A shattered covenant: Israel’s lone soldiers and the broken promise of care

There is a gap in the duty of care for mental health support during the transition from active military service to civilian life. The military waits for soldiers to ask for help, but asking for help carries shame, stigma, and consequences. Under the Defense Ministry’s disability system, soldiers who reach a 30% mental health impairment rating are automatically discharged. Lone soldiers are suffering in silence, afraid to give up who they are.

Boone’s family escaped Russia just before World War II, but not everyone made it out. His mother raised him with the kind of pride that comes from surviving. In a December 3, 2025, podcast episode of Boots on the Ground, Boone relayed how she told him, “‘Be proud of who you are. You’re a Jew. That means you’re a warrior.’” Her words became etched in his soul.

Three rejections from The Jewish Agency for Israel to become a citizen didn’t deter him. Boone loved Israel and believed in the covenant between a country and the people who protect it. He kept flying back. When they finally said yes, they invited him for Shabbat dinner. That’s Israel for you.

Boone became a sniper in the Golani Brigade. His grandfather, a Vietnam-era sniper who died when Boone was 19, had told him, “Go to the army, become a sniper. You shoot pretty good.” When Josh finished sniper school and got his pin, he teared up.

Oct. 7 ignited a fire inside of him. He didn’t stop fighting for 748 days, 90% of the war, one of the longest continuous deployments of any soldier in the conflict. He served in Gaza and Lebanon and kept serving until there was nothing left.

Boone stated in the podcast: “I am a protector. Israel is my home, and I’m here to stay. It’s my identity, and it’s a God-given identity.”

On January 11, 2026, two weeks after his reserve days ran out, Boone was found dead near his home in Beersheba. Because he had been a civilian for two weeks, the state denied him recognition as a fallen soldier. Prof. Eyal Fruchter, former head of the IDF Mental Health Division and current director of ICAR Collective, the national body coordinating Israel’s trauma response, told the Magazine, “Lone soldiers are more prone [to suicide]. They don’t have the family. They don’t have the backup. When they finish, they’re alone.”

He added, “When the civilian world is not in charge of you yet, and the military world is not in charge of you anymore, that’s a big crack that needs to be solved.”

In November 2024 alone, there were two lone soldier suicides. Then Cpl. Dan Phillipson, 19, from Norway, died on July 20, 2025. Then Boone. Since Boone’s death in January, friends and family have reported three more suicides.

Israel demands mandatory military service – years of conscription, then decades of reserve duty. In the US, the UK, the EU, and Australia, the concept of duty of care is enshrined in law. The European Court of Human Rights holds member states to an “ought to have known” standard. If a soldier’s mental health crisis was visible and the system chose not to look, that is not a defense. Israel has no equivalent legal framework. Boone was struggling, but there was no law to protect him when he crossed over from soldier to civilian.

Chaim Meisels, a veteran and national chapters coordinator at Nevut, an organization that supports lone soldiers, framed it simply: “Every soldier who suffers from [a] mental health [issue] that occurred in service should be treated like a physical health issue. He should be under medical [supervision] until he’s able to get back to normal life.” In other words, the army wouldn’t discharge someone with a broken leg before it heals, so why discharge someone whose mind is still breaking?

KEREN OULIEL, a 35-year-old author from Beersheba, met Boone on Tinder. She almost didn’t swipe right – his profile was all military, and she had lost a close friend on Oct. 7. Soldiers and death had become linked. But something made her swipe right, anyway. “It was like God’s hand,” she said.

Their first date was on January 11, 2025, at a coffee shop in Beersheba. That date would become the cruelest symmetry of her life. Exactly one year later, Boone was gone.

Ouliel saw sides of Boone that he rarely showed. She recalled how, before he fell asleep on the first night they spent together, he cautioned her, “‘Just FYI, sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up. And I need to be reminded that I’m not in Gaza.’”

Units fought over Boone because he never said no. In one mission, Boone shot two terrorists at 950 meters. He saved many lives and eliminated at least 50 terrorists. But, Ouliel said, “The soul pays a price.”

Boone proposed privately. A wedding was planned for the fall. He told her things he had never said to anyone: “I lost parts of my soul in Gaza. But being around you brings the soul back. I finally feel like I have something to live for.” He gave every sign of coming back to life.

He also told her what he saw through that scope – not just the enemy, but the things he couldn’t stop. Children. Animals. Women on the other side. “It wasn’t just our people he wasn’t able to protect,” Ouliel said. “It was the other side, too. He wasn’t able to save everyone.”

In early December, something broke. Ouliel said that Boone had a severe PTSD episode. His commander faced an impossible choice. Report it, and Boone’s career was over – no firearms, no service, and a loss of identity. “If he was told he was discharged from miluim [reserve duty],” Ouliel said, “he would have shot himself in the head. Everyone knew that.”

Soldiers who report mental health symptoms can wait as long as 100 days for care through the Defense Ministry. Private therapy is expensive and disconnected; when Boone was directed toward private care, the IDF absolved itself. The private provider had no reciprocal obligation to share records, follow up, or flag a crisis. The duty of care did not transfer – it ended.

“J.” IS a lone soldier who spoke freely to the Magazine; but he became concerned that if the army saw his name in print, they could conclude he was unfit to serve. He stated, “It’s kind of upsetting that seeking help to a lot of us means quitting. And we’re just not ready to quit. We’re not willing to quit.”

Running from his rough teenage years, J came to Israel not sure what he was looking for. He met Boone, already a trained soldier and mentor, at the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center eight years ago.

They served together in Golani, worked security in the Old City, and bonded over beers. By the end, Boone called J his little brother.

J read from a diary that he has kept since the war began. When he came out of Gaza over a year ago, he described returning to a world that feels empty, unrelatable, and depressing after becoming accustomed to “fear, excitement, adrenaline, purpose, destruction, and hell.” Upon returning home, “We start to disconnect from our families and friends, and it’s hard to feel close to anyone.”

He hauntingly said, “When the next soldier kills himself – and I’m going to say ‘when’ because it’s not a matter of ‘if’... it’s going to be a big number. We are right before a storm of soldiers who are going to lose their lives off of the battlefield.”

Daniel Edri, 24, asked to be hospitalized the week before he died because he feared he would harm himself – and was denied twice and placed on a waiting list. He was found dead in a burning car in Biriya Forest on July 5, 2025, two days before a rehabilitation retreat he was scheduled to attend. His mother told The Times of Israel, “He lost his soul in military service and lost his life because of his military service.”

Roi Wasserstein, 24, spent more than 300 reserve days as a combat medic in the 401st Armored Brigade evacuating wounded soldiers. He died on July 30, 2025, two months after his service ended. The IDF’s official response: “A civilian who is not in active reserve service at the time of suicide is not recognized as an IDF casualty, and there is no intention to change this.”

Assaf Dagan asked to see a mental health officer multiple times. His twin sister, Neta, testified to the Knesset on January 19, 2026: “A month before he took his own life, my mother warned a senior commander.”

THE IDF’S suicide prevention program, built under Fruchter’s leadership, reduced soldier suicides by 63%, but the program was not built for reservists fighting a prolonged war. “We used to have a month in miluim a year. You had 11 months to come down. But now – three, four months twice a year – you don’t calm yourself. You’re stuck,” Fruchter said.

A January 19, 2026, Knesset hearing reported that combat soldiers were shown to account for 88% of military suicides – up from 42% before the war. Those numbers exclude everyone who, like Boone, died by suicide after their service ended. In addition, 279 soldiers attempted to take their lives in the 18 months prior to the hearing.

Fruchter warned what happens when the system fails. “After Vietnam, about 25% of the people in the jails in the US were veterans. That’s due to PTSD. We don’t want to be there.”

J expressed his anger about the IDF’s decision not to honor Boone as a soldier when he died. “It’s enough that you lost your life from your wounds two weeks after you got out of the army,” J said. “And then the government slaps you in the face: ‘You weren’t even a warrior. You don’t get a warrior’s burial.’”

Boone’s friends refused to accept that verdict. Some 30,000 people signed a petition demanding that Boone be recognized as a fallen soldier. Soldiers in uniform surrounded his grave. They gave him the honors the bureaucracy denied.

At Boone’s funeral, J stated, “PTSD is the one enemy you can’t put your crosshairs on. But I want everyone to remember he did not lose. Because true courage isn’t about facing gunfire. It’s about fighting every day to stay standing, even when it hurts.”

J continued to honor his friend: “I don’t know what rifle God has assigned you up there, but I know you’ll still always be my overwatch. Miss you, brother.”

Then he broke down – the man who says he never cries, crying as he carried his “brother” to the grave.

DAVID DEVOR, chairman of the board of Nevut, warns about lone soldiers not receiving mental health care when they return home. “The danger is not theoretical. The conditions for a post-war mental health crisis are already in place, unfolding quietly, and largely out of sight,” he said.

Fruchter suggests having a fellow soldier in every unit call the soldiers who left at one-, three-, and six-month intervals. Not to assess risk – just to ask how they’re doing the way a friend or family member would.

The “Josh Boone Law” would make that call mandatory and make the state liable. No soldier in mental health treatment would be discharged without a continuity plan and a confirmed civilian provider.

Josh Frisch is a 26-year-old lone soldier and new immigrant. He has been an active combat reservist since Oct. 7 and is a PTSD survivor. He was Boone’s closest friend. He testified at the Knesset and posted on social media about how he can’t sleep, lives with anxiety attacks, daily physical pain, and keeps losing friends, not just on the battlefield but in “their own private war for their souls.” He described the armor that soldiers build around their pain: “You wrap the pain in another layer of armor, and you keep going if you can.” He named the silence: “There are so many wounded soldiers who aren’t treated, who aren’t counted, who don’t even know where to begin because they’re afraid.”

Frisch was not saved by the system. “Incredible people around me saw my silent struggle and pushed me toward treatment. They showed me I’m not invisible. Maybe I’m invisible to the system – but not to them. They see me.”

Frisch recently posted on Instagram another cry for help for his comrades in arms, announcing that another soldier had taken his life.

“God, help us. Today we lost another warrior – not on the battlefield but in his own internal battle. Another soldier who gave everything to the state and didn’t manage to bear the pain alone. The State of Israel, wake up already! The injury is real. PTSD is not a weakness. It is not shame. And it should not be a death sentence. How many more?! We will not be silent. This is not normal. And we cannot let this continue. May his memory be blessed.”

Those who define themselves by their willingness to stand between danger and everyone they love should not feel they have to hide their suffering to protect us. Until the Defense Ministry says that out loud and builds a system that proves it, soldiers will keep doing exactly what Josh Boone did.