It is difficult to trace the exact origin of the phrase often used to describe the Israeli occupation army as “the most moral army in the world”. Some attribute its roots to the doctrine of the Haganah, which claimed that it only carried weapons when necessary. However, in his article The Most Moral Army in the World: The New Ethical Code of the Israeli Army and the War on Gaza, Muhammad Ali Khalidi notes that available documents show no evidence of the phrase before 1996.
What matters is that, with Washington’s “war on terror” gaining momentum, the Israeli army began heavily promoting this phrase from 2005 onwards, as part of its broader effort to present its war against Palestinian resistance as part of the global war on terror.
At the same time, Israel was in the middle of its “Brand Israel” campaign, marketing itself as a democratic oasis in a region it portrayed as backward and authoritarian. It promoted itself as a centre of culture, arts, nightlife, and Tel Aviv as a global capital of LGBTQ identity.
Israel wanted to sell itself as the cultural and political opposite of its Arab neighbours and their Islamic Eastern values. For a period, that strategy worked.
But after 7 October 2023, Israel entered a new phase in its history. The image it had spent years and millions of dollars constructing was repeatedly shattered by its campaigns against Gaza, culminating in the genocide of 2023.
Since then, Israel has become increasingly exposed to sharp criticism in places once considered safe strongholds, including major European capitals and American universities.
Many Israeli diplomatic, military, and security practices were forced to respond to the changes imposed by this moment. Yet the principle of “the most moral army in the world”, along with the idea of Israeli exceptionalism, remained central to official rhetoric, especially in the language of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This was clear in his response to a scandal involving Israeli soldiers destroying a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon. After apologising for the incident, Netanyahu still insisted:
“Christians thrive in Israel, unlike the rest of the Middle East, where they are slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims. Israel is the only country in the region where the Christian population and standard of living are increasing, and the only place committed to freedom of worship for all.”
At the popular level in the West, many no longer believe Netanyahu’s claims. Yet he continues to repeat them. Why?
The answer lies in the internal mechanics of Israeli discourse around the so-called “morality of the army”, and how this idea is constantly reshaped and repackaged to remain usable despite the glaring contradictions surrounding it.
Netanyahu and His Defence Minister: Two Readings of “Army Ethics”
Following the destruction of the statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir held a meeting with senior commanders to discuss the incident. On the surface, the language coming from Israeli officials may appear deeply ironic.
Yet for those studying the narrative of “the most moral army in the world”, this meeting offers a key entry point into how the narrative is evolving.
Zamir told his officers that the army had experienced a decline in discipline during Israel’s multi-front war in recent years. He reviewed incidents involving looting, the destruction of the statue of Jesus, and unauthorised religious and political slogans containing inciting messages.
He said:
“The unethical incidents we have seen are the product of a long and complex period, but that does not justify them. We must not compromise our values. The erosion of standards is no less dangerous than operational threats.”
To drive the point home, Zamir showed an image of a soldier wearing a hat that read: “Stop the hate. It’s time for violence.”
He then asked:
“Is this the army you want? If there is even one person who believes this reflects the values of the IDF, let him stand now.”
His closing line was the clearest:
“I do not want us to become an army of thieves.”
Netanyahu, however, does not appear willing to follow his army chief in acknowledging any structural crisis within the army’s supposed ethical code.
In 2024, when facing widespread criticism over the moral collapse of his army, Netanyahu chose instead to accuse the entire world of conspiring against Israel. He claimed that the world had forgotten the “terrorist” attack of 7 October, saying:
“There is no army in the world that has done, and continues to do, what the Israeli army has done to reduce casualties and achieve what no other army has achieved.”
Netanyahu also asked how anyone could accuse Israel, a state founded after the Holocaust, of committing genocide, invoking his father’s battles against antisemitism.
That same year, Netanyahu commented on one of the most controversial cases in the history of the occupation army. He condemned officer Tomer-Yerushalmi, accusing her of severely damaging the image of the Israeli army and describing her action as a “terrorist attack against the army”.
The “terrorist attack” he referred to was her authorisation to leak surveillance footage showing part of an assault on a detained Hamas member inside Israeli desert detention camps.
In principle, Netanyahu does not seem prepared to admit fault within the ethical framework of his army, even at an individual level. Most military leaders would accept such failings as part of human reality, but Netanyahu is different.
He remains trapped inside the symbolic language he constantly produces about the self and the other.
Why Netanyahu Needs This Narrative
In her research paper The Power of Political Speeches and Linguistic Strategies: A Qualitative Critical Analysis of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2024 UN General Assembly Speech, researcher Anisa Sukni analyses Netanyahu’s symbolic discourse and how he defines himself, his army, and the enemy.
According to Sukni, Netanyahu’s political language does not merely describe reality. It produces interpretive systems that shape perception before judgement even begins.
By constantly portraying Israel as a democracy, a state of law, and a symbol of Western civilisation in the East, while attaching terrorism, chaos, and inhumanity to Hamas and so-called “Islamic terrorism”, Netanyahu pre-assigns moral legitimacy to violence.
Violence is not presented as something that needs justification later. It is framed from the beginning as an act required to protect ethics and civilisation.
Netanyahu also relies on what Sukni describes as dominant speech acts, where claims are presented as facts. These include statements such as the army doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, or Hamas using civilians as human shields.
Such statements are not merely informational. They function as mechanisms for fixing the narrative in place.
He also uses collective pronouns such as “we”, “you”, and “they”, creating a direct emotional contrast between the internal group and the external enemy.
In addition, Netanyahu repeatedly invokes emotionally loaded historical references, especially the Holocaust, drawing on its religious and symbolic weight in Western consciousness. These references operate heavily through emotional pressure, guilt, and historical shame.
Netanyahu’s speeches target two levels of reception.
The first is international. He continues to rely on the gap between the growing shift in global public opinion and the slower institutional transformation in Western policy towards Israel. This is where the normalisation of lying in international relations becomes important. States do not generally build relations with another state that openly defines itself as bloodthirsty.
The second level is domestic. A wide base of Israeli right-wing supporters still believes that the army’s actions are profoundly moral. This belief also extends to segments of Netanyahu’s opposition.
Israeli Society’s Need to Believe in Army Morality
A 2024 report in Haaretz titled Israel: The Most Moral Army? For Now, Compared to the US Army, Gaza’s Killing Field Tells a Different Story exposes how deeply Israeli society needs to believe in the morality of its army.
The writer criticises the dominant assumption within Jewish society that the army remains bound by an ethical code on the battlefield and goes beyond what is required to protect civilians in Gaza.
He asks how the margin of civilian death can keep expanding while society continues to believe that a functioning ethical code governs an army increasingly driven by revenge beyond even its operational goals.
In his discussion of casualty figures, the writer argues that without international legitimacy, what Netanyahu calls “international consensus”, Israel would not have been able to wage such a ferocious war in Gaza.
Even in what was framed as a war of survival, the Israeli strategy could not rely on public willingness to accept large numbers of soldier deaths. As a result, the strategy required inflicting massive losses on Gaza’s population.
Even the liberal camp, which supported the war objective of dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capacities, avoided asking about the moral cost, because the alternative would mean exposing their own sons and daughters fighting in Gaza to greater risk.
By contrast, revenge rhetoric and the comparison of Gaza’s people to Amalek, the ancient enemy whose extermination is religiously framed in Jewish tradition, made the idea of risking soldiers to protect civilians in Gaza politically illegitimate.
This helps explain how Israeli society could receive the killing of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people with striking indifference: death is enclosed within a shared consensus between right and left.
Compared with this, Netanyahu’s rhetoric remains limited by the formal politeness of the office he still holds. His narrative around the “morality of the Israeli army” goes as far as giving genocide itself a moral character.
At times, this idea appears even more fully expressed by his political and military rivals.
Genocide as the New Definition of Israeli Army Ethics
Yoav Gallant was dismissed as Israeli defence minister on 5 November 2024. His exit was not quiet. It was followed by public controversy, street protests, and anger inside the Knesset.
In an article published after his removal, Gallant appeared to be addressing enemies beyond Netanyahu himself. Writing in The Times alongside John Spencer, he published an article titled: Western Leaders Condemn Israel, Yet Their Militaries Still Ask for Its Advice.
Gallant’s article reflected a growing crisis in how the Israeli army understands itself. He did not choose defence or apology. He went on the attack, accusing Israel’s allies of hypocrisy.
He wrote that many Western counterparts deliver prepared statements about restraint, proportionality, and civilian protection, often disconnected from operational realities and battlefield facts.
For Gallant, this is not only political inconsistency, but strategic dissonance. War is difficult, and urban warfare against a hybrid enemy embedded within civilian areas is one of the hardest challenges modern democracies face. Yet public debate, he argued, is often dominated by expectations of precision and perfection, which no military force can guarantee.
Gallant’s bitterness towards Western condemnation is clear. He believes Western leaders come to learn from the “dirty work” Israel performs on their behalf, while continuing to criticise it.
He does not condemn his army, not even in relation to individual actions. Instead, he shifts the moral burden onto Europeans, accusing them of failing to pressure other states to take humanitarian responsibility.
He argues that while calls for humanitarian concern grow louder, political leaders rarely push for solutions that would actually reduce civilian harm. He points to Egypt keeping its border with Gaza closed, despite being the only neighbouring state not directly involved in the conflict and capable of offering immediate relief to civilians seeking safety.
Gallant then invokes the history of Western wars to accuse Israel’s allies of double standards. He references civilian deaths in Korea, Mosul, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the campaign against ISIS, presenting them not as footnotes but as reminders of what war always involves.
His argument reaches a direct conclusion: only one army, the Israeli army, is expected to win without error, without civilian harm, and without criticism, even against enemies who deliberately make such expectations impossible.
Israel’s Offer to the West: Accept the Reality
Gallant’s article ends almost like an offer to Western states: accept the Israeli army as it is and stop hiding behind polished language.
He reminds them that they benefit from Israeli military technology precisely because it has been tested in real battlefields, what researcher Antony Loewenstein has described as the “Palestine laboratory”.
Gallant argues that militaries around the world continue to seek Israeli expertise, while governments enter formal cooperation agreements, train officers in Israeli facilities, and purchase defence technologies developed through combat experience.
For him, democracies must regain strategic clarity. They cannot treat war as a moral theatre. When necessary, war must be presented not only as legal, but as morally required.
This is where Gallant places the narrative in its most explicit form.
For him, the morality of the Israeli army today lies in its willingness to fight a brutal and supposedly unavoidable war on behalf of the world, in defence of Western and civilisational values.
This is also where Netanyahu’s rhetoric ultimately leads. The Israeli army’s violence is not merely excused. It is elevated into honour.
