Meet 85 Canadians That Have Fought For Israel

 

Here’s what our investigation into Canadians that have joined the Israeli military found

For the better part of the past century, some Jews in Canada have been travelling to Israel to fight alongside other Jewish Zionists from around the world.

Throughout this time, the Israeli military has been credibly accused by and/or before major international bodies of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, apartheid, and now genocide. Israeli soldiers have also provided the physical force necessary to uphold practices the Canadian government has condemned, such as the occupation of the West Bank and the creation of new settlements. Despite this, the Canadian government has shown no interest in making it illegal for its citizens to join the Israeli military, preventing them from doing so or even keeping track of them.

There is little existing research in Canada beyond one-off news articles about who these soldiers are and how they came to make the life choices that they did. As such, I created a database of mini-profiles for as many Canadians that have fought in the Israeli military at any point as I could find. The resulting project, Find IDF Soldiers, was published this month, and offers the most comprehensive online public database of Canadians that have joined the Israeli military. This project defines “Canadian” as someone who is a Canadian citizen, and/or has lived in Canada for a significant amount of time, and/or currently lives in Canada.  

The level of detail for each of the 85 profiles included varied based on what was publicly available, but the goal was to identify: where each soldier was born and grew up, what schools and institutions they attended, when they joined the Israeli military and why, if their participation was encouraged by family members and social networks, what they did in the military and what they’ve had to say about it, and what they’ve done since. 

Every profile was based entirely on information gathered through simple Google searches from news articles, social media profiles, newsletters, websites, public directories and other sources. If you’d like to check out these profiles and a full list of the names of the soldiers, you can do so now at the website I created for the project.

This article draws upon the research I conducted to create the profiles and offers some of the trends I discovered to help provide a better understanding of the average Canadian Israeli military member.  (more...)

Meet 85 Canadians That Have Fought For Israel

The database:

Find IDF Soldiers