סקירת מאמרים
The Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel
Preface
We proudly present the English edition of our biannual report that provides an update on the evolving knowledge in the Association’s field of interest. The report is based on an analysis of journals and the websites of research institutions and government organizations in Israel and abroad. We believe that members of the Association will be able to find in the report current information that will assist them in developing their research.
The current issue includes most of the abstracts and references to articles, research reports, and books published between January and December 2023 in Israel, as well as a selection of sources from around the world. The current issue includes abstracts of 71 articles and books, compiled, and edited by Mr. Matan Kenigsbuch and Dr. Itamar Rickover. Our next issue will cover articles published between January and December 2024.
This review was conducted with the support and collaboration of Ariel University and is distributed to research institutions and universities abroad that engage in the Association’s fields of interest.
This file is also available on our website.
We appreciate any comments on additional information and important fields of interest that our readers believe should be included in our reviews. To send your comments, please contact us here.
Sincerely,
Prof. Uzi Ben-Shalom Dr.
Chairman of the Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel
Itamar Rickover
Director of the Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel
About the Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel
The Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel was established in 2012. All members of the Association are researchers in various disciplines whose academic research focuses on civil-military relations, including communications, political science, sociology and anthropology, history, economics, law, education, and psychology. The Association’s researchers represent very diverse political outlooks and strategic approaches yet share the recognition of a need for objective research of the activities of security institutions, their interface with other government institutions, and their societal controls.
Heading the Association’s goals are the promotion, presentation, and analysis of interdisciplinary studies reflecting diverse perspectives on civil-military relations in Israel: the connections between the military and society, the interface between civil and military echelons, the relations between the military and other security institutions, and various social and organizational aspects of the military. Moreover, the Association also disseminates the accumulated knowledge in Israel and in other countries, among academic, military, and security institutions, and to the general public.
Chairperson: Prof. Uzi Ben-Shalom
Director: Dr. Itamar Rickover
Previous chairperson: Prof. Yoram Peri, Prof. Ze’ev Drory, Dr. Reuven Gal Board members (in alphabetical order): Dr. Avi Bitzur, Prof. Eyal Ben-Ari, Dr. Ofra Ben-Yishai, Prof. Uzi Ben-Shalom, Dr. Reuven Gal, Prof. Ze’ev Drory, Prof. Ayelet Harel, Dr. Roni Or Tiarjan, Prof. Stuart Cohen, Prof. Udi Lebel, Dr. Eyal Levin, Prof. Ehud Menipaz, Prof. Hillel Nossek, Prof. Yoram Peri, Dr. Itamar Rickover, Dr. Eitan Shamir, Prof. Gabi Sheffer, Dr. Idit Shafran-Gittleman, Dr. Dov Tamari.
Legal counsel: Adv. Eyal Nun. Accountant: Chen Noy.
The Association, jointly with Maarachot Press, publishes a biannual journal entitled “The Israeli Journal of Society, Military, and National Security.” The first issue, which was published in January 2021, is available here.
The Association’s website: http://www.civil-military-studies.org.il/
To join the Association, please contact Dr. Itamar Rickover e-mail: civil.military.studies@gmail.com
Military and Society
This textbook introduces the reader to the field of military sociology through narrative reviews of selected key studies in the discipline. The book provides a guided introduction. In each chapter, the authors set the stage for the topic presented and then feed the reader with descriptions of essential studies that inform military sociology. The goal is to give readers a ready route to how sociologists and social science researchers have thought about issues in the study of the military and war. This book will be of great interest to students of military sociology, military and society, peace studies and international relations.
The Yom Kippur War is considered one of the most difficult wars that Israel has faced since its establishment. Despite ending with IDF forces threatening Damascus and just 100 kilometers from Cairo, there was no clear sense of victory among the IDF and Israeli society. Today, 50 years after the war, it is possible to analyze its direct military consequences in greater depth, and its impact on the political-strategic situation in the Middle East. The passage of time also allows us to re-examine the war’s results and its social impact, both on Israeli society as a whole and on the individual soldier.
Moving between Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies comes with significant challenges and risks for foreign researchers, due to a polarized political climate, mobility restrictions, and ongoing Israeli violence against Palestinians. In the author’s case, these challenges have included an ongoing struggle to make sense of the day-to-day difficulties and the emotional mess that can define years of researching and living across the boundaries of Palestine and Israel. In this chapter, he reflects on some of his experiences of doing prolonged fieldwork in Israel/Palestine as a foreign researcher, with the goal of making the practical and emotional challenges of this engagement visible. The 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict marked an emotional and professional breaking point in the author’s journey as an anthropologist and journalist based in Israel/Palestine. The ethnographic engagement with Palestine and Israel has covered a wide range of themes and time periods since the 19th century.
The military provides a valuable resource for the civilian medical education sector to potentially model or adopt strategies used to train emerging leaders. The Department of Defense has a long tradition of cultivating leaders, espousing a culture that emphasizes a value system that promotes selfless service and integrity. In addition to leadership training, and a fostered value system, the military additionally trains leaders to use a defined military decision-making process. This article identifies and shares lessons learned in how the military structures and focuses to accomplish the mission, and develops and invests in military leadership training.
Israeli soldiers dancing to global pop hits in the Occupied Palestinian Territories look like they are having fun, and there is always something entertainingly contradictory in watching army bodies circumventing the military codes. But the choreographic analysis of three viral videos from the 2010s reveals how dancing serves the Israel Defense Forces’ territorializing and necropower strategy.
Over 30,000 Jewish foreign nationals have served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the new millennium. They come from over eighty countries, take Israeli citizenship, and become soldiers. What makes such people leave everything behind and participate in high-risk and high-cost military service? What makes some stay and settle in Israel and others leave? And what roles do diaspora organizations and state-sponsored actors play in convincing, facilitating, and supporting diaspora recruitment and wellbeing before, during, and after their service? Drawing on an original survey with over 1,100 soldiers and more than 100 in-depth interviews, this study examines the pathways of diaspora Jews to the IDF, the work of state and diaspora actors, and the interconnections between immigration and military service. I study these issues in three articles. The first article explores how diaspora people from different origins make decisions about military service in Israel. It shows that military service constitutes a crucial site for immigration and integration; that people from different origins are driven by very different reasons, but in all cases, diaspora military service is inextricably connected to immigration concerns. The second article explores how diaspora organizations construct national identity and meanings of belonging that are conducive to high-risk homeland military service. Using a three-case comparison, the article shows how homeland military service is being normalized and legitimized as a crucial element of belonging to Israeli nationhood. The third article explores the long-term effects of diaspora military service on identity and migration plans. Drawing on the theory of ethnic return migration, it develops the concept of military return migration. The article shows that military return migration operates differently than the standard ethnic return migration in the civilian sphere and labor market. Altogether, this research project contributes to our understanding of immigration and integration; meanings of citizenship, nationalism, and belonging; diaspora organizations and state-diaspora relations; and transnational high-risk activism. It shows that military service is an important site within which these topics and processes unfold and materialize in totalistic and extreme ways.
This article examines the links between alternative spirituality and Israeli militarism in the context of the confrontations between new religious and spiritual movements and Israeli society and state, and the efforts of such movements to gain legitimation through participation in republican citizenship practices and adaptations of Israeli cultural values. The article discusses the representation of alternative religious and spiritual movements as a danger to the Israeli Army by anticult movements, and the response of new religious movements to such accusations. Through the study of two case studies, Emin and Anthroposophy, the article examines the adjustments of religious and spiritual doctrines and practices of new religious movements to Israeli military ethos, the role of militarism in the endeavors of such movements to legitimize themselves through participation in Israeli republican citizenship practices, and the appropriations and interpretations of the Israeli military ethos by Israeli alternative spiritual movements.
Military organizations have adapted to the logic and dynamics of social media to transmit their institutional narratives. Instagram is the most popular social network, but one of the most understudied in relation to the Armed Forces. This research note presents a comparative study of the content of the official accounts of the Spanish, French, the United States, Israeli, and Australian armies throughout 2021 (n = 1,922). The specific objectives are to describe and analyze the hashtags, the accounts mentioned, and the main topics of the post. Results show that armies can convey multiple messages in a single post, and reveal that armies make similar use of Instagram, notwithstanding the various differences between Israel and the other armies due to organizational and contextual elements.
The constitutional crisis and the widespread protests in Israel, alongside the escalation of Palestinian terrorism, have strengthened Nasrallah’s perception that Israel’s internal weakness is growing and convinced him of Hezbollah’s ability to deter and confront Israel in the event of a military confrontation. His public statements claim that Israel is on the verge of “civil war” and that its end is near, in line with his past assertion that Israel is a “spider’s web” state. This perception also underpinned the previous confrontation with Israel over the agreement between Israel and Lebanon to determine the maritime border, which Hezbollah saw as being signed as a result of the organization’s threats to use military force against Israel if Lebanon’s rights were not recognized. The current internal crisis in Israel could give Nasrallah a false sense of security, one that does not consider the real balance of power between the parties and the strength of Israeli society’s cohesion in the face of external threats.
Counter-radicalization programs address social processes that create a tendency for political violence, and in a significant number of countries around the world, they are included in counterterrorism efforts. These programs are widespread worldwide as a tool whose effectiveness has been tested and proven, and due to the reduction of collateral damage, they can also be a triple-benefit tool: more security, fewer human rights violations, and an improved prospect for reconciliation and peace. Despite this, there is no available information on a comprehensive and inclusive policy in this area in Israel. This is a problematic lacuna, both in terms of violence from Palestinian citizens and violence from extremist Jewish organizations. The data collected suggests that it is worth considering the establishment of a government body in Israel whose purpose is to research and fight radicalization.
The article by former IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi calls for a comprehensive view of the IDF’s place in the state, not only as a security asset but also as a national-social, cultural, and economic accelerator. The article argues that the IDF actually serves as a “personal gym” for recruits, who develop a variety of skills and abilities required in the 21st century during their service, and is also a “national gym” that strengthens the social fabric and solidarity and encourages economic growth. Thus, the article seeks to view the IDF as an organization whose contribution to society goes far beyond its security mission; an organization whose contribution to personal, social, and national development is exceptional and provides an opportunity that must be nurtured.
Since the Second Intifada, a new form of militarization has emerged in Israel, rooted in a paradox: the more Israel faces international constraints on the use of military force, and the more alternative policies emerge and a market society grows that diminishes the aura of the battlefield, so the state institutions and the forces supporting them strive to strengthen public legitimacy for the use of force and military sacrifice. The result is a new type of militarization. The book examines how the military has developed a new discourse of violence, “top-down,” glorifying the use of force; how the social groups populating the army have cultivated, “bottom-up,” a religious-nationalist discourse of violence that takes pride in the use of violence; and how state institutions use precisely liberal phenomena, such as sensitivity to casualties, feminism, and even human rights discourse, to consolidate the legitimacy of the use of force.
This book is a semi-biographical account of Daniel Seaman, former director of the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO), and his 25 years of working with foreign journalists in the GPO, coupled with an analysis of the impact that foreign media coverage of Israel has had on both public perception and diplomatic policy. It relates the untold story of decades-long manipulation involved in the presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by journalists and editors, together with Palestinian operatives, who abused their professional standards in order to create and maintain an ideological narrative.This is a challenging read for those whose opinion on Israel is fixed, but it is a crucial wake-up call for the survival of Western democracy and a free press.
Modern case studies are presented to show how the idea of war in Western societies is legitimized through an ethical script by which war and warfare result in few losses to both sides. A Post-War Ethical Discourse model is used to describe the prevalent postwar condition of casualty aversion, by which modern leaderships attempt to convince the public of the need to justify the idea of military empowerment and to legitimize the idea of war, through technological revolutions and doctrines aimed at assuring that the next war will be more precise and more ethical, distancing soldiers from the battle field and thereby resulting in less casualties to both sides. The paper illustrates this condition by analyzing events that took place after World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War, as well as an Israeli case study.
Over the past twelve years, and in the shadow of various profound processes taking place in Israeli society, there are growing question marks regarding the validity of the original Zionist idea as a central ‘organizing idea’ for Israel in this era. This report is the result of a concentrated effort, which included forty in-depth interviews with influential figures in Israel from diverse backgrounds, as well as a comprehensive opinion poll conducted among a nationally representative sample, aimed at validating the initial findings and the feasibility of their implementation. The goal of this complex endeavor is to propose an agreed-upon framework, including an alternative ‘organizing idea’ and a number of leading paradigms, which together can serve as a ‘common ground’ for the diverse voices and ‘tribes’ that exist in Israeli society today.
Since the early 2000s, military violence has been legitimized using consumer marketing practices, particularly microtargeting. This responsive strategy invites various audiences to interpret military violence and thereby become its legitimation agents. The lethality concept recently adopted by the IDF has been central to such a strategy. Communicated in a deliberately vague manner, lethality served as an effective mechanism for legitimizing violence by allowing competing and dynamic interpretations, aligned with the values and interests of different social groups. The present study examined this mechanism by analyzing readers’ comments on lethality-related news articles, and found it to be highly effective in achieving legitimacy by marking the concept’s ethical boundaries and the sectorial interests bound up with it. Following this dialogue with the public, the military chose to highlight the relation between lethality and the relative security calm and economic prosperity achieved in Israel, marketing the IDF as the “largest startup in the country.” This responsive strategy, however, compromises the democratic process by shifting the choice of strategic concepts from elected representatives onto a direct dialogue between the military and its favored legitimation agents. It also erodes the military’s apolitical status and has a heavy ethical, operational and moral price.
Standardization is a mechanism used to create uniformity and express the equal status of citizens facing governmental institutions. However, when standardization in various life aspects ignores fundamental differences between groups and individuals, it might increase inequality, compromise justice, and create explicit or implicit discrimination. This study exposes the mistake of identifying standardization with equality by looking at a specific and complex human situation. The linkage between standards and justice will be examined through three angles: philosophical, economic, and social. As a case study we will examine the case of Bedouin IDF widows. This group of women suffers from the uniformity of rights granted to widows of IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers, since the benefits included within these rights are not suitable to their lifestyle. We will demonstrate how culture-insensitive standards distort distributive justice and prevent certain groups, usually marginal and excluded ones, from accessing the resources and benefits to which they are entitled. We will claim that only a policy that considers personal, social, and cultural needs will enable true democratic equality, as opposed to technical, bureaucratic uniformity; and that only considering the two sides of the standardization coin will lead to genuine equity, which recognizes diversity and acknowledges its social value.
Ariel Barnea interviews his grandfather, Benjamin Barnea, about the energy transformations he has witnessed during his lifetime. Ben, a Holocaust survivor, discusses his early life experiencing a pogrom in Romania in the 1930s, the family’s deportation to a ghetto in Ukraine, and his immigration to Israel. He describes his time living and working on a kibbutz and serving in the Israeli army. He draws comparisons between Israel and the United States, noting the importance of consumption to the American Dream. Ben describes the gradual improvement of infrastructure in Israel as it became a “start-up nation,” and the challenges the country faces both in the Middle East and from drought and climate change.
Soldiers often use different kinds of reasoning to explain, justify or legitimize their behaviour. Often these explanations can be classified as moral, because the end goal is to do what is theoretically ‘good’. However, when looking more closely at the incentives for acting justly, we can see they are often triggered by other, more instrumental, motivations. I then want to categorize such reasoning and subsequent acts as instrumental morality. In this chapter, I focus on Israeli and I look at how their actions and explanations fall into three levels; the personal (protecting the self) focused on the group (the unit, or military as a whole) or even as considering the whole nation state. I will further show how this instrumental morality is often influenced by a ‘disciplinary gaze’. I argue in this chapter for a contextualized approach to morality that takes into account power relations, physical circumstances and interpersonal relationships.
The military in Israel – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – is considered one of the society’s most prominent institutions, influencing its economic, cultural, and political spheres. Israel is one of a few nations in which military service for women is mandatory and this is considered as an evidence of gender equality. Although women are drafted and serving in the military since 1948, Israel still lags behind other nations insofar as women in combat roles remain an exception rather than the rule, and they are still not allowed to integrate into all units and military roles. The chapter explores the process of incorporating women as soldiers in the IDF and describes the process of their incorporation into combat-support roles and combat roles. The chapter follows their struggles and perspectives regarding women’s positionality in combat in the militarized Israeli society.
In contrast with studies examining the incarceration experience in civil prisons, there is a lack of literature and theory focusing on the military prison incarceration experience. The present retrospective qualitative study explored the experience of 27 Ethiopian-Israelis, an overrepresented population in Israeli military prison, incarcerated during their military service due to desertion offenses. Two main themes developed from the interviews: (a) the military prison as a tool to achieve personal goals and (b) Self-perception as victims of the system. Findings suggest that military prison incarceration may be a different experience to that of civilian incarceration, at times lacking the negative psychological described in literature on civil incarceration. On a theoretical level, results suggest that the incarceration experience may not be universal but, rather, dependent on the social and cultural context and meaning of the incarceration for the individual involved.
Anchored in feminist theory, this article examines the relationship between mothers and their sons serving in Israel Defense Forces. A review of the feminist literature reveals that the military is one of the main sources of gender inequality and reproduction of traditional gender roles. The military plays a pivotal role in male socialization and encourages soldiers to distance themselves both physically and psychologically from their mothers and deny any feminine traits that may be attributed to them. Yet this qualitative study, which is based on 28 interviews with mothers and sons, reveals a more complex picture. Although the military does serve as a gatekeeper that distances mothers and reinforces hypermasculinized culture, the participants depict the mothers’ active involvement in the daily life of their soldier sons without any sense of inferiority in confronting the military apparatus. The mothers assume the role of psychologists, save the sons from entanglement with their direct commanders, and even organize their sons’ service route. The extension of maternal practices into the military realm blurs the binary conceptualization of “men in arms and women at home” and sheds more light on contemporary changes that have taken place in military–family relations in Israel.
In May 2021, a major conflict took place in and around Gaza between Israel and militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Two months later, in July, JPR asked Jewish people in the UK their views about the actions of Israel’s government during that conflict, providing us with a view of British Jewish opinion at that time. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way it had carried out the military action, and the extent to which they believed this action had been motivated by military or political considerations.
Individuals who conform strongly to masculine norms tend to have more mental health problems relative to other individuals. However, knowledge about the contribution of conformity to masculine norms to military-related posttraumatic sequelae among women combat veterans is sparse. This study examines the contribution of conformity to masculine norms to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD symptoms among women veterans as well as the mediating roles of coping strategies in these possible associations. A volunteer, community sample of Israeli women combat veterans (n = 885) and non-combat veterans (n = 728) responded to on-line self-report questionnaires in a cross-sectional study. Combat veterans reported higher levels of conformity to masculine norms and PTSD symptoms, but not complex PTSD symptoms and coping strategies, as compared to non-combat veterans. Moreover, among combat and noncombat veterans, conformity to masculine norms was associated with higher levels of PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms, beyond adverse childhood experiences and combat exposure. Importantly, conformity to masculine norms was indirectly associated with higher levels of PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms through maladaptive coping strategies, for both combat and noncombat veterans. Overall, women combat veterans were more likely to endorse masculine norms that are associated with higher levels of PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms. Moreover, maladaptive coping strategies might serve as mechanisms that link conformity to masculine norms to military-related posttraumatic consequences and warrants further investigation.
The current research explores the association between political views, combat experiences, and the adaptation of soldiers to post-service life. Violent experiences in military service were explored as contributors to both positive and negative dimensions of adaptation, while political views served as possible mediators. Three hundred and twenty Israeli veterans participated in the study. Political views were correlated with adaptation, especially left-to-right voting and anti-militarism. The results support the mediating role of political beliefs (left–right voting and militarism) in the relationship between combat experience and adaptation to post-service life. We contend that political perceptions affect adaptation through sense-making of the combat experiences and the individual processing of these experiences, and the willingness to continue in reserve service, which allows social support and recognition. In addition, they are linked to a sense of bitterness following the reduction of public participation in military and reserve service.
We evaluated longitudinal associations between subjective appraisals of transgressions of moral beliefs, values, and expectations (potential morally injurious events; PMIEs) and suicidal ideation (SI) among recently discharged combat veterans. Participants were 374 active-duty Israeli combatants who participated in a five-year longitudinal study with four measurement points: T1- one year before enlistment, T2- one month before discharge from army service, and then again six months and twelve months following discharge (T3 and T4, respectively). A history of lifetime suicidal ideation and behavior was associated with higher levels of subjective appraisals of PMIEs, as compared to no history of suicidal ideation and behavior. Above and beyond pre-enlistment personal characteristics, cross-lagged pathway analyses indicated significant bi-directional pathways between subjective appraisals of PMIEs and SI. For all PMIEs dimensions, SI was associated with greater subjective appraisals of PMIEs, on subsequent measurement. However, cross-lagged effects of PMIEs-‘other’ (T2) predicting SI (T3) and PMIEs-‘betrayal’ (T3) predicting SI (T4) were also found. Our findings are the first to provide evidence of longitudinal, temporal associations between subjective appraisals of PMIEs and SI, which might serve as potential intervention targets among recently discharged traumatized veterans.
the issue at stake here is first and foremost the categories and scales that inform claims over a state’s limited and rare employment of sexual violence. Rejecting the tyranny of large-scale cases of state sexual violence and existing legal categories of sexual violence allows posing the following questions: What informs what we see and identify as state sexual violence? Why are the cases I present (none of which is classified or obtained directly by me from a Palestinian victim) haven’t been gathered to this day as evidence of Israeli state sexual violence against Palestinians? Why did knowledge of these cases not lead to their consideration as the tip of the iceberg in relation to what we know about Israeli state sexual violence? Why, instead of exploring the silence around Israeli state sexual violence against Palestinians, was this silence used to acquit Israel? To address these questions, I examine in the first section the pertinency of the main components of these claims: Israeli male soldiers, Palestinian women, rape, and war. I show how each of these categories works to: (1) limit the discourse over Israel’s use and employment of rape and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinians; (2) render the cases we do know of illegible; and (3) distract us from the colonial nature of Israeli control in the oPt and the settler-colonial structure of Israel.
What explains the high levels of public confidence in the US military and does high confidence matter? In Thanks for Your Service, the eminent civil-military relations scholar Peter D. Feaver addresses this question and focuses on what it means for the military. Proprietary survey data show that confidence is partly based on public beliefs about the military’s high competence, adherence to high professional ethics, and a determination to stand apart from the bitter divisions of partisan politics. However, as Feaver argues, confidence is also shaped by a partisan gap and by social desirability bias, the idea that some individuals express confidence in the military because they believe that is the socially approved attitude to hold. Not only does Feaver help us understand how and why the public has confidence in the military, but he also exposes problems that policymakers need to be aware of. Specifically, this book traces how confidence in the institution shapes public attitudes on the use of force and may not always reinforce best practices in democratic civil-military relations.
Six months into Israel’s acute socio-political crisis, a diverse group of experts and researchers convened at the Institute for National Security Studies to discuss the crisis’s origins, characteristics, and anticipated consequences, taking a holistic future-oriented perspective and focusing specifically on national security. By nature, these questions do not have definitive or agreed-upon answers. The analysis of the crisis and its components is directly dependent on the different interpretations of the observers, as presented here as well. A significant part of the crisis’s roots lies in differing and often polarized views of reality, which necessarily dictate deep disagreements about what is happening and its implications. This publication attempts to create a picture reflecting both these disagreements and elements of agreement regarding the examination of the ways and conditions that will allow for an eventual extrication from the severe crisis, towards a return to normal functioning. This is based on broad dialogue, which may enable the identification of common denominators that still exist among the public and in the political and social systems of the State of Israel.
The article is devoted to the problem of studying Israel’s experience in psychological rehabilitation and support of war veterans who have experienced combat stress. It reveals the main methodological principles („VISED”) of providing support by Israeli military psychologists to servicemen and war veterans. The main emphasis is on the importance of following the principles of „VISED” to support military personnel in situations of stress and psychological trauma. The article highlights Ukraine’s interest in familiarization, adaptation and application of Israeli experience in the field of medical and psychological rehabilitation of veterans, their families and families of fallen servicemen. The need to involve experts and implement innovative approaches to create a similar system in Ukraine, taking into account the specifics of the region, which will contribute to comprehensive rehabilitation and assistance to victims of Russian aggression, is emphasized. Implementation of Israeli practices and work methods will help to improve the quality of life of the affected persons and contribute to their social adaptation.
Finding and locating missing IDF soldiers is have moral, valent, operational and even strategic importance. The Yom Kippur War was the first war in which the IDF searched for missing persons during the war due to their unprecedented number. The purpose of the article is to review the efforts to locate the missing soldiers during and after the war – efforts that continue to this day. At the same time, the article describes the story of the establishment of the formation for locating missing persons in the IDF, which has known many changes over the years. The lessons of Yom Kippur continue to dictate the combat theory of the formation that works day and night to bring all the riddles of the “Maklanim” (martyred soldiers who their burial is unknown) and the missing, both from Israel’s wars and from ordinary times, to be resolved.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine created a fundamental policy dilemma for Israel, since inherent tensions arose in its set of considerations, which made it difficult to create a coherent policy. The main tension that was presented as a basis for Israeli considerations was, on the one hand, the basic commitment to the United States and the West, and the desire to continue a positive dialogue on the Iranian issue and the Palestinian whole; And on the other hand, the desire to maintain the freedom of action within the framework of the MBM (the campaign between the wars) in Syria to prevent the Iranian presence and the arming of Hezbollah, and the fear of pushing the Russians into the arms of Iran, as indeed – happened. Although most Israeli speakers and commentators regarded this as the leading and even exclusive consideration, there were additional tensions that influenced the decision-making. The Jewish communities in both countries and in Israel, which were the cradle of the Zionist movement. Until the war, most Israelis called the Jews from these countries “Russians”, and after it broke out, it became clear how much they were related to two different communities of the two communities, the one that experienced the war at its doorstep and the one that could be harmed by Israel’s position against Russia.
In the Israeli case discussed here, Arab and ultra-Orthodox citizens immigrate as a continuous process into the living spaces of the majority and create mixed spaces. The article attempts to examine the impact of these civilizational processes on social resilience and national security and to answer the question: Is the State of Israel sufficiently aware and prepared to face the challenge these demographic changes bring to its doorstep?
How—and why at all—should we listen to voices of perpetrators of political violence, lend an ear to their stories and hear their (self-inflicted) pain? In this paper I try to show how the psychoanalytic concept of “witnessing”, which came forth in the context of the treatment of trauma victims, gets problematized when applied to testimonies relating to perpetrators’ trauma. While initially the idea of witnessing marked an increased affinity between the psychoanalytic and the political/ethical, current literature on witnessing and trauma in the context of perpetrators reveals a re-growing gap between these two spheres. I examine these complexities through the case of Israeli soldiers and the testimonies they recite, both within clinical settings and in the public realm. I use the concepts “implicated witnessing” and “failed witnessing” in order to relate to possible ethical perils, especially in the context of ongoing, socially sanctioned violence. I point to the potential proximity between notions of the therapist qua witness and the therapist qua bystander. However, I also insist on the potential gain of applying psychoanalytic ideas (such as working-through) to processes in the public sphere and on the importance of thinking politically about clinical processes. In this spirit, I aim to find a way to go beyond two binary positions towards perpetrators’ narratives which are lacking in their account of the witness’ own involvement and responsibility: on the one hand, a resolute critical denunciation, and on the other, an alleged neutrality. In the case of testimonies of perpetrators and their trauma, I assert, this may be an important step in a social process of shifting from defensive splitting to assuming responsibility, and thus in diminishing political violence.
Ahead of debates in the Knesset, after the recess, several bills about the exemption from recruitment to the IDF are to be discussed. The Institute for National Security Studies conducted a public opinion survey to examine the public’s attitudes on the issue and the possible consequences of passing this law. According to the main findings, about 68% oppose the law that would allow a full exemption for ultra-orthodox yeshiva students from enlisting in the IDF; Almost a third of the parents of 16-18-year-olds (29%) answered that if such a law were enacted, they would encourage their children not to serve in combat service or at all; Whereas 37.5% answered that they would support reservists who would declare the end of their volunteering if such a law were enacted. The results of the survey confirm the concern that the emerging law exempting ultra-Orthodox from military enlistment is likely to cause fatal damage to the “People’s Army” model, undermining the accepted public status of service in the IDF and the ethos of mandatory conscription. Such a law will further deteriorate social solidarity, which is also being challenged these days.
Objective: The current research aims to explore the nature of trauma experienced by female combatants. Method: Data were collected from two focus groups and a series of personal interviews with 100 women military veterans who had served in the Israel Defense Forces as combat or combat-support soldiers. Results: Interviews with these veterans revealed a variety of narratives about their war experiences, including an intertwining of the emotional and the physical. The ongoing danger and traumatic events that the combatants and combat-support soldiers faced on a daily basis were woven into their stories. These narratives indicated that—alongside their exposure to traumatic and potentially life-threatening situations—the soldiers also felt empowered and valued as a result of their military service. The women soldiers’ perspectives regarding their military service covered three main themes, “experiencing trauma,” “meaningful combat experiences,” and “the need to be heard.” Conclusions: Through qualitative research and narrative analysis, this study offers mental health professionals, policy makers, and scholars ways to gain a nuanced insight into women’s combat trauma that avoids categorization. Based on the research findings, we suggest that additional aspects of trauma can be understood through the study of women soldiers, who face a “double battle”—combat, with the attendant trauma, and the gendered biases of the masculine military environment. Our findings suggest that there is value in engaging with and listening to diverse narratives of trauma and emphasize the need for a critical perspective in the study of trauma and combat trauma.
The Military Organization and the Military Profession
The Israeli government must understand and assimilate that the execution of constitutive moves that undermine internal solidarity, that undermine public trust in the government and undermine governance, may harm social resilience and, consequently, Israel’s national security. Even if the government is determined, for its own reasons, to promote reforms in the legal system, it must do so with discretion and responsibility, while trying to generate broad public consent and in a manner that will not harm social resilience or endanger the national security of the State of Israel.
Research on the military potential/national power has focused on features such as numbers of soldiers, the military budget, population size, industrial production, technology, and others as underlying national power. The geopolitical situation of the State of Israel made the IDF General Staff the arbiter of any planning decision related to the development of the state economy, and responsible for planning and directing national security. Because the asymmetry between the military potential of the Arab countries and that of Israel was a reality on the ground that Israel’s national security concept had to take into consideration, and because modern warfare is between nations, their material forces and their mental capacities, the Israel Defence Forces [IDF] recommended setting up civil–military Planning Units based on military guidelines to identify, calculate and plan specific areas of national potential such as administration and regime, morale and education, static defence, the economy in wartime, and manpower.
The involvement of the IDF in the direction and planning of industry and civilian infrastructure immediately after the War of Independence was due to several reasons which are not only dependent on each other but also influence each other. From the IDF’s point of view, all civilian aspects of the country, with an emphasis on civilian industry, were seen as a central part of IDF’s fighting potential and as a decisive factor in the victory and the subsequent restoration of the country. From the historical description presented in the book, several conclusions emerge regarding the relationship between the IDF and civil society: the IDF did not deviate from the democratic rules of the game; this involvement did not stem from a desire for militarization or dominance, but rather from a genuine fear that the political echelon is not understands the needs of security; in these years there was a rejection of the military’s demands; moreover, the questions that are examined throughout the book, such as who is responsible? Who has the power and authority to decide? – These and other questions still accompany the IDF’s relations with civil society.
The Emergency Regulation (“Security Zones”), which was approved by the Knesset in April 1949, defined areas within the State of Israel as ‘protected areas’ and made it possible to define certain areas within them as ‘security zones’ while giving powers to the security forces to violate individual rights inside them when necessary. This is a regulation that was born as a result of the security-spatial reality created after the War of Independence: the lack of strategic depth; the fear of another round of fighting; The cut in the budget and the abilities of the IDF forces; as well as the presence of an Arab population in the areas near the border – a population that in those years was perceived as hostile. The considerations that led to the approval of the regulation stemmed from the fear of losing territories conquered during the war as a result of international pressure or the return of Arab refugees, as well as the need to control the area where the “containment phase” may take place and where the forces will prepare for the counter attack. This need resulted in the demand for legal backing for various security measures to be carried out in the area. In practice, the regulation was used very little, but it was only canceled in 1972, which raises the question “why the IDF needed this regulation even though there were other laws and regulations that could have been used?”.
In this article, we ask what constitutes legitimacy when state agents use violent means in non-war martial settings and situations of fragmented sovereignty. More specifically, we concentrate on a more microlevel of conflict and examine the patterns of legitimization for military violence in the field, where microsocial dynamics are key. To theorize about the local sources of such legitimation, we draw on the case of the prolonged Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, which reveals that this phenomenon has neither continuous traits nor a single key source. Hence, instead of focusing solely on formal frameworks of legitimacy, it is also necessary to consider the emergence of empirical legitimacy, which is often fluid and temporally contingent, at the local level.
A scale is a human trick that allows the world to be measured and evaluated. The scale of the burnings is presented in three arenas: polemical writing, policy, and pedagogy in Israel and Israeli art. The polemical arena contributes to the cultivation of a dramatic scale that is evident in the terms “mega-fire” and “huge fires” and even in the flagship term “the Anthropocene era”. These terms establish a total scale of one-way movement towards extinction and the end. Burning therefore ceased to be part of organic existence and does not signify a cyclical movement that includes regeneration and renewal. If the Anthropocene era marks a universal and apocalyptic scale, then the local scene sees the fires as a disturbing violence that cannot be prevented, and a parallel between them and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The third arena that the essay deals with, the arena of art, presents an alternative to the emotional and political organization of both total catastrophe and local terrorism. The works of three Israeli artists – Ronit Goldschmidt, Tamar Hirschfeld and Ella Litvitz – seem to try to free nature from the human scale.
This article identifies the causes of regional instability and the expansion of revisionist states. Using the state-to-nation balance theory we argue that a key explanation for regional instability and the expansion of revisionist states is the incongruence within a given region between the national aspirations and identities of the peoples inhabiting it and the region’s division into territorial states. The other variable in the theory refers to state strength or capacity. A strong state which is externally incongruent tends to become a revisionist state, eager to expand its border physically or increase its influence in the contested region, using all means available, in order to “resolve” this incongruence. This incongruence also leads to the emergence, especially in weak states, of various nationalist trans-border groups, including violent ones that support the revisionist agenda. Some of the groups might be instruments in the hands of the revisionist state while others might act more independently of it. Our argument will be examined through the attempts at Russian territorial expansion in the recent Ukrainian case.
The term negative spaces was coined in 2021, referring to situations and contexts in which dialogue is not possible or appropriate. The purpose of this article is to further explore this concept by using the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) as a case study to investigate whether organizations can choose negative spaces as a purposeful, strategic decision. The study uses an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, combining the notion of open governments, the Strata Approach to Dialogue Analysis (SADA) framework, and negative spaces of dialogue. It also triangulates research methods, including quantitative and qualitative content analysis, as well as a first-time, in-depth interview with a former Head of Communications for the ISA who served in the organization for fifteen years.
Through an analysis of the Israeli case, this paper explains why states add superfluous provisions that facilitate naturalization processes after military service. The Israeli Citizenship Law states that military service in Israel will confer exemptions from the list of requirements toward naturalization. Amendments in 1987 and 2004 and 35 proposed revisions also link military service with citizenship in Israel. I argue that those provisions were enacted mainly for symbolic reasons. Republicanism is not just a characteristic of a particular polity but a rhetorical trope for politicians in that state. In Israel, politicians wanted to emphasize the importance of republican participation, particularly through military service, as the ultimate sacrifice in constructing national identity.
In June 1975, the State of Israel held a series of three state ceremonies as part of the process of transferring the bones of two members of the Lahi underground (“Stern gang”). The consensus regarding the perception of the actions of the two young Jews as negative and harmful encompassed the vast majority of Jewish circles in the country from left to right. here, 30 years later, the Israeli government, led by the Israeli Labor Party, held state ceremonies in which the assassins were reburied on Mount Herzl, Israel’s official pantheon of heroism. This article seeks to examine the event and its import through a stratified perspective based on the study of collective memory, society, Israeli culture, and politics.
This article will explore the IDF’s approach to building cyber capabilities, focusing on talent development and the “whole of nation” approach to talent scouting through various programs, and aims to draw lessons for the Indian Armed Forces.
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Israel and securitization processes. He develops an original analytical framework to improve the theoretical understanding of the audience component during a security process, drawing on insights from both security theory, political psychology, and IR theory. This gives us significant new insights into why certain audiences are essential to be convinced for confidence to occur, while others are not. This book also examines the role of the United States in defining what is important in Israeli national security. Essentially, since the United States is Israel’s most significant ally, it is essential for the Israeli leadership to obtain the support (or lack of opposition) of the American administration for almost all security operations. The book analyzes a highly original set of interviews with prominent figures in Israel who were at the top level of the Israeli decision-making process, including the political and military ranks.
Israel, Iran, Hezbollah and the United States conduct psychological warfare in our region. Israel’s enemies estimate that the divisions in Israeli society, the tension between Israel and the United States, and the distancing of the “Abraham Accords” countries from Israel have weakened it greatly, and they are exploring the possibility of conducting a multi-arena campaign against it. The US strives to reach a temporary and partial nuclear settlement with Tehran, and its threats are intended to present a punitive alternative to Iranian refusal. Israel must remove the barriers in relations with the White House and convince the administration to consider its reservations about its policy.
This article explores how the paradigm of operative media participates in the politics of state secrecy. Studying a failed military operation conducted by the Israel Defense Forces in inland Lebanon in 1997, it analyzes investigative journalism reports of the event together with reflections offered by the event’s operators. Drone footage and footage taken from aerial, thermal, and body cameras are brought as evidence in an attempt to expose what compromised the event while fueling a public desire for a candid disclosure. Operative media, this article argues, are sociotechnical constructions, catering to a dialectic of knowing and knowing not to know.
Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem claim that Israeli policy in the city over the past 20-30 years has a dual purpose: cutting off the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem from the West Bank and erasing any sense of their national identity. According to them, this policy not only largely succeeded in achieving these goals, but also led to economic underdevelopment, political indifference, and pessimism about the future. They also claim that in response and as part of an attempt to fill the void created by these feelings, many Palestinians in East Jerusalem have become religiously radicalized and in some cases have become more violent. The article aims to examine these claims according to an empirical approach. First, the Israeli policy that may have contributed to the situation is described, and then an analysis of public opinion data appears. Although the study supports many of the claims made by the Palestinians from East Jerusalem, it also reveals some positive trends in East Jerusalem. In the end, recommendations are offered to improve the socio-economic conditions in East Jerusalem, to reduce religious extremism, and consequently – to reduce terrorist attacks against Israelis.
This book examines Israel’s growing interaction with Asia’s sub-regions and countries since the 1990s. It shows how these interactions have increased in recent years, both at government level and for companies, entrepreneurs, academic institutions, religious groups, tourists, and NGOs. Likewise, it discusses the evolving shared interests between Israel and Asian states and demonstrates how Asian countries adopted sophisticated policies that allowed them to get closer to Israel without compromising their traditional support of the pro-Palestinian position. It also explores how Israel differentiates between different regions, circles of importance, and countries in Asia rather than sees Asia as a monolithic whole. This groundbreaking book concludes by assessing the overall state of relations at present and likely future developments.
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Military, Government, and Other Defense Organizations
The events of May 2021 and the increase in crime in Israel create pressure on decision-makers to make changes in the Israeli police, including the border police. With the establishment of the new government, ideas emerged, some of them extreme, regarding the role of the executive force. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed plans – and are they even applicable?
In the early 2000s, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz held a series of discussions on military-society issues. Under the challenging title “Is the whole nation an army?” Economists, sociologists, regular and reserve military personnel, researchers and academics gathered to discuss the implications of the strategic and social trends on the “People’s Army” model in the reserves. Some called the situation in the reserves a crisis, compared to those who spoke in terms of a challenge or a problem that needed to be found.
In the early 2000s, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz held a series of discussions on military-society issues. Under the challenging title “Is the whole nation an army?” Economists, sociologists, regular and reserve military personnel, researchers and academics gathered to discuss the implications of the strategic and social trends on the “People’s Army” model in the reserves. Some called the situation in the reserves a crisis, compared to those who spoke in terms of a challenge or a problem that needed to be found.
Involvement of senior commanders in bribery and sex scandals and deviations from ethical values and norms in operational units raises questions regarding the effectiveness of the learning mechanisms of ethics education in military colleges. The digression of those who are supposed to be role models from the professional and ethical point of view led to a series of studies on the subject. The review reveals that despite the establishment of an educational framework, there is still a lack of a clear strategy for the management of ethics education. The studies are mainly based on memorization and compliance with rules, and the methods do not properly develop critical thinking, nor do they impart applied knowledge on how to design an ethical organizational culture. The existing evaluation processes do not measure the effectiveness of the ethical programs on changing the ethical climate in the units. Addressing the gap between what is declared and what is done in practice requires a paradigm shift in ethics education and the initiation of an extensive strategic move to examine basic assumptions, goals and learning mechanisms. An outline for operative steps presented at the end of the article may help to lead the change.
The start of the twenty-first century saw many changes in the way war was being conducted. Alongside war at sea, in the air, and on land, there is now psychological warfare (referred to as psywar), which has proven to be an extremely powerful military dimension. The power of psychological warfare is a result of the revolution in information and communication in the first years of the current century: the Internet, instant global communications, smartphones, and social media. All these channels have become arenas for warfare and powerful influencers on leaders, militaries, and entire populations. Historically, democracies have been reticent about employing psychological warfare for a number of reasons, but in recent years, they have been unable to ignore its existence and have increasingly been making use of it. However, in contrast with other forms of warfare for which there are international ethical rules, there is no ethical regulation of psychological warfare. This article assesses the challenges and dilemmas facing democratic countries in their use of psychological warfare and for the first time offers proposals for ethical rules toward that end by way of an Israeli test case: the long-term use of psychological warfare by the Israel Defense Forces.
Many advanced commercial technologies increasingly offer new and potentially significant opportunities for defense applications that, in turn, could greatly affect military power and the metrics of military advantage over potential rivals. This book is grounded in two interconnected arguments. First, the technologies of the emerging fourth industrial revolution (4IR) will have a significant impact on future military effectiveness and advantage. Second, if militaries want to harness the technological potential of the 4IR, then they must craft a new kind of civil–military cooperation, which has become known as military–civil fusion (MCF). MCF will likely grow as a competitive strategy for nations seeking to exploit advanced technologies for military innovation and, subsequently, military advantage.
The current chapter focuses on the experiences of female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who served in war rooms (also known as operation or situation rooms) located near the battlefield – in this case, on Israel’s borders and in conflict zones. Interviews with these female soldiers revealed that they did not experience distance or disconnection during their service in such war rooms, but a feeling of closeness to the battle and the fighters in the field, accompanied by a strong sense of responsibility and involvement in every battle phase.
Today, in an era of shared spaces, the role of the leader takes shape in a different way – the power, the authority, and sometimes even the responsibility – are not necessarily his exclusive property. What is the infrastructure for the formation of an effective common space, and what are the common characteristics of adapted leadership in this environment?
This book explores the events of Moshe Dayan, one of the most influential figures in Israel’s history in the first decades of its existence. His personal achievements, as well as moments of depression, coincide largely with Israel’s achievements and failures. This is not another one of the many biographies written about Moshe Dayan, but an essay that focuses on his character as a strategist, an attempt to understand his way of thinking and his worldview from a theoretical and practical point of view.
This article is conceptually motivated to show how instrumental rationality is reflected in the military domain. Instrumental rationality refers to the adoption of suitable means to achieve particular ends. However, this conception was criticised by the Frankfurt School for focusing on means rather than on ends. Based on this critique, I present specific categories of instrumental rationality in the military domain. I will argue that instrumental rationality, or at least its faulty application, is reflected in means-centred thinking whereby the means justify the ends. This approach may create specific categories in the military domain: means justify the ends just because they are available, and they can also expand the ends. The means-centred approach may be expanded from subordinating ends to means to focusing on the objects to be attacked, thus developing an objects-centred approach that may also develop into a focus on the direct outcome of the operation of means, thus becoming a tool of legitimation. A similar legitimising impact is produced by the process of moralisation implicit in the focus on means. Finally, a means-centred approach may be translated into overconfidence in the omnipotence of means, and can thereby be elevated to the belief that weapons can obviate the need for political settlement.
As is the nature of combat rounds against terrorist organizations, Operation “Shield and Arrow” (May 9-13, 2023) was also characterized by complex combat challenges conducted in the territory of a civilian population. The operation began with a targeted counterattack by the IDF against senior members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These actions led to the death of ten more civilians, and reopened the discussion on the issue of causing damage to those not involved in the fight against terrorism.
In the current era, the commander must address his subordinates and the public also through the media, an act that has a leadership opportunity and not just a risk. However, commanders avoid this due to a lack of understanding of the importance of the frequently changing medium. Posing in front of the camera is a real operational tool, and such a brave pose is a modern version of the “commander in front” practice.
Military Culture and Human Resources
Israel’s military prisons operate a rehabilitation program for imprisoned soldiers based on a psychosocial diagnosis. The program’s essential aim is to help soldiers complete their service and avoid re-incarceration. This article describes the program, its function related to the integrative law court, and its role as the army’s probation service. It further presents a unique perspective regarding military rehabilitation programs, demonstrating how rehabilitation leads to recidivism. It concludes with a recommendation for incorporating an organizational change in the program that involves redistributing the existing sections to operate under two different authorities.
While military settings may increase psychological distress, soldiers frequently avoid seeking professional help. This study aimed to examine barriers and facilitators associated with intentions to seek help and actually seeking help from a mental health officer (MHO) and how these differ among soldiers who had sought help in the past and those who had not. Military commanders should make an effort to make soldiers feel safe to seek mental health assistance by creating a supportive organizational atmosphere to reduce the stigma associated with mental health care.
While past decades Western societies have been shifting from mandatory military service toward all-volunteer forces, a number of them have retained conscription. A growing emphasis on individualization and neoliberalist ideas results in a tension for youths between fulfilling a duty and the need for constant self-development. We argue that a central mechanism for addressing this challenge is convertibility, the ability to use competencies gained in one sphere in another, and thus increasing the individual value of conscription for recruits. By linking convertibility to societal expectations, we demonstrate how societies shape ideas of what is convertible and why, and by relating convertibility to agency and motivation, we extend the concept to the individual level. We argue that as material rewards are limited and conscripts cannot rely on occupational motivations, convertibility has a potential to increase the value of conscription for recruits and enable them to combine institutional motivators with utilitarian motives. Read here online
Attrition from combat service carries significant organizational and personal ramifications, but predicting factors associated with attrition remains challenging. To evaluate medical and psychosocial factors associated with attrition from basic combat training (BCT) in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In addition, we identify subsets of the recruit population which exhibit certain trends in terms of medical corresponding with a high risk of attrition. e than 11 sick leave days (59% versus 19%). This study sheds light on unique measures relating to attrition. Attrition is associated with several demographic and psychosocial factors. Early prediction of motivation and monitoring of healthcare utilization may enable early identification and focused interventions targeting soldiers at high risk for attrition. These findings need to be further translated into actionable directives and further investigations.
An instructional book dealing with leadership, centered on the creation of meaning leading to the internal motivation of the soldiers and commanders in motivating people. The essay is based on lectures, conversations and census pages written by the 22nd Chief of Staff, Major General Aviv Kochavi, throughout his forty years of service.
The existing crisis in the continental reserve system is deep and fundamental, and concerns four layers: a continuous devaluation of their competence and professionalism, a wrong appeal in the perception of their necessity, great challenges to the ability and desire of the servicemen to balance their lives as citizens and the reserve service, as well as the vision of the regular army, also Wrong, the reserve system as “foreign children” whose competence is low and they are more of a problem than a solution. And yet, the IDF will not be able to decide the next war without the reserve forces. The multi-faceted challenge may strengthen the sense of necessity among the reserve servants. Dedicating resources to their mission-focused training will strengthen their competence and sense of capability, as well as the sense of meaning for the reserve service, which is essential for national security.
The exchange of the Chief of Staff is an opportunity to look to the future and update the military strategy in the face of the expected challenges. This article offers a point of view for the analysis of the army’s competence and insights into the changes in the IDF’s intensification and its operation during the tenure of the 22nd Chief of Staff of the State of Israel, Major General (Ret.) Aviv Kochavi. The article also discusses the main gaps and challenges facing the incoming Chief of Staff Major General Herzi Halevi. The second part of the article includes recommendations for the incoming Chief of Staff regarding the building and operating of IDF’s force.
This article explores the concept of time among combat reservists in the Israel Defense Forces. Most ethnographic studies of temporality tend to focus on how time’s passage is measured or ‘reckoned’ within varying cultural contexts. In contrast, this article looks to the more corporeal and embodied aspects of the human experience of time. It argues that within Israeli military contexts time is experienced as a near material-like substance that imposes itself – in a very physical way – upon the bodies of combat soldiers. In this sense, the ‘military timescape’ is experienced as a sort of malleable substance that the physical donning of a military uniform can transcend, alter, and refract. A detailed ethnographic exploration of time’s corporeal dimensions offers anthropologists a temporal, as opposed to a spatial, paradigm for engaging with some of the unique sociocultural phenomena of militarism and of military reserve service more specifically.
The term “Military Ethical Washing” is used to describe ways in which military ethics clears military organizations from moral responsibility for their actions in a post-national liberal militarism era. Film and television, now even more than in the past, serve as agents of ethics in general, and of military ethics in particular. Using the terms of the “Just War Theory,” the study shows how through processes of De-Politicization and Dis-militarization enhanced by fictional audio-visual narrative representations, narrative films and television dramas express the ethical-liberal turning point of our times, while at the same time using it to ratify national militarism. The process of “Military Ethical Washing” is illustrated in the paper in the Israeli context through cinematic and televised representations of internal targeted assassinations that took place during the constitutive national period of the struggle for Israel’s independence – a case study having critical potential for discussing current military practices and ethical issues being dealt with by the Israeli military, but also relevant to other cases.
Physical activity (PA) within the military can have large effects on the soldier’s health, productivity, and ability to meet tasks. This study aims to identify the factors associated with PA adherence during military service, applying the socioecological model, which classifies the factors influencing health behaviors into individual, social, and environmental levels. This cross-sectional survey was carried out among 500 soldiers aged 18 to 49 years in the Israeli Defense Forces. Statistical analysis to assess associations between PA and individual, social, and environmental factors included correlations, variance analyses, and multivariable linear regression. PA rates were higher among men soldiers in combat positions. Individual level factors, such as intention to perform PA (β = 0.42, p < 0.001), and self-efficacy regarding PA (β = 0.20, p < 0.001) were associated with PA among men and women. However, social norms were associated with PA only among men (β = 0.24, p < 0.001). The physical environment was not associated with PA adherence (β = −0.04, p = 0.210). Conclusions: Developing interventions on the individual level for all military personnel and interventions on the social level, mainly for men, could help increase levels of PA in the military.
Israel’s national way of war has gradually become “post-heroic” and is very risk-averse. Unlike most research that looks at this process from the macro level, this paper presents this process through the experiences of IDF combat engineers involved in tunnel operations in the Gaza Strip. Participants in the study were interviewed and shared their experiences during operations against the subterranean threat in the Gaza Strip from 2002 to 2014. The information collected was defined as an “operation in tunnels” since we did not find any case studies of close combat in tunnels. The main themes found include: “tunnel operations experience,” “Classification and self-selection of personnel”, “Accumulation of operational experience,” and “danger and heroes.” We present an analytical model of these themes that includes four types of operational organizations that serve to counter the threat posed by the enemy in underground warfare. This model reflects the process of Israeli warfare transforming into post-heroic warfare, including the allocation of resources to technologically based warfare. However, we emphasize the possibility that this process can become heroic based on the operational experiences of combatants in the theater of operations. Understanding this process is important for understanding the IDF’s fighting power in the event of another high-intensity conflict.
During the last three decades, women have been fighting for the opportunity to serve as warriors in the various army units. Since the Alice Miller Supreme Court decision in 1995, many new roles were opened to women, including fighting roles, and new units were opened, especially in Border Defense Core. However, it seems that the IDF is in no hurry to create equal opportunities for women in its fighting units, in the infantry and armor brigades. We claim that the IDF should only consider the competence required from the soldiers for executing successful missions and military goals and show how whenever there is blurring of gender boundaries between men and women in the military (Degendering), attempts are made to return the women soldiers to traditionally feminine roles (Regendering).
Sick leave is a major negative economic effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2021, the Integrated Benefits Institute reported that employers spent a total of US $50.5 billion for workers absent due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While vaccination programs lowered the number of severe illness and hospitalizations worldwide, the number of side effects following vaccination against COVID-19 were high. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of vaccination on the probability of taking sick leave in the week following vaccination. Read here online
The current study presents a longitudinal analysis of the gender integration process in mixed-gender combat units by focusing on the antecedents of dropout intentions. A total of 295 men and women soldiers participated in the study, completing questionnaires at three points during eight months of basic and advanced combat training process. The results revealed a converging similarity between men’s and women’s dropout intentions over time. Perceived physical health and unit prestige contributed significantly to dropout intentions at T1 and T2. In addition, soldier perception of unit prestige negatively predicted dropout intentions at T1 but was non-significant at T2 and T3. Furthermore, masculine norms predicted dropout intentions at T2 but were non-significant at T3. The findings suggest the occurrence of a gradual socialization and self-selecting out process during training. We discuss the results through a gender lens and consider the applications of this research for reducing dropout intentions in gender-integrated combat units.
The information revolution is changing every aspect of our lives and the IDF is no exception. Ignoring the behavior of IDF officers in online spaces or being content with vague instructions will not eliminate the problem but will create real crises. “Matkal’s orders”, which deal with topics ranging from the use of tanks and airplanes to the length of the haircut and the color of the nail polish, are incomplete without rules of what is allowed and what is not allowed on social networks.
Why does IDF military capital curb Israeli veteran homelessness and how does IDF military capital affect Israel’s incubator of innovation? Put simply, why does the veteran reintegration system work so well in Israel? In this paper, I argue that conscription and size of a country (utilizing population size as a proxy for territorial size) correlate with the success of veteran reintegration in society. In essence, the answer and argument are summed up in the interaction between two variables: size of a country and conscription. Consequently, military capital, obtained through required conscription, is confined, isolated, focused, and saturated amongst a small population of people living in a geographically dense space where the wealth of knowledge and skills obtained in the military can be shared in society.
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