This study investigates how second-generation Israeli Americans explain their voluntary enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). By using 63 interviews, I compare enlistment motivation narratives of three groups: IDF enlistees with a background in Tzofim, an Israeli-Zionist youth movement in the U.S.; same movement participants who did not enlist; and IDF enlistees with no movement background. The findings illustrate the importance that life circumstances, instrumental considerations, and a search for belonging have for enlistment. Respondents whose future life course was clear were more likely to opt for college, while those without a clear life course joined the IDF in a quest for belonging and future opportunities. Ideological motives were mostly subsidiary, and enlistees without a movement background were even less likely to express them. The study brings together the scholarship on migration and nationalism with the sociological theory of highrisk participation. It thus investigates the largely uncharted territory of homeland military service among diaspora members, an underexplored yet highly relevant topic in the current era of mass migration. The study also offers a novel contribution to high-risk collective action theory as it brings attention to two largely overlooked groups: non-participants and participants who have not undergone movement socialization.

This paper examines the relationship between British police officers, Jewish guards, and German internees in Palestine's internment camps during World War II. Using the reports of the Jewish guards, the paper investigates the role of Western‐identified actors in the Zionist identity‐making project. The reports evince a surprising rapport between the British and their German prisoners and the mistreatment of the Jewish guards by their British superiors. The paper analyses these Jewish accounts in the context of identity‐ and ethnic boundary‐making and argues that they illustrate Zionism's intent to construct itself as a Western but noncolonial movement and Zionists in Palestine as natives but not “Orientals.” The reports also reveal a breach between the formal hierarchy—British officers, Jewish guards, German internees—and the ethnic order, which situated British and Germans at the apex and the Jews at the bottom. The paper highlights the utility of researching group‐making interactions in different contexts to develop a more nuanced understanding of identity‐making processes.