Gershom Gorenberg says ruling the West Bank continues to corrode Israeli society.
Since the 1980s, religious Zionists have also been gradually taking the place of Israel's old secular elite in the army's combat units and officer corps. A key element in the shift is a set of religious academies where young men can spend a year between high school and their compulsory military service, getting a mix of physical and doctrinal training. A new study shows that over the past 20 years, the proportion of infantry officers who are religious rose from 2.5 percent to more than 25 percent. (For comparison's sake, the proportion of religious soldiers in the army as a whole is less than 14 percent.)
