Since the October 2023 escalation of what genocide scholars deem a clear case of genocide on Palestinians in Gaza, mainstream journalists have hegemonically deployed “Israeli trauma” and spirituality as rationale for war crimes and genocide. CNN reported that Israeli soldiers returning from Gaza face rising cases of mental illness and psychological trauma.Reports document Israelis using yoga to: 1) draw attention to the hostages; 2) support soldiers serving in Gaza; and 3) decompress in Indian villages colloquially referred to as “Little Israel” and “Tel Aviv of the Hills. Although a Haaretz opinion piece identified Israelis who mobilize spirituality to justify Palestinian annihilation as an emergent “YogiNazis”fascist movement, mainstream media largely depict Israeli gravitation toward Asian spirituality as politically neutral. Limited scholarship explores the global far-right's political weaponization of and, authority over, yoga – and media's complicity in this phenomenon.

This paper explores this trend by analyzing Israeli fascination with yoga. Looking specifically from October 2023 to the current media reporting on yoga for Israeli hostages, soldiers and reservists, and tourists in India, I explore how journalists frame spirituality as tools of psychological healing for Israelis while obfuscating the persistent, systemic psychological trauma Palestinians face under genocidal occupation. Building on Fanon's observation that French colonizers perpetuated their own trauma by enacting violence against the colonized, I consider how journalists report on Israeli soldiers' trauma without confronting its root cause: the violence they committed for oppressive regimes. Building on the frameworks of “greenwashing” and “pinkwashing,” and scholarship linking yoga to “warrior asceticism,” fascism, neoliberalism, “neoliberal spirituality,” “soft power,” “saffron nationalism,"and orientalist tourism, I argue that these journalists are complicit in “omwashing”– using yoga to conceal Israel's colonial, ethnonational agendas. By playing into yoga's “soft power” as a camouflage for genocide, these journalists authorize Israel's extermination of Palestinian life.