Between Caregiving and Soldiering: Filipina Non-Citizens and Settler Militarisms in Israel

Abstract

While Filipinas often appear in studies of gendered reproductive care, Filipinos appear commonly as militarized labor extending American hegemony. Both sets of Filipinx labor aspire to attaining citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article focuses on Filipinas in the Israeli Defense Forces. Filipina IDF recruits have recently appeared in Israeli media in order to reframe Israeli settler militarism as benevolent. Yet these instrumental portrayals build on longer histories of Philippine-Israeli entanglement. By situating two Filipinas’ stories within transnational contexts of humanitarian and reproductive care, we highlight how legacies of U.S. and Israeli settler militarism tether the Philippines to Israel.