TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / February 8, 2026
Over two years after the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, retired Israeli reserve general Yitzhak Brik acknowledged sweeping military, economic and social damage, saying the campaign has failed to achieve its primary objective.
Failure to achieve war objectives
In a Channel 13 television interview, Brik described the war as a prolonged conflict whose costs exceeded its gains.
“In reality, we have lost national and social resilience over these two years, along with hundreds of billions of shekels,” he reportedly said.
The retired general added that Israel had not succeeded in defeating Hamas, arguing that the campaign imposed heavy casualties while failing to produce a decisive outcome.
“Over the past two years, we have borne severe losses,” Brik stated, referring to both battlefield casualties and long-term physical and psychological injuries among soldiers and civilians.
He also warned of diplomatic repercussions, saying Israel had “lost credibility in the world,” and suggested Washington has intervened after viewing the war as strategically stalled.
Expanding psychological crisis
Parallel reports from Israeli institutions and healthcare providers indicate a growing mental-health emergency inside the military.
According to data from the Israeli Security Ministry, around 22,300 soldiers and personnel are receiving treatment for war-related injuries, with approximately 60 percent suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Israel’s healthcare provider Maccabi reported that 39 percent of soldiers under its care sought psychological assistance, while 26 percent displayed symptoms of depression.
A parliamentary committee documented 279 suicide attempts between January 2024 and July 2025, with combat soldiers representing the majority of cases.
Authorities have expanded mental-health funding and alternative treatment programs, but specialists warn the scale of trauma could continue rising sharply in the coming years.
Clinical psychologist Ronen Sidi, director of combat veteran research at Emek Medical Center, also noted widespread “moral injury,” describing emotional distress linked to actions taken during combat.
Multi-front war
The war has extended across several arenas simultaneously.
The Gaza Health Ministry confirmed that more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, while thousands more have been killed in south Lebanon.
Israeli sources acknowledge over 1,100 Israeli soldiers killed during the same period. Resistance groups, however, have disputed these figures, arguing that Israeli authorities do not disclose the full extent of battlefield losses and that the real number of casualties is likely higher than officially reported.
Despite a US-backed ceasefire announced in October, Israeli occupation forces remain active across large areas of Gaza, with continued operations causing further casualties in recent months.
Israeli occupation troops also remain deployed in parts of south Lebanon and expanded areas in southern Syria.
Internal debate over strategic outcomes
Brik’s remarks have intensified debate inside Israel regarding the feasibility of the war’s goals.
The retired general has long argued that prolonged ground operations against an entrenched resistance movement would produce high costs without decisive victory.
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ARCHIVE
‘Vietnam scenario’: Israeli general Brik says Netanyahu’s Gaza plan is a ‘death trap’
TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / September 4, 2025
Israeli reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik wrote that Netanyahu’s push to reoccupy Gaza City is a “death trap,” accusing Israel’s leadership of weakening the army and deceiving the public about the war.
Israeli Reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik has warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to reoccupy Gaza City could have catastrophic consequences, calling it a “death trap” for Israeli soldiers and captives. His remarks were published on Thursday in the Israeli daily Maariv.
Brik said that for years, Netanyahu’s governments allowed Israel’s ground army to shrink dramatically.
“Netanyahu, throughout his reign, allowed the ground army to be drastically cut, to a third of its size twenty years ago,” Brik wrote. As a result, he argued, the Israeli army “was not adequately trained and could not prevail in even a single sector.”
The retired general described an ineffective strategy of raids and withdrawals, rather than permanent control of territory.
“This method of operation not only did not lead to the defeat of Hamas, but also caused the IDF (Israeli army – PC) severe losses and many wounded,” he wrote.
Brik also accused Israel’s political and military leadership of misleading the public with false achievements.
“In order to justify the continuation of the war, the political and military echelons began telling the public fabricated stories and clichés, such as: ‘We destroyed over 50% of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip,’ ‘We eliminated 20,000 Hamas fighters,’ and ‘We destroyed all of Hamas’s military infrastructure,’” Brik said.
In reality, he argued, “less than 24% of the tunnels were destroyed, and in fact even less than 10%, as the operators themselves on the ground testify.”
He added that “less than 10,000 Hamas fighters were eliminated, not 20,000,” stressing that Hamas continues to operate as a guerrilla force.
On Netanyahu’s latest push to retake Gaza City, Brik noted that Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir opposed the plan, warning the cabinet that it was a trap. Netanyahu nevertheless insisted on the operation, declaring it would uproot Hamas’s rule.
“This is a big cliché,” Brik countered. “Hamas operates from the tunnels – a network of hundreds of kilometers connected to the entire length and breadth of the Gaza Strip.”
Brik warned that such an operation would cause heavy Israeli casualties, risk the lives of captives, kill many civilians, and leave Israel further isolated.
“Those who do not recognize their limitations and therefore do not address them pay a heavy price, as the United States did in Vietnam,” he concluded.
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‘Hamas has defeated us’ – Ret. Israeli Maj. Gen. Brik speaks of ‘collective suicide’
TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / June 8, 2025
The retired general directly addressed the ongoing war on Gaza, now entering its twentieth month, dismissing official Israeli claims of progress.
Retired Israeli Major General Itzhak Brik has issued a scathing assessment of Israel’s military and political leadership, warning that the country is on the verge of “collective suicide” and that the army has effectively been defeated by Hamas in Gaza.
In a blistering op-ed published on Sunday in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, Brik—who previously served as IDF Ombudsman for Soldiers’ Complaints—wrote that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are “left behind, without a response to future wars,” and are “preparing itself for the wars of the past, not the wars of the future.”
Brik, a longtime critic of Israel’s military doctrine, accused the Israeli government of leading the country into a disastrous path.
“With a political and military echelon of this type, there is no need for external enemies; they will bring disaster upon us in their stupidity,” he warned.
“We may soon reach a point of no return, and the only thing left for us to do is pray to our God to come to our aid, and then we will all become messiahs who pray for miracles.”
The retired general directly addressed the ongoing war on Gaza, now entering its twentieth month, dismissing official Israeli claims of progress.
Referring to the latest military campaign dubbed Operation Gideon’s Chariots, Brik wrote, “Just as the political and military echelons lied to the public throughout the war, declaring back and forth that it was a matter of days until Hamas would surrender… The same lies of the political and military echelons continue even now.”
He added: “Not a day goes by without our forces being killed or wounded… We will understand what a terrible tragedy this group and their friends, who have gone off the rails and are acting with shocking irresponsibility and are below all criticism, are bringing the people of Israel to.”
Perhaps the most devastating part of Brik’s critique came in his stark admission of defeat: “An army that held its own as the strongest in the Middle East was defeated by Hamas, a powerful blow to Israel’s deterrence against its enemies, and this will encourage our enemies around our borders to prepare themselves for war against us.”
Brik argues that Israel’s strategic choices—particularly its overreliance on air power and neglect of ground forces and missile technology—have left the military unprepared for modern warfare.
He pointed to Ukraine’s recent drone strikes on Russian air bases as a paradigm shift in global military doctrine, while Israel continues to invest billions in outdated technologies.
“Even after all the lessons were learned during the ‘Iron Swords’ war, which proved that it is impossible to win wars with planes alone, we still continue to invest forty billion dollars in purchasing planes,” Brik wrote, warning that “manned aircraft are losing their place to swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
He noted that China now produces up to 700,000 attack drones a month, while Israel remains unprepared for similar technological shifts. “The air revolution is already here,” Brik stated.
In the Gaza Strip, he said, Israel’s military strategy has largely failed. “The IDF is almost unable to harm Hamas, but mainly uninvolved Gazan residents who are mainly harmed by the air force’s bombings,” Brik wrote, adding that Hamas fighters operate freely in tunnels while Israeli forces continue to suffer mounting casualties.
“In the meantime, the kidnapped will die in the tunnels and many more of our soldiers will be wounded and killed.”
The former general also warned of imminent financial collapse. “The Ministry of Finance announces that at this rate, within a few weeks, the state budget will run out… and we have not yet reached the middle of the year.”
Brik concluded with a dire forecast: “They are leading the people of Israel to collective suicide.”
