The Israeli army has become a professional militia army
JVL Introduction
Orient XXI introduces the interview below by saying:
“Assaf David is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research fellow at the Van Leer Institute (also in Jerusalem) specialising in the armies of the Middle East.
“Born in a religious settlement, he spent 11 years three decades ago in unit 8-300 of the Israeli army, a unit specializing in technological intelligence.
“In this interview with Orient XXI, he talks about the evolution of the Israeli army, but also about that of the country’s society as a whole since 7 October 2023.”
In his view the army has been taken over by messianics: “They are to Judaism what the Jihadists are to Islam.”
There was a battle in the army command but it has been won, the military elite now being in the hands of the ethnic nationalists…
RK
This article was originally published by Orient XXI on Mon 1 Dec 2025. Read the original here.
The Israeli army has become a professional militia army
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words fail me. I post comments regularly on the Times of Israel online daily edition, and have lost track of how many times the words “Israel has lost its soul” and ‘going berserk’ normally connotes ‘going ape-shit’ (pardon my french) in an orgy of violence of relatively SHORT duration. The IDF/IAF went berserk from the get-go, and are STILL going berserk. Ben Gvir said, in terms (I think) that it is ‘fitting’ to go berserk as a rejoinder to 7 October.
I am going to buy the updated version of L’État d’Israël contre les Juifs (La Découverte, 2020).
Is Asaf Hazani, planning to have One Way or Another, the Sword Will Win : Anthropology of a Time of War translated into English? Or into French (I read French fluently, retired translator). I believe that Hebrew is abnormally difficult to translate.
Would you mind letting me know, please?
PS have you seen this?
https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/46-adults-worldwide-hold-significant-antisemitic-beliefs-adl-poll-finds
methinks the lady doth protest too much
Thank you JVL for your breadth of perspective, it’s good to read opinions and journalism that lies outside our small worlds but so enriches our thinking.
A militia not an army. Thank you for this viewpoint which now seems so obvious. We are inured to the way language is manipulated in mainstream media – Palestinians are killed, Israelis are murdered.