To his friends and family, it seems like a cruel joke. After performing 748 days of reserve duty as a sniper in the 832 days since the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Master Sgt. (res.) Josh Boone is being denied official recognition as a fallen soldier because he died two weeks after his last round of reserve service ended.

Since the U.S.-born former “lone soldier,” who was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, was found dead near his home in Beersheba on Sunday, his family, friends and fellow soldiers have pushed for this recognition. They see it as both something that Boone earned after an extended military service and deserved, as they see his PTSD-related death as resulting from that service. No cause of death has been made public, but friends and family have indicated that it was directly tied to his mental health struggles.

“Finally, after 748 days behind a sniper’s scope, he said to himself that he needed help. Do you know how hard that is? To have nothing in this country and to admit that you have a problem and you need treatment? And I’m sad to say that he lost that battle; he lost his war. His psychological war took him. This hero of Israel, Josh David Boone, deserves a military funeral and recognition as a fallen soldier, and it is insanity for him to be denied this because of two weeks,” Josh Frisch, a fellow lone soldier and friend of Boone, told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) on Monday. Frisch and others also spoke in the parliament’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, and some returned to the Knesset the following day to again speak in the FADC.

In addition to appearances in the Knesset, friends of Boone launched an online petition, which garnered nearly 30,000 signatures as of this morning, and nonprofits that support lone soldiers — troops who either do not have family in Israel or are not financially supported by their families — have shared Boone’s story widely on social media and similarly pushed for him to receive official recognition.

“The family, together with Josh’s friends and the lone soldier community, are calling on Israel’s leadership to ensure that Joshua Boone is formally recognized as a fallen soldier and laid to rest with the full military honors befitting his service and sacrifice,” Boone’s family said in a statement. 

Those efforts have so far been in vain, however. Today, Boone is being buried in a civilian funeral in the New Beersheba Cemetery. Despite its civilian standing, Boone’s family asked as many attendees as possible to come wearing IDF uniforms to make it “as military-esque as possible,” according to one of Boone’s friends. Indeed, of the hundreds of people in attendance at the funeral, a large number arrived in the madei bet “work uniforms” associated with IDF reservists. Many also carried the yellow and green flags of Boone’s Golani Infantry Brigade. A group of Knesset members have sent a request to Defense Minister Israel Katz to have Boone recognized as a fallen soldier, and a spokesperson for one of them told eJP that these efforts will continue even after the funeral.

While Boone’s story resonated most acutely with fellow foreign-born lone soldiers, who was highly active in the community and stood out by coming from the exotic locale of Boise, Idaho, his death — and how it is being treated by Israel’s Defense Ministry — also serves as a tragic indicator of what’s to come as the country grapples with the psychological effects of the past two years of war.

Experts in Israel have been warning of a growing mental health “tsunami” in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and the more than two years of war that followed. This is particularly acute among infantry soldiers, who fought in densely populated urban areas.

“Historically, suicide rates tend to rise after wars end — when the adrenaline fades, when soldiers return home to find life has moved on, when they discover that the resilience that served them in combat does not serve them in daily life,” according to a report from the Israeli mental health group ICAR Collective, following roundtable discussion on the subject in the fall of 2025. 

While Israel’s Defense Ministry has improved the process of recognizing veterans as having PTSD, experts warn that obstacles — bureaucratic and societal — remain, preventing many from receiving the support and assistance that they need.

Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Guy Zaken, a combat PTSD activist, noted the dissonance that a soldier who is physically injured in a war and, after being discharged, dies from his wounds is recognized as a “fallen soldier,” while those who die from their psychological trauma are not. 

“What’s the difference between the invisible bullet and the physical bullet?” Zaken asked.