“No One Left Behind”: What it takes to build a path for discharged soldiers and their families

“We must unite forces to reduce duplication and make sure our fighters get the respect and support they deserve.” 

Someone said that early on, and the room fell quiet. It wasn’t a slogan. It was a kind of exhaustion — a recognition that after two years of effort, thousands of discharged soldiers and families are still navigating chaos, and that none of us can fix it alone.

The ICAR Collective–Momentum roundtable on September 29th brought together people who rarely sit at the same table. Around it were senior representatives from ~35 key stakeholders in the field, among them the IDF’s Mental Health Department and the Ministry of Defense, directors from Clalit and Meuhedet, leaders from NATAL, ERAN, and IDF’s Disabled Veterans Organization, community organizations like Kfar Ma’avar and Shavim, funders, and academics from Reichman University and Bar Ilan University. And we would have liked more people to be there — this was only a small sample. The goal was not to celebrate collaboration but to face what isn’t working, and to ask whether a coordinated system of care for soldiers and their families is still possible.

We’re still inside the crisis

It’s tempting to speak about this war in the past tense. But the war hasn’t ended. Soldiers continue to rotate in and out of Gaza and the north. Families are still holding everything together at home. Clinicians are still working under impossible demand.

The numbers are staggering: over 900 soldiers killed since October 7, more than 20,000 wounded — more than half of them with psychological injuries. Thousands have already been recognized with PTSD, and many more are in limbo, waiting for acknowledgment or treatment. Every sector represented in the room feels the pressure: the HMOs, the NGOs, the army, and the families themselves. One participant put it bluntly: “We’re all building the plane while it’s flying, and there’s no landing strip in sight.”

Where everyone agreed — and where we didn’t

The first point of consensus came quickly: the system is fragmented. Soldiers move from the army to civilian life with no real hand-off. The army holds health information the HMOs can’t see. NGOs work around the edges, improvising. “When they arrive,” one HMO clinician said, “we don’t know their history. We start from scratch.”

No one argued with that. The argument was about what to do next. Some said we need a formal coordinating body — a single authority that connects the dots between the army, the HMOs, and civil society. Others worried that another government office would just add layers of bureaucracy. The idea that gained traction was simpler and harder at the same time: build shared infrastructure, not a new hierarchy. Create a basic “no wrong door” intake — a way for every discharged soldier to enter the system once and be guided, rather than bounced between agencies.

Everyone liked the concept. No one pretended it would be easy. It requires data systems that don’t yet exist, legal changes that will take years, and, above all, trust between institutions that rarely share data. “We can’t even send a referral between the IDF and a hospital without hitting a privacy wall,” someone from the Ministry of Health reminded us. That sentence hung in the air.

The friction between goodwill and structure

There is enormous goodwill in this field — dozens of organizations, hundreds of professionals, all trying to hold pieces of the puzzle. But without shared definitions, the same words mean different things. “Treatment” and “wellness” are blurred. One NGO’s “therapy” is another’s “support group.” Without standards, soldiers can’t tell what’s credible and what’s experimental.

The idea of an accreditation framework surfaced again and again — not to control the field, but to bring order and transparency. A vetted list of trusted organizations, basic evidence standards, and a registry of qualified trauma therapists. “It’s not about shutting people down,” one participant said. “It’s about giving soldiers and families a map they can trust.”

That same tension — between flexibility and structure — threaded through every discussion. Innovation has kept this ecosystem alive; regulation could stabilize it. We need both.

The blind spot we keep circling: families

If one theme cut across all sectors, it was how invisible families still are. Only a fraction of programs formally include spouses or children. “The trauma enters the family space,” a clinician said, “and we pretend it’s individual.” Spouses face isolation, fear, and decision fatigue; children absorb the anxiety at home.

Some NGOs are already expanding to include family support, and a few HMOs now do the same when the soldier is already a patient. But in most cases, if there’s no formal recognition of injury, the family is left on its own. That line — “left on its own” — came up repeatedly.

The outreach paradox

We also confronted an uncomfortable truth: the people most in need of help are often the least likely to seek it. Reservists go back to work overnight, trying to act normal. Lone soldiers and minorities face cultural barriers. Many just don’t pick up the phone.

“The army should reach out to them,” one participant said, “not wait for them to reach out to us. And it has to be human-led — not another SMS.” Others added examples of what’s already working: short follow-up calls within days of discharge, reservist meetups in local councils, wellness groups that blend prevention and therapy. These are small steps that build trust and keep people from slipping away unnoticed.

Why this matters — and why it’s hard

The challenges are not new, but they are sharper now. Everyone around the table has seen what happens when systems stay siloed: soldiers giving up halfway through the process; families deteriorating while waiting for recognition; NGOs burning out filling gaps they were never meant to fill.

And yet, despite the friction, the day ended with something rare — not optimism, exactly, but alignment. “We’re all tired,” one hospital psychiatrist said, “but at least now we’re tired in the same direction.” That line drew nods all around the room.

Coordination is not a vision statement; it’s a grind. It means building shared intakes, shared taxonomies, shared accountability — and showing up to keep them alive long after the cameras move on. It means funders aligning with public systems instead of replacing them. It means ministries accepting that no single authority can carry this alone.

The road ahead

We are now sorting through all the notes from the discussion, turning the dozens of ideas into a clear outline for action. Over the coming weeks, we’ll work with the organizations that joined the roundtable to map which ideas each would like to help lead, what resources are required — budget, personnel, expertise, or data — and which partners need to be around each table to make progress possible.

One group might decide to focus on designing a joint intake template and early-warning (“red flag”) protocol; another to draft a shared language for defining services; others will refine ideas for accreditation and proactive outreach. After the holidays, ICAR and Momentum will reconvene to review progress and identify which proposals are ready to move forward.

We know the system won’t be fixed this year — maybe not even in five. But change begins with shared reality. We’re not at the stage of celebration; we’re at the stage of construction: slow, heavy, essential work.

As one participant put it before leaving, “We’re still inside this event. The traditional chronological view doesn’t work. We have to weave the healing into daily life, not build it outside of it.”

That’s the work. That’s where we are.