Four thousand Israeli regime forces have become disabled since the beginning of the Tel Aviv regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October, according to Israeli media reports, stressing that the number could rise to 30,000 forces.
“Currently, about 4,000 soldiers (with disabilities) have been recognized according to classification 3, meaning they are entitled to all treatments and rights enjoyed by a disabled person in the Israeli army without being officially recognized in this way,” the regime’s Hebrew news site, Walla reported on Friday.
The report added that the regime authorities were now preparing themselves to deal with the huge number of disabled forces who needed extensive rehabilitation services.
According to the report, the Israeli regime tries to censor media coverage of the aggression on Gaza, while also blurring the magnitudes of its own losses, and “does not provide all data about the wounded to the public, for fear that it will lower people’s morale”.
Idan Kaliman, chairman of the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) Organization for the Disabled was quoted by Walla as saying, “I have been in the organization for 30 years, and I have never encountered such a large number of severely wounded individuals. There are many wounded with amputated limbs, blindness, or paralysis.”
The news site noted those injured were paid and received treatment without the need to prove that they were wounded in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
It cited the official as saying that a rehabilitation plan for the disabled was in hand and “will begin soon to reintegrate them into life.”
Walla added that now the disabled are entering the most significant battle of their lives – the rehabilitation struggle, physically and mentally, which is getting longer.
It said the definition of a disabled can also lead to weakening when one has to prove that s/he is “unfit” to receive his treatment.
Kaliman, who is himself an amputee who sustained an injury in Khan Yunis in the 1992 Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, complains about the bureaucratic problems that he had faced during the rehabilitation process that continues to this day.
“We need to triple our strength immediately to support our soldiers and we are prepared to face this challenge,” he said.
“For every physiotherapist we’ve worked with, we now ask for four to meet the scale of the wounded, the same for all treatment professions,” Kaliman said.
Kaliman was at pains to say that the regime forces were mentally damaged too, and needed psychological help after the war.
“We are still in the middle of the war, so our soldiers are not yet completely available for psychological help,” Kaliman said.
He warned that some of the mentally deranged and demented Israeli forces are still in denial. “When I sit with the soldiers alone, without the families, I also hear the mental difficulty. Little by little they will be able to talk more and we will be there, at the moment it is very quiet.”
The Israeli so-called war ministry’s rehabilitation department is reportedly admitting approximately 60 injured forces daily, most of them in serious condition with severe disability.
As of Friday, the Tel Aviv regime put the death total of all those killed since Oct. 7 at around 1,200 with the number of Israeli forces killed at 520.
Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours alone, 135 more Palestinians have been killed as the Israeli forces continue the genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry in besieged Gaza Strip said on Saturday.
The death toll of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7 has reached 23,843 with 60,317 injured and an unknown number buried under the debris.
