*5.3. Third Tier: Utilization*

The third tier is governmental utilization of religion to achieve national security goals. This utilization of religion for security objectives is common, multifaceted and present in the four classic instruments of national power. Israel's use of Islamic messaging to delegitimize Hamas is an example of utilization in the informational instrument. The utilization, to be discussed below, of Hamas's religious objection to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine by Olmert is an example of religion in the diplomatic instrument. Examples of utilization of religion in the military instrument include Ben-Gurion's use of the Bible to enhance the fighting spirit of immigrants soldiers, and the IDF's tactic of deliberately launching an aerial bombing operation on the Sabbath, in order to surprise the enemy, who knows that, except for emergencies, the IDF refrains from acting on the Sabbath, a holy day for the Jewish public and orthodox Jewish soldiers (Hassner 2016, pp. 35, 173 note 8; Shelah 2015, p. 96). As for the economic instrument, Israel does not seem to utilize religion there (nor does France), but other countries do. For example, the US conditioned foreign aid or trade agreements on increasing religious freedom and, since 1984, every Republican president has withheld USAID funding from any overseas family planning organization o ffering or providing information about abortions, including the UN Population Fund (Lucius 2013, pp. 63–66; Rankin 2017). Along with religion's utilization in the four instruments, there is also a fifth type of utilization—the reorganization of state–religion relations for national security purposes. This utilization is absent in the Israeli case, but exists in the French case.
