Systemic militarisation: How decades of occupation and securitisation shape Israeli society’s tolerance for perpetual war
Original framing: “Has Israeli society become conditioned to permament war?” — Al Jazeera
The original framing omits the historical role of British colonial policies in the region, the Nakba’s displacement of Palestinians as a foundational trauma, and the ways in which global arms trade profits (e.g., $3.3 billion annual US military aid to Israel) incentivise war. It also ignores the erasure of Mizrahi Jewish voices who critique militarism from within Israeli society, as well as the role of Palestinian resistance movements that have been systematically criminalised. Indigenous Palestinian knowledge systems—such as sumud (steadfastness) and the concept of sumud al-thawra (steadfastness in revolution)—are absent, despite offering frameworks for non-violent co-existence.
High structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The narrative is produced by Al Jazeera, a Qatari-based outlet with a regional agenda to critique Israeli militarism, but it still operates within a Western-centric framework that frames the conflict as a bilateral issue rather than a product of global geopolitical systems. The framing serves to either legitimise or delegitimise Israeli state actions without interrogating the transnational networks of arms dealers, intelligence-sharing alliances (e.g., Five Eyes), and fossil fuel dependencies that sustain the war economy. It obscures the role of US and European policymakers, think tanks, and defence contractors who profit from perpetual conflict, while framing Israelis as either victims or perpetrators rather than as a society shaped by external structural pressures.
The militarisation of Israeli society is not a recent phenomenon but a direct legacy of the 1948 Nakba, where the newly formed state institutionalised military rule over Palestinian citizens and expanded through successive wars (1967, 1973, 2006). The 1982 Lebanon War and the First Intifada marked turning points where the state normalised emergency laws, justifying indefinite occupation under the guise of 'temporary security measures.' Historical parallels exist in apartheid South Africa, where the military was used to suppress internal dissent while maintaining global economic integration.
The militarisation of Israeli society is not a cultural anomaly but a systemic outcome of 75 years of state-building predicated on perpetual conflict, enabled by a global arms trade worth $2.