How religious Zionism is influencing Israel’s brutality in Gaza
Religious Israeli soldiers pray during training of a haredi Orthdox unit of the Givati Brigade near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, 27 September 2017
Sam Hamad reports in The New Arab on 3 July 2026:
A recent investigation by Haaretz has renewed scrutiny of the growing influence of religious Zionism within Israel’s military after officer cadets described what they said was a right-wing ideological shift within the army’s training system, raising fresh questions about whether it has contributed to genocidal rhetoric and policies in Gaza.
Central to the report was a lecture by former Israeli reserve general Ofer Winter, who allegedly told officer cadets there were “no uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and used his platform to criticise former Israeli military chiefs of staff Gadi Eisenkot and Herzi Halevi. Israeli military regulations prohibit political or religious activity in training programmes.
Winter later told Haaretz he had presented cadets with two schools of thought regarding Gaza’s civilian population: that everyone in Gaza supports Hamas, or that Gazans are themselves victims of the group. He argued both ultimately led to the same conclusion – the emigration of Gaza’s Palestinian population.
Speaking to The New Arab, Professor Yagil Levy, head of The Open University Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations, said the controversy reflected a much longer ideological transformation within the Israeli military. However, Levy argued that the principal force behind that shift was not religious Zionism as a whole but the Hardal (national ultra-Orthodox) current within it, which he described as “an exceptionally well-organized minority, unlike any other Jewish group in Israel”.
“The critical turning point was Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza and the evacuation of the Gush Katif settlements,” Levy said. “For the Hardal sector, these events were widely perceived as a betrayal by both the state and the military.”