Some 81,700 soldiers wounded in Israel’s wars, 20,000 in current one, Defense Ministry says

Every month, around 1,000 soldiers file new claims regarding their wounds from the war.

More than 81,700 soldiers have been wounded in Israel’s wars, including nearly 20,000 in the current war, the Defense Ministry said Sunday, leading into the war's two-year anniversary.

The updated numbers of wounded soldiers tell many stories, but two somewhat disparate ones.

On the one hand, the volume of wounded soldiers since the year before the war has spiked astronomically. Every month, around 1,000 soldiers file new claims regarding their wounds from the war.

The ministry believes that the total number of wounded will surpass 100,000 by 2028.

Prior to this war, there were about 62,000 wounded soldiers from all prior wars and battles over around 75 years, of whom 18%, or 11,000, had emotional harm.

A jump of nearly 20,000 more, or around 25% more wounded soldiers over only two years has completely changed the picture.

Along the same lines, a jump to 31,000 suffering exclusively from emotional harm means that 38% of the wounded have suffered emotional harm, a 180% increase.

The numbers are even larger when taking into account that another 21% of those with physical harm issues also have accompanying emotional harm issues, such that 56% of all wounded soldiers have emotional harm problems.

Number of soldiers facing emotional trauma to reach 50,000

By 2028, the ministry predicts the number of soldiers with emotional harm will reach 50,000.

In economic terms, the cost of dealing with emotionally harmed soldiers before this war was at 5.4 billion shekels, and in only two years it has spiked to 8.3 billion shekels.

Of the 8.3 billion shekels, a full 4.1 billion shekels is now devoted to handling emotional harm issues for soldiers.

On the other hand, there is a paradoxical narrative that is strangely more optimistic in terms of the numbers as of September 2025 compared to what estimates were for how bad the situation would be at various midpoints of the war.

Put differently, when looking at the numbers from the perspective of pre-war, they are off the charts, but when looking at them from the perspective of the worst-case scenarios imagined in the middle of the war, they are not as bad as predicted.

Much of the change in that regard, to the wounded numbers leveling off since certain points in 2024, is that while the war has continued now for two years, almost all of the more intense fighting, when the largest number of soldiers were getting wounded, took place from October 2023 to February 2024 and from May 2024 to August 2024.

While soldiers have been regularly wounded throughout the war, other than the January-March ceasefire earlier this year, the rate of wounded soldiers dropped substantially during periods where Hamas only engaged in small guerrilla warfare tactics as opposed to larger organized resistance.

For example, in April 2024, the ministry predicted that by the end of 2024, 20,000 soldiers would be wounded.

Instead, that benchmark will only be crossed in the near future in fall-winter 2025.

Yet, even after the rate of wounded soldiers has plateaued, it has still overwhelmed the ministry's existing system of mental health and administrative professionals.

A ministry representative said that the ratio of care providers to patients is a staggering one to 750.

The ministry said that it has sought to hire 3,000 additional employees to help handle the issue, but is still far below what it needs to properly attend to wounded soldiers.

Next, the ministry has established three "Stabilization Houses" where patients get active intervention help for emotional issues versus another four "Safety Houses" where they have favorable surroundings and access to help but they get to choose more how much intervention they want.

There are also a variety of creative therapies using farm situations, specially trained dogs, and sports, as well as new artificial intelligence operated ways to make basic emotional harm diagnosis in order to streamline approvals for rehabilitative care.

A ministry official warned that existing Israeli law is insufficient to address the escalating crisis of the country regularly dealing with so many wounded soldiers, including emotional harm.

Many of the needs that the soldiers have currently can only be addressed by a time-consuming appeal process to an "exceptions committee."

The ministry representative said that a new law must outline a streamlined procedure for addressing wounded soldiers' needs, including emotional ones, at a much more rapid pace.

She said that a new task force is working on developing such a law, but that in the meantime, the government must approve an extended period of speeding up handling these problems until such a new law might be passed.