A group of 117 reserve soldiers and officers, ranking from Lieutenant Colonel and below, have filed a petition with the High Court of Justice against the IDF and the Ministry of Defense. The petition seeks to abolish the policy that leads to the freezing of military service for those recognized as IDF disabled veterans due to PTSD with a rating of 30% or higher.
The petition was filed by attorneys Shlomi Tzipori, Ran Cohen Rochberger, and Harel Weinberg, and is directed against several entities, including the Head of the Manpower Directorate, the Chief Medical Officer, and the Minister of Defense. As reported by Ynet, the controversial policy is based on the transfer of medical data from the Rehabilitation Department of the Ministry of Defense to the IDF. The petitioners claim this data transfer occurred without the explicit consent of the service members, lacked a legal basis, and contradicted regulations limiting the disclosure of sensitive information.
At the core of the claims is a demand to terminate the procedure that imposes a sweeping and automatic 'presumption of unfitness' based on disability percentages, rather than conducting an individual and sincere assessment of the service member's fitness for duty. Furthermore, the petitioners point to unlawful discrimination compared to service members with similar medical conditions who are not registered as disabled with the Rehabilitation Department, as well as compared to other security agencies that do not adopt such a policy.
In practical terms, it is argued that the current policy creates a dangerous negative incentive: soldiers who fear discharge from reserve service choose to refrain from seeking mental health treatment or from pursuing disability recognition procedures. Major (Res.) Amit Maoz, who was present at the filing of the petition, emphasized that the IDF itself estimated that most service members recognized as suffering from PTSD are capable of continuing their service as usual; therefore, the blanket policy is unjustified.
The petitioners are asking the court to order the deletion of the transferred medical information, the sweeping cancellation of the service freeze, and the reinstatement of suspended service members. Concurrently, the petitioners are demanding an interim injunction to prevent the continued implementation of the procedure until a ruling on the petition is reached.