Violence, trauma and rising crime rates: How Israel's wars of aggression are hitting home

Something dangerous is happening within Israeli society, and it could have consequences for the entire region.

Since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza, Israeli society has consciously created a broad consensus around a violent discourse centred on revenge - one that encourages war not only against Palestinians, but across the region as a whole. 

Almost every public opinion poll finds overwhelming support for the war, and very little criticism of the continuous chain of crimes committed over the past two-and-a-half years. But this culture of revenge and violence has also turned inwards, affecting Israeli society itself. 

Research increasingly reveals the psychological and social costs of the war, amid the spread of violence into every sphere of Israeli society.

As early as 1968, a year after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz published a foundational essay in which he coined the notion that “occupation corrupts”.

He argued that the practices of occupation carried out by the Israeli state in the West Bank and Gaza would inevitably corrupt the human spirit, and over time would also corrupt Israeli society within the Green Line itself. 

Leibowitz, of course, ignored the occupation and dispossession of 1948 and the logic of building a national home at the expense of another people’s expulsion. Yet he was correct in his central argument: the domination and occupation of another people inevitably corrupts the occupying society itself.

Culture of militarism

It is therefore impossible to truly understand the willingness of Israeli society to support the genocide in Gaza, the creeping annexation of the West Bank, the displacement of Palestinian communities, the occupation of parts of Lebanon and Syria, and a war with Iran that threatens global stability, without grasping how the very practice of occupation has transformed Israeli society into a militarised and deeply violent one. 

Author Aime Cesaire correctly and brilliantly argued “that no one colonises innocently, that no one colonises with impunity either; that a nation which colonises, that a civilisation which justifies colonisation - and therefore force - is already a sick civilisation, a civilisation which is morally diseased”. 

Israel is today a society that believes virtually every problem can be solved through military force - to the point that anyone advocating compromise or diplomacy is often treated as being detached from reality.

These trends collectively point to a profound social and psychological crisis within Israeli society, suggesting that the impacts of war extend far beyond the battlefield

But we are starting to see how this same culture - one that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others proudly market as a form of “super-Spartan” resilience - is beginning to consume Israeli society from within. 

While Israel attempts to present its social model to the world as something admirable, or even necessary, to justify the destruction it causes, the reality beneath the surface is far more troubling.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war in October 2023, various studies and official reports have shown dramatic effects on the mental health and social welfare of Israeli society, particularly within the family sphere. 

The social consequences of prolonged militarisation and war have included sharp rises in depression and addiction. In 2025, the proportion of Israelis reporting that they needed psychological help reached a peak of approximately 32 percent, while cases of post-traumatic stress disorder soared by 40 percent over 2022.

Domestic violence has also been on the rise. Last year, the Israeli justice ministry reported a 44 percent increase in domestic-violence cases, with a woman murdered every nine days. At the same time, one-third of women in Israel have reported suffering from postpartum depression, more than double the prewar rate.

Recent data also shows a significant increase in the number of criminal cases being opened against minors, while hundreds of soldiers have attempted suicide since the outbreak of the Gaza war.

These trends collectively point to a profound social and psychological crisis within Israeli society, suggesting that the impacts of war extend far beyond the battlefield. Violence and trauma have seeped into every layer of daily life in the country.

Clear transformation

While Israel attempts to project an image of national resilience, the reality is far more complex. The transformation taking place within Israeli society illustrates the historical fate of settler-colonial societies, as the side effects of war and occupation become increasingly clear. 

Towards the end of this year, Israel is expected to hold parliamentary elections. The country’s political map is currently divided into two broad camps: the “Bibi” camp and the “anyone but Bibi” camp. 

Although common sense would suggest that the core political debate should revolve around Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, even Netanyahu’s rivals have largely adopted the same militaristic framework. 

Just two weeks ago, in announcing their new political alliance, former prime ministers Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett presented a similarly hawkish line, insisting that they would not give up any territory - without clarifying which occupied land they were referring to. 

At the same time, they attempted to explain Israel’s deep social crisis simply by putting the blame on Netanyahu. In reality, however, Netanyahu is only the symptom of a deeper problem: indeed, the roots of the country’s moral deterioration and normalisation of violence lie in the occupation itself.

There is still almost no serious political discourse examining the consequences of Israel’s permanent-war trajectory on Israeli society. The solutions proposed by Israeli politicians to tackle the country’s social problems increasingly rely on anti-democratic means, such as tighter protest crackdowns.

The current situation is not merely a byproduct of 7 October. It reflects deeper processes that started unfolding decades earlier, planting the seeds not only for violence against Palestinians, but also for the growing social and institutional disintegration of Israeli society itself.