A mural in Tel Aviv shows a young girl embracing an Israeli soldier, July 21, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
PHOTOS: How hypermilitarism pervades everyday life in Israel
From the sacred to the mundane, military imagery suffuses the Israeli public sphere — shaping our imagination, desires, and collective identity.
By Nissi Peli April 10, 2026
At one point in middle school, a bizarre fantasy formed in my mind: I wished to die a heroic death as a combat soldier in the Israeli army, to have my picture hang in the school’s corridors as its first slain soldier, and to be mourned every year on Remembrance Day.
By the time I finished high school, my political consciousness had begun to take shape. Still, I held onto the liberal Zionist creed that I could be a good, moral soldier and change the system from within. When I was drafted into the armored corps, I quickly realized the impossibility of that position and, after several months, obtained a medical exemption.
But for a few years after leaving the army, I had recurring nightmares about being reenlisted. In one especially vivid dream, when I was 20 and living in Berlin, I looked out of my window to find my entire primary school class and teacher standing below. They were screaming that my exemption had been canceled and that I had to return with them at once to rejoin the military, because war had broken out.
Contemporary Israeli society is characterized by hypermilitarism. This form of militarism is not merely a political philosophy: it is a state of being that fundamentally structures the self, shaping our imagination, thoughts, desires, relationships, and sense of our collective as Israelis. Almost everything is perceived and understood in military terms, values, and imagery, while a permanent state of emergency and war become the natural order.
This ideology spans the Israeli spectrum from the spiritual and theological militarism of hilltop youth and religious settlers, to the secular, liberal militarism that is prominent among the Israeli bourgeoisie. At almost any point in life, Israelis see themselves and those around them through a military lens: as soldiers-to-be (as pre-service youth, and later as potential reservists), active-duty soldiers, or former soldiers.
Left: A 2018 ad for Ichilov’s Lis Maternity and Women’s Hospital featuring an illustration of a saluting baby wearing an army beret, accompanied by the text: “Recipient of the President’s Award of Excellence for the year 2038 (will probably be born at Lis).” This award, one of Israel’s most prestigious military honors, is presented annually to 120 IDF soldiers. (Screenshot)
Right: A 2022 campaign by non-profit “A Real Israeli Doesn’t Evade.” The word Mishtamet (draft evader) has a unique derogatory connotation in Hebrew. The campaign’s poster shows an elderly person’s hand marked with an Auschwitz tattoo, clutching a military dog tag, alongside the text: “Know where you came from and where you are going.” (Screenshot)
Even those who do not enlist, or who are exempted from reserve service later in life, are perceived in relation to the army and are treated as outcasts by the majority of Israeli society. Conscientious objectors face not only jail time, but regular hostility and incitement, while politicians across the political spectrum occasionally threaten to strip civil rights from those who refuse to “share the burden.”
Much has already been said about the sociology of militarism in Israel: how high-ranking military officials regularly go on to become successful politicians, how journalists receive their training in military media units; how cafés and bars and trains are crowded with armored soldiers and civilians, and how the education system participates in militaristic indoctrination and the army’s recruitment efforts. What often goes under the radar, however, is the way that militarism permeates everyday life in Israel in its more banal forms — a phenomenology of the militarized everyday.
Left: Road sign on an Israeli highway reading: “Highway 16: traffic is flowing. Together we will win!,” November 25, 2024 (Nissi Peli)
Right: Flags displaying Israeli army unit insignia installed by the Ramat Gan municipality, November 12, 2024. (Nissi Peli)
Part of this is the commodification of militarism in a capitalist society. Sometimes, it is sold directly: for example, courses preparing youth for screening into cyber or intelligence military roles, or “combat fitness” training for elite units. A recent recruitment poster targeting beach-going teenagers reads: “If they ask, I’m at the sea with friends. Think you got the SEA factor? Come and prove yourselves in one of the Navy’s Gibushim” — a multi-day physical and mental training seminars for elite military units.
But more often, militarism serves as a platform to sell other products. Countless advertisements not only feature soldiers using the merchandise, but draw on the emotional valence of militarism in Israeli society: the “heroism” and “patriotism” of soldiers serving in battle, the sentimentality of soldiers returning home to their families for the weekend, and even their sex appeal.
Left: Profile photo of an Israeli soldier on a dating app. (Screenshot)
Right: An ad for cleaning company “cleaning fighters,” featuring Israeli soldiers sitting in a devastated urban setting likely in Gaza, with the title: “Coming soon, sofa cleaning in Gaza.” (Screenshot)
Consider, for example, a recent advertisement by an Israeli lubricant company: for International Women’s Day, it published a series of images depicting women soldiers (among them a fighter pilot and a uniformed soldier wearing Rosie the Riveter’s red bandana), each holding a bottle of lube, accompanied by the caption: “Hey babe, you are a superhero.” Or take the myriads profiles (mostly men’s) on dating apps that feature photos in military uniform, sometimes set against the backdrop of a destroyed Gaza. In one such profile I recently came across, a reserve sniper is photographed aiming his rifle out of the window of a wrecked home in Gaza or Lebanon.
Online advertisement campaign for Israeli lubricant company Noom. (Screenshot)
This recent Passover, shoppers in Israeli supermarkets could find “Heroism Matzos” and “Rising Lions Matzos” (referencing the name Israel gave to its June war with Iran), branded with images of soldiers, B-2 bombers, and F-15 aircrafts “on their way to bomb Iran.” In a Tel Avivian café, one finds a Profiterole named after a slain soldier, a broader recent trend in Israel of naming foods and beverages to “honor” the dead.
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Hypermilitarism leaves little room for anything other than eternal war. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted as much in September, when he argued that Israel must become a “super-Sparta,” securing economic self-reliance and expanding domestic arms production to deal with the country’s growing “diplomatic isolation.”
Only by dismantling this ideology — especially the myth that Zionist militarism secures, rather threatens, Jewish safety — can we begin to move towards a different, more just and prosperous future for both Jews and Palestinians.
For more examples, visit the Militarized Realism Instagram page.
Israeli militarism
Israeli army
Israeli fascism
Israeli society
israeli politics
Nissi Peli is a writer and an activist at New Profile - The Movement to Demilitarize Israeli Society.
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