Changes in Israeli policy have military rabbis joining combat troops at the tip of the spear. Ostensibly there to boost morale, critics worry that the rabbis are turning soldiers into Jewish jihadis. One rabbi says he was ordered to blow a ram’s horn like Joshua, because “It makes the war holier.”

During the Gaza war, the military’s religious leaders distributed propaganda under the army’s official seal, casting that conflict in biblical terms.

All this has created an environment more attractive to fundamentalists and less appealing to Israel’s moderates and secular citizens. The military is drawing in settlers and zealots and transforming into something that doesn’t quite reflect the rest of the country. — PS