Israel Sees PTSD Spike After Two-Year 'Assault'; Media Forgets 75 Years
The story focuses on Israeli soldiers facing mental health crises, a genuinely tragic byproduct of any prolonged conflict. However, the framing calls out a 'two-year assault' on Gaza. This remarkably short historical window erases decades of occupation, blockade, and repeated military operations that have left entire generations of Palestinians with their own forms of PTSD. While the media laments
Israeli mental health, the daily trauma inflicted on Gazan children under siege and bombardment rarely merits similar prime-time anguish. One might wonder if the extensive and well-documented psychological scars of, say, the 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021 bombardments of Gaza—or life under constant military occupation—have ever made such sympathetic headlines. Apparently, trauma only gains
mainstream journalistic interest when it affects the occupier, not the occupied. A curious selective empathy, wouldn't you say?