"Now, with the genocide in Palestine, we’re faced with a reality in which tens of thousands of Americans are actively involved in war crimes. They are part of an army responsible for the murder of more than 20,000 children in Gaza, where the Economist estimates that Israeli soldiers have killed between 77,000 and 109,000 people, or 4-5% of the territory’s population in 2023."

‘We’re faced with a reality in which tens of thousands of Americans are actively involved in war crimes.’ Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

Why do so many Americans join the Israeli military?

Ahmed Moor

 

Tens of thousands of Americans serve in the country’s ranks amid genocide, investing in and propagating occupation

In his 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth renders a rich plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, the French president. The conspirators are pied-noirs, the term used to describe Frenchmen born in Algeria during the colonial occupation there. They grieve De Gaulle’s exit from north Africa, which they regard as a betrayal. Unable to remain in the former colony, they return home – dejected and emasculated – and murderous. In many ways, the pied-noirs regard themselves as being more French than the French.

The novel derives some of its appeal from the fact that it’s rooted in history – revanchist Frenchmen made at least six attempts to assassinate De Gaulle in the 1960s. Yigal Amir, the Israeli settler who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, reportedly devoured the book, and drew inspiration from it.

I began to reflect on the novel after reading about the recent Hamas-US prisoner deal. Edan Alexander, the American Israeli soldier who was held captive by Hamas for a year and a half, “grew up in New Jersey and moved to Israel after high school to join the military”, as reported by the New York Times. When I read that line I wondered what drove his radicalization – what leads an American teenager to travel to a foreign country to join an army whose primary occupation is apartheid?... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/29/americans-israeli-military

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