For most of Israel’s history, religious soldiers were a minority in the IDF. Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) did not serve at all, a large number of religious Zionists served for less than the standard three-year tour of duty, and religious Jews were underrepresented in the officer corps. All of this has changed over the last years, with the proportion of religious Jews among both soldiers and officers rising dramatically. Skeptics have warned that the shift could lead to problems, but so far such that has not been the case:

There has always been a fear in the army of religious soldiers because religion provides them with another source of authority—to whom would they listen in a clash between their religion and an army command? The major flashpoint for this was the removal of settlements in Gaza in 2005. Would rabbis tell their students to refuse orders to remove residents from Gaza? Would they listen? In 2005 there was a huge discussion about this, but in the end, there were relatively few refusals to serve, mainly at junior levels of the army.

 In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu pulled out of a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like the IDF’s decision to employ raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—they are offered in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden admin. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.