When it Comes to War, Jews and Shi'ites Share the Same Trigger During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) the Islamic Republic of Iran used various ideological Shi'ite stories to entice its people of various age and sex to fight against the Iraqis. The story of the third Shi'ite imam Husayn and his murder at the Battle of Karbala (680) by the Sunni Umayyad forces provided the struggle with a religious dimension that was effective in enticing Iranians to fight. With the help of the newly-established Revolutionary Guards the Iranian government supported this effort and placed mullahs in charge of it. They succeeded when they used such stories to mobilize the public. Iranians volunteered in roves to fight the Sunni Iraqi dictator, Saddam Husayn who, according to mullahs, embodied Yazid, the Umayyad caliph. However, Iranian Shi'ite mullahs were not the only Middle Eastern clergymen that used religious stories to encourage their people to kill or be killed. In recent developments Israeli military and civilian rabbis acted similarly to their Iranian counterparts and used Jewish stories of struggle against those who wanted to destroy their livelihood on their forefather's land during operation Cast Lead (Winter 2008-2009) against Palestinians in Gaza Strip. During that operation the rabbis used certain ideological stories to boost the morale of the IDF fighters. Shi'ite sources in this study consist of tragedy literature on the Battle of Karbala as remembered in public sermons' (rozeh khani) proceedings that commemorate that event in the month of Muharram; interviews with mullahs who conduct these sermons and were in charge of this effort during the war; and interviews with fighters that were influenced by these religious stories. Similarly, Jewish sources used in this study include material with the same ideological nature such as the liturgical poem eleh ezkarah, which is recited in the Day of Atonement's musaf service or Medieval poetic martyrologies like lamentations (or the kinot), of the Ninth of Av, in addition to interviews with military rabbis and soldiers that confirm the rise of religious rhetoric in the military. Through careful examination, comparison, and juxtaposition of Jewish and Shi'ite sources, along with testimony of Israeli and Iranian military and religious personalities, this study suggests that in lieu of failed policies that usually depend on nationalist ideologies and lack of public and military sympathy for fighting, Iranians and Israelis used similar religious stories to generate support and involvement for acts of war against others.