Are Americans citizen soldiers being trained in Israel?
Executive summary
Yes — Americans are being trained and serving in Israeli military units, but the phenomenon covers distinct categories: U.S. citizens who join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as immigrants or volunteers and receive full IDF training; U.S.-based reservists with Israeli citizenship who have been called back for mobilization; and separate U.S. military personnel who train with or operate alongside Israeli forces under bilateral exercises or special-operations deployments — though claims that regular U.S. “citizen soldiers” are systematically being trained as part of an official U.S.-Israel program are not supported by the cited reporting [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. How many Americans are we talking about, and how they end up in the IDF
Mainstream reporting has documented tens of thousands of U.S. citizens serving in Israeli ranks, with The Washington Post cited in The Guardian estimating roughly 23,380 American citizens in Israeli service as of early 2024, a figure that encompasses immigrants, dual nationals and long-term residents who entered IDF service through programs for new arrivals or volunteer tracks [1]. Historical and institutional pathways — including Mahal and immigration-related enlistment for new citizens — have long existed to integrate non‑Israeli Jews and others into full IDF training and service, meaning many Americans who join the IDF are trained by Israel as regular soldiers rather than as an external “mercenary” cohort [5] [6].
2. Dual citizens, new immigrants and reservists: the practical reality
Reporting shows that a large share of Americans serving in Israel are dual citizens or recent immigrants who enlist under the same conscription and reserve rules that apply to Israeli citizens; some who returned to Israel have been called up as reservists during major mobilizations, boarding military charters from abroad to join units or reserves and undergoing IDF mobilization and training routines like any other reservist [2]. Task & Purpose documented Americans who gained Israeli citizenship after immigrating and then served, including being mobilized back into reserve formations — a practical illustration that many U.S. citizens in Israeli service are assimilated into Israel’s conscript‑plus‑reserve structure [2] [6].
3. U.S. forces in Israel and joint training: separate but overlapping
Separately, the U.S. military regularly conducts large bilateral exercises with Israel (for example, Exercise Juniper Oak involved thousands of U.S. service members alongside Israeli troops), and U.S. special operations forces have been deployed to or near Israel for missions such as hostage recovery or to conduct previously scheduled training, per reporting — these are U.S. service members training with or near Israeli units, not Americans joining the IDF as Israeli soldiers [3] [4]. Responsible Statecraft and DoD reporting indicate several dozen U.S. special-operations personnel operated in Israel around the October 2023 period for narrowly defined missions, and some presidential-visit photos were interpreted as showing U.S. special-ops personnel meeting with Israeli counterparts [4].
4. Political context, advocacy and contested narratives
The debate is politicized: some U.S. lawmakers have proposed extending U.S. employment and reemployment protections to Americans who serve in the IDF, framing them as “defending Israel,” while critics and some commentators depict American participants as radicalized volunteers implicated in broader allegations about Israeli operations in Gaza — a framing advanced by outlets like The Guardian that links the presence of Americans in IDF ranks to accusations of serious wrongdoing [7] [1]. These competing frames reveal implicit agendas: legislative moves can normalize foreign military service, while advocacy and opinion pieces may emphasize moral culpability or geopolitical alarm.
5. What the sources do not show or cannot prove
The available reporting does not substantiate a single, centralized U.S. government program that “trains American citizen soldiers in Israel” as a covert recruitment pipeline; instead, it shows distinct phenomena — Americans legally joining the IDF through immigration or volunteer programs and U.S. service members participating in joint exercises or limited deployments for operational tasks [5] [4] [3]. Allegations such as eyewitness reports of U.S.-marked soldiers operating in Gaza remain unverified in mainstream outlets cited here, and the sources do not provide documentary evidence of widespread clandestine U.S. training of American civilians by Israeli authorities [4].
6. Bottom line
Americans are being trained and serving as soldiers in Israel — largely because they have become Israeli citizens or volunteers subject to IDF training and because some U.S. reservists with Israeli ties have been mobilized — and separately U.S. military personnel regularly train with Israeli forces under bilateral arrangements; however, the evidence supports a distinction between Americans integrated into the IDF through migration/volunteer pathways and U.S. military personnel engaged in joint training or limited operational deployments, not a single covert program training “citizen soldiers” en masse under U.S. direction [1] [5] [2] [4] [3].