[1][2] It was first drafted in the 1990s, when a joint committee of military officers and professional ethicists was formed for the purpose of creating an official framework to disseminate among new and existing recruits.
The purpose of the IDF is to protect the existence and independence of the State of Israel and to thwart enemy efforts to disrupt the normal way of life within it.
Only the principle of "Devotion to Mission and Drive for Victory" supersedes all other values, and is supposed to be foremost in the minds of IDF soldiers, or in other words, "First among equals."
[2] By the year 2000, with a view to revising the IDF's ethical code, the Chief Education Officer, Brigadier General Elazar Stern, appointed a new committee.
[5] This committee consisted of several esteemed professors, Avi Sagi, Danny Statman, Avshalom Adam, Shaul Smilansky, Noam Zohar, and Moshe Halbertal, who were known for their expertise in ethics and moral philosophy.
High-ranking IDF officers, including Major General Yishai Beer and Colonel Yaakov Castel, were also part of the committee.
[9] In fact, Khalidi points out that Kasher and Yaldin stated they "reject the common conception of noncombatants having preference over combatants" in their 2005 paper Military Ethics of Fighting Terror: An Israeli Perspective.
[9] The IDF colonel Herzi Halevi said: "First complete the mission, next defend the soldiers' lives, and finally minimize the damage to the Palestinian civilian population.