Long after leaving Gaza, some Israeli soldiers say they remain trapped there.
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.
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’s war on the Gaza Strip.
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.
‘I felt like a monster’
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.
“I was in hell, but I didn’t know it,” he said.
Near Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main thoroughfare, his unit identified what were described as “suspects” through a drone camera and opened fire.
“I was shooting like crazy, the way they taught us in training,” he said.
When the soldiers reached the scene, he realized those killed were not fighters.
“They were an elderly man and three boys, maybe teenagers,” he said. “None of them were armed.”
Their bodies were riddled with bullets, he said, and one soldier later spat on the corpses and insulted them.
Yuval said he stood in silence.
“I was in shock, but I said nothing because I’m a coward,” he said.
Months later, after being discharged, friends organized a party in his honor.
“They called me a hero,” he said. “But I felt like a monster.”
- Humiliated in a cage
Another soldier, Maya, said she served in a reserve armored battalion and witnessed an incident that never left her.
According to her account, troops spotted five Palestinians walking toward northern Gaza after crossing what the army had declared a forbidden line.
“Everyone lost control,” she said.
A commander ordered troops to open fire even though nobody knew whether the Palestinians were armed.
A tank fired hundreds of rounds, killing four of them, Maya said.
Hours later, she said, an armored bulldozer buried the bodies in the sand.
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’s Shin Bet security service.
The man was handcuffed, blindfolded and shivering from the cold, Maya said.
Then, she recalled, one of the soldiers urinated on him while others laughed.
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.
But Maya said the image never left her.
“I felt filthy,” she said. “The image of his helplessness has stayed with me ever since. Why did I stand there and do nothing while pretending to be moral?”
‘This is murder’
Another soldier, Yehuda, described an officer he said shot an unarmed Palestinian without reason.
The Palestinian approached an Israeli position one night and immediately raised his hands, Yehuda said.
“It was obvious he was unarmed,” he said.
The officer waited a few seconds, then shot him dead without asking a single question.
Back at the operations room, officers watched drone footage of the killing.
“One of them said: ‘This is murder, simply murder,’” Yehuda recalled.
No investigation was opened, he said, and the officer remained in service.
‘Every time I close my eyes’
Other testimonies describe the war continuing long after soldiers returned home.
A sniper from the Nahal Brigade said he can no longer sleep without seeing the faces of Palestinians he killed.
“When you look through a sniper scope, everything feels close, like a video game,” he said. “But afterward, you never forget the faces.”
He said he now suffers from nighttime urinary incontinence and spent a month in a hospital.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see someone taking a bullet in the forehead,” he said.
Another soldier said troops routinely looted Palestinian homes.
“I saw soldiers stealing electrical appliances, gold necklaces, cash, everything,” he said.
Others burned family photographs or urinated on them, he added.
“What was the point of that?” he said.
‘The screaming would not stop’
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.
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.
“The screaming would not stop,” Eitan said. “It sounded as if his soul was leaving his body.”
He said the screams still echo in his mind.
“What happened destroyed everything I believed about the army, about us and about myself,” he said.
“If we were capable of doing something like that, then what else is happening behind closed doors?”
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.
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’s infrastructure.
*Writing by Tarek Chouiref
