Introduction

Israel, as a sovereign nation-state, functions in many respects like other nation-states. It has a responsibility to protect its citizens, and that protection requires a military with the capacity to use force to defend all Israeli citizens and residents within its borders. Military power is normalized in Israeli society. All eighteen-year-old Israelis are conscripted and expected to serve in the army, with important exceptions among the ultra-Orthodox and Arab segments of the population. Military service is also part of the Israelization process; in some ways, it serves as a form of acculturation and civic education, cultivating a sense of “Israeliness” among populations that come from disparate educational systems, multi-ethnic backgrounds, and secular and religious communities, and that do not all share a common civic education experience in school. Conversely, for the majority of Diaspora Jewry, there is no direct connection to military service. Most Jews across the Diaspora do not serve in the army, participate in Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) or their equivalents, or consider military service as a professional path. As a result of this difference in exposure, each community attributes a different value to military life. For most Diaspora Jews, Jewish military power is an abstract notion. For Israeli Jews, not only is it a concrete lived experience; it is deemed necessary to ensure the survival of the state and its citizens.

To a certain extent, this American, and more broadly Diaspora, attitude reflects a continuation of traditional Jewish Galuti attitudes toward military power and the warrior ethos. Since Jews in exile were, for the most part, demilitarized and dependent on gentile rulers and powerholders (such as bishops or noblemen) for protection, the successful warrior came to be identified as a non-Jewish, gentile model of virtue. Although Jews in exile were aware that many biblical heroes were great warriors, this dimension of Jewish life was relegated to the future messianic era. Perhaps making a virtue of necessity, Jews developed cultural ideals of learning, piety, intellectual acumen, and the like. According to scholars such as Daniel Boyarin,¹ Talmudic Judaism and the exilic Jewish life that followed from it presented an alternative image of masculine prowess. Whereas the dominant Western model (derived from ancient Roman culture) emphasized masculine dominance and aggressiveness, the alternative Jewish model highlighted gentleness, scholarship, and consideration for others. As a result, Jewish men in Western culture were often considered effeminate.

The Return to Hard Power

One of the central aspects of the Zionist revolution was the return to military activity. This was necessitated by the hostility of Arab populations and states to the Zionist project of creating a Jewish state. Yet it went deeper than immediate security needs. As with the return to agriculture, the return to militarism was part of the Zionist program of normalization. The Jewish people, in their state and homeland, were to become like other independent peoples: self-reliant in matters of defense and not dependent on the good graces of others. This aspect of Zionist ideology gained tremendous persuasiveness after the horrors of the Holocaust.

The “Purity of Arms”

At the same time, this return of instrumental violence, at least in principle, was fashioned to fit within the general contours of how important Zionist thinkers and leaders conceived of the Zionist “Jewish return to history”: the collective Jewish return to politics, social and economic policy, international relations, and the military. As a persecuted minority, Jews tended to think of themselves as more morally virtuous than those in their oppressive gentile surroundings. It could be argued that this was because Jews did not possess power and therefore could not oppress others (as the King of the Khazars argues in Yehuda HaLevi’s fictional dialogue, The Kuzari),² but many Jews attributed it to their superior religion and ethics. Hence, many Zionists, including the secular Labor Zionist leadership, understood the Zionist “return to history” as an opportunity to demonstrate the superior Jewish civilizational vision (embodied in the Bible and Jewish history) as it applied to politics, economic and social policy, statecraft, the military, and international relations. This attitude found supreme expression in David Ben-Gurion’s notion that the historic ideal of the people of Israel is to be “a model nation and a light unto the gentiles,” and that this is the ultimate “guiding star” of the efforts of the State of Israel.

It is in this context that the ideal of “purity of arms” should be understood. The concept was first introduced by Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson in an address to the Zionist Congress of 1939. Katznelson argued that the weapons (neshek) the Yishuv was adopting and learning to use should “not be stained with innocent blood,” and that the arms should remain “pure” and used for defensive purposes only. Underlying this declaration was the idea that the Jewish state was also to be a “model nation” in its use of military force: it was to use military force in an ethically exemplary way. This attitude was adopted, at least officially, by the elite Labor Zionist militia, the Palmach, under the leadership of Yitzhak Sadeh and Yigal Allon, which was later incorporated into the IDF. “Purity of Arms” is one of the nine leading values of the IDF’s code of military ethics, “The Spirit of the IDF.”

In recent years, Religious Zionist and conservative figures have put forth an alternative formulation of military ethics: “Jewish Military Ethics.” While Jewish law (Halacha) prohibits harming civilians in combat, it is more “lenient” regarding civilian and “bystander” casualties than Western military ethics, especially in connection with asymmetrical warfare against non-state actors embedded in the civilian population (as Hamas and Hezbollah are). In recent years, Religious Zionist and conservative politicians have also criticized “The Spirit of the IDF” as reflecting foreign and liberal ideas, being too cosmopolitan, and not sufficiently emphasizing victory on the battlefield as the overriding value.

Diaspora Attitudes Toward the Israeli Military

After World War II, although Diaspora Jews did not adopt a military way of life for themselves, they applauded the creation of an Israeli military capable of fending off the Arab armies in 1948 and winning a spectacular military victory in the Six-Day War. This appreciation was enhanced by the official Israeli presentation of its military endeavor. Israel stressed that its military was primarily defensive in nature, as the name of its armed forces – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – indicates. Israel also presents its military as operating under the ideals and strictures of “purity of arms”: limiting violence to combatants and trying to minimize civilian casualties. Most liberal Diaspora Jews tended to identify with this conception of Israel and were able to view it as a “model nation,” with the IDF as an ethically exemplary military organization.

Nevertheless, over the decades, as unease within the liberal American Jewish community over Israeli government policy has grown, some of that unease has spilled over into questions about Israel’s use of military force. This is especially the case as some of the central visual symbols of the Israel-Palestine conflict have been dead Palestinian children, an iconography that has become especially prevalent in the current war. Further, the Israeli military ethic itself is increasingly contested as right-wing and nationalist-religious elements, which are amply represented in the ruling coalition, demand or defend a less scrupulous and more callous attitude toward harming non-combatants.

Developments in Western liberalism and progressivism, especially among the younger generation, have also sharpened differences between Israelis and most Diaspora Jews in how they view military might and the use of force more generally. Israelis tend to see force as a necessity for protecting the sovereignty of their nation and its citizens, especially in the last decade, when wars have felt increasingly asymmetrical and have often involved non-state actors. Many young American Jews, more removed from regular, direct existential conflict, prefer to rely on a liberal international order in which problems are resolved through negotiation. For them, force should be used only as an absolute last resort and, even then, in a very limited and controlled manner. These important values-based distinctions lead to very different conceptions of how to navigate conflicts and highlight why the two major centers of Jewish life in the modern world – Israel and America – may have diverged in their understandings of what it means to hold real hard power and when military force should be used.

The Israel-Gaza War of 2023–2025 greatly sharpened these issues. Israel sustained a significant number of civilian and military casualties on October 7, 2023, and in the ensuing war (around 2,000 dead and many thousands wounded), while the IDF killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including women, children, and infants. Israel has been accused of committing war crimes, including ethnic cleansing and genocide. In many settings, these charges have gained currency and are accepted as fact or, at least, the consensus view.

Many observers and journalists have offered explanations for why the IDF’s warfare was so deadly. These ranged from the desire for revenge for the October 7 massacres, to the significant presence of Religious Zionist junior officers (who hold a different conception of military ethics) and whose prominence in the ranks set the ethical tone for some fighting units, to the way Hamas deliberately embedded itself in the civilian population (and the civilian population acquiesced to such embedment). In any event, the Gaza war raised new thoughts, doubts, and feelings regarding Israel, the IDF, and military power among most Diaspora Jews, and amplified existing ones. These thoughts and feelings were not of one piece; they moved in many directions and contained many nuances. In the 2025-26 Jewish World Dialogue, we wanted to understand these thoughts and feelings in all their complexity.