Vet released from rehab center two years after self-immolating

Two years and two weeks after setting himself on fire to protest the state’s treatment of PTSD-afflicted veterans, Itzik Saidyan has been released from Tel Hashomer rehab center, following a slow, odds-defying recovery.

Saidyan, who was in a unit that saw fierce combat in the 2014 war with Gaza, expresses dismay that legislation meant to bolster care for vets with post-traumatic stress disorder like himself has become stuck.

“I ask the government not to forget us. There’s thousands like me. I was shut up at home for six years and each day was a war that’s impossible to explain in words. The isolation can kill you,” he says.

In April 2021, Saidyan arrived at the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Department’s offices in Petah Tikva with a bottle full of a flammable liquid, doused himself with it, and then set himself on fire in the entryway, after being denied increased benefits for his mental health struggles.

He suffered extensive burns and was in an induced coma for several months as he slowly recovered, but the act brought the Defense Ministry’s treatment of wounded veterans under intense scrutiny.

Despite saying that “I am here to continue crying out on behalf of combat troops,” Saidyan expresses little appetite for the limelight.

“I’m not a celebrity and don’t want to be famous,” he says. “I want to go back to being the old Itzik. What I did was the worst thing someone can do and it can’t happen again.”

While Saidyan is released from the rehab center’s inpatient facility, he says he still faces a long road ahead, including more surgeries.