Military Propensity through Time Perspective: Sources of Motivation for IDF Enlistment over the Years

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the motivation to serve in the military has undergone major changes, which, in many ways, reflect the many transformations that the Israeli society had undergone. While the potency of this motivation remained quite stable over the years, the sources of this propensity fluctuated significantly. The impetus of young Israelis to enlist into the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), over the years, can be divided into four types of enlistment motivation: survival, ideological, normative and individualistic. The paper begins by describing and analyzing these four prototypes, providing examples from various armed forces and different wars.
What follows is a periodical overview of Israel's history, from the War of Independence (1947-8) up to the present, which highlights the changes that have occurred over the years with regard to the different sources of motivation for service in the IDF. We identified four periods, each characterized by a dominant – though not exclusive – type of motivation.
Today, the configuration of Israeli youth motivation for enlistment in the IDF is of a mixed nature: in addition to the individualistic motivation, that still characterizes many groups in Israeli society, we are currently witnessing a return to ideological motivation, at times even accompanied by glimpses of survival motivation.
The paper concludes with a cautionary observation regarding the potential risks stemming from such a mixture in military propensity. This caution pertains to the perceive legitimacy of military service and actions, to the explicit as well as implicit military goals and even to levels of military competence.