Reuven Gal

Gal served as the IDF's chief psychologist from 1976 to 1982, during which time he founded the IDF Behavioral Science Department in 1978.[2] He retired from the IDF in 1983 with the rank of colonel.[2] He is also listed among the notable residents of Zikhron Ya'akov.[6]

Gal's scholarship has focused on the psychological and social dimensions of military service, including enlistment motivation and officer recruitment.[1][7] His book A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier was published by Greenwood in 1986 and has been cited in security studies.[1] A 2006 Israeli politics and society syllabus also listed a work by Gal titled Portrait of an Israeli Soldier as mandatory reading.[8] His February 1996 Hebrew article, "For a Review of the Current Model of the Israeli Officer," identified deficiencies in the IDF's officer-recruitment system.[1]

A major strand of Gal's scholarship is his framework for analyzing the historical evolution of motivation to serve in the IDF. His article "Motivation Levels for IDF Enlistment over the Years," published in INSS Memorandum no. 159 in 2016, identifies four motivating factors: survival, ideology, social norms, and individual self-fulfillment.[3] He presents them not as successive stages that replace one another cleanly, but as motivations that shift gradually and unevenly across historical periods, generations, and social sectors.[7]

At a February 1999 Jaffee Center conference, Gal summarized his argument: "Motivation to serve in the first years drew on a combination of survival and ideology. In later years, the source of motivation was normative, and since the Intifada, it has become based on individualistic factors."[9] Survival motivation emerges when military service is understood as necessary for a society's existence; ideological motivation is connected to national identity, values, and belief in the justice of a cause; normative motivation reflects conformity to accepted social principles; and individualistic motivation involves using military service for personal development and self-fulfillment.[7]

In his analysis of the contemporary period, Gal describes multiple motivations operating simultaneously. He associates ideological motivation particularly with national-religious youth, including youth from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, hesder students, and students at other yeshiva high schools.[7] Individualistic motivations are expressed through personal advancement, professional opportunities, and self-actualization. He also examines normative enlistment, ideological opposition to military service or to serving in particular regions, and the ultra-Orthodox concept of torato omanuto—Torah study as a primary occupation—as a countervailing force.[7]

Gal concludes that motivation among Israeli Jewish youth to enlist remained high across the decades under study, even as its composition changed substantially.[7] Surveys discussed in his article found that approximately 80–90 percent of Israeli youth expressed a desire to enlist even when hypothetically offered the option not to do so during the period characterized by primarily normative motivation.[7] He argues that the coexistence of different motivations within one conscript army creates internal tensions, illustrated by a potential conflict between soldiers enlisting "to enjoy himself," "to serve his homeland," or "to earn a salary," and challenges the earlier image of the IDF as a socially uniform melting pot.[3]

In 2007, Gal coauthored, with Karin Amit, Alon Lisak, and Micha Popper, the peer-reviewed article "Motivation to Lead: Research on the Motives for Undertaking Leadership Roles in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)." It appeared in Military Psychology, volume 19, issue 3, pages 137–160.[4] The study tested and expanded an existing model of motivation to lead using a sample of 402 IDF members.[4]

The research confirmed three established motivational factors—affective, social-normative, and calculative motivation to lead—and identified two additional factors: ideological and patriotic motivation.[4] It also documented differences between leaders and non-leaders in their profiles of motivation-to-lead factors.[4]

Beyond his scholarly work, Gal has held several administrative and policy positions. He served as director of the Administration for National Civic Service in the Prime Minister's Office, where his office developed a strategy for expanding civic national service as an alternative to military service for broad segments of the Israeli public.[5] In 2007, he founded Israel's National Civic Service program, which offered Haredim and Israeli Arabs an alternative to military service through civic engagement, and he headed the program until 2009.[2] The program differed from Sherut Leumi, launched in 1953, because the newer program was specifically tailored to ultra-Orthodox needs.[2]

Gal also headed an ultra-Orthodox employment-integration project at the S. Neaman Institute for National Policy Research in Haifa.[2] He and his team prepared a "Beginner's Guide for Those Who Employ Haredim," which identified alienation between Haredi job-seekers and potential employers as the principal obstacle to integration.[2] A survey discussed in connection with the project found that 41 percent of employers believed Haredi workers had a strong work ethic, loyalty, and respect for employers. It also found lower turnover among Haredi workers than among non-Haredi workers and that 95 percent of surveyed employers would recommend employing Haredim.[2]

Gal reported that the number of Haredim in military or civic service grew from approximately 300 in 2005 to 2,200 in 2010, alongside increases in Haredi participation in higher education and employment centers, although substantial gaps between Haredi and non-Haredi Jews remained.[2] He argued that Haredi yeshiva students should have access to English, mathematics, and computing; that universities should provide support frameworks for Haredi students, potentially including gender-separated programs and financial aid; and that integration should not undermine the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle. He described such integration as "the only way" to bring prosperity to Israeli society and the economy.[2]

In March 2024, Gal led a preliminary, unpublished study at the Samuel Neaman Institute that was presented at an INSS seminar on societal resilience. Respondents viewed trust in political leadership and government institutions as the most important factors contributing to societal resilience.[10]

Gal's publications span military psychology, civil-military relations, and Israeli society. They include A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier (Greenwood, 1986)[1] and The Motivation of Youth to Serve in the IDF—Israeli Adolescents during the Intifada (1990), coauthored with Ofra Meizels.[7] He also coauthored The Adaptation of MAKAM Soldiers ("Rafoul's Boys") After Discharge from the IDF (1993) with Ofra Meisels; the work was published by the Israeli Institute for Military Studies.[11]

Gal edited Between the Yarmulke and the Beret: Religion, Politics, and the Military in Israel (2012) with Tamir Libel.[7] His article "Motivation Levels for IDF Enlistment over the Years" appeared in the 2016 INSS collection Military Service in Israel: Challenges and Ramifications, Memorandum no. 159.[12] A 2016 report identified him as chairman of the Israeli Association of Civil-Military Studies.[13]

Gal's work links military psychology with broader questions about Israeli society, public service, and the relationship between citizens and the IDF. He has been identified as one of Israel's leading military psychologists, and his study of the Israeli soldier has appeared in both security research and university coursework.[1][8]

His four-part framework for enlistment motivation provides a historical model for examining changes in why Israelis serve, while his coauthored leadership study extended motivation-to-lead research within the setting of a conscript army.[3][4] His later administrative work applied related civil-military concerns to national civic service and Haredi integration.[5][2]

Gal has participated in public debate over the growing religious character of the IDF. A 2016 report stated that a Defense Ministry journal had documented an increase in the share of national-religious infantry officer cadets from 2.5 percent in 1990 to 26 percent in 2008. It also cited later research by specialists including Gal indicating that Religious Zionists accounted for between one-third and one-half of army cadets. Gal characterized this as "over-representation."[13]

Gal argues that the IDF should remain an institution shared by religious and secular soldiers and has opposed deriving the military's values from rabbinical authority. He stated: "The IDF is the Israel Defence Force, not the Jewish Defence Force. It has religious and secular soldiers. If its values come from the rabbinate (The Jewish Awareness Branch), that's warped. It's wrong."[13] Religion, politics, and military service are also the subjects of the 2012 volume Between the Yarmulke and the Beret, which Gal edited with Tamir Libel.[7]