For more than 70 years, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have taken pride in being a very secular organization with no religious or political agenda, except to defend the state of Israel. However, there are people within Israel sounding the alarm that there has been a concerted effort to take over the IDF and use it as a battering ram to further a religious agenda. The ultra-Orthodox in Israel avoid military service, but there is a faction sometimes known as “Hardalim,” or “national religious,” who only represent about 13% of the Israeli population, but now represent 40% of the officer cadets entering the IDF.
A network of national religious pre-military academies and yeshivoth schools have been established to train a new generation of military leaders who not only graduate with military training, but also have a religious motivation to seek out combat roles within the military. Yagil Levy, a professor of military relations at the Open University of Israel, views this as an organized effort to gain control of the military, according to The Guardian.
