Chapter I explores traditionally ‘non-hegemonic’ attributes as inherent to militarised masculinities in contemporary Israel, examining embodied compliance and submission to a higher order as a normalised means of ascending the ‘hierarchy of bodies’ that bolsters and undergirds the Zionist project from its outset. Exploring basic training, punishments, military hierarchy, friendship, camaraderie and death, I argue that the conscious performance of embodied submission (with enthusiastic consent) is as much valued within conscripted military masculinities as militarised domination in this context. Indeed, I suggest that the conscripted combat soldier – the archetypal national and masculine hero – must be both visibly dominant over the indigenous Palestinian ‘Other’, while simultaneously malleable and submissive to the goals of the Israeli state. As such, I explore both polarities of domination and submission as demanded within the parameters of idealised military masculinity – illustrating the gendered tensions that punctuate normative binaries in this militarised setting.