IDF General Staff regulations 33.0611 and 33.0811 prescribe the order of wearing decorations by soldiers. Many of the rules are similar to those for civilians that were published by the Ministry of Defense.
Decorations and ribbons shall only be worn on appropriate uniforms, not on Class B uniforms etc, except for
reserve soldiers who may wear ribbons also on Class B uniforms.
A soldier is obliged to wear the campaign ribbons that were awarded to him.
Ribbons should be worn above the left chest pocket or on the parallel place for a dress without such a
pocket.
The ribbons shall be combined into rows, in declining order or priority from
left to right, provided that there are no more than 2 ribbons per
row. In case of an uneven number of ribbons, a single ribbon shall be
mounted in the middle of the top row.
| a | from left to right: Medal of Valor, Medal of Courage, Medal of Distinguished Service |
| b | from left to right: Chief Of Staff Citation, Territorial Commander Citation, Divisional Commander Citation |
| c | Campaign Ribbons, from left to right: War of Independence, Sinai Campaign, Six Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, "Peace For Galilee" War, Service in the Security Zone in Lebanon, Second Lebanon War, Operation Protective Edge. |
| d | Service Ribbons for acts before the Independence of Israel. |
| e | Decorations of foreign countries, after permission is granted by the IDF personnel department. |
The website of the Ministry of Defense used to have the following picture, to illustrate above rules. Nowadays the picture is not shown.
I believe that above rules a) and b) were based on the tradition in Europe, the highest decoration is worn close to the heart (as a token of
loyalty to the sovereign who awarded the decoration) and lower decorations are worn next to the first, in the direction to the left arm.
Likewise, service ribbons and campaign ribbons follow the rule that the oldest ribbon is to be worn close to the heart, with more recent ribbons
next to the first in the direction to the left arm.
The problem begins when there is more than 1 row of service ribbons and campaign ribbons,
because according to the MOD rules, the more recent ribbons are to be placed above the first row, not below.
So the
decorations/citations go from left to right, top to bottom while service/campaign ribbons go from left to right, bottom to top. A
conflict appears when a decoration/citation appears together with a service/campaign ribbon on the same row.
For instance three campaign ribbons together with the Medal of Distinguished Service are sometimes seen as:
In my opinion the Medal of Distinguished Service should be mounted on the most left place:
This uncertainty could be avoided if the Ministry of Defense would publish a consistent order of wear of all decorations and ribbons, like what is determined in the "Order of Wear of Orders, Decorations and Medals" in the UK.
Samples:
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| The correct order of the ribbons War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War and "Peace For Galilee" War, Second Lebanon War | |
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| The correct order of the ribbons Six Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War and "Peace For Galilee" War |
The correct order of the ribbons War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War and "Peace For Galilee" War
should be worn on the right side of the uniform, so not at the side of the ribbons
Ribbons on the left chest side, Operational Service badge on the right side
(Major General Shlomo Yanai, chief of the Southern Command)
Source Rules: IDF site (Hebrew)
Source ribbon pictures: www.zahal.org