Of the Israeli military’s vast arsenal – MK-82 bombs, UAVs, Merkava tanks, Tavor assault rifles and an unspoken cache of nuclear warheads somewhere in the desert – diversity may be one of Israel’s lesser known weapons. 

Israel is a very small country with thunderous military might. Each Israeli citizen over 18 is required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whereas others join voluntarily – from places like China, Honduras, Thailand, France, South Africa and, of course, the United States. About 4,600 foreign volunteers fight for the IDF as of writing. 

I got a unique taste of this in January while sitting with my brother inside a South American airport’s coffee shop. I read a book as he scrolled through his social media feed. Suddenly he elbowed me. “Woah, look at this,” he said. “Alex, from high school, is in Gaza… and she’s fighting!”

My brother flashed his phone at me. It was an Instagram post from a girl who once attended our rival high school. In another life, she played volleyball, competed in the powderpuff football game and attended concerts. She was, in other words, a typical high school student from the American suburbs. Now, clad in desert camouflage and posing with an assault rifle, I see that Alex has joined the war effort in Gaza. 

So what the hell happened? 

Alex couldn’t be reached – she is busy in Gaza – but her journey into this foreign country’s military is not a unique tale. 

Foreigners started volunteering for the IDF in 1948 (at that time, most Israelis were technically foreigners). Back then it was British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. 

As Israel’s war in Gaza enters its fourth month, the response abroad has been polarized. Hundreds of thousands have protested, levying accusations of genocidal intent against Israel. Others have been keen to get involved – even take up arms – on Israel’s behalf. 

“Many lovers of Israel from abroad contact our office, wishing to know whether they can enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces or volunteer to fight for Israel,” Michael Decker, an Israeli attorney based in Jerusalem, published online.

Well, can they? The answer is sort of. Through a government-sponsored program the Israeli military may enlist Jewish people from across the planet. It’s called ‘Mahal’ – an acronym of Mitnadvei Hutz LaAretz – which allows foreigners to come and fight. There are some criteria though; men must be under 24 years old, and women under 21; they also must have at least one Jewish grandparent. To join, one doesn’t need any understanding of Hebrew. To actively serve though, some level of Hebrew is necessary. But this is only a minor inconvenience for eager foreigners with this lingual handicap; those who don’t speak it get sent to an ulpan, an intensive, three-month Hebrew course designed to ready new recruits to take orders in the official language. So long as prospective soldiers check those boxes, they can come to Israel and fight, from 18 months to two years, without citizenship. Others make Aliyah, a process which helps Jewish foreigners “return to Israel” and become a naturalized Israeli. Once a citizen, most are conscripted to mandatory military service. 

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says over 70 different countries are represented by foreign soldiers in the IDF. Some of this is from the estimated 1,000 foreign volunteers who join each year (it also says more than a quarter of these foreign recruits are American, like Alex). This nods to a compelling sense of nationalism among some of the Jewish diaspora which has been purposefully and strategically developed over decades by the Zionist movement in Israel and abroad. 

“I can imagine that many foreign fighters in the IDF see themselves as playing an important part in rectifying the injustices of the past against Jews,” says Dr. Holly Oberle, an American professor of political science. “If you are a non-Israeli Jew (…) there is often a desire to find a more compatible sense of community and identity, especially if one comes from a state with its own complex history with antisemitism. It also gives a purpose and mission based in religion, history, morality and a higher-calling.” 

 

Idling in Addis Ababa’s airport after an outbound flight from Tel Aviv in July 2023, I meet Sebastian Muller. He’s a stout, 5-foot-7 South African who has since relocated to Israel. We strike up a conversation, discussing his new life in the Middle East. When he moved to Tel Aviv to make Aliyah last year, he was exempt from what is an otherwise mandatory military service. At 25, Sebastian is too old to enlist (men over 24 are generally considered excused from serving, despite 28 being the maximum age). 

Sebastian’s got another problem: his Hebrew, as he puts it, “is total shit.” He’s a polyglot who can fluently flap tongues in English, Afrikaans and Swahili, but this hasn’t done much to help him pick up Hebrew. “I’m stuck on the pronunciation. It’s tough.”

He also has poor vision and mild asthma. He’s a white, Jewish South African living in Tel Aviv and pursuing permanent residency. Because of his age, ailments and a Hebrew deficiency, he has several convenient excuses which allow him to sidestep military obligations. To me, this all sounds great; he can live comfortably in his Tel Aviv apartment, waking up to views of the shimmering Mediterranean every morning. The best part? He won’t have to fight. In fact, he won’t have to spend any of his twenties as a soldier. Muller could avoid all of it. But he doesn’t want to.  

We have a beer together. He’s soft spoken but articulate. He’s on his way back to Pretoria to visit his parents for a month, then he’ll head back to his new home, in Israel. When he returns, he tells me he’ll exhaust every option to fight for a country he was not born in and has lived in for less than a year. I raise an eyebrow to his dream: to be issued a Tavor rifle and guard the Al-Aqsa mosque. Apparently I don’t get it, so he patiently lays it out for me. 

“South Africa is very antisemitic. People think Israel is an apartheid state in South Africa,” Sebastian says. “I didn’t want to live there anymore, so I moved. It’s crazy, man: Israel feels more like home now,” he sips his drink, “so obviously I need to defend it. Aren’t I a hypocrite if I don’t protect my people? I’m a diaspora Jew, so I see (Israeli military service) as a moral duty. How can I be a Jew and not defend my people?”

Identity is a common denominator for people like Sebastian. Many foreign-born fighters in the IDF cite antisemitism in their home countries to justify their enlistment. Meanwhile, critics argue propaganda is what brings young Jewish foreigners into Israel’s military. 

Heba Moghadam, an Egyptian-Canadian, a peace activist and an Arabic teacher, is one such person. Moghadam says Israeli officials disseminate deliberately misleading propaganda campaigns online, sometimes intended to attract foreign nationals. 

“Israeli propaganda is everywhere,” she said. “You can find it online, on TikTok, on Instagram. Anywhere you want. They know what they are doing.”

Moghadam nods to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his comments amidst the war in Gaza. She feels they imply a false victimhood, conflate nationality with religious identity and have an underlying, implicit message of government infallibility. “If I criticize a government – any government – for murdering people and children,” she said, “I am not criticizing a religion. I am criticizing the government. Do not confuse the two, like Netanyahu tries to on purpose. He hides behind the word antisemitism, and it makes young Jews think of the Holocaust. This is propaganda. Israel, I do not hate your religion, I hate your bombs.” 

Moghadam pointed to Netanyahu brandishing a copy of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” while chastizing the International Court of Justice’s decision to assess South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel. Netanyahu said: “The very fact that it was not dismissed (…) proves that many in the world have learned nothing from the Holocaust.”

Israeli politicians deflecting criticism by sounding the “antisemitism alarm bell,” Moghadam argues, is not only disrespectful to those who died in the Holocaust, but irresponsible. “It enforces the idea, especially with young, impressionable Jews struggling with their identity, that the world is out to get them. It stokes these ethnonational flames that have made Israel as far-right and zealous as it is today. It is dangerous. Now Gazans are paying the price. By accusing Palestinians of Nazism and invoking fears of another Holocaust, Israel has been committing genocide themselves. History is repeating itself, but this time the oppressed have become oppressor. It is very ironic.” 

A layer of modern Israeli nationalism is no doubt wrapped up in the Holocaust. Collective identity has been shaped by a common experience of persecution and genocide. The generational trauma of Hitler and the Nazis hardened Israeli society since its inception. Israel then positioned itself as a beacon of light for Jews in the grisly aftermath of World War II, and now as a respite of hope in the often turbulent Middle East. The former, in many ways, is true. The problem then – and what Moghadam says is maliciously used by Israeli officials for political gain – is how non-ethnic scrutiny of Israel is swatted down as antisemitic. To criticize the military or a politician, however valid, can be met with accusations of antisemitism or even neo-Nazism. 

Addressing the issue, for many, has become radioactive. In 2014 a college professor was stripped of tenure. More recently, US universities have lost millions in donor funding, a British official was suspended for speaking at a ceasefire rally, and across North America and Europe, a rising trend of journalists fired, medical residents flagged as potential hirees, and students and employees across domains terminated or suspended for their stance on the Israel-Hamas war has been documented. 

“What we’re seeing is the weaponization of the Holocaust,” says Miriam Beker, a historian of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She’s also Jewish. “(The Israeli government) have taken one of the most horrific periods in our history and used it to benefit their political movement. This puts the rest of the world in an incredibly unique and unfair position, for if you question Israel, you question the entire Jewish people.”

 

I remember photographing an Israeli settlement in the West Bank (settlements are illegal, but rarely ever penalized, under international law) in the summer of 2023. A pair of soldiers at a nearby checkpoint heard the clicking of my camera’s shutter, so they approached and asked to see my passport. They asked me my nationality, so I assumed it was appropriate to ask them theirs. Their respective responses were intriguing. 

Simonov, a 22-year-old Russian, and Andrij, a 19-year-old Ukrainian. Both Jews. Neither an Israeli citizen. Back home their countries are fighting each other in a bloody war. In Eastern Europe it was possible they’d have been enemies, but there in the West Bank, they were comrades. Whatever their passports said didn’t matter, because as Simonov put it: “We are not defined by our birthplace. Here, we are so much more.” This isn’t just an anecdote; the IDF features hundreds of foreign volunteers from both Ukraine and Russia. 

The question I had was whether it was even legal. Do nations allow their citizens to go fight for a foreign country’s military? The short answer is yes. There is almost no Western country with laws prohibiting its citizens from fighting for Israel. Since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on an Israeli kibbutz, Israel says over 360,000 reservists have mobilized, from Nepal to South Africa to Canada, and returned to wage war. For countries like the UK and US, this remains controversial. 

In Washington D.C., GOP lawmaker Brian Mast (R-Fla.) showed up on Capitol Hill wearing an IDF uniform. “As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” Mast wrote on X. His outfit pissed off some liberals, but the scrutiny was light and quickly vanished. Then, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) came under fire after a speech she gave to Somali Americans, where she was accused of saying she would put foreign interests before those of the US (the speech turned out to be mistranslated, and the accusations debunked). But that didn’t stop her critics. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for her expulsion from Congress, her citizenship revoked and deported from the United States. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused Omar of “serving as a foreign agent for a foreign country” while trying to get her censured. It begs the question: should countries tolerate their citizens’ militarism abroad, and do countries like the US unfairly glorify Israel? 

Israel last bombarded Gaza in 2014. At that time a petition was submitted to the UK government arguing for the prosecution of British citizens serving in the occupied territories under the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. The act states Brits cannot legally join a foreign state’s military. In response, the government was blunt: the act doesn’t apply to Israel. What it does do is forbid British nationals from fighting one foreign nation through another foreign military. The UK does not recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, and since Israel’s war is with Hamas – a political entity, and not an independent state – Brits are well within their bounds to join the IDF. 

Former Senior Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Baroness Warsi argued the contrary. Any British national fighting for a foreign army, any foreign army, should be prosecuted, she contended. Supporters of this argument pointed to UK citizens who fought for anti-Assad and Kurdish groups in Syria, and especially those who joined the Salafi jihadist group, the Islamic State. These Brits were questioned, prosecuted and, in some cases, jailed. To critics like Warsi, it revealed a loophole of hypocrisy. 

Don’t be fooled: foreign volunteers who take up arms abroad are not unique to Israel. Under certain conditions, many countries, including the US and UK, allow their citizens to fight for other militaries (as we’ve seen in Ukraine). What distinguishes Israel is the lure. Foreigners in Ukraine, for example, are generally going to fight Russians, defend Europe and promote NATO interests. On the surface level, it can be said that similar factors are motivating foreigners to join the IDF right now; contribute to Israeli national security, fight Hamas and maybe even exact some revenge. Though unlike Ukraine, Israel is considered the ‘Holy Land.’ For three major religions, it is a prophetic, divine piece of real estate with apocalyptic implications. Political Israel has used this image to its advantage. It has leaned into the idea of a homeland to develop a robust sense of national identity tightly knit with ethnic and religious attributes. Andrij told me he was doing God’s work, ensuring God’s country and guaranteeing the bloodline of the Chosen People. To find other examples of this sort of interlinked militarism and theocratic sentiment, look no further than Netanyahu. 

“A danger lies in attaching nationalism to ethnicity,” Dr. Oberle said. “If ethnicity is seen as blood, then building a nation around an ethnic identity is dangerous because it is absolutely exclusionary and rigid in a way that ideological nationalism isn’t. Belligerents in an ethnic conflict are unlikely to abandon their cause since their ‘cause’ is literally who they see themselves to be. Therefore, traditional conflict and post-conflict management techniques are unlikely to succeed, such as power-sharing agreements, which is why a one-state solution is doomed.”

A hefty death toll mounts in the Gaza Strip as Netanyahu clenches his jaw and presses harder on the gas. It’s widely considered the bloodiest and most destructive war in recent history. More than 10,000 Palestinian children have been killed, comprising a total kill count of somewhere north of 25,000. The IDF has suffered some casualties, too. When Hamas sprung their attack, several British-Israeli soldiers were killed. An IDF soldier from Maryland was blown up in a missile strike. In total, 563 IDF soldiers have perished. Hamas is responsible for only some of it; an IDF report claims that nearly a fifth of Israeli fatalities have resulted from friendly fire or accidents. The tiny coastal enclave that is Gaza is packed with thousands of soldiers and 2 million Palestinians, displaying the chaotic nature of compact urban warfare which, as Moghadam said, “make the whole goddamn Mediterranean run red.” 

 

Israel’s foreign fighters offer insight into how exaggerated notions of identity can set the psychological framework for radicalization. Pair an elevated sense of ethnic, religious and national identity with ideological echo chambers online, and one is suddenly far more susceptible to extremism.  

Why did 30,000 foreign fighters from at least 85 countries go fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria over the last decade? True, many recruits came from other Islamic countries, but a substantial chunk of these foreign jihadists were from affluent Western countries like France, the UK, Canada and the US. Experts say recruitment was driven by religious and political ideology. Researchers noted the difficulties Muslim immigrants had in assimilating to their developed host countries. Social isolation, they found, seemed to induce radicalization. Understand I’m not comparing Israel to ISIS. What I am comparing is the way by which people are compelled to trade in their lives to go and fight abroad – for ISIS, for Israel or whomever else.

Like the socially isolated Muslim immigrant struggling to assimilate, and who is then spellbound by ISIS, perhaps a similar psychological phenomena occurs among Israel’s foreign fighters. Imagine a young person wrestling with their identity, disheartened by antisemitism at home but heartened by a robust sense of ethnic and religious camaraderie abroad. Maybe they feel misunderstood for their culture and their religion. Maybe, as they begin to shape their sense of self, they find community in the mere idea of Israel. So when they see it attacked there is an obligation to do something. The Jews have been subject to too much. An attack on Israel today, for some, conjures the Holocaust, swastikas, Nazis, concentration camps. But more importantly, an attack on Israel feels like an attack on themselves. It feels personal. 

Identity rooted to one’s ethnic, religious or national background isn’t insidious by default. These things become toxic when poisoned by political agendas, superiority complexes and misplaced senses of self-righteousness. 

So what’s one to do? How does one reconcile with generational trauma but still resist identity-centric worldviews? 

Palestinian journalist and poet Rafif Na’il Talat put it best: “I am many things: a brown Palestinian Muslim woman. I am proud of these things, but this is not what defines me. What defines me is my humanity. Because I am human, my people are people everywhere – in every nation, of every color, of every religion. If our identities are not shaped globally, on the simple basis of common humanity, then this world will never, ever know peace.” 

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