I'm Israeli, former IDF soldier and unfortunately had a family member KIA a few years back. I feel I have some idea of how the IDF treats families of KIA and ha

I'm Israeli, former IDF soldier and unfortunately had a family member KIA a few years back. I feel I have some idea of how the IDF treats families of KIA and have followed the story since Barak Ravid's first report. Here's my feeble attempt at hindering the redditization of HN: 1. Eishton story concerned fatality figures in the IDF's yearly Memorial Day press release. It has no relevance to KIA numbers in a specific conflict, as AlexMuir seems to think. Neither Eishton nor Ravid claim that. 2. Eishton's main claim is that the IDF didn't publish the fact that some of the soldiers actually committed suicide or died in car accidents etc. It's actually already known the IDF leaves the cause of death empty in case of suicide in order to spare the families' feelings (again, remember it's a press release rather than actual statistics). 3. Eishton was questioned about the source of the leak, which was apparently a soldier in active service. He refused to answer and basically that was the end of that (though I assume the IDF is still trying to find the leak on its end). 4. Eishton's original blog post had very little publicity. What initiated the investigation were complaints by families of soldiers who committed suicide, which were upset their sons' names and cause of death were now exposed. 5. Contrary to jacquesm's assertion, in reality Eishton faces exactly zero risk (even if he was "exposing propaganda"). He enjoys his newfound celebrity status and now gives the IDF "a 24 hour ultimatum" to release data and says he'd "proudly go to jail" if he was, but knows full well - as does everyone else - that he doesn't face any meaningful penalty. As a bonus exercise, you might want to google "Anat Kamm" and "Bradley Manning", or perhaps "Uri Blau" and "Judith Miller". Compare and contrast. 6. Nivertech's comment re: Judaism and suicide is correct, but only effective for the Orthodox (most of whom don't serve in the IDF anyway). It is not applicable for most Israelis - unfortunately, I speak from personal experience. PS. Incidentally, the number of soldiers committing suicide has been shown to be within the average for men aged 18-21, and declining. There's a reason for this: In today's IDF it's enough to tell a military Psychiatric Officer you're contemplating suicide to be relieved from service almost instantly.