Between Hero and antihero: the Israeli soldier in cinema

The Soldier on Screen: how cinema shaped Israeli identity

Since 1948, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been central not only to security but also to Israel’s national imagination. In a country that conceives itself as an "imagined community", the image of the soldier as David - a young fighter against a giant - became a national symbol and teaching tool. This article shows how that figure has shifted with the fortunes of the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating in a metamorphosis: from David to Goliath and, more recently, the paradox of "David versus David". The result is a fractured identity and an unresolved tension between individual and collective memory.

Beyond the Screen: Politics of Identity and Representation

Film and television are not just entertainment; they shape how people think and imagine themselves. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz called this "thick description": stories don’t only show events, they give them meaning, almost like ethnography on screen. Building on this idea, scholar Lila Abu-Lughod showed how Egyptian melodramas worked as a "dramatization of consciousness", both entertaining viewers and shaping their values, emotions, and sense of identity.

In Israel, this becomes what we might call a "cinematic dramatization of the David model". Cinema doesn’t simply reflect the national spirit - it helps create it.

Israeli cinema was born with the state: before 1948, films in Mandatory Palestine followed the model of Soviet propaganda, while after independence the soldier-pioneer became the central figure of national identity. As Frontain and Wojcik explain in David Myth in Western Literature, David is the most contradictory biblical hero - at once warrior and poet, lover and murderer. That ambivalence makes him a powerful archetype for Israeli cinema, able to embody both the rise of the nation and its moments of crisis.

1) From zero to hero: building the body of the Nation

The slogan attributed to Joseph Trumpeldor - "Tov lamut be’ad artzenu" ("It is good to die for our country") - became a founding myth, celebrating individual sacrifice for the homeland. With mandatory service for both men and women, the citizen’s body, as professor Mira Weiss writes, came to represent the nation itself: after 1967, even the occupied territories were symbolically inscribed on it, marking the state’s expanding borders.

In the early decades, this vision was strongly masculine. After the Six-Day War, Moshe Dayan emerged as the ultimate national hero, and the euphoria of victory spilled into films that reworked the frontier myth in Zionist terms - mixing spiritual redemption with physical conquest. Cultural scholar Ella Shohat interpreted this as a kind of "spatial liberation", a small country breaking free from its siege.

Assi Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s son, embodied this spirit on screen. In the 1967 film He Walked Through the Fields (based on Moshe Shamir’s novel - extract below), he played Uri Kahana, a young Palmach fighter who symbolized both the soldier and the kibbutz pioneer. The film, seen by more than 324,000 viewers, told Uri’s love story with Mika, a new immigrant played by Iris Yotvat - ending with his tragic death in battle.

2) David’s Crisis: Is it still worth dying for the Homeland?

After 1973: from hero to antihero

The year 1973 marked a turning point. The surprise Yom Kippur attack shattered the post-1967 euphoria and replaced trust with anger and doubt. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister Golda Meir were blamed for the failures, fueling protests led by veterans such as Motti Ashkenazi. Politically, it ended the long dominance of the Labor Party. Culturally, the army - once the unshakable pillar of national identity - entered a crisis. Sacrifice for the homeland no longer felt self-evident.

Art and cinema became spaces for this debate. In the "New Sensibility" era of the 1960/70s, films blended high art with pop culture, adding sex, violence, and irony to reflect the counterculture mood. The soldier shifted from hero to antihero.

Yehuda "Judd" Ne’eman’s Paratroopers (1977) broke new ground by critically portraying the military ethos. In its tragic ending, the soldier Weissman dies during a live-fire exercise - perhaps suicide, perhaps confusion - leaving the meaning of his death unresolved. In the passage below, a soldier opens up to his commander (played by Gidi Gov) about his struggles in the army, revealing his vulnerability and breaking away from the image of the fearless hero.

Assi Dayan, now director, mocks the war epic in Halfon Hill Doesn't Answer (Giv'at Halfon Eina Ona, 1976), desacralizing even his father’s image. The Characters like Sergio Constanza, Mr. Hasson, and the cook Yosifun have become well-known figures in Israel, and the movie has became an important Israeli cinema. 

The extract below features a famous scene with iconic characters engaged in a humorous, almost absurd conversation with their commander. Over time, it has become deeply rooted in Israeli culture - even today, some of its lines and characters are still quoted and remembered in the army.

3) Apocalypse Now: Lebanon and the Metamorphosis of David into Goliath

Lebanon and the loss of innocence

The 1980s deepened Israel’s sense of crisis. The Lebanon War of 1982 and the First Intifada of 1987 reshaped the image on screen. The Palestinian was no longer shown as a towering Goliath but as a new David defending his land. In contrast, the Israeli soldier - once the symbol of strength - appeared wounded, traumatized, and often betrayed by the very state he served.

Filmmakers drew inspiration from Hollywood’s Vietnam movies, which portrayed the "Vietnam quagmire": a war that trapped soldiers in a dangerous cycle with no way out. This echoed Israel’s own experience in Lebanon. Disillusionment grew even stronger after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, which suddenly cut short the fragile hopes of the Oslo peace process.

Between the Second Intifada (2000) and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a new siege mentality took hold. Israeli cinema returned to the soldier’s perspective, but now he was no longer a conquering Goliath. Instead, he appeared as a confused David - facing across the battlefield not a giant enemy, but another David.

4) David vs. David: return to arms and the privatization of war

Facing ourselves: A fractured identity

Recurring themes, which emerged with striking force, included love and death, desire and destruction - themes that filmmakers used to capture the soldier’s inner struggles. They grappled with images of wounded masculinity, showing men scarred physically and psychologically. And they turned toward plural identities, reflecting a society increasingly fractured, diverse, and uncertain of its collective self.

Professor Nurith Gertz describes a polyphony that dissolves the old Zionist discourse and opens a “new Zionism” of minorities and lateral voices. Film gives space to subcultures and identities: LGBTQ (Yossi & Jagger, 2002), Soviet immigrants (The Loners, 2009), women soldiers (Close to Home, 2005), religious soldiers (Time of Favor, 2000).  Researcher Gilad Padva reads the “New Israeli Queer Cinema” as a deconstruction of machismo.

Formally, these films move the front from epic expanses to claustrophobic ethnoscapes: bunkers, interiors, a tank’s gunsight, dreams. Heroism yields to impotence: protagonists cannot - or will not - fight. Yael Munk, an Expert in Israeli cinema and gender studies, notes that the patriotic meaning of service loses validity: soldiers struggle simply to survive, exposing the arbitrariness of their condition.

Lebanon became the ultimate stage for this reflection. Beaufort (Joseph Cedar, 2007), Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008), and Lebanon (Samuel Maoz, 2009) brought Israeli cinema back to international festivals, but in apocalyptic tones. Each film offered a different vision of one night - Beaufort’s tunnels, the tank’s narrow view, or surreal animation - yet all shared the same core: soldiers trapped between victimhood and the hope of redemption.

Journalist Nahum Barnea called it "yorim ve-bochim" ("they shoot and cry"), accusing Israelis of self-victimization in the face of Palestinian suffering. The haunting question remained: how can Israel still see itself as David when the other side also appears as David?

Conclusions: Did David betray his soldiers?

In 2 Samuel, the aging King David, consumed by desire for Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, sends her husband to the frontlines of the war against the Ammonites, ensuring his death. When informed of the losses, David dismisses them coldly: "Such is war". The allegory is clear: an aging state willing to endanger its own people rather than give up the "Promised Land" / destiny. Applied to Israel, the question is whether the state, like David, risks endangering its own citizens for the dream of holding on to the land.

Zionism, as scholar Boaz Neumann explained, was always more than politics; it was an existential desire to "be in the Land of Israel". Even after criticism of Zionism, that desire remains strong, though its meaning is shifting. What happens when there is no clear Goliath, only two Davids facing each other? The article suggests that, without Goliath, David still survives - but not as a hero of triumph. Instead, he survives through desire, an inner drive that shapes culture and identity. Israeli cinema reflects this: even when critical, it continues to reproduce a shared imagination where David is central.

Yet the Bible reminds us that David’s story does not end with him. Before dying, he passes the crown to Solomon, remembered for his wisdom and judgment. If David symbolizes struggle and sacrifice, Solomon represents balance and foresight. We do not yet know which figure will next dominate Israel’s cultural pantheon. If David has "betrayed"his soldiers, the hope is for a Solomonic model - reconciling strength and wisdom, memory and responsibility - to guide not only cinema but the nation as a whole.

Article written by Fiammetta Martegani

Curator at the Jewish Museum of Lecce (Italy), journalist, art and cinema specialist

Article based upon Fiammetta’s PHD published in 2017, on The Israeli Defence Forces’ Representation in Israeli Cinema

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