An Israeli Rabbi’s troubling advice to soldiers feeling guilty about Gaza

Soldiers on the Gaza border, September 2025

Ofri Ilany writes in Haaretz on 4 September 2025:

In a Jerusalem bookstore I found Rabbi Yigal Levinstein’s book, “Master of War – Sower of Salvation.” Levinstein, or as he’s known, “Harav [Rabbi] Yigal,” is the head of the pre-army academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli and one of the most important rabbis in the Hardali (ultra-Orthodox-nationalist) stream of Judaism.

Occasionally the media cites his views on gays (“They’re perverts”), on women (“It’s harder for a woman to make a rational decision contrary to her emotions”), and on framing the October 7 disaster as part of the path to redemption (“No words can describe the immensity of the hour”).

But the content of “Master of War” is far darker. It is a collection of several lectures that Levinstein gave during the war. It is a moral guide for fighters.

The most striking lecture deals with the problem of feeling guilt in the face of war. This in itself is an exceptional topic these days. Mainstream media barely touches the question of guilty feelings – after all, according to the prevailing view in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces is the most moral army in the world, and any accusations against it are nothing more than an antisemitic campaign.

But among the religious Zionist population, whose sons are playing such a central role in the forefront of the present war, the question of guilt necessarily arises. Indeed, this community is aware that there is something to feel guilty about.

For example, in July the news website of the religious Zionist movement, Srugim, published an article by a homeroom teacher in a religious school in Jerusalem. The writer recounted a conversation he had with a religious officer serving in the Gaza Strip. The officer had admitted that he was disturbed by the rules of engagement in regard to civilians in the Strip. And this is, patently, only the tip of the iceberg.

Rabbi Levinstein’s aim is to explain “how to cope with feelings of guilt.” Drawing on the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), and of Rabbi Zvi Thau, the spiritual leader of the anti-LGBTQ Noam Party, Levinstein sets out to answer the question of “what we are morally permitted and not permitted to do.”

To this end, he articulates a new morality, according to which “the divine historical mission of the Jewish people” stands above any other consideration. According to this view, a universal, human stance – which says, for example, that wars are unethical and should be avoided – is really a contradiction to morality, because it “conflicts with the ability of the Jewish people to bring its tremendous blessing unto the whole world.” It follows that the war is not only a necessity, but a holy war.

A scenario that emerges from Levinstein’s ideas would go like this: When a soldier or an officer opens fire at Palestinian women and children, he might feel guilty. As the rabbi puts it, “Suddenly he is frightened of himself, of his moral deterioration.” But then he must “look at the Arab enemy with eyes of holiness,” and thereby to realize that this soul-searching is “an obstacle on God’s path.” According to Levinstein, “Only when this element is understood, can fighters and commanders spring up who are imbued with the righteousness of the path.”

However, in his perception, the present official policy of Israel and of state bodies – the Shin Bet security service, army and state prosecution – is still based on viewpoints of the left (represented, according to Levinstein, by the writer Amos Oz). Therefore, heaven help us, “These systems are very careful when they take action against the Arabs.”

As we see, then, in the view of rabbis like Levinstein, the Swords of Iron War (as the war in Gaza is officially known in Israel) is not only a campaign against the Arab enemy; it is a war of liberation of the Hardali stream against the universal morality they identify in secular Zionism. Out of the horrors of Rafah and Gaza a Jewish super-being is forged, who acts according to a pure Jewish morality. “The ‘fighter with purity’ does not succumb to feelings of guilt that lead him to adopt the enemy’s narrative.”

Psychological training

I generally avoid drawing comparisons between the war crimes we are committing and the Nazis’ crimes. Enough atrocities have been perpetrated throughout history, and even enough genocides, to enable other examples for comparison to be found.

But faced with Levinstein’s sermon, it’s hard not to think of a terrifying example: a speech delivered by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the S.S., in October 1943. Himmler addressed a “very grave matter” which his troops had to cope with: the challenge of annihilating the Jewish people. On this matter he said, notoriously: “Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stuck it out, and at the same time… to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history.”

Obviously there are differences between Himmler’s briefing and Rabbi Levinstein’s sermons aimed at forging “fighters and commanders imbued with the righteousness of the path.” But these two texts belong to a common genre: techniques for doing battle against the human emotion of guilt.

This is a very specific area of psychological training, which is needed only in extreme situations. In colonial Belgium, perpetrators of crimes were told that they were serving civilization; in Rwanda, it was done by obligatory community participation; and in Germany the method was to dole out administrative work and create emotional distance.

As the philosopher Hannah Arendt argued in referring to the anti-moral techniques that fomented the Holocaust, the challenge that confronted the Nazi annihilation machine wasn’t how to liberate some barbarian layer in human existence, but to neutralize rationally the “the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering.” This was done by dehumanizing the Jews and by underscoring the sublime destiny of the German people.

Atrociously, we are seeing moral actions of a similar character today. The sermons of Rabbi Levinstein constitute important documentation that explains the mechanisms that rendered significant segments of the army murderous. Talks like this resonate in the minds of the new elite that is in the forefront of the war.

The general public, on the other hand, espouses a more or less standard moral approach. But it too is sufficiently tainted with the idea of Jewish supremacy to treat the proto-Nazi ideology of the Hardalim as a regrettable but tolerable deviation. All in all, they serve in the army – which is the most important thing.

And finally, it is worth mentioning: Behind the lofty words and the theological theories about “eyes of holiness” lurks the horror. Piles of bodies. Torn limbs. Girls whose heads have been smashed to smithereens.

This article is reproduced in its entirety