Ephraim Shwartz had spent months fighting on the front line when, home on leave, he walked into his baby’s room late one night and switched on the light. For a moment, he did not recognise the child in the cot.
His son had been born just three weeks into the war and – briefly – he had forgotten that he was the boy’s father.
For Shwartz, 33, now a father of four, moving between military service and family life has been dislocating. That moment is one of the experiences he can discuss at A Father Is Born, a project by the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (Wizo) helping men navigate life between the army and home, a challenge with which hundreds of thousands of reservists have had to contend.
Three years after October 7, the psychological toll of Israel’s longest war extends far beyond the battlefield.
In January, the IDF reported a nearly 40 per cent increase in PTSD cases among soldiers since September 2023 and predicts the figure will increase by 180 per cent by 2028. Of the 22,300 personnel being treated for war wounds, 60 per cent suffer from post-trauma, the ministry says.
Wizo, Israel’s largest social welfare organisation, found one in 10 men in Israel had witnessed physical violence by another man towards a partner or child and nearly 70 per cent say the security situation has increased their stress.
The organisation’s work combatting domestic violence means that supporting men is part of its work protecting women and families, and breaking that cycle of violence.
“The more we invest in prevention, the less we will need to deal with the consequences,” said Michael Orion-Sagi, Wizo’s director of emergency services, treatment and rehabilitation, when she gave the JC a tour of one of its shelters that supports mothers and children.
“We believe that men are not born violent, they become violent. So we offer therapy or treatment for men and invite them to deal with the problem. If he stays the same as he was, the next relationship will be the same,” Orion-Sagi said.
A Father is Born is an eight-week, facilitated group programme that helps new fathers and military reservists balance active duty with early parenthood and family life.
At Wizo’s Beit Hakerem headquarters in Jerusalem, the JC sat down with men attending the programme.
One of them was Shwartz, who described the impact of the war on his family.
Ephraim Shwartz (left), Gideon Igra and Tal Atzmon at Wizo’s Beit Hakerem headquarters in Jerusalem[Missing Credit]
“On October 7 I said goodbye to my nine-month pregnant wife and two children, not knowing what I was going into. I was very disconnected,” he said.
He has alternated between months of fighting and periods at home, with his longest deployment lasting six months. His fourth child, a daughter, arrived a week before the 12-Day War.
Like many men, he struggled with anger issues when he returned home. “I felt like I had to remove myself [from some situations] because I was not able to control my anger.”
He realised he needed “some sort of therapy to understand what is going on” and his wife sent him the details of Wizo’s programme – that’s often how the men find out about A Father is Born.
Tal Atzmon, 45, also struggled with anger, and said it was easier to speak about this with men from A Father is Born than with friends, family or men from his unit.
“Some of them will always be in a mood of showing off. I feel safer to talk about difficult issues with people that I do not know,” he said.
Atzmon, an architect, served as a reservist in an Israeli prison which housed some of the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks. Unlike a soldier on the front line, he could return home most nights. But coming back to his three children, he struggled to leave the demands of his work behind.
Tal Atzmon[Missing Credit]
“It was difficult for me, [my children] did not brush their teeth as I taught them. An hour ago, I was in a jail of Palestinian prisoners, now I am with my children, seven and four years old, how come they don’t know how to brush their teeth? I couldn’t bear it.
“Being on the base is a lot easier that being off base,” he said, and sometimes he asked if he could stay the night on duty.
The journey between prison and home was short, but the emotional adjustment took much longer, with ordinary challenges of parenting provoking out-of-proportion reactions. Soon, Atzmon realised that his children had become afraid of him.
“You can’t just go back to your life, your office, your family, when you are so emotionally charged,” he said.
He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and no longer serves.
Therapy, as well as A Father is Born, has helped Atzmon learn how to recognise the point at which anger begins to build and confront it. Now, when he feels that wave, he has an opportunity to choose: “Whether you’re going to yell or scream, or breathe deeply, listen to music, wash your face.”
Gideon Igra, 43, a social worker, reservist and father of two, facilitates A Father Is Born. Even without war, he says, becoming a parent can unsettle a family.
Social worker and reservist Gideon Igra is spearheading Wizo's efforts to address men's mental health[Missing Credit]
“When a child is born, it is a blessing and gift. But it’s also a crisis for the family and the relationship.
“In our generation, a lot of men want to be different from their dads, but they do not have a role model. When we combine this with the war, it is a really hard transition.”
For Itiel, 26, fatherhood and military service are connected. Both of his children were born since the war began and he has completed more than 300 days of reserve duty in that period.
Serving, for him, is part of his decision to protect and defend his family, but it has meant spending months of time away from them.
He was home from the front line for the birth of his first child, but moments after labour, he learnt that a comrade in his battalion had been killed. “That moment I realised, I had to go back,” he said.
Taking away a printed photograph of his new baby, he returned to the army that day and stayed away for two months, warning his wife that he might not make it home.
For Itiel, sitting with five or six other men who have been through the same thing has helped him make sense of his experience. “In the army, we don’t always have time to sit and support each other,” he said.
Like Shwartz, he said that while his family continued to grow and change, his life paused when he was called up on October 7.
While one in five combat soldiers and 17 per cent of reservists in Israel are now women, in many families men have been away fighting while women have managed the home and, by the time fathers return, routines and relationships have changed.
Itiel said: “Before the war, we were a young couple with no kids.” Six rounds of reserve duty later, they have two children, and his wife has built a home life while he has been away fighting.
Each time he returns, the couple rebuild their relationship. “We rebuild trust,” he said.
“During the time they were away, the house just found a new status quo without them, so the reintegration is very hard. In military and reserve service, the mission is clear; your duty is certain,” Igra explained.
At home, the task is less straightforward. “Is the mission for the kids to go to bed by 8:30? Or maybe the mission is to be a role model for how to be a man in the world? Things are more vague.”
The danger, Igra said, was that fathers struggled alone and, in some cases, the consequences were violent.
“It is hard to regulate all the emotions, the intensity. Lots of fathers report more anger. When I say domestic violence, let's not only look at the extreme of physical violence, but also shouting, yelling, cursing,” Igra said.
Joining the group is a decision to take responsibility for those emotions. “It is the intervention, the choice we made,” he said.
The first step is to talk openly. Before the war, he said, Israel, like much of the West, had made real progress in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health. For some, the war has stalled that progress.
Atzmon’s willingness to discuss his PTSD was “something that was very uncommon a couple of years ago”, Igra said. Speaking up creates an opportunity to seek support before difficulties become entrenched.
Atzmon’s symptoms were still relatively recent, Igra explained, and “clinically speaking, the sooner one faces the issue, the better the chances of getting better and develop a coping mechanism”.
The dangers of leaving trauma unaddressed are clear for all of the men.
“There are a lot of cases of suicide,” Shwartz says, citing a recent high profile death of a reservist.
An Israeli parliamentary committee found in October 2025 that 279 soldiers had attempted suicide in the period from January 2024 to July 2025, a steep increase on previous years. The report found that combat soldiers comprised 78 per cent of all suicide cases in Israel in 2024.
Alongside the fathers’ groups, Wizo runs a men’s helpline offering emotional support to those dealing with violent thoughts. It is believed to be the only such line that takes calls from men teetering on the edge of being abusive.
Tzahi Harahi, the helpline’s media manager, explained: “You cannot change the world like Wizo wants by helping only the women, you need to help the men too.”
Thousands of men of different ages get in touch each year, as do their mothers and partners, for anonymous support without stigma. “Every call and email is so important, because we know that it could be their last hope,” Harahi said.
Harahi has encountered hostility from some men. He monitors online comments and some are negative. Then there are the so-called “men’s rights” groups who are suspicious of a women’s organisation helping men.
But Harahi – who also creates online resources on male mental health – wants to persuade them that the line can help. It is staffed by men and Harahi himself draws on his own experiences of divorce and military service.
“I am also divorced, and I was a soldier 20 or 30 years ago. Now I am just a man in Israel dealing with the effect of the war.”
Harahi believes the war has made people more willing to discuss mental health because so many are worried about their relatives. But the need for help can be urgent: the line also supports men at risk of suicide.
Its helping to fill what some believe to be a gab in the state’s provision. Soldiers and reservists have reported a shortage of mental health officers, and have noted that debriefings after combat are often too brief or non-existent.
For Shwartz, who works in finance, the support from Wizo has been invaluable, but he thinks the army, which offers limited psychological support sessions for soldiers, should do more.
“We’re the ones risking our lives going off to war. Now I have to find out what the new normal is,” Shwartz said.
As the war enters its fourth year, that’s a new normal that all of Israel must contend with.
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