For What Shall It Profit a Nation?

Israeli research on how occupation and control have cost the country its soul

Grüezi!

When I travelled alone in Northern Ireland as a journalist, there were times British soldiers took me for Irish, and times Irish people took me for a soldier. It was instructive about how conflict reshapes perception.

Shortly after the 7 October attacks, I spent time with a group of Israelis. They still felt the raw violence of the attacks on friends, family and neighbours.

Some were glad to see retribution. Some were angry at their government’s failure to defend their country. They were all patriotic and principled people.

One of them was a military psychologist who spoke about the trauma unleashed by violence, not just without – that’s well documented and devastating – but also within Israeli society. I resolved to investigate it further and write about it. Here it is.

1 The Impossible Mandate

When the Israel Defense Force crossed the Green Line in June 1967, it took on a responsibility unprecedented in the country’s brief history: policing a hostile population larger than the pre-war Jewish state itself.

Fifty-seven years later, Israel offers a unique laboratory for studying what happens when a society sends every 18-year-old to war.

With mandatory conscription at 18 and 70 per cent of Jewish Israelis serving, it is one of the world’s most militarised societies. Israeli researchers have spent decades documenting what this does to human beings. Their findings paint a devastating picture of how occupation eats away at occupier.

Professor Yoel Elizur, former chair of the Council of Psychologists at Hebrew University, captures the generational weight:

“Like my contemporaries, I was a worried father when my children served in the Israel Defence Forces, and I am a more worried grandfather.”

The occupation’s fundamental corruption lies in forcing soldiers to be police, judges, and jailers over a hostile civilian population. An 18-year-old trained for combat finds himself manning a checkpoint, deciding whether a pregnant woman reaches hospital, whether a farmer accesses his land, whether a child gets to school. He has little training for such decisions, and the framework is the army’s: force.

During the first Palestinian intifada (1987-93), military psychologists Dan Bar-On and Charles Greenbaum were asked by the IDF to investigate complaints of brutality. Their fieldwork, never fully released, found that a clear majority – 58 per cent – of soldiers had either used or witnessed violence against unarmed civilians that was “unrelated to self-defence”.

One of Yoel Elizur’s students worked with soldiers in the early 90s:

“A new commander came … We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard.

The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left.

We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock ... I asked the commander: ‘What’s your story?’ He told me: ‘These kids need to be killed from the day they are born.’ When a commander does that, it becomes legit.”

Elizur’s later work reveals the psychological catastrophe this creates. Soldiers describe the transformation:

“You’re eighteen years old and suddenly you’re playing God with people’s lives. A kid throws a stone, and you have to decide – do I shoot? Do I chase? Do I punish the whole village? There’s no right answer, but every choice destroys something in you.”

The occupation demands impossible things: be tough enough to survive but decent enough to retain humanity. Treat everyone as a potential terrorist whilst respecting human rights.

The psychological splitting required can break people.

2 The Architecture of Moral Injury

Consider the checkpoint, the occupation’s most ubiquitous feature. A soldier stands for hours in hostile territory, at once bored and terrified. Every civilian is potentially dangerous; every interaction potentially deadly. The rules are deliberately vague, the authority absolute.

Kimhi and Sagy’s study of 170 checkpoint soldiers found a direct correlation between time served and moral disengagement. The longer soldiers stood at checkpoints, the more they dehumanised Palestinians. Not from hatred, but from psychological necessity. One soldier described the progression:

“First month, you feel bad making old people wait in the sun. Second month, you stop noticing. Third month, you’re screaming at pregnant women. By the end, you’ve become someone else – someone your mother wouldn’t recognise.”

What follows is not classic post-traumatic stress but moral injury: a toxic mix of guilt, shame and anger when troops perpetrate acts that contradict their moral code. The occupation doesn’t order units to break the laws of war. It creates the conditions where such laws become meaningless.

When every Palestinian is a potential threat, when commanders pressure for “results”, when the only metric is quiet – violence becomes not just permissible but logical.

3 From Hebron to Home

Professor Simha Landau of Hebrew University has spent three decades assembling crime statistics that connect Israeli security crises to violence at home.

Using time-series analysis, she showed that spikes in hostilities – notably the intifadas – were followed nine to twelve months later by measurable rises in murder and robbery rates within the pre-1967 borders.

The mechanism is painfully simple: young people trained that violence solves problems apply this lesson everywhere. Road rage incidents where drivers pull military-issued weapons. Domestic disputes resolved through techniques learned in Gaza. One veteran told researchers:

“I came home and my kid wouldn’t eat dinner. I grabbed him exactly like I’d grab a Palestinian kid – same grip, same force. My wife screamed. That’s when I realised what I’d become.”

The occupation’s violence doesn’t stay in uniform or within the Green Line. It seeps into every corner of Israeli society, poisoning families, neighbourhoods, and institutions.

4 God’s Warriors

Soldiers of the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion

Meanwhile, the composition of the IDF has changed. As one officer said in 2011:

Jewish identity in the army is undergoing a sharp shift. In the past, the approach was that Orthodox rules were observed in public, and at home every soldier did whatever he wanted. Nowadays, the army is deciding for you what kind of Jew you will be: a national-religious Jew.

Since the mid-1990s, pre-military academies aligned with the Hardal (haredi-nationalist) movement have channelled thousands of religiously conservative officers into combat units.

The Hardal blend Haredi practices with nationalist ideology. Unlike mainstream Religious Zionism, it promotes gender segregation, and seeks the integration of halachic principles – the Judaic equivalent of shari’a law – into Israeli legislation. It has an uncompromising, messianic belief in Jewish ownership of the entire land of Israel.

In 1990 just 2.5 per cent of officer cadets in the infantry wore the knitted kippah that is synonymous with religious nationalism. By 2018, it was 35 per cent. The IDF has gone from accepting women in frontline roles to placing subtle restrictions on them to allow service by more orthodox religious Jews.

Israel’s Military Rabbinate has also grown – up from 200 officers in 2000 to over 700 today. The rabbis offer a more compelling reason for military “sacrifice.” They too preach unambiguous claims to the whole Land of Israel and dismiss the laws of armed conflict as “Christian morality.”

During the 2009 Gaza conflict, rabbis distributed pamphlets warning against showing mercy to enemies, comparing modern-day Palestinians to the Biblical Philistines. One pamphlet declared that “not one millimeter” of land should be relinquished and that battle sometimes required cruelty to the enemy.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich – himself a Hardal settler – now holds a second position in the defence ministry overseeing West Bank administration. The result is what sociologist Yagil Levy calls “a drip-feed theocratisation of military norms.”

This movement provides a sophisticated narrative for soldiers torn by moral injury: Israel’s enemies, not its soldier, bear the guilt; Western legal strictures merely weaken the Jewish people.

When an IDF patrol in Gaza shot dead three Israeli hostages waving a white flag in December 2023, public criticism was muted whilst Hardal figures blamed Hamas for “forcing” tragic mistakes.

5 The Democratic Contradiction

A domestic violence protest.

Here’s the deepest irony: a democracy maintaining occupation inevitably undemocratises itself. Citizens trained in domination cannot practise equality. The accumulated scars go into policing, classrooms, hospitals, offices, homes.

The occupation creates impossible moral positions. One veteran described living with two selves:

“There’s the me who sits with my kids at dinner, who wants them to be kind, to share, to see everyone as equal. Then there’s the me who did things in Hebron that I can’t tell them about. These two people can’t exist in the same body, but they do.”

This split extends throughout society. Israelis who protest cottage cheese prices accept occupation’s costs without question.

Parents who teach children not to bully send them to become enforcers. A society that prides itself on innovation trains its youth in rigidity and control.

6 The Economic and Strategic Price

This ethical catastrophe has other consequences. External rating agencies already price Israeli sovereigns partly on geopolitical volatility. A society whose domestic cohesion frays after every round of fighting imposes an extra layer of uncertainty.

High-tech now represents 18 per cent of Israeli GDP. Graduates suffering untreated moral injury have lower productivity rates and are more likely to emigrate. Tel Aviv start-ups report growing difficulties retaining top software engineers after reserve duty in Gaza.

As Breaking the Silence’s Avner Gvaryahu noted in Foreign Affairs, “A system designed to mass-produce targets inevitably compromises accuracy and increases harm to civilians” – creating cycles of violence that harm Israel’s economy and destroy its international standing.

Meanwhile, the bigger the Hardal footprint in the officer corps, the harder any future Israeli government will find it to implement territorial compromises – a prerequisite for deeper integration with regional markets.

Last year, even the IDF Military Advocate General acknowledged the crisis, writing to commanders that soldiers’ actions “do not meet IDF values, deviate from orders and disciplinary boundaries – and have crossed the criminal threshold.” Israeli soldiers now receive warnings about potential prosecution for war crimes when travelling abroad.

The IDF operates multiple rehabilitation centres running month-long programmes for traumatised soldiers. Thousands cycle through annually. Over decades, this means hundreds of thousands of psychiatric casualties among Israel’s most productive citizens.

7 The Security Paradox

The occupation was meant to provide security. Instead, it has created a society of insecure people – morally injured, psychologically damaged, ethically compromised. Every checkpoint humiliation, every night raid, every administrative detention creates enemies where none existed. Security policy has become insecurity manufacture.

Israeli society’s response amplifies the damage. When IDF veterans from Breaking the Silence began testifying, they faced vicious attacks. Not for lying – everyone knew the stories were true – but for violating the conspiracy of silence that allows the system to continue.

Evidence points to potential remedies: tighter command presence and body-worn cameras can reduce brutality; protected whistle-blowing channels prevent moral injury; a secular ethics directorate could balance religious influence. None requires a peace treaty. All would reduce civilian casualties and ease veterans’ burden.

But after fifty-seven years, the question isn’t whether toxic militarisation damages societies – the Israeli studies demonstrate conclusively that it does. The question is whether a society trapped in these cycles can break free, or whether each generation will continue sacrificing its children to the machine.

The occupation’s daily violence is often framed as a moral quandary or diplomatic headache.

It is, as the evidence now shows, also a domestic security threat, an economic liability, and a cancer eating away at the very society it was designed to protect.

Endnotes

1. Ahituv, N. (2025). “What Troops Experience When They Commit Acts That Conflict With Their Moral Code.” Ha’aretz, January 30, 2025

2. Bar-On, D. & Greenbaum, C.W. (1988). [Unpublished IDF study]. Referenced in:

   • Matalon, R. (1988). “Without norms.” Ha’aretz Newspaper Supplement, pp. 5-9, February 19 (Hebrew).

   • Pedhazur, R. (1988). “The policy of beatings harms the best of soldiers and commanders - an alternative must be found.” Ha’aretz newspaper, p. 1, February 24.

3. Bronner, E. (2009). “A Religious War in Israel’s Army.” New York Times, March 21.

4. Currier, J. M., Adler, A. B., Silva, C., et al. (2024). “Trajectories of moral injury and their associations with posttraumatic stress symptoms in combat veterans.” Journal of Psychiatric Research, 187, 167–176.

5. Elizur, Y. (2024). “‘When You Leave Israel and Enter Gaza, You Are God’: Inside the Minds of IDF Soldiers Who Commit War Crimes.” Haaretz, December 23.

6. Elizur, Y. & Yishay-Krien, N. (2009). “Participation in Atrocities Among Israeli Soldiers During the First Intifada: A Qualitative Analysis.” Journal of Peace Research, 46(2), 251-267.

7. Gvaryahu, A. (2024) “The myth of Israel’s ‘moral army’: The failure of the IDF’s targeting protocols is producing massive civilian casualties.” Foreign Affairs, 4 March.

8. Greenbaum, C.W. & Elizur, Y. (2013). “The psychological and moral consequences for Israeli society of the occupation of Palestinian land.” In D. Bar-Tal and I. Schnell (Eds.), The Impacts of lasting occupation: Lessons from Israeli society (pp. 380-437). Oxford University Press.

9. Kimhi, S., & Sagy, S. (2008). “Moral justification and feelings of adjustment in military law-enforcement situations: The case of Israeli soldiers serving at army roadblocks.” Paper presented at International Society for Political Psychology conference, Paris, France.

10. Landau, S. F. (1997). “Homicide in Israel: Its relation to subjective stress and support indicators on the macro level.” Homicide Studies, 1, 377-400.

11. Landau, S. F. (1998a). “Crimes of violence in Israel: Theoretical and empirical perspectives.” In R. Friedman (Ed.) Crime and criminal justice in Israel: Assessing the knowledge base toward the 21st century (pp. 97-121). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

12. Landau, S. F. (1998b). “Crime, subjective social stress and support indicators and ethnic origin: The Israeli experience.” Justice Quarterly, 15, 243-272.

13. Landau, S. F. & Pfefferman, D. (1988). “A time-series analysis of violent crime and its relation to prolonged states of warfare: The Israeli case.” Criminology, 26, 489-504.

14. Landau, S. F., Dvir-Gvirsman, S., Dubow, E.F., Huesmann, L. R., Boxer, P. Ginges, J. & Shikaki, K. (2010). “The effects of exposure to political conflict and violence on aggressive behavior: The case of Arab and Jewish children in Israel.” Paper presented at Conference on Protection of Children During Armed Political Conflict, Jerusalem, June, 2010.

15. Levi‑Belz, Y., Greene, T., & Zerach, G. (2020). “Associations between moral injury, PTSD clusters, and depression among Israeli veterans: a network approach.” European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1736411.

16. Levy, A. & Gross, M.L. (2024). “From active duty to activism: how moral injury and combat trauma drive political activism and societal reintegration among Israeli veterans.” Frontiers in Psychiatry.

    • DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1353733

17. Levy, Y. (2013). “The Theocratization of the Israeli Military.” Armed Forces & Society, 40(2), 269-294.

18. Levy, Y. (2024a). “An Army’s Morality Is Measured by a Single Factor. The IDF Has Failed This Test.” Haaretz, December 2024.

19. Levy, Y. (2024b). “A nationalist religious group has swelled the ranks of Israel’s military.” The Forward, October 17.

20. Ortal, E. (2024). “Levy’s Anti-IDF Argument Shows a Loss of Moral Direction.” BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,320, November 28.

21. Schattner, M. (2024). “‘We act like human beings – we are not on a killing spree’: Far right’s Biblical pretexts for mass expulsion.” Le Monde diplomatique, April.