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"Don't forget to talk about the reservists, about the active-duty soldiers who are burned out from doing everything," said one. "Once I finish this round, I'm done with Gaza. I'm not coming back. People don't understand what burnout means. They think we just want a few hours of sleep, but we're wrecked," he added.
Open gallery view
IDF soldiers walk by ruins in Beit Hanoun, Wednesday.
Credit: Yaniv Kubovich
Another reservist beside him, a 36-year-old software engineer, said he was fired from his high-tech job after his first round of reserve duty. Since then, he's struggled to find work between deployments.
"I'm not coming back to Gaza either," he declared. He reported extremely low turnout rates for reserve duty. "Today, our unit is operating at less than 10 percent of its original strength from the start of the war," he said.
According to him, most of those now serving are "mercenaries" – the nickname for people who sign up to serve with various reserve units, often recruited through job ads or transferred between units in the field.
Another reservist affirmed this. "A lot of these 'mercenaries' are West Bank settlers. It works for them because they don't have steady jobs or they serve for a week or two and get paid for a month," he explained.