I am writing this from the Gaza border, in the middle of my own reserve duty. I know the call-up by heart now. The gear, the briefings, the weeks away from my wife and my three kids, the quiet drive back to base after a Shabbat at home. I know the men around me. Most of them will finish this war in one piece. Some of them are carrying something home that will not show up on any medical form.
That is the part the army does not prepare you for. The danger that waits after the shooting stops.
Josh Boone served 748 days. He was a lone soldier from Boise, Idaho, who made aliyah in 2017 because he believed protecting Jewish lives was his purpose. He trained as a sniper in Golani and fought across Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, one of the longest continuous deployments of anyone in this war. More than once he took the holiday and Shabbat shifts so soldiers with families could go home. He had recently been diagnosed with PTSD. He had started treatment. He had been hospitalized between rounds of reserve duty.
On January 11, 2026, two weeks after his reserve service ended, Josh was found dead near his home in Beersheba. Because he had been a civilian for those two weeks, the state declined to recognize him as a fallen soldier. A committee classified his death as one that happened after his service rather than because of it. He was buried in a civilian funeral. Hundreds came anyway, many of them in IDF uniform, carrying the flags of his brigade. His partner, Keren, his family, and the lone soldier community are still fighting to have him recognized for what he was.
748 days in combat. Two weeks at home. And a form deciding his death did not count.
Eliran Mizrahi was 40, a father of four from Ma’ale Adumim. The army called him up right after October 7, and his first assignment was clearing the bodies at the Nova festival site. Then they sent him into Gaza in a D9 bulldozer, the 62-ton machine that goes in first. He spent about 186 days in the worst places, Khan Yunis and Tel Sultan. He was injured more than once. He was pulled out, diagnosed with PTSD, and recognized as a disabled veteran. Then a new call-up order arrived, sending him back toward Rafah. Two days before he was due to return, in June 2024, he took his own life. His mother, Jenny, said it as plainly as it can be said. He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him.
Alex Miller was 23. He was a combat soldier, originally from the United States, who had already been wounded once in a car-ramming attack before this war began. He rehabbed and insisted on going back to his unit. He carried the death of his close friend Noam Shemesh, killed in Gaza last year. In May of this year, after his discharge, struggling with PTSD tied to his service, Alex died by apparent suicide.
Three men. Different units, different ages, different roads into the uniform. The same gap took all three.
The wound is bigger than combat
There is a clean story people tell about all this. A soldier sees something terrible in Gaza, carries the image home, and breaks under it. That happens. It is also only one part of what is actually breaking these men. Much of the damage is built from things that never make the news. Months alone, far from a wife and children, missing the ordinary life that holds a person together. The low constant hum of threat, the knowledge that an attack can come at any hour. A business that quietly collapsed while its owner was in uniform. Bills that kept arriving long after the income stopped.
Then the war loosens its grip and a man goes home, and home turns out to be its own battlefield. He has to rebuild a marriage that ran without him for a year. He has to be a father again to kids who learned to stop asking when Abba is coming back. He has to walk into a job, or stand in front of the wreckage of a business the war shut down, and act like the last two years did not happen. Every one of these is a trigger. Stack them on top of what he already carries, and a man can fall into a hole he cannot climb out of.
Yesterday I sat through a full training with the other officers. The whole session was about this. What to watch for in our soldiers, the small and subtle signs that a man is in trouble, and what to do the moment we notice them. We are being trained to catch it early, while we still have eyes on every soldier in the unit.
That protection ends the day they go home. In the field, someone is taught to notice. At home, no one is assigned to watch. The man is out of the army. The trauma is not out of him. It is the direct result of what the war asked of him, whether or not the government is willing to write that down on a form.
The gap after the uniform comes off
Israel built a serious suicide prevention program over the last two decades, and it worked. It cut military suicides by more than half. It was built for eighteen-year-olds in mandatory service, who had roughly eleven months between reserve stints to come down. This war broke that model. Reservists now serve three and four months at a stretch, twice a year, with no time to settle before the next round. Professor Eyal Fruchter, who once ran the IDF’s mental health division, describes the most dangerous place as the seam where the military is no longer in charge of you and civilian life has not taken over yet. That seam is where men are falling.
It is hard to put an exact number on it, and that is part of the failure. A Knesset research report counted 124 soldier suicides between 2017 and the middle of 2025, with the sharpest rise among reservists since the war began. The same body recorded 279 suicide attempts among active soldiers in eighteen months. Combat soldiers, who used to make up a little over 40 percent of military suicides, accounted for around 78 percent of cases in 2024. A separate committee identified at least 15 former soldiers who died by suicide in connection with their service after leaving the army. Josh, Eliran, and Alex belong to that last category, the one the official count keeps losing.
Where the work begins
This is the ground Smiles for the Kids works on. The human space that opens after the uniform comes off, where a person can slip out of view while everyone assumes someone else is watching. The reservist sitting alone in an apartment between rounds. The wife holding the kids and the house together while the man she married is somewhere behind his own eyes. The father staring at a business the war shut down, with no idea how to start it again. The family that does not recognize the man who came back and does not know who to call. We show up with a meal, a hand, a presence, before any committee has decided whether anyone qualifies for anything.
A panel can take months to rule on a death. A friend can knock on a door tonight.
So check on the soldier you know who came back quiet. Call the reservist who stopped answering his phone. Sit with the family that lost someone and is now fighting the state for the right to bury him as a soldier. Every one of us can do that much.
Josh Boone never stopped serving. Eliran Mizrahi gave everything and agreed to go back when they asked. Alex Miller returned to his unit after he had already been wounded once. They all came home. We owe them a country that is still standing in the doorway when they walk through it.
At Smiles for the Kids we are working to take the financial weight off the men who are carrying it. Money is one of the quietest triggers, and it is one we can actually do something about. We are raising funds for our own division and placing them directly in the hands of our MAGAD, the commander who knows these soldiers by name. He sees who is struggling. He knows whose business closed and whose family is underwater. He decides, at his discretion, where the help goes and when, and it reaches the men who need it without a form, a committee, or a waiting list. You can stand behind that effort here: https://givebutter.com/plugat-avtacha-alog-99