Did Key Elements of the Israeli Army Wage a Jewish Jihad in Gaza?

Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.

In a process one military historian has termed the rapid "theologization" of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hard-line rabbis, who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian territories.

Their influence in shaping the army's goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel's religious extremist population.

"We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield," said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University, who has written several books on the Israeli army.

The new atmosphere was evident in the "excessive force" used in the recent Gaza operation, Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole neighborhoods of Gaza were leveled.

"When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering of the other side."

The greater role of extremist religious groups in the army came to light last week, when it emerged that the army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to soldiers preparing for the recent 22-day Gaza offensive.

Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said the material contained messages "bordering on racist incitement against the Palestinian people" and might have encouraged soldiers to ignore international law.

The booklet quotes extensively from Shlomo Aviner, a far-right rabbi who heads a religious seminary in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem. He compares the Palestinians to the Philistines, the biblical enemy of the Jews.

He advises: "When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers  This is a war on murderers." He also cites a biblical ban on "surrendering a single millimeter" of Greater Israel.

The booklet was approved by the army's chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Ronsky, who is reportedly determined to improve the army's "combat values" after its failure to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

Ronsky was appointed three years ago in a move designed, according to the Israeli media, to placate hard-line religious elements within the army and the settler community.

Ronsky, a settler in the West Bank community of Itimar, near Nablus, is close to far-right groups. According to reports, he pays regular visits to jailed members of Jewish terrorism groups; he has offered his home to a settler who is under house arrest for wounding Palestinians; and he has introduced senior officers to a small group of extremist settlers who live among more than 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.

He has also radically overhauled the rabbinate, which was originally founded to offer religious services and ensure that religious soldiers were able to observe the Sabbath and eat kosher meals in army canteens.

Over the past year, the rabbinate has taken over the role of the army's education corps through its Jewish Awareness Department, which coordinates its activities with Elad, a settler organization active in East Jerusalem.

In October, the Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior officer, who accused the rabbinate of carrying out the religious and political "brainwashing" of troops.

Levy said the army rabbinate's power was growing as the ranks of religious soldiers swelled.