Introduction

The War of Redemption (Swords of Iron), especially the fighting on October 7 and the subsequent campaign in Gaza, which demanded extraordinary resilience from IDF soldiers, has underscored how essential it is to instill clear and well-defined core values in soldiers. Discussions among some soldiers and junior commanders about the absence, at the senior command level, of principles such as taking the fight to the enemy, responsibility and initiative, and the pursuit of victory over the enemy have highlighted the serious gap that has emerged between the fighting ranks and senior leadership.

A military ethos is not merely a collection of orders; it is a moral framework that allows a hierarchical organization to wield lethal force while preserving its principles and its institutional identity. In the IDF this framework evolved through three stages. For decades the army relied on ten foundational values often referred to as the “Ten Commandments.” Later, following a decision to revise these principles, the military adopted an ethical code grounded in philosophy and developed under the leadership of Professor Asa Kasher. A further development followed with the formulation of the document known as The Spirit of the IDF, which was likewise shaped largely by academic philosophers. This article argues that through this gradual process the IDF moved away from simple and clearly defined values that once formed the core of the ethical education of its soldiers and commanders. In their place emerged a more academic and philosophical framework that replaced values such as initiative and victory with concepts such as legitimacy and legality—an evolution that created, and continues to entrench, a structural tension between the fighting ranks and those responsible for drafting the doctrine.

The First Anchor – The IDF’s Ten Core Values

Formulated from the accumulated operational experience of Israel’s wars of survival, the ten core values served as the commander’s “Ten Commandments.” Below is a brief outline of these values together with a short explanation of their meaning.

Commitment to the Mission in Light of the Objective – This value stands at the center of the IDF’s operational ethos. It establishes that the mission is paramount and must be carried out. At the same time, commanders are expected to act with a clear understanding of the objective that the mission serves. The objective guides a commander’s judgment and allows commanders the freedom to exercise initiative when circumstances change. It is therefore no coincidence that this principle also appears first in the IDF’s formal list of principles of war, underscoring the connection between the army’s core values and the operational principles by which commanders and soldiers are expected to act.

Personal Example – The personal example set by IDF commanders is the primary means of earning the trust of their soldiers. A commander who does not serve as a model for those under his command loses the moral authority required to lead them into battle.

Responsibility and Initiative – These are complementary values. Responsibility defines the obligation to carry out the mission, while initiative allows commanders and soldiers to exploit operational opportunities, even when circumstances require acting without explicit authorization from above. At times this may mean carrying out actions that have not been ordered when these serve the defined objective. Such actions may come at a personal cost, and those who take them must be prepared to bear the consequences. In doing so they advance the mission in light of the objective and embody another essential value: courage—not only in the face of the enemy but also moral and civic courage.

Human Life – This value emphasizes the sanctity of the lives of soldiers and civilians. It reflects the understanding that every mission must be carried out with the minimum necessary loss of life, stemming from the state’s moral obligation toward the soldiers it sends into battle. This obligation must be fulfilled in accordance with the laws of war, including the principles of distinction and proportionality in the use of force against the enemy. At the same time, commanders must place the safety of the state’s citizens and their own soldiers first—not the safety of the enemy or the enemy’s population, despite the confusion that has unfortunately developed in recent years.

Integrity – Integrity is a prerequisite for the existence of an ethical and victorious army. This value requires soldiers and commanders to tell the truth, even when it is painful or reveals failure. Integrity forms the foundation of the ability—and the obligation—to conduct honest and truthful debriefings, including acknowledging one’s own mistakes.

Brotherhood in Arms– At its core is the understanding that your comrade’s life depends on you, and yours on him. This bond goes far beyond ordinary friendship. It is a bond forged in battle. It is what drives a soldier to emerge from cover under fire and run toward danger to rescue a wounded comrade, even at the risk of his own life.

Discipline – In the IDF, discipline is not merely a matter of ceremony. It is what allows a complex military organization to operate in coordination. At the same time, discipline is tempered by initiative, which serves as a balance against blind obedience.

Combat Ethics – This value defines the limits on the use of force. It requires soldiers to remain moral actors even under the extreme pressures of war, in their conduct toward both the enemy and the civilian population. The deliberate use of the term “morality” reflects a connection to the ethical traditions of the Jewish people and a long engagement with questions of human conduct in war. It is from this principle that concepts emerged such as purity of arms and the expectation that a soldier must refuse an order that bears the “black flag” of manifest illegality.

Courage – Courage is the ability to overcome fear and carry out the mission. It does not mean the absence of fear but the decision to act despite it. It is what enables soldiers to advance in the face of danger. This value also includes civic courage, the responsibility to speak honestly even when one’s views conflict with those of one’s commanders or with the prevailing consensus. Courage from below, and leadership from above that allows such courage, are essential safeguards against flawed assumptions and dangerous strategic concepts.

Love of the Land – This is the “why,” the deeper source of purpose that reflects an emotional and historic bond with the Land of Israel and underpins the legitimacy of using force in its defense. Without this connection, the military risks becoming a purely professional institution, one that struggles to explain to itself why sacrifice is required.

The list was clear, straightforward, and easy to teach to generations of soldiers and commanders. The authors, who served for many years as officers in both regular and reserve service, and their collegues, used this list of values, together with their colleagues, as a framework for educating the soldiers under their command and for judging their own conduct as commanders. Yet, as often happens in the IDF—an institution that tends to treat “change” as a value in itself—a decision was eventually made that the army’s core values needed to be revised.

The Era of the “Ethical Code” and the Academization of Warfare

The year 1994 marked a turning point in the history of the IDF. Against the backdrop of the Oslo Accords and broader geopolitical changes, the military leadership concluded that the army required a formally articulated ethical framework. The initiative was led by Chief of Staff Ehud Barak and the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, Yoram Yair, who assembled a team headed by Professor Asa Kasher, a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University. The team also included Brigadier General Shalom Ben Moshe, then head of the Gadna and Education Corps, and Military Advocate General Ilan Schiff. The decision to appoint Kasher as the central academic advisor was deliberate and had a decisive influence on the character of the document. Kasher sought to produce a universal ethical code that could withstand the normative standards expected of any liberal democracy. The result was a deliberate shift away from the straightforward military concepts that had previously characterized the IDF, replacing them with terminology drawn largely from the language of philosophy.

In a course on military ethics, he taught at the IDF Command and Staff College during those years, Kasher acknowledged that the code had been deliberately framed so that it could apply to any democratic army—conceivably even the modern German military. This position angered many commanders, who felt that the distinctive character of the IDF as the defense force of the Jewish people had been diluted in favor of “democratic universalism.”

Several substantive changes were made in the IDF ethical code. Most notable are the neutering of the concepts of “initiative” and “objective.” These two key changes illustrate why this is problematic from an operational point of view. From the first value, “Commitment to the Mission in Light of the Objective,” they deleted the “objective”.  From a philosophical perspective, a “mission” is a legal and binding directive. In military practice, however, executing a mission without understanding the objective, reduces the soldier to a robotic executor of orders. When conditions change, it is the objective that guides the commander’s judgment. Removing the word “objective” effectively encouraged a culture of rigid compliance rather than situational understanding.

At the same time, the concept of “initiative” also disappeared. From the original value of “responsibility and initiative,” only responsibility remained. The justification offered was that initiative, by its nature, is unpredictable and difficult to define within a rigid ethical code. Its removal conveyed a subtle but clear message to commanders: adhere to procedures, do not improvise, and do not act beyond the literal wording of the order.

One of the most contentious changes was the replacement of “morality in combat” with the concept of “purity of arms.” Whereas the former focused on the soldier as a moral agent and on the norms governing his conduct, the latter shifted the discussion into a more technical and legal register. The main criticism from field commanders was simple: a weapon is merely an object; the notion of it being “pure” is meaningless. By centering the discussion on purity of arms, the new language created a sense of “moral hygiene” where the objective seemed not to be defeating the enemy but emerging from battle with a legal “clean sheet”

Among commanders and soldiers, resentment quickly surfaced. Many derisively referred to the document as “Eti’s code” (a play on words between the Hebrew term for ethical and the name Eti, a common women’s name, that reflected derision for the code).  About six years later, the IDF leadership decided to revisit the issue and established a new committee to draft what would later become known as The Spirit of the IDF.

The 2000 Committee and the “Spirit of the IDF” Document — An Attempt at Synthesis and a Conceptual Failure

In 2000, following sharp criticism of the ethical code, a new committee was appointed under then Chief Education Officer Brigadier General Elazar Stern. The Chief of Staff at the time was Lieutenant General Shaul Mofaz. The committee included Professors Avi Sagi, Daniel Statman, Avishalom Adam, Saul Smilansky, and Moshe Halbertal, alongside Major General Yishai Bar and Colonel Yaakov Kastel from the Education Corps. Its task was to draft a revised values document that would correct some of the deficiencies of the ethical code and gain broader acceptance among commanders, particularly at the field level. Yet once again the IDF erred in the composition of the committee, placing greater weight on academic philosophers than on experienced combat commanders from both the regular and reserve forces.

In our view, the Spirit of the IDF document that emerged from this process only further complicated matters. The first problem lay in its reliance on multiple sources of authority, a fact that led to ambiguity. The new document declared that it drew from four foundations: Jewish tradition, Jewish heritage, the legacy of the State of Israel and its democratic values, and universal moral principles. Yet it established no hierarchy among them. When the universal value of “human dignity” clashes with considerations such as “state security” or “love of the homeland,” the document provides no clear guidance. This ambiguity opened the door to expansive legal interpretations that at times risked undermining the operational clarity required in military decision-making.

One of the most critical points of contention in the committee’s deliberations concerned the concept of victory. The Chief of Staff at the time, Shaul Mofaz, insisted that victory be included as a core value. The academic members of the committee opposed this. In interviews he gave later, Professor Avi Sagi argued that “victory is not a moral value” and warned that elevating it could justify the unrestrained use of force. In the end, victory was included only through a kind of compromise typical of Israel’s political culture, in the phrasing “commitment to the mission and striving for victory.” Even so, the formulation of the value itself remained almost apologetic. For many in the fighting ranks, pushing victory to the margins of the value system conveyed a sense that the army had lost its bearings. If a military does not educate its soldiers to see victory as a central value, it risks losing its fundamental moral purpose: protecting the lives of the state’s citizens.

The committee also chose to retain the term re’ut (“camaraderie”) while avoiding the more specific concept of “brotherhood of arms.” The argument was that re’ut was a broader concept that could also encompass soldiers in support roles, with the notion of brotherhood remaining only as part of the explanation of that value. Yet, as the original text argues, brotherhood of arms is a distinct and uncompromising concept rooted in the realities of the battlefield. By broadening the value into the more general notion of camaraderie, the document diluted the absolute commitment required in combat and transformed a core military value into something closer to a benign social ideal. As soldiers and commanders remarked at the time: “Re’ut is the name of a town.”

In 2022, Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi added the value of “statesmanship” (mamlachtiyut). Despite the concept’s prominence in Israeli public discourse, it was introduced into a document that already suffered from excessive length and lack of focus. Intended to shield the military from politicization, the notion of statism ultimately added another layer of abstract definitions, further distancing soldiers from a clear understanding of action in practice.

The deeper structural flaw of the document was the battlefield was absent from its formulation. The most fundamental criticism of this stage in the evolution of the IDF’s core values is that the document was not written by combat commanders. Instead, the values were crafted in academic conference rooms, with the intention of “educating” the army rather than emerging from its operational experience. Turning to external experts to define the soldier’s moral compass signaled a professional weakness within the IDF, which had lost confidence in its own ability to define its foundational values. The result was a clear trajectory away from the sharp, martial clarity of the original “Ten Commandments” toward texts full of internal tensions, in which legal legitimacy increasingly took precedence over the pursuit of victory and the exercise of command initiative.

A Professional and Moral Loss of Direction

The IDF is not just another organization. It is the army of the State of Israel and the defender of the nation and of the Jewish people wherever they may be. This is its highest moral obligation. The value system of such a military must grow out of the experience and judgment of its commanders, both in the regular forces and in the reserves. The attempt to bring in actors from outside the IDF to formulate the army’s core values reflects a professional and moral loss of direction. In many cases, IDF commanders have sought to rely on academia and other external professional circles. Often, this reflects a lack of confidence in their own professional ability to lead such processes.

The shift from the original list of ten core values to the Spirit of the IDF document represented a broader process of the “academization” and “juridification” of the military ethos. Although the intention was to improve the framework, the result was a cumbersome document—one that was at times “sterile”—that struggles to resonate with soldiers on the front line. The removal of values such as initiative and victory created a vacuum that is now being reconstituted from  battlefield experience during this current era of combat.

Values are not written in an ivory tower. The values of the IDF must arise from military practice itself. Philosophers and academics may have a role to play as advisors, but they should not lead the process. The same applies to the central role given to the Military Advocate General in shaping the army’s ethical code. We should remember that simplicity is a form of strength. Soldiers and commanders should not be burdened with dense and overly complex texts; they need clear principles that can be internalized and acted upon. Above all, we must remember that victory over the enemy is the supreme military moral value. No purpose is more fundamental for an army than defeating its adversary and removing the threat to its citizens.

Conclusion

Soldiers and commanders today speak far more about “love of the land,” “heritage,”  “defense of the homeland,” and the “sanctity of Jewish life” than about abstract notions of “universal human dignity.” During the most recent war, many commanders addressed their troops before battle by emphasizing their connection to the land, the people, and their shared heritage, rather than the universal formulations found in the Spirit of the IDF document. Anyone who followed the pre-battle briefings commanders delivered to their units over the past two years could hear these same basic values invoked repeatedly: love of the land, brotherhood in arms, and initiative. These were often accompanied by additional expressions of Jewish tradition, such as prayers before entering combat and the sounding of the shofar. This occurred not because all soldiers are religious, or even Jewish, but because the IDF is the army of the Jewish state and draws its strength from its heritage and traditions. The resilience displayed in battle stemmed above all from a deep identification with the national mission, from brotherhood in arms, and from courage, values that were diluted or emptied of meaning in the current official version of The Spirit of the IDF.

In our view, the situation resembles a lesson we learned many years ago in orienteering training: when you lose your bearings, return to the last point where you were certain of your position. Accordingly, the immediate step should be to restore the original list of ten core values as the binding educational foundation of the IDF. If the military ultimately decides to revise its values in light of the events of the War of Redemption, the task should be entrusted to a team composed exclusively of combat commanders from both the regular and reserve forces, and they should be given the authority to propose an updated framework of core values. The existing list, beginning with commitment to the mission in light of the objective and concluding with love of the land, provides a far clearer guide than lengthy documents filled with repeated references to democracy, human dignity, and universal moral values.

The two committees that reshaped the IDF’s core values in 1994 and 2000 were composed primarily of philosophers and academics rather than combat commanders with extensive field experience. The foundational values of a fighting army should be written by those who understand what drives a soldier to emerge from cover and charge into enemy fire, an understanding rooted in purpose, initiative, courage, and love of the land. Those values must speak to all who serve in the IDF.

In the end, the soldier on the battlefield needs a compass with a straightforward sense of direction. That compass was part of the IDF’s original core values. The layers of philosophical language and lengthy legal formulations that have obscured it must be stripped away, and those values must be placed back in the hands of IDF commanders.

JISS Policy Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family.