WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Israeli Broadcasting Authority says that a reserve officer in the Air Force with the rank of major committed suicide after being called up for service.
The authority reported that according to an urgent message sent to war minister Yoav Gallant, the reserve officer in the Air Force, Major Asaf Dagan, was called up for service and was on his way to the military base when he ended his life. His body was found in a forest near Atlit, next to his personal rifle.
The broadcasting authority said that on the day of his death, his unit was in dire need of manpower, and he was called up with others to arrive immediately at the Kirya base.
According to the authority, the data-x-items found near his body confirm that he was indeed on his way to the shift before he ended his life. It noted that his backpack contained equipment and clothes for the shift, a mobile phone, a charger, headphones, keys and a shaving kit, according to Russia Today.
The source said that his family demanded that he be buried with a military ceremony, but the army refused.
Dagan, 38, was discharged from regular service about three years ago, but has continued to serve in the reserves since then.
He began his career in the army with the paratroopers and became an officer, served in the 2006 war on Lebanon and then volunteered for a pilot course.
His mother said that during the four years since his release, her son has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In a letter he left for his mother, Dagan wrote: “You may be relieved to know that I found rest and you simply will not have to worry about me anymore.”
According Israeli paper Ha’aretz, his death followed hundreds of appeals sent by her mother over three years for attention to his situation from the Israeli military, Knesset (the Zionist regime’s parliament), and the regime’s cabinet.
“Yet the responses ranged from disregard to scorn,” Ha’aretz wrote of the conditions suffered by Asaf, “who was struggling since his discharge.”
Last month too, the CNN reported the suicide of Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old reservist, who had ended his life after returning from Gaza.
The Israeli military withholds figures on the number of the troops, who have committed suicide following enlistment in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, where the regime has respectively been waging a genocidal war and escalated deadly aggression since last October.
The military has sufficed to reveal that “thousands” of its forces have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other mental illnesses.
Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, however, asserted that the regime seeks to prolong the war until “elimination” of the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas, a prospect that has been ruled out as impossible by Israeli officials and Tel Aviv’s allies.