Man shot while causing scene at IDF rehab center, attacking guards

A man was shot and wounded outside a Defense Ministry rehabilitation center Monday after causing a ruckus and rushing guards with a sharp object, according to Hebrew-language reports.

The 27-year-old, who was not named, was said to have claimed to plan the disturbance in advance to draw attention to complaints regarding his status as suffering from post-traumatic stress.

According to reports citing the Defense Ministry, the man showed up outside a rehabilitation center in Beersheba and began attacking guards and breaking windows. In response, security personnel closed the site and called in police, who attempted to calm the man.

However, the suspect then ran at the guards while brandishing a sharp object. The guards, who felt they were in danger, first fired in the air and then at the man’s legs, hitting and injuring him, according to the reports.

He was transported to a local hospital in non-life-threatening condition.

The Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Department is responsible for rating disability levels for IDF veterans and security personnel, including those suffering psychological trauma, and reintegrating them into civilian life by providing them with social services and financial support.

Unverified reports described the man as thought to be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. He was said to have caused disturbances in the past.

According to the Walla news site, in a Facebook message posted shortly before the incident, the man said he had been waiting nearly seven-and-a-half years to be recognized by the Defense Ministry, and that he had yet to receive compensation he thought would be coming that day.

“I’m sick of this,” the man wrote, adding that he had begun to go mute in recent weeks and had suffered Tourette’s syndrome since 2019. “Why did I write this? So the people I attack understand. I am planning to purposely carry out an attack because I’ve had enough.”

He also said he had been seen by psychiatrists three times in the last 10 days following “attacks.”

“Yesterday I attacked in a hospital and they released me because I am a danger to myself,” he wrote.

The incident came as the issue of mental health among military veterans and reservists has moved into the spotlight in recent months, due to a spate of suicides thought to be related to the heavy emotional and physical tolls suffered by soldiers fighting in Gaza and serving extended stints.

Even before the war, critics had long accused the military of failing to adequately address mental health among active-duty troops, reservists, and combat veterans.

Veterans and their advocates have maligned the department as providing woefully insufficient care and subjecting applicants to a bureaucracy so convoluted and tortuous that many were required to hire expensive lawyers to help them navigate the system.

In 2023, a man unhappy with his lack of recognition as a wounded veteran tried to set a rehabilitation center in Tiberias alight.

Two years earlier, IDF veteran Itzik Saidyan self-immolated outside the Petah Tikva offices of the Rehabilitation Department for disabled soldiers in what became a lightning-rod case in Israel.

Saidyan, who has since mostly recovered, said he struggled for years to receive the care he requested for post-traumatic stress disorder, which he said stemmed from his service in the military.

The Defense Ministry’s treatment for wounded veterans came under intense scrutiny in the weeks following Saidyan’s grim protest, and officials promised to introduce reforms.