Why do so many Americans join the Israeli military? by Ahmed Moor

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?

The question is meaningful in its particulars, but it also highlights a broader phenomenon: Alexander’s path is not remotely unique. The Washington Post reported in February 2024 that “an estimated 23,380 American citizens currently serve in Israeli ranks”. But they have traveled a trail worn and bloodied by others. Baruch Goldstein, an American Zionist who murdered 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron in 1994, was from Brooklyn.

The Post story, which profiles the families of Americans who died serving in the Israeli army, describes their “fierce commitment to the Jewish state”. Two of the three families have lived or volunteered in settlements – the apartheid infrastructure Israel has built in the West Bank. One mother describes her son, who died while perpetrating a genocide in Gaza, as “more Israeli than the Israelis”. A father describes his family’s journey from America by saying: “We came for Zionism.”