Israel’s army, for much of its seven decades the country’s pre-eminent secular institution, is increasingly coming under the sway of a national religious movement that has made bold moves across Israeli society in recent years.
About 40% of those graduating from the army’s infantry officer schools now come from a national religious community that accounts for 12 to 14% of Jewish Israeli society and is politically more aligned with Israel’s right and far-right political parties and the settler movement. Critics charge that its growing influence – including from the more orthodox portion known as Hardalim – is pursuing its own agenda within the army.
The views of the national religious community are shaped by the teachings of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of pre-state British Mandatory Palestine, who saw the foundation and settlement of the “land of Israel” as a divine mission. For today’s national religious community, that land also encompasses the West Bank and in Gaza.
The war in Gaza has seen some soldiers from the community, including officers, involved in statements and religious activities promoting the Jewish resettlement of the Palestinian territory that have drawn rebukes from the senior leadership of the Israel Defense Forces.
Known as national religious, religious Zionist or, colloquially, “knitted kippah” (for the style of head covering favoured by men), the community stands in contrast to the ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as Haredi, who have long resisted military service. They see the army as a route to promote values that some of its key thinkers say are in tension with more secular and progressive Israeli society.
“That’s [secular and progressive Israelis’] fear, that if the national religious are in the most influential positions in the army, that not only will determine the character of the fighting but also the character of Israeli society as a whole,” said Rabbi Oury Cherki, a prominent spiritual leader in the national religious community.
Yagil Levy, a professor of military relations at the Open University of Israel, has documented the campaign to make inroads into the IDF over the last decades, in particular the impact of national religious pre-military academies and yeshivoth established to promote the community’s influence.
“The academies provide a religious education to reinforce those recruits when they join the military and to enhance their motivation to join in combat roles and as officers,” Levy said. “Twenty years later what we see is growing the presence of graduates of pre-military colleges in senior command roles as well as at a less senior level.”
Critics of the academies include the former IDF deputy chief of staff Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats party, who said some teach “anti-democratic values”.
The rise in national religious representation in the army has in turn seen the community’s leaders point to what they say is the disproportionately high number of their own among the soldiers killed in Gaza.
As well as documented incidents in Gaza, units operating in the occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank that recruit heavily from people with national religious backgrounds have been accused of failing to intervene in violent Jewish settler attacks or human rights abuses carried out by IDF troops.
A key turning point, said Levy, was the 2005 decision of the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to order the withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in Gaza – a move enforced by the army in the face of resistance from settlers.
“The disengagement from Gaza was perceived by the national religious as a failure and a betrayal. They came to the conclusion they would have to increase their presence in the military, to create another army that would not disengage from the West Bank,” he said.
As a consequence, tensions have arisen between the IDF’s most senior commanders and the wider national religious community and the far-right politicians who speak for it, in regards to high-ranking military appointments.
The highly controversial figure of Brig Gen Ofer Winter, the most prominent graduate of the Eli pre-military academy, has served as a lightning rod for this tension in recent years. Supporters claim Winter, who was released from service earlier this year, was passed over for a divisional command. As a colonel during the 2014 Gaza war, Winter had described that conflict with Hamas in terms of a religious battle against “a blasphemous enemy that defiles the God of Israel”.
For some, the influence of the graduates of the national religious pre-military academies and yeshivoth has come to represent a question about Israel’s democracy. When Golan took aim at the academies earlier this year, he suggested they were at odds with the IDF and that some national religious recruits should have democracy education.
Denying that he was “against the religious Zionists” in the army, Golan said: “I came out against those institutions that teach anti-democratic values with a racist, fascist flavour that should not be heard in any educational institution in the state of Israel.”
Yehuda Shaul, a co-founder of the thinktank Ofek: the Israeli Center for Public Affairs, described the growing influence of the academies as part of a “larger effort in Israeli society to attempt a change of the elites from old school, middle- and high-class secular to national religious … that has been going across the board for years”.
He said that in the IDF it had been a long-term process. “In 1990, 2.5% of the graduate officer cadets of the infantry came form the national religious,” Shaul said. “By 2014 it is 40%. That is three times the representation of the national religious in Jewish Israeli society.”
The progress of those cadets through the ranks would gradually result in more senior national religious officers, he said. “At present we see a large representation of the national religious up to the level of brigade commanders. But every five to 10 years, it climbs up one more rank,” Shaul said.
“The highest generals may still come from the old elite, but below it is the new elite and you can see that in the attitudes coming from the field. Inevitably there will be a point where a large part of the high command are from a national religious background – and in the future that will have implications for any government that wants to take decisions that oppose that ideology.”
He added: “Already we have seen discipline issues [related to national religious ideology] become almost unenforceable, and that has consequences elsewhere, including on issues like the rules of engagement.”
In units with a high representation of national religious recruits, the war in Gaza has, according to some, produced an atmosphere of extreme nationalistic sympathy and desire for revenge. However, the latter has not been limited to the national religious community.
Luiz Aberbuj, a Brazilian-born soldier who served in the Kfir Brigade during his national service from 2014 to 2016 and now serves as a reservist in a home front combat battalion, noted attitudes in his unit that predated the current war.
“Very fast there was some friction based on ideology with the Israeli guys. I heard some very radical ideologies during my service,” he told the Guardian, adding that attendance at some religious events, including talks and classes by rabbis, was compulsory.
“I am sure that it affected the consciousness of some of the soldiers and how they see their role in this complex situation. I remember it disturbed me during my service,” Aberbuj added.
During the current Gaza conflict, it was not only rabbis whose views were being shared. “We saw a big mobilisation of people coming to the base to bring donations, to empower soldiers,” he said.
“There were a lot of religious aspects. Someone would put a phylactery [the small black boxes worn for prayer] on the table or they would give you small prayer books you can carry to the front.
“The same discourse is very rightwing, very religious, even messianic, talking about Gaza as ‘ours’ and ‘we deserve it’ … with a lot of prejudices about the Palestinians. There is a heavy atmosphere of revenge.”
Among soldiers in Gaza that has been reflected in behaviour, documented on their own social media accounts, that has drawn condemnation from the IDF.
Videotaped speeches speak in messianic terms of retribution, sometimes quoting religious texts. Soldiers have set up makeshift synagogues in the Palestinian houses they have taken over.
Tanks in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, have been seen flying the orange and black flag of Gush Katif, the former Israeli settlement in the Palestinian territory that was evacuated in 2005. There has been a slogan written on the flag: “We will build it, we are returning to Gush Katif.”
Elsewhere, a unit posted a video on Telegram with one soldier addressing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.
“We are here adding light after the black sabbath that the people of Israel had. We are occupying, deporting and settling. Occupying, deporting and settling. Did you hear that Bibi? Occupying, deporting and settling.”
For Cherki, settlement has been the key motivation for national religious army service going back to the occupation of Palestinian territories after the six-day war in 1967.
“Because of this, many religious joined the army, which [in turn] saw religious schools created that combined military service with the religious study,” the rabbi said.
“As the state advanced, the national religious got more and more space in the Israeli society, reaching the point where many of the fighters in the combat units come from the movement. That is the reason why so many of the casualties in this war are coming from the national religious movement.”
Cherki is among those who believe the IDF have acted to block members of his community from promotion to the highest ranks. He cites the case of Winter, though the IDF have long denied claims that his membership of the community was related to his not being promoted to divisional command.
“Among the high commanders there is a ‘glass ceiling’ [for national religious officers]. The Matkal [the high command] worry about an ideological change in the army,” Cherki said. “The national religious soldiers who come to the army come with their own ideology … and that has consequences in thinking of the morality of the fighting.”
An IDF spokesperson said: “The IDF does not distinguish or differentiate between its recruits based on their religious identity. IDF units are made up of personnel from diverse backgrounds, both secular and observant of different religions, who all serve together.
“As to the specific cases mentioned regarding IDF soldiers filming, taking pictures and participating in both provocative or political videos or pictures, the IDF acts to address exceptional incidents that deviate from the orders and expected values of IDF soldiers.
“The IDF examines events of this kind as well as reports of videos uploaded to social networks and handles them with command and disciplinary measures.”
