Answer

Strong words indeed.
In general, discussion topics like this usually suffer from problematic methodology. There are no clear metrics that can determine a society’s attitude toward any given issue. And even when metrics are established (like the number of quotations per day and the like), they are not necessarily representative. These are the compulsory “sciences,” for better and for worse. So usually people choose this or that speaker, and from them this or that statement, and treat them as faithful representatives of the views of the society they come from. In your remarks you pointed this out, rightly.
Still, one must also be careful of a similar fallacy on the other side. It is true that caution about generalizations is good and proper, but that caution can lead us to the point where we won’t allow ourselves to judge or characterize societies at all (in the spirit of blessed political correctness). My sense is (from personal impression, of course) that there really is a difference between kibbutz society and the Mercaz HaRav world. This or that quotation does not necessarily express that, since such quotations are chosen rather arbitrarily. But it is easy to get the impression that the overall ethos really is different. The anguished speakers in military discourse became part of the kibbutz-leftist ethos, whereas the other speakers are not very present there ​(partly because of the tendentious editing you described; for me that was quite a revelation). By contrast, the Religious Zionist ethos is dominated by militant rhetoric, and the other, anguished kinds of talk are not very present there (and here apparently without deliberate censorship). So the difference is not in the statements themselves, since on each side there are some of both kinds. The difference lies in the weight the different kinds of discourse receive in society as a whole. And more generally, in research of this kind it is worth distinguishing between data about the leadership and intellectual figures and data about the outlook of the ordinary person in the street.
And one final comment. I do not necessarily see this difference in judgmental terms. There is no moral obligation to be anguished. There is a moral obligation to act correctly and properly. There is also no moral obligation to be hesitant, nor is decisiveness in war a moral flaw. Therefore, willingness to fight and kill does not necessarily indicate immorality or insensitivity to human life. I’ll put it more sharply: even killing prisoners is not necessarily such a case. It is of course contrary to international law, but if one thinks about it on its own merits, it is not clear that killing someone who poses a threat to me by his very existence—especially someone who launched an arbitrary and pointless war against me simply in order to kill me (because he does not accept the UN Partition Plan)—is immoral. I won’t enter here into the requested discussion of the Elor Azaria case, which in my opinion is a clear example of what I am saying. Beyond that, one must remember the Arabs’ attitude toward our prisoners and civilians for the past hundred years. A wild reaction toward them, especially if it remains at the margins, seems to me quite natural (even though I usually do not identify with it). The comparisons constantly being made to racism and the treatment of minorities around the world (see Major General Yair Golan and many others) are foolish at best, and in many cases simply malicious and biased. Nothing is more natural than hating someone whose entire identity and national aspirations consist of the desire to kill me and my people. The fact that this is natural does not mean it is commendable or noble. It isn’t. But it is natural, and as such, in my opinion it does not point to an excessively deep moral failure. We are all human beings.