They Fled the Bombs, Now They Drop Them: Ukrainians in the IDF
When the world watches Gaza burn under relentless bombardment, many ask who is dropping the bombs. Yet few grasp the extraordinary lengths to which Israel has gone to recruit fighters from abroad, including Ukraine. These foreign passport holders are deployed across multiple fronts, helping to flatten entire neighborhoods, rape Palestinian hostages, terrorize their families, and sustain an occupation built on displacement. Israeli propaganda tirelessly presents this as a noble defense of its people, but the reality reveals a system that actively exploits the vulnerabilities of other nations’ sons and daughters to fuel its colonial expansion.
A striking statistic occasionally surfaces in discussions about the ongoing genocide, roughly 3,200 to 3,900 Ukrainian citizens currently serve in the Israel “Defense” Forces (IDF).
For outside observers, this often sparks a geopolitical curiosity about why are they fighting for Israel instead of Ukraine? But for Palestinians enduring the relentless destruction of our homeland, the focus cannot remain on the curiosity of their motives. The urgent reality is how these individuals are being systematically absorbed into the machinery of our oppression.
These volunteers are not merely passive victims of circumstance. While they are undeniably exploited by the Israeli state, they have made an active choice to become enforcers of the occupation.
Israel’s military model relies on a constant influx of bodies to sustain its demographic dominance and war machine. To achieve this, it targets jewish communities, offering a predatory bargain to Jewish Ukrainians fleeing war and seeking an easy fresh start at the expense of Palestinians.
The zionist state dangles refuge, citizenship, and financial incentives. Through programs for “new immigrants” and “lone soldiers,” the IDF provides housing stipends of up to 1,800 shekels a month, rental subsidies of 1,050 shekels, and 100 percent exemptions on municipal taxes. For Ukrainian refugees specifically, the Zionist state hands out immediate cash grants: 2,300 shekels for a single Ukrainian, 2,900 for a couple.
But this “refuge” comes with a blood price. The implicit, and often explicit, cost of this safety is mandatory military service. Israel uses the desperation of displaced people, offering them a spot in the oppressor’s ranks in exchange for their labor in the military, all while continuing to displace the indigenous population.
While alive, these recruits are rewarded for their complicity with material perks that elevate their standard of living as they enforce the occupation. But the moment they are killed, the illusion of their value vanishes.
Take Staff Sgt. Michael Tyukin who came from Ukraine in 2020 and chose to wear the IDF uniform. He was 21 years old when he was killed by a drone attack in southern Lebanon in May 2026. When he died, his life was reduced to a brief, easily ignored mention in the obituary section of a local newspaper. A few lines of text, and then he was forgotten.
This is the reality of fighting for a settler-colonial project. They are bought with material perks while they pull the trigger, and the moment they die, they are granted nothing more than a fleeting footnote in the local press. They are not mourned as tragic figures. They are simply replaced by the next recruit willing to take the payout.
While it is tempting to frame these soldiers as merely “caught in the gears” of a bureaucratic compulsory system, we must reject this softening of reality. Exploitation by the state does not erase individual agency.
When a Ukrainian dons the IDF uniform, they are actively choosing to become a tool of the occupation. They choose to stand at checkpoints in the West Bank, choose to raid Palestinian homes, and choose to drop bombs on Gaza and Lebanon.
The trauma of their own displacement does not grant them immunity from the trauma they inflict on Palestinians. To accept the privileges, salary, and protection of the occupier is to accept full complicity in the genocide.
Ukraine knows the horror of bombed cities, shattered infrastructure, and displaced families. You would think that surviving such trauma would inoculate a person against inflicting it. Instead, some of those who fled the destruction of their own homes have chosen to replicate it on ours.
Israel’s profound moral bankruptcy lies in its ability to weaponize the trauma of one displaced people to justify the ongoing displacement of another. It takes those who have known the fear of the bomb and turns them into the ones dropping it.
Understanding why these Ukrainians are in the IDF, lured by state incentives, dual citizenship, or ideological alignment, does not excuse what they do.
We will not offer absolution to those who choose the uniform of the occupier. They were presented with a choice, and they chose to become the boot on our neck. As the world wakes up to the reality of this genocide, we will hold every single one of them accountable for that choice..
Sources
PRM.ua (Ukrainian Independent News): “More than three thousand Ukrainian citizens serve in the Israeli army.” (February 2026). Documents the official figure of 3,210 Ukrainian citizens actively serving in the IDF, placing them among the top demographics of foreign-born soldiers.
Ynetnews: “Not obligated, but committed: Lone soldiers who choose Israel every day.” (Late 2025). Reports on the annual influx of roughly 1,300 new “lone soldiers” joining the IDF, with a significant portion arriving specifically from Ukraine, Russia, and France.
Garin Mahal & The Michael Levin Lone Soldier Program: Official organizational guidelines on “Lone Soldier Benefits.” Documents the exact financial compensation provided by the state, including the 1,300 to 1,800 NIS monthly housing stipends, the 1,050 NIS monthly rental subsidy, and the 100% exemption on Arnona (municipal taxes).
Israeli Ministry of Aliyah and Integration: State guidelines on the “Absorption Basket (Sal Klita)”benefits for new immigrants. Verifies the immediate cash grants handed to new arrivals, including 2,300 NIS for a single immigrant and 2,900 NIS for a couple.
Olim Haifa : Local absorption center guidelines detailing the elevated base salaries for combat lone soldiers (up to 2,578 NIS).
The Jerusalem Post: Ongoing coverage on the integration, deployment, and casualties of Ukrainians in combat brigades, including profiles of soldiers like Danil Esterkin in the Golani Brigade, highlighting their use in high-casualty ground maneuvers.
The financial figures cited in this article are drawn directly from the published benefit structures of the IDF’s Lone Soldier (Hayal Boded) department and the Israeli Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. The casualty and demographic data are sourced from official IDF statements released to Hebrew media (Haaretz, Ynet, Times of Israel) and verified by regional outlets like The Media Line and PRM.ua.
Right now after reading this IDGAF if Ukrainian wins the war with Russia. And as far as all those European countries? Fuck them big time ! Anyone who supports Israel 🖕.
It is because Zionism has been fully integrated into Judaism that the IDF can be seen wearing "Third Temple™" badges. Yet it is this melting down of Zionism into the core Judaic ethos that no one dares to talk about.
I will try to do just that, in the briefest possible manner.
In its very early days, Zionism's primary aim was to replace Judaism with a newly formed Jewish secular nationalist narrative — to transform the Jews from a "religious group" into a "national identity," a folk associated with a soil, "a people like all other peoples," to quote Herzl.
However, from the 1930s onward, Zionism found itself in an unfolding battle with Judaism. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the chief rabbi of Palestine in the 1930s, was initially an opponent of the secular Zionist agenda; however, he was quick to see the potential in the Zionist pioneers' ideological commitment. He decided to integrate their idea of Eretz Yisrael into his own Judaic teaching.
What we witness is basically an emerging battle between Judaism and Zionism. As it happened, Judaism won, a lot because Zionism saw the end of its historical mission in "bringing along a Jewish state" (1948). Zionism was replaced by "Israeliness" — the attempt to bring about a newly formed Hebraic culture. But Israeliness didn't have a chance to survive a dialectic battle with Judaism. As the battle unfolded, Israeliness was just a few years old ‘revolutionary spirit’ , while Judaism enjoyed the maturity of being 3,000 years old.
One of the most interesting and significant turning points of this battle is the Israeli interpretation of the 1967 IDF’s victory. While that war was won largely, if not solely, by Labour Zionism's offspring (kibbutznik pilots, paratroopers and tank commanders) — people who were devoted and still believed in the replacement of Judaism with a secularist Hebraic "national socialism", most Jews around the world, Israel included, perceived the victory as a miracle, i.e., a "divine intervention."
Ten years after '67, the Likud party won the election and has been leading Israel ever since. During the time the Likud Party has been at the helm, Israel quickly shifted from a Jewish state (a state of the Jews) into a Judaic state (a state guided by Judaic law).
Zionism, if it means anything anymore, has been fully integrated into the Judaism of the Jewish State — which is the Judaism of Rabbi Kook. Ben Gvir and Smotrich are graduates of Rabbi Kook's yeshiva. They follow his legacy. The West Bank settlement movement followed Rabbi Kook's legacy adequately.
Jewish forceful sects like Chabad, which were skeptical about Jewish nationalism and Zionism in the early days of the Jewish State, changed their spots completely following the 1967 Israeli military victory.
The Gaza catastrophe and the Greater Israel ideology are all preached by Rabbi Kook's religious teaching. Except for the Satmars — one Judaic sect that opposes the philosophy of Rabbi Kook and mount to 1% of world Jewry, the whole Judaic world has adopted Kook's Eretz Yisrael fetish.
Sadly, tragically, and also dangerously, this exact historical evolution from Zionism into crude Judaism is the one very thing the Jewish left, Jewish academia, and Jewish solidarity activism are there to conceal.
They want you to think that it is "settler colonialism," "apartheid," Zionism — basically everything except the most obvious Jewishness of the Jewish State. -- Gilad Atzmon
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My rant.....
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/antisemitism-june-8th-1967-uss-liberty