The British New Statesman has compared training in the IDF with terrorists' training of teenagers to become suicide bombers. It referred to Marva, an IDF program that simulates basic training for foreign youth.

The New Statesmen quotes participants who wrote on blogs, "By the end of the first week we were beginning to look like soldiers... Shooting an M-16 gun… physically lying on the land of Israel, learning how to defend it, gave me an immense sense of pride."

"Marva demonstrates how some Zionists have inadvertently come to mimic their opponents in defining Israel solely by its militarism," according to the British publication "There's not much to be won in games of moral equivalence and assertions as to which side's indiscriminate attacks on civilians are the more reprehensible. But ask yourself this question: If these were British Muslim 19 year-olds firing machine guns and running assault courses in Pakistan or Yemen, would we not have them all arrested at the airport?"