The Radicalization of Israel’s Military • How the response to alleged abuse of Palestinian detainees reveals a wider ideological war within the I.D.F.

In July, Israel detained ten soldiers who were suspected of raping a Palestinian man at a detention center in southern Israel. This followed reports in the international press—including from the New York Times and CNN—of widespread physical abuse at the same detention center, Sde Teiman. The soldiers detained at Sde Teiman were brought for interrogation at another military base; Israeli protesters stormed both that base and Sde Teiman to demand that the soldiers be released. The protesters have been supported by right-wing cabinet ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who referred to the accused soldiers as “our best heroes.” Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, has called for an investigation into whether Ben-Gvir, who is the national-security minister, purposely delayed the police from responding to the riots

How does the storming of these bases fit into the history of right-wing attempts to undermine the rule of law in Israel?

First and foremost, we need to keep in mind that we have had settler violence in the West Bank for many years, and it has been rising for years without enforcement, or close to no enforcement. So the settler community has been living for decades in a reality where they can break laws. I’ll even take one step back and say the entire settlement project is a project that is drowning in criminality.

We have had decades of this kind of behavior in the West Bank, and unchecked violence where soldiers were given orders to stand idly by. When I was a soldier in the West Bank, our orders were not to enforce law on the settlers.

We moved from soldiers standing idly by while Palestinians were being attacked to soldiers sometimes even joining the attacks. Sometimes it was soldiers who were settlers, who were back at home in the settlement or the outpost where they live, or where their friends live, and the guys are organizing to go down and attack Palestinians, so they take their gun or come half in uniform and join the attack. Sometimes it’s because specific military units were made up largely of extremist, nationalist, religious guys that the U.S. was even contemplating restricting military assistance to. But after October 7th things got even worse. Now the settlers are the soldiers and the soldiers are the settlers.

So you’re saying that the biggest change is in the makeup of who the soldiers are?

It’s structural to the way the I.D.F. is designed. In a full-scale war, the better equipped, better trained units go to the front line. In our case, now, that’s Lebanon and Gaza. So who stays in the West Bank? Reservists. But it’s not only normal reserve units. It’s also what are called regional-defense units. The West Bank is divided into several regional brigades. Each of them has regional-defense battalions, which are reservist units made of local settlers.

Lawlessness and violence was allowed because the relationship between the military and the settlers on the ground became so symbiotic. It is now so symbiotic that it’s not clear any more where the military starts and ends, and where the civilians start and end.

There is a sociological change in the army. A change from the old-school, secular, Labor Party-oriented people to nationalist religious people, and especially to the ultra-Orthodox nationalists. People like Smotrich.

In 1990, only 2.5% of graduate officer cadets in the infantry were nationalist religious. In 2015, it was nearly 40%

In 2016, two Palestinian attackers stabbed a soldier. The Palestinians were shot. One of them was killed—the other one was neutralized, laying on the ground. Minutes later, a military medic called Elor Azaria arrived and he shot one bullet into the head of the Palestinian—basically executed him. Ultimately, Azaria was indicted, but there was outrage about the fact that he was indicted. And it got to a place where even Netanyahu, who was the Prime Minister, called the shooter’s parents to show support.

That was the moment where the rank and file within the Army, plus the political base of the Likud Party and the Israeli right, essentially rebelled against the old guard who want to say that the I.D.F. is a professional army with discipline, who want to tell a story to the world of adherence to international law, checking ourselves, investigation, accountability. Now it became, “In our Army, we have different ethics than you, and we have a different idea of rule of law than you have. And it’s unacceptable that a soldier will be indicted for this.”

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