“Zionism is not reformable” — Israel’s 'moral injuries' and moral breakdown

Conflicts Forum’s compilation focused on the effects of war on Israel drawn from Israeli commentators, 21 April 2026

Professor Omer Bartov: “Zionism is not reformable” — ‘What Israel needs is shock therapy. It has not still come to identify the limits of its own power, because those limits are in Washington, D.C., and it’s there that those limits have to be set. Only then can forces in Israel start generating a new way of thinking about Israeli society”.

Former IDF Chief Psychologist Reuven Gal: “Israel’s growing collective moral injury”

Haaretz Editorial: Tsunami of moral injuries amongst IDF soldiers who fought in Gaza

‘I Felt I Was a Monster’ — IDF Soldiers Talk About ‘Moral Injury’

Israeli historian Gideon Avital Epstein: ‘IDF Chief of Staff Zamir is responsible for the crimes & evil being committed in the West Bank’

[These compilations are drawn from analysis & commentary by Israeli commentators, usually from the Hebrew press — as reports published in Hebrew often provide a different window on Israeli internal discourse. Minor edits have been made for clarity].

CONSEQUENTIAL OBSERVATIONS —

Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza (New Yorker interview with Professor Omer Bartov):

In a new book called “Israel: What Went Wrong?,” [Professor] Bartov argues that Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza …

“Most vividly, I remember patrolling the shadeless, silent streets of the Egyptian town of Arish [in 1973], which was then occupied by Israel. Pierced by the gazes of the fearful, resentful population observing us from their shuttered windows, for the first time, I understood what it meant to occupy another people … I thought I was doing the right thing … I’d say that my maybe moment of real awakening was only really 1988, ‘87, ‘88, with the outbreak of the first intifada … I was an officer in reserve. I had every likelihood that I would be called up to go and break their bones, as we were told to do by the Minister of Defense at the time, Yitzhak Rabin. That was not something I wanted to do … I could see where this was heading ...

Ethnic cleansing, which was what the Israeli government wanted to carry out, became genocide … [It] was caused by Jewish men and women, Israeli Jews, by people who are the children and grandchildren of my friends. That does break my heart. Yes. The state is still, to this moment, in complete and total denial of what it had done ... Now, how do people respond to it? Some have felt uncomfortable themselves because they know that what I’m saying is correct … What happened in Gaza is not the Holocaust. What happened in Gaza is a particular genocide that happened in Gaza. Very different from the Holocaust, but conforming to the definition of genocide by the UN, which, as I said, is the only one that matters …

[The period, 20-odd years ago, before the second intifada] was, in many ways, the last moment of realism as opposed to messianism, which is what has taken over Israel now. It was not naive, it was the best way to go. It culminated with the assassination of Rabin … He was the last hope, and he could have accomplished something because of his own record, because of his standing in Israeli society …

What went wrong? I try to answer that in the book. You can go back to 1948. One of the things that went deeply wrong is that Israel never had a constitution, and that Zionism became [not simply] a state ideology, it became something else. It kept transforming itself into what it is today, which is an insupportable ideology of extremism, of militarism, of racism, and eventually of genocide. Anyone who supports it becomes complicit in the acts of that particular political ideology.

Zionism is not reformable. The state of Israel is. The state of Israel has to be reinvented, and it cannot be reinvented according to this ethno nationalist principle that has taken hold of it … Zionism is an ethnonational ideology, but ethnonational states have reformed themselves over time, and Israel has gone the other way … Look at the states of the interwar period. Poland, for instance, was an anti-Semitic, racist country, went through a lot of drama. Poland today, despite the fact that it does have also strong ethno nationalists, is a very different country from what it was at the time. Israel ... has to be a society of all its citizens …

As I write in the book, I don’t think that Israel and the Palestinians right now have the internal dynamic to move forward beyond [the situation now] ... without pressure from the outside. What Israel needs right now is shock therapy. Despite all the horrors that it has inflicted on others and has also experienced itself since October 7th, it has not still come to identify the limits of its own power, because those limits are in Washington, D.C., and it’s there that those limits have to be set. It’s only then that some forces in Israel will start generating a new way of thinking about Israeli society …

Gaza War’s Unseen Moral Toll on Soldiers (Haaretz Editorial, 19 April):

They walk among us and seem no different. But in their hearts, a storm is raging. They feel a sense of guilt, shame, revulsion and self-alienation. The reason: They are suffering from moral injury in the wake of their military service during the war in Gaza. Moral injury occurs as a result of exposure to events that are perceived as a profound violation of basic ethical values. Some of those injured committed atrocities themselves. Others watched as others committed acts in deep contradiction to their moral code. Experts in mental health who spoke with Haaretz testified that they are identifying moral injuries in unprecedented numbers. What began as a trickle, they say, has become a real tsunami in recent months …

The state must directly face up to the true implications of the war. These include failures, crimes and atrocities that were committed, which are taking a precious toll, in body and soul. If not for the sake of the innocent victims on the other side – which Israel has so far adamantly refused to acknowledge – then for the sake of its own soldiers, who were sent to the front at the politicians’ command, only to return with a hole in their hearts in the wake of all they did at their instructions.

Israel’s growing collective moral injury (Reuven Gal, former Chief Psychologist of the IDF and former Deputy National Security Advisor, Times of Israel, 9 February):

Years of crisis culminating in October 7, the war in Gaza, and increasingly brutal behaviour in the public sphere have fused personal and national well-being into one painful reality. Israeli society is not merely weakened; it is experiencing severe trauma … Some trauma stems from a breach of values – from betrayal, from the collapse of trust in institutions once seen as moral anchors, and from the unbearable gap between who we believed we were and what we now witness. Psychology calls this phenomenon “moral injury,” and its prolonged consequence “moral post-trauma.” Increasingly, Israel appears to be approaching a state of collective moral post-trauma.

Unlike classic post-traumatic stress, rooted primarily in fear and existential danger, moral injury arises from participation in, witnessing, or accepting actions perceived as profound violations of basic values: justice, responsibility, humanity, and the sanctity of life. When such injury persists without acknowledgment or correction, it manifests in shame, guilt, rage, alienation, loss of trust, and a haunting sense that “there is no longer a moral place for me here” … Moral injury does not arise only from difficult acts themselves, but from how they are justified, explained, and normalized … Public rhetoric that casually threatens to “trample” legal institutions, abolish gatekeepers, or dehumanize opponents creates the sense of a ship without a rudder. The resulting despair and erosion of well-being are not abstract feelings; they are lived daily by countless Israelis.

This erosion is no longer confined to politics. It seeps into institutions once widely viewed as moral pillars: the army, the police, and other security agencies. Allegations of unethical conduct by the IDF, repeated criticism of police behavior toward demonstrators, and fears of politicization within security bodies all widen the gap between expectation and reality. Precisely because these institutions were long associated with high moral standards, the disillusionment cuts especially deep … When such harm becomes collective ... the consequences are severe. Trust in state institutions erodes, social solidarity fractures, political radicalization intensifies, and despair and alienation grow. Ultimately, national resilience – the ability to recover and rebuild after crisis – is directly weakened.

Unaddressed moral injury tends to worsen. One of its quieter but most damaging outcomes is departure: not dramatic protest, but the silent exodus of previously-engaged, well-educated, committed citizens who feel they no longer have a moral home here … Healing collective moral injury will not come from slogans, propaganda, or silencing dissent. It requires acknowledgment, accountability, and genuine correction. As in psychological recovery, rebuilding begins with restoring moral responsibility and reconstituting collective self-respect. Without this, no society – however strong militarily – can truly heal.

‘I Felt I Was a Monster’ — IDF Soldiers Talk About ‘Moral Injury’ (Tom Levinson, Haaretz):

Yuval sits biting his nails, his legs fidgety ... he looks around, anxiously scanning the people passing by. “Sorry,” he says. “My biggest fear is a vendetta.” But Yuval (an alias) … [is] 34, grew up in Tel Aviv … and became a computer programmer … “I was in hell, but I wasn’t aware of it,” he says. The hell he’s talking about took place in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza back when he was a soldier in December 2023. “There were airstrikes all the time. A one-ton bomb falls not far from you and makes your heart jump ... You function on autopilot. You don’t ask questions,” he says. The questions will only come and haunt him months later. “I don’t have good answers; I don’t have any answers at all. There’s no forgiving what I’ve done. No atonement.”

It happened near Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main highway. Using a drone, one platoon noticed suspicious figures. Yuval’s unit charged. “I was firing like a madman, like they teach you in platoon drills in basic training,” he says. “When we got to our destination, I realized that these weren’t terrorists. It was an old guy and three boys, maybe teenagers. Not one of them was armed. But their bodies were riddled with bullets; their organs were pouring out. I had never seen anything like that so close up. I remember there was silence; nobody uttered a word. Then the battalion commander came over with his people and one spat on the bodies and yelled, ‘This is what happens to anybody who messes with Israel, you sons of bitches.’ I was in shock, but I kept quiet because I’m a loser, just a gutless coward.”

Yuval was discharged … and went back to his job. “They threw a party for me when I was discharged, applauded me and called me a hero,” he says. “But I felt I was a monster. I couldn’t bear the things they said to me. I felt they didn’t realize that I wasn’t a good person; just the opposite.” For a few months he tried to hang on to his job, to escape the weight on his heart, but he gave up … “I try not to leave the house, and if I do, I wear a hoodie so people can’t recognize me,” he says. “I even threw the mirrors out. I can’t bear to look at myself. I have a deep fear that somebody will take revenge on me for what I’ve done, even though I realize that this is impossible. Who in Gaza can find me? Who even knows it’s me? … I don’t kill myself because I promised my mother, but I admit I don’t know how long I can keep it up.” Two days after speaking with Haaretz, Yuval was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward.

Last year, Haaretz reported on soldiers who fought in Gaza and suffered “moral injuries” … “We’re seeing moral injuries of a much greater extent than ever before,” says Prof. Gil Zalsman, head of Israel’s National Council for the Prevention of Suicide. “We’ve been seeing it at our trauma clinics and at private clinics. We’ve even been seeing it in reservists’ children who heard some story and are troubled about what their fathers have done ...

Some soldiers say their moral injury stems from methods employed in the fighting in Gaza, many of them first reported by Haaretz. Several snipers from the Nahal Brigade, for example, shot Palestinians seeking aid; they had crossed the arbitrary line set by the army. “When you shoot through a sniper’s scope, everything seems close, like in a computer game,” one of them says. “You don’t forget the faces of the people you’ve killed. It stays with you. “Ever since my discharge, I keep wetting myself at night; I feel like I’ve been left alone, that nobody can help me. I spent a month in the hospital. They tried to explain to me that I had to accept it, that you can’t turn back the clock. Easy for them to say. They aren’t the people who, whenever they close their eyes, see somebody taking a bullet in the forehead.” Some soldiers speak of mental injuries after seeing Palestinians used as human shields, or after witnessing looting or vandalism. “We would go into Palestinian homes and people would just take pleasure in destruction,” one says … It’s not just the military that has refused to take a direct look at moral injuries; so do many soldiers. They’re afraid to tell their friends about their feelings, fearing they’ll be branded as traitors, leftists or weaklings …

‘IDF Chief of Staff Zamir is responsible for the crimes & evil being committed in the West Bank’ (Gideon Avital Epstein, Israeli historian and writer, Haaretz):

The Hamam al-Malih baths … now serves as a school for local Bedouin children. Jewish women – one grandmother, four mothers and seven girls – have just finished [clearing up after] a rampage in a classroom ... Why? Just because. Remember what Amalek did to you … On the way to Rosh HaAyin and Kafr Qasim. A dozen [Israeli] men in their eighties and one woman on a journey to discover the land of abuse and misery. Five [Israeli] generals (retired), one a former commander of the Central Command, two former coordinators of operations in the territories and former commanders of the Judea and Samaria Division, a third a former corps commander; one from the intelligence services; one from the Mossad, two businessmen and a few idealists. [We see a] farmer [who] has been separated from his land and, in effect, dispossessed of it. Opposite stands [an Israeli] outpost; to the south, [a settlers’] farm[*]. The farm’s residents are tasked with harassing the Palestinians until they leave. All means are fair game: setting fire to houses, throwing stones, a quad bike running over sheep. There are also fatalities. Jewish terrorism, strictly kosher … Soldiers, police and settlers are working hand in hand to make life unbearable for the locals.

A regime of occupation does not breed righteous men. The commander of the district is the formal sovereign; the Chief of Staff is his superior; the Yesha Council is the de facto ruler. The security coordinator acts as a prince and the battalion commander as his aide-de-camp. Since the beginning of 2023, and even more so in the last three months, some 200 outposts and farms have been established. The government provides for their needs. Thousands of armed settlers are carrying out ethnic cleansing in Areas B and C under the protection of the IDF and Ben-Gvir’s private army. Regular and reserve units guard them.

A young, masked [Israeli] man, armed from head to toe, is dealing with Ahmad, a shepherd in his eighties. With him are two female soldiers. Ahmad is ordered to sit under the scorching sun. His dignity is trampled upon. He lowers his gaze. Tears stream down his beard … October 1940. My grandfather, Oskar Epstein, manager of Deutsche Bank in Mannheim, Germany, was deported and taken to a concentration camp. The comparison is relevant and inevitable. ‘What has the old man done wrong?’ an elderly general asks a young female soldier. Keep your distance! she orders ... What did the shepherd do? he insists. Ask him yourself, she snaps. A volunteer documenting the incident reports: the army claims the man entered a firing zone, where even with sophisticated equipment not a single bullet casing will be found.

Amidst besieged villages and burnt-out tents, we witnessed scenes of horror and heard hair-raising testimonies: burst water pipes, power cuts, movement restrictions, beatings, false arrests, sheep theft, confiscation of phones, cigarettes stubbed out on people’s bodies. There is no law and no judge. Anyone who complains to the police may find themselves handcuffed and thrown to the ground. Life and death are in the hands of a policeman with a baton, a soldier with a rifle, and a settler with murder in his eyes. An hour from Tel Aviv.

The locals understand the purpose of the terror directed against them, but the farmers and shepherds are not willing to give up their land easily, and they have nowhere else to go. The authorities and the settlers seek to force them to move to the towns and cities in Area A, and to confine three million Palestinians to seven ghettos: Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Bethlehem and Hebron. More extreme elements yearn for an all-out war that would lead to the expulsion of all Arabs west of the Jordan River. The public purse feeds this evil; the people on the ground need no explicit orders. They know what is expected of them, and the army, under the command of Eyal Zamir, works for them.

True, the current government is responsible for the situation. Its predecessors will not escape the judgement of history either. But between Netanyahu, Smotrich and Katz, and Blot, the brigade commanders and the security coordinators, stands the Chief of the General Staff. I hold you, Zamir, responsible for the crimes in the West Bank. The IDF under your leadership turns a blind eye to injustices at best, condones them at worst, and at times even participates … Under your command, Zamir, the IDF is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of the civilian population ... and to refrain from expelling locals and transferring Israeli citizens to territories occupied in the Six-Day War. Furthermore: under your command, the IDF’s conduct in the West Bank casts an indelible stain upon us, the citizens of the state; it alienates Israel from the family of enlightened democratic nations to which Israel seeks to belong; and it may give rise to allegations against us of crimes against humanity.

* According to a 2024 Peace Now report, the settlers’ agricultural farms span an area 2.5 times larger than the combined area of all settlements.

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