Resisting the ‘Ecstasy of War’: Gaza Through the Eyes of Religious, Left-wing Israeli Soldiers

For religious left-wingers, the moral complexity surrounding their military orders created a unique battle within them during their time as reservists in Gaza – especially when witnessing ‘disgraceful acts’ that contradict Jewish values.

By David Issacharoff

A religious reserve soldier carrying a weapon, marked with ‘X’ symbols representing the number of enemy combatants killed, in Tel Aviv earlier this month.Credit: David Issacharof

Of the 11 discussion groups held at a conference organized by religious left-wing Israelis in Jerusalem this February, only one required advance registration and was conducted behind closed doors.

Thirteen religious reservists who served either in Gaza, on the Lebanese border or in the West Bank came from all over the country to the Faithful Left confab, in the hope that someone would listen to them. The meeting attracted participants who wouldn’t consider themselves on the political left: There were also mainstream religious Zionists, including settlers, and one ultra-Orthodox Jew. The moral complexity accompanying their military duties had stirred a unique battle within them.

It’s possible that the event was the first organized “combatants’ circle” of the Israel-Hamas war that was not under the direct oversight of the Israeli army. It was led by Ariel Schwartz, a 30-year-old social worker and lawyer from Jerusalem who completed several months of reserve duty on the Lebanese border as an artilleryman. He knew on October 7 that he would enlist as the country faced “a sense of existential threat.”

“I’m glad I was called up to the north this time,” says the veteran of the 2014 Gaza war, “because things are clearer there and you’re not within a civilian population.”

Schwartz comes from a right-wing, religious Zionist (what Americans would call Modern Orthodox) family in the political heartland of extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. He studied at Yeshivat Otniel in the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank, and during his compulsory service, in settlements, he questioned his absolute power over Palestinian civilians.

He says that led him to become politically active on the left. Today, as a social worker, he spends his days in Jerusalem hotels filled with evacuees from Israel’s north and south who were displaced following the events of October 7.

He describes feeling alone during the war. “On the one hand,” he says, “friends on the far left didn’t enlist. And on the other hand, I heard right-wingers say that ‘no one is innocent’ [in Gaza] and justified expulsion and total destruction.”

He says he saw reservists armed with pamphlets from extremist rabbis such as Yigal Levinstein and Zvi Tau, distributed by rabbis in uniform sent by the Israel Defense Forces’ department of Jewish education.

War “shouldn’t be treated as a ‘mistake’ or ‘error’ that we would prefer to avoid. War is a great thing,” Levinstein wrote. These words echoed what an IDF rabbi, Amichai Friedman, said a month after the Israeli military response to the Hamas massacre began: “I imagine in these days there are no murdered people, no hostages and no wounded. And then, I am left with perhaps the happiest month of my life.”

Schwartz shared that on the front lines, rabbis in IDF uniforms came to lecture the soldiers. “Once, a rabbi from Kiryat Arba in the West Bank said we need to destroy and shoot everyone, and that the IDF’s [rules of engagement] ethics are a ‘distorted Western morality.’”

Asked about these incidents, the IDF spokesperson said: “The statements mentioned do not align with the values of the IDF, its commands and strict guidelines on the matter. If it is indeed confirmed that such events occurred, the issue will be investigated and addressed accordingly.”

Schwartz felt what he describes as a complete and painful theft: “They take away from me what is precious to me, my faith, and direct it against me,” adding that he “witnessed people feeling joy about this war.”

Calls to “restore Jewish honor” through intense military action weren’t only heard among rabbis or far-right politicians. On October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “avenge” Hamas and was quoted on social media citing the biblical verse “God, to whom vengeance belongs.” Days after the ground invasion of Gaza at the end of October, in a letter to soldiers, Netanyahu invoked a biblical commandment for Israelites to decimate their nemesis: “Remember what Amalek did to you.”

The main question that arose in the combatants’ circle, Schwartz says, was: “How can we maintain our image as Jews, who want to be ethical in the battlefield, when we are ordered otherwise?”

“We as religious people know what Amalek means,” the reservist says. But “we are religious people who believe that our morality requires a different ethical stance, to restrain the war instead of fueling it.”

Late at night on his iPhone, Schwartz wrote an essay titled “There are no lights in war: we need a different religious language,” in which he detailed how ethical conduct during war is “at the heart of Jewish tradition.” He quoted Jewish rabbis and scholars like David Cohen (“HaNazir”), the foremost student of Religious Zionism titan Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who wrote: “War is the plague of affliction of humanity … in all the generations ever,” and that fighting it is possible only after humanity’s “enslavement to the evil inclination.”

After publishing the article on Yashar, an online journal for Orthodox thought, Schwartz recounts that religious soldiers who read the text thanked him for managing to encapsulate their thoughts.

Dilemmas over military orders

The Faithful Left movement emerged about 18 months ago as a collective response from left-wing intellectuals, rabbis and activists to the establishment of the far-right, religious Netanyahu government, including Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s Jewish supremacists and Haredi parties.

When the organizers began to arrange the second conference this February, they knew there would need to be a space for soldiers and reservists who had just returned from the front.

“The talk was very intense and moving,” Schwartz recalls. “We all felt a sense of loneliness. People had dilemmas about military orders and also questions related to the purpose of the war.” For most, he says, it was unclear if they were even advancing the war’s declared goals of “destroying Hamas” and returning evacuees to their homes.

He asked not share with Haaretz or publish any of the testimonies from that Faithful Left meeting. The main question that arose, he says, was: How can we maintain our image as Jews, who want to be ethical in the battlefield, when we are ordered otherwise? He adds that the combatants’ circle was a discussion about “what our role is in society – like the 1967 one [following the Six-Day War], which had a significant impact on the day after.”

Indeed, the concept of combatants’ circles is integral to the Israeli left, kibbutznik ethos, exemplified in the book “The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Reflections on the Six-Day War,” where soldiers gave raw testimonies of what they witnessed and did in June 1967. Haaretz revealed in 2002 that, ironically, the testimonies of religious soldiers were excluded due to their positive view of war and occupation, a decision the editor justified as “moral.”

“The arrogance of the yeshiva students seemed to us … power-drunk … with messianic rhetoric, ethnocentric … apocalyptic and, in a word, inhumane. Also not Jewish,” wrote Amos Oz, one of the book’s prominent editors. The six censored soldiers became central figures in the educational and settlement enterprise, three of them establishing the extremist Gush Emunim settler movement.

Now, 57 years after the Six-Day War, Schwartz finds himself “30 years old, and fighting in my second war.” So, he says, “I want to create a solution.”

‘I never thought I’d be in this situation’

This was A.’s first war. He grew up in West Bank settlements and in central Israel, and studied in national-Haredi schools – a sect that represents a strict interpretation of religious Zionism that sanctifies the Land of Israel. He also studied at a religious Zionist yeshiva prior to the IDF. He is in his late twenties, married and studying for his master’s degree. He enlisted because he too felt the need to protect his country from an existential threat. But October 7 was also personal for A.: Very close family members were kidnapped by Hamas and taken to the Gaza Strip.

He served for over two months in Gaza. He says he saw the experience of fighting through a conflicted prism of “human sensitivity,” noting that many people experienced the same feelings. “The fact that I define myself as left-wing does not mean people who aren’t lefties didn’t feel it,” he says. He did not attend the combatants’ circle in Jerusalem.

A couple of weeks into the fighting in Gaza, A. and his team moved into local people’s homes. “It was surreal,” he says. “Everything is still there, including their pictures. It was the house they lived in, and we used it.” When a house becomes a space that is occupied by the IDF, the soldiers leave behind “intelligence markings” – and therefore “there are instructions not to leave the house as we found it.”

“So we burned houses,” A. says. “It disgusted me.”

Religious soldiers carrying a Torah scroll while serving in Gaza during the war (illustrative).Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

“It felt difficult using other people’s things, like the sofa and the refrigerator,” he adds. “It was also complicated by people taking things home. They often took misbaha prayer beads. I have to mention my officer positively: he is a staunch right-wing settler who opposed looting. It disgusted me that others took other people’s property, knowing that they would burn the house… And you have no one to argue with. It’s Gaza. Everyone does whatever they want.”

Sometimes, he recalls, “we drove over graveyards – and I tried to avoid it. They found a central tunnel underneath one and said there were hostages there. That infuriated me more, thinking of Hamas, who knew it would cause people to desecrate graves.”

A. recalls an encounter with a terrorist, which was also his first encounter with death in Gaza. “Even if it’s silly to say it, there is the honor of the dead. And we leave them there, since there are orders not to approach them for fear that the body has an explosive device on it. And all I feared was that I’d accidentally run him over with the tank after he was killed.”

“I never thought I’d be in this situation,” he admits.

What is the role of religion in all of this, in a war we did not enter as a religious one, even if we are fighting against a murderous group using religious ideas?Yagil Levy

A few weeks later, he found himself in southern Gaza – in a completely new situation: face-to-face with civilians, mostly refugees. Before that, the army said “the people we saw were Hamas spotters. This time, they were just civilians,” A. recounts.

“We took over an area that was very important to Hamas, and we discovered that there were hundreds of civilians there. We fired shells at the place and, fortunately, we fired ones that are not designed to blow up behind walls… I made sure I could see the civilians to make sure they weren’t approaching us. I wanted to see it. It broke my heart.

“After we took control of the area, we had to send refugees further south in the middle of the night,” he continues. “Only then did I see the extent of the destruction. I saw elderly women bent over with canes, and children, and disabled people, and I felt bad in my heart. I didn’t feel like we were trying to be cruel to them. An officer who knew Arabic tried to explain the situation to them. It was not a political situation but a terrible one for everyone, and we tried our best. But it was cruel to see them going to the unknown.

“On the first day, a friend of mine from the crew, who is very right-wing, was angry that I gave [the Gazans] water and bread. On the second day, he broke down and gave out bread and water too.

“And then we occupied a house again. But this time, there were people physically there and we had to kick them out. When we saw their belongings, their food and water, that they lived here just a second ago – at this point people started to break down.”

IDF soldiers with an Israeli flag that states “Nitsanit, we have returned,” referring to the settlement in northern Gaza that was evacuated in 2005.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

However, A. says, as they were now in the homes of more affluent Gazans, there was even more looting.

‘Cut the bullshit’

A. says he couldn’t bear listening to military rabbis preaching that “we need to kill everyone,” because it angered him so much “that they supposedly represent our religion.” He describes seeing IDF rabbis in Gaza in an ecstatic state, and understood that for many people, the mission went far beyond defending Israel. “Rather, it was the joy of war for them.”

However, A. says his commanders spoke against looting or burning down houses in cases where it wasn’t necessary. He did not feel an inherent conflict between the orders he received and his religious values. “I felt I was listened to. I discovered that it was difficult for right-wingers too,” he notes.

Gaza, A. says, “gives you a different perspective: you realize how people live there, and how they lived before. You feel empathy and compassion for people because of the lack of water or basic means of existence, but also anger and hatred. It does leave a mark on the soldiers. Some deny it, others acknowledge it.”

During a notorious “Return to Gaza” conference in late January in which far-right government ministers, joined by thousands of Israeli civilians, called to resettle Jews in the Strip, A. was on the ground in Gaza. He had no idea that extremist politicians were causing international uproar with their promise to reoccupy the land.

Attendees at the “Return to Gaza” conference in Jerusalem. calling for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A. says this was never a stated goal of the war from his commanders. “When we arrived at a deserted settlement [that was evacuated unilaterally by Israel in 2005] and saw its synagogue and town hall, it seemed like an illusion that Jews had once lived here. Some soldiers talked about returning. At the command level, they mainly spoke about aiming for a better hostage deal with Hamas – though that never happened. As long as it was about the hostages, it was easier for me.

“We felt we were representing Israelis and not the government, who failed us,” he adds. So, even if Netanyahu tweeted something, “that was not what inspired us.” When a military rabbi came to the unit, mentioned Amalek and blew a shofar, “many people were cynical about it,” A. recounts. “We had guys in our platoon whose homes were under attack on October 7. Our friends were killed in combat. Cut the bullshit.”

Shifting tectonic plates

Open University Prof. Yagil Levy is widely recognized as Israel’s top researcher on the impact of the IDF on Israeli society. He says that in order to challenge religious Zionism from within, “you need even more courage” than when confronting other parts of Israeli society.

Levy believes the religious Zionist public, deeply entrenched in an internal struggle for its narrative, is going to have to a reckoning following the Gaza war. However, there is a long road ahead. “We really know nothing” about the war’s long-term effects, he says, adding that “it’s such a powerful experience that it shifts tectonic plates – and therefore it cannot end with marginal debates in society.”

Levy chooses to focus on the feelings of isolation that for him characterize the essence of ex-combat soldiers. Some reveal the moral complexities of their service in the West Bank and Gaza through testimonies to the anti-occupation Breaking the Silence organization. “If it weren’t for loneliness, there wouldn’t be the Breaking the Silence group and a critical mass of soldiers with a conscience code influencing real-time orders,” he argues.

He says there was a significant presence of young religious people in Breaking the Silence, people like Yehuda Shaul and Mikhael Manekin – the latter being one of the founders of the Faithful Left movement.

However, the lonely isolation is even more challenging for religious soldiers. “It’s deeper than that of a secular soldier,” since religious leftists must “dare to challenge the entire religious establishment” and, in many cases, the educators and rabbis in their yeshivas. “It also challenges the position of the religious IDF officer, which has become the community’s status symbol,” says Levy. “It shows us what barriers there are until an alternative movement forms among religious soldiers.”

Levy says that contrary to its weak position in society, the national-Haredi stream is very influential in the army and has used the war to strengthen its hawkish positions. The so-called Hardalim are eager to say “We told you so: This war proves that our ethos is right, that we have warned for years against territorial concessions or the impulse to accept [the notion of] ‘innocent’” Palestinians, he notes.

When a military rabbi came to the unit, mentioned Amalek and blew a shofar, “many people were cynical about it,” A. recounts. “We had guys in our platoon whose homes were under attack on October 7. Our friends were killed in combat. Cut the bullshit.” 

But the professor also sees a potential backlash within the religious community against the national-Haredi dominance. The biggest test for the community, he says, is whether it manages to push back against these extremist forces on the margins. These have become a dominant voice in Israeli society, setting the tone even among secular IDF commanders during the war.

“It’s not about an abstract ‘debate’ that develops on the righteousness of the war, its logic and ethics,” Levy says, since “we’re aware of how directives on the rules of engagement aren’t upheld, and how shots are fired at innocent people just because they’re in an area they shouldn’t be in – alongside the disgraceful acts that contradict Jewish values, like eating [someone else’s] food without operational justification, or destruction of property.”

Breaking the Silence is now embarking on the daunting task of collecting and verifying soldiers’ testimonies from Gaza, and it goes even further than Levy. A spokesperson for the organization says that religious acts by IDF soldiers in Gaza, such as placing mezuzahs on the homes of displaced Palestinians or signs reading in Hebrew “Returning to Gaza,” are not acts stemming from “security” but are open, politically motivated statements. The organization decries the senior military command for “not even attempting to pretend it stops this.”

The spokesperson adds that this complacency only reinforces Israel’s “complete disregard” for Gaza, facilitated by a group of extremist settlers who “see the disaster of October 7 as an opportunity to entrench us all in perpetual occupation” of the Strip.

Schwartz, A. and others illustrate an emerging alternative interpretation of religious Zionism, amplified by the events of the Gaza war. This is why Levy proposes that one of the most effective arenas for discussing these traumatic experiences is precisely within combatants’ circles. “You don’t have to be hard leftists,” he says, “just people with basic morals.”

While a secular soldier may struggle to morally interpret any traumatic wartime experience, Levy believes religious soldiers can “filter” them through ethical values.

He suggests listening to the soldiers with a wider question in mind: “What is the role of religion in all of this, in a war we did not enter as a religious one, even if we are fighting against a murderous group [Hamas] that uses religious ideas?”

Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, last November.Credit: Leo Correa/AP

A revolutionary struggle

Is Israel actually fighting a religious war? The conscription of religious language into the war, from the top of the government to rabbis in uniform, shows how blurred the lines have become. And even if that wasn’t the stated aim of the war, one cannot deny how the religious discourse was cited at the International Court of Justice, with the South African indictment explicitly quoting Biblically-inspired calls for revenge and destruction of Gaza and its civilians.

“The more violent and the more you believe in war, the more authentic a Jew you are; when you talk about peace, you become Westernized,” Schwartz says of perceptions in his military milieu. “However, there are prominent voices and rabbis in Jewish literature and thought that offer a completely different view.” Today, the establishment sees the Amalek affair as one in which every Arab is guilty and no one is innocent, “as the language that continues Jewish tradition.” And then the Jewish canon, Schwartz painfully says, turns into “semi-Hamas.”

Many religious reservists, like Schwartz and A., enlisted to protect their homes and families, and in the hope of freeing the more than 250 Israelis who were initially abducted to Gaza. They did not embark on a journey of revenge and destruction. Their battle, when they return to their old lives, is twofold: against the religious community that rejects peace, and against the leftist camp that rejects faith.

The struggle of religious leftists is perhaps the most revolutionary one in Israel today, as it reveals the complexity of Jewish power, and demands an answer to it. After 75 years of independence, including five decades of occupation, Israel doesn’t know what to do with its power over the land: Whether to strengthen it at the expense of repressing millions of Palestinians, who will never be deterred and will resist violently; to use it for restraint; to create a horizon for peace or any reality that deviates from the present one.

They have an opportunity to offer a genuine alternative to Israeli-Jewish supremacy – exactly because they use religious language to debunk and expose the lie of a religious far-right ideology. They could be the only effective challengers to the idea that Israel’s existence can only be interpreted as an oppressive apartheid regime, paving a new route away from war, death and never-ending pain.