead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another soldier said troops routinely looted Palestinian homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw soldiers stealing electrical appliances, gold necklaces, cash, everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Others burned family photographs or urinated on them, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was the point of that?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018The screaming would not stop\u2019<\/p>\n
The most disturbing testimony came from a soldier identified as Eitan, who said he witnessed the torture of a Palestinian detainee captured in northern Gaza.<\/p>\n
He said an investigator from Unit 504 stripped the prisoner, tied plastic restraints around his genitals and tightened them when he refused to answer questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe screaming would not stop,\u201d Eitan said. \u201cIt sounded as if his soul was leaving his body.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the screams still echo in his mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened destroyed everything I believed about the army, about us and about myself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were capable of doing something like that, then what else is happening behind closed doors?\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments come amid daily Israeli violations of the ceasefire in effect since Oct. 10, 2025. The Health Ministry said those violations have killed 777 Palestinians and wounded 2,193 others so far.<\/p>\n
The ceasefire followed more than two years of a genocidal war that killed over 72,000 Palestinians, wounded more than 172,000, and devastated about 90% of the enclave\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n
*Writing by Tarek Chouiref<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long after leaving Gaza, some Israeli soldiers say they remain trapped there. They speak of sleepless nights, shame,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":{"0":"post-404341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sitekeywords"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}