For decades, the Israeli military has embraced an unofficial motto as its guiding principle: the most moral army in the world.
The slogan has been championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli defense ministers, and Israeli military commanders who claim their soldiers’ actions are essentially above reproach.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is the most moral military in the world and no ‘flat earth’ decision by the UN secretary general can change that,” Netanyahu said last year when the United Nations put Israel on its annual “list of shame” for committing grave violations against children in armed conflict.
It was one of the many times Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have wrapped themselves in the slogan to try to inoculate Israeli soldiers from persistent accusations that they are carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
But the two-year-old war has caused a subtle-but-significant shift, even in the Israeli military. Over the past two years, a growing number of Israeli reservists have come forward to criticize the war in Gaza. Many call it a strategic mistake for Israel. Others call it ethnic cleansing. Some even call it genocide.
An Unexpected Admission
We tapped into this strain of disaffection while doing interviews for ‘Who Killed Shireen?’, the documentary released by Zeteo in May about the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
One person we interviewed was Richard Hecht, who served from 2022 to 2024 as the Israeli military’s international spokesperson. Hecht, who is Scotland-born, had just taken on that job in the summer of 2022 when Israel completed its investigation into Shireen’s killing, and he served as a top public defender of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks.
Hecht, in his recognizable Scottish accent, could be candid and self-deprecating when he defended the Israeli military. Hecht appeared regularly on CNN, the BBC, Fox News, and Sky, where he was a steadfast advocate for Israeli military might. He was widely quoted everywhere from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times and The Guardian.
Five months into the war, Hecht quietly retired from the Israeli military. There were reports that he was part of a group of Israeli officers who were growing increasingly disillusioned with the way things were going in the military as the Gaza war unfolded.
When I sat down with Hecht earlier this year to talk about the Israeli military’s response to Shireen’s killing, I expected him to offer a strong defense. When I asked him about the Israeli military’s unofficial slogan, his response caught me by surprise.
Dion Nissenbaum: In this particular incident, Israel always calls itself the most moral army in the world…
Richard Hecht: I’ve never used that term that we are ‘The most moral army in the world.’ I’ve never used it. I don’t know. Who uses that? We’re an army, just like any other army.
Nissenbaum: Okay. So you don’t embrace that?
Hecht: I don’t identify with that - that message. ‘We’re the most moral army.’ Nah. We’re like any other army.
Hecht’s response was unexpected. He knew that his prime minister and top Israeli political leaders routinely use that phrase. But here was a retired Israeli military official disavowing the country’s unofficial motto. And he’s not the only one distancing himself from the term.
In December, former Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon became the highest-profile Israeli politician to disavow the slogan.
“It’s not the most moral army today,” Ya’alon said in a televised interview. “And it’s hard for me to say that.”
Ya’alon accused Israel of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, a charge that earned him the vitriol of his country’s current political leadership.
Claim Crumbles Under Actions
Since the war began, the Israeli military’s claims to be the most moral army in the world have been repeatedly battered by its actions in Gaza.
The Israeli military admitted that it made “a grave mistake” when it targeted a World Central Kitchen convoy last year, killing seven people working for celebrity chef José Andrés.
The Israeli military admitted to “professional failures” earlier this year when its soldiers lied about their attack on a convoy of Palestinian ambulances that killed 15 aid workers.
Independent investigations concluded that the Israeli military fired more than 300 rounds into a civilian car carrying 5-year-old Hind Rajab, whose innocent pleas for help were recorded by rescue workers who tried in vain to save the little girl.
Independent investigations by the New York Times and others have found that Israeli soldiers used Palestinians as human shields during military operations in Gaza.
The Israeli military indicted five soldiers accused of beating, tasing, and sodomizing a Palestinian detainee at a notorious prison where whistleblowers said guards repeatedly inflicted physical and psychological abuse on Palestinians.
Investigations found that Israeli forces deliberately targeted a Reuters cameraman at one of the few remaining Gaza Strip hospitals, killing 22 people, including five journalists.
Israeli soldiers have uploaded thousands of videos from Gaza showing them burning libraries, wearing Palestinian women’s underwear over their uniforms, celebrating the deliberate demolition of Gaza schools, universities, and United Nations compounds, and holding Palestinian children’s stuffed animals.
Israeli soldiers have boasted about killing civilians and said they were often ordered to treat anyone – man, woman, child – as a threat that should be killed, regardless of rules of war that call on them to protect civilians.
Israeli soldiers even killed three Israeli hostages speaking Hebrew and waving a white flag as they tried to escape from Hamas captivity.
These are only the ones we know about so far. Israel has barred Western reporters from entering Gaza to freely report, thwarting efforts to cover the war and validate consistent reporting from Palestinian journalists in Gaza that Israeli forces are carrying out war crimes by deliberately targeting children, bombing hospitals without justification, and shooting starving civilians trying to find food.
The war is taking a rising toll inside Israel as well. More Israeli military reservists are refusing to return to Gaza to fight a war without end. There has been a spike in suicides among Israeli war veterans. Some Israeli teenagers are burning their draft notices and going to jail for refusing to join the military.
Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, the Israeli group of military veterans that has spent two decades documenting allegations of abuse and war crimes in the Israeli military, said his country’s claim to be the most moral army is absurd.
“I don’t think that the IDF is the most moral army in the world,” said Weiman, who fought in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Lebanon.
Weiman cited the Israeli military’s use of Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, its use of indiscriminate artillery in densely populated areas, and its decision to permit the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians when it targets low-ranking Hamas members as some of the reasons why Israel can’t lay claim to being the most moral army in the world.
“The most moral army in the world would behave differently,” he said.
Dion Nissenbaum is an award-winning journalist who was part of the investigative team that produced ‘Who Killed Shireen?’. He has spent more than two decades working as a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and McClatchy Newspapers.
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Genocide is indefensible. The army committing genocide is not moral.
Check this https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/ a lot of israeli soliders have told the truth before Oct. 7th. Anyway, thank you vm for your article. Keep up the good work