Friends of IDF expands mental-health treatment network, housing for lone soldiers

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces distributed more than $132 million in 2025, the largest annual allocation in the organization’s 44-year history, with what it said was “significant” funding for mental health care and post-traumatic stress treatment for IDF soldiers, reservists and veterans...

“We started seeing these reservists getting out of Gaza or from Lebanon, and nobody took care of them,” said Nadav Padan, CEO and national director of FIDF.

Padan told JNS that he witnessed the psychological toll of combat in the days following the Oct. 7 attacks. “I flew to Israel the night of Oct. 7, reached Israel on Oct. 8 and did a reserve for three months,” he said.

“I saw with my own eyes the scene of the Gaza envelope,” Padan said. “I’m an old soldier. I saw a few things in my life. It was horrible. It was a Holocaust scene.”

“I could not sleep,” he said. “Even today, I have triggers, smells. I could not eat meat for almost six weeks. I’m not a vegetable guy. It was quite tough.”

Padan told JNS that he told Israeli officials, including the health minister, that “we have to do something,” and in what he described as an “informal” conversation, the Israeli defense minister asked him for help.

In response, FIDF helped accelerate the creation of a national PTSD treatment framework. The organization supported mental health clinics stretching from northern Israel to the south, with a clinic planned for Ashdod.

FIDF is advancing alternative therapeutic tools, including animal-assisted treatment programs using dogs and horses, in partnership with Israeli farms and care groups.

The organization is also funding a temporary mental-health hub in Tel Aviv that currently treats around 2,500 people monthly, Padan said, with plans to expand and eventually relocate to a permanent center in Netanya.

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And we have the crappy VA and our soldiers homeless on the street or killing themselves.

The U.S. is 35 times larger than Israel. An equivalent amount for us would be to spend nearly $5 billion on a similiar program for our troops. Does any such program even exist?

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