Zeev Rosenhek, Daniel Maman, and Eyal Ben-Ari ...

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003), 461–484. Printed in the United States of America DOI: 10.1017.S0020743803000199

Zeev Rosenhek, Daniel Maman, and Eyal Ben-Ari

T H E S T U DY O F WA R A N D T H E M I L I TA RY I N I S R A E L : A N E M P I R I C A L I N V E S T I G AT I O N AND A REFLECTIVE CRITIQUE

This article reports an empirical investigation of the study of war and the military in Israel and offers some reflective thoughts on our findings. We explore the social and political conditions under which academic knowledge about “things military” in Israel has been, and is being, produced. By academic knowledge we mean the publicly available theories, methods, and findings produced in universities and research institutes. Concretely, we refer to the plethora of articles, books, and edited collections published over the past thirty years in the social sciences. We do not, however, deal with research in clinical psychology or psychiatry, or with strategic studies, international relations, and conventional military history, although these fields have been sources of a good deal of research in Israel. By “things military” we mean social and cultural concerns related to (and derived from) the armed forces, war, and provisions for “national security.” Thus, we are concerned with studies related to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as an institution that is characterized by certain professional and organizational features and that must constantly manage its relationship to a variety of social groups and representatives of the state. In a complementary manner, we refer to studies that explore the ways in which the state and society manage their relations with Israel’s armed forces. To be sure, in the past few decades a general weakening of the hold of security considerations on public policies and debates has been coupled with growing misgivings about, and questionings of, the military sphere or arena as the definer of Israeliness. Yet the military remains a central institution in Israel, and military matters continue to be of central importance for public and private lives. Indeed, this basic continuity is still evident in such diverse areas as the prominence of defense concerns for national policy and planning, the sheer quantity of resources still granted the IDF, and the importance of military service for many social and cultural groups.1 We construct our discussion along three lines of analysis concerning the relations between the centrality of the military and security, on the one hand, and the kinds of

Zeev Rosenhek and Daniel Maman are Assistant Professors and Eyal Ben-Ari is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel; e-mail: [email protected].  2003 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/03 $12.00

462 Zeev Rosenhek et al. academic knowledge produced about these concerns, on the other. The first line of analysis has to do with the patterns of quantitative growth of studies of the military in Israel. Given the importance of things military in Israel, one could well presume that scholarly studies rooted in the social and human sciences would be marked by a rather steady and continuous quantitative production of academic material. Yet our inquiry reveals that only in the 1980s was there growth—a veritable “explosion”—of such studies. What factors related to the particular social and historical circumstances of the mid-1980s can explain growth of this kind? The second line has to do with the content and form of these studies. Here again, given the long-term importance of the military, one would have expected that Israel would be the site for the development of a set of unique theories or analytical frameworks for understanding war, the military, or “security.” Yet in writing about things military, Israeli scholars have usually adopted theoretical concepts and frames developed elsewhere. Indeed, in those (rather) rare cases where Israeli scholars have suggested new approaches or theories, their suggestions have not been taken up by scholars outside the country. What are the reasons for this Israeli predilection to embrace externally elaborated theories at the expense of introducing locally developed analytical frameworks? The third line of inquiry centers on patterns of continuity and change in the study of war and the military in Israel, focusing on the kinds of issues and themes that scholars have deemed worthy of study. In this respect, despite the multifarious nature of the military—comprising diverse kinds of units, tasks, professions, and roles—it is only a certain limited segment of Israel’s armed forces that has received an overwhelming amount of scholarly attention. The majority of studies of the military in Israel have centered on fighting men during their compulsory term of service. What are the reasons for the focus on this segment to the almost total neglect of research on other types of soldiers or service? We carry out our investigation in regard to two inter-related dimensions of the production of academic knowledge. First, we uncover how the production of knowledge about things military in Israel is related to wider social, political, and cultural developments that have “allowed” or “disallowed” discussions and debates about the IDF and, consequently, have promoted or curbed the academic study of such matters. Second, we explore the concrete circumstances within which such knowledge is and has been produced in Israel: the kinds of strategies of publication undertaken by Israeli academics, the institutional locations and structure of academic careers, and the structures of incentives and disincentives underlying academic work. M E T H O D S A N D T H E DATA S E T

Our article reviews the academic work dealing with things military in Israel published between 1968 and 1997. As the boundaries among war, the military, security, the state, and society are blurred, it is no surprise that the disciplines dealing with these matters include (among others) sociology, psychology, economics, legal studies, history, political science, anthropology, education, and communications. With these points in view, we created a bibliographic data set that includes all of the English- and Hebrewlanguage academic works of relevance in the social sciences and humanities. Con-

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 463 cretely, in our search we used a large array of key words in order to cover as well as possible all appropriate works.2 The bibliographic databases we searched include Economy Literature, Education Abstract, Eric, International Political Science Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, Historical Abstracts, and Psychological Literature. In addition, we carried out a systematic search in the libraries of the Hebrew, Tel-Aviv, and Haifa universities and the Hebrew database of the Henrietta Szold Institute (specializing in social-scientific research). The initial set we created included about 800 bibliographic items. Because we were interested in analyzing the production and dissemination of published academic work, we took out all non-academic items (biographies and publications in non-academic forums), unpublished works (primarily doctoral dissertations), and papers presented at conferences or workshops. In the end, we had a final catalogue of works with 433 items representing the work of 246 researchers. After reviewing all of the items in the remaining set, we decided on eighteen categories for classifying the published works.3 All the items were categorized independently by the three authors and a research assistant. In the present work, we look at only the part of the data set that focuses on the military, the state, and civil society. This focus entails 167 works, with the vast majority of publications not included covering psychology, clinical psychology, international relations, strategic studies, and war history. Apart from these data, we make judicious use of two other kinds of scholarly literature in our analysis. The first consists of a handful of studies of Israeli academe in general, and of its social sciences in particular. We use these studies not only to characterize the conditions of academic production in Israel, but also to show that our contentions about the study of the military should be seen alongside similar trends in other areas of scholarly research in Israel. The second kind includes overviews of the social-scientific study of the military in other national contexts. Although these overviews—with a few exceptions, such as Christopher Dandeker’s4 —do not on the whole provide sustained and systematic analyses of the social conditions within which the study of the military has taken place, they very often provide clues as to these circumstances. We make use of these sources to place the Israeli case in a comparative perspective and thus to underscore its particular features. T H E DATA S E T : Q UA N T I TAT I V E T R E N D S

Between 1968 and 1997, 167 academic pieces were published about “things military” in Israel. Our analysis reveals that over the years the growth in publications has been steady, and that this growth is evident every decade. In fact, we discern two main periods in this respect (see Figure 1). The first period, which ends at the beginning of the 1980s, is characterized by a low number of publications: only thirty-one works, or 19 percent of the total, were published during this period, and the yearly average is 2.6 publications. In addition, there is a high ratio of non–Israelis who published during this period (13 out of 31). The second period begins in 1983, and it is during this period that most of the works were published (fully 136 of the total 167). The major growth during this second period is in English-language publications. During this period, the average number of publications each year is 9.1. The year 1996 saw the greatest number of publications, with twenty such works being issued. Another

464 Zeev Rosenhek et al.

FIGURE

1. Publications on the military, war, state, and society in Israel, 1968–97.

characteristic of this second period is the dominance of Israeli scholars: 122 out of 136 publications—or 90 percent—were published by Israelis.5 Moreover, this trend is significant in terms of the fact that, while in the first period—until the mid-1980s— three of the five most salient scholars (i.e., those publishing more than one item) were non–Israelis, in the second period no non–Israeli published more than one article or book about things military in Israel. One hundred and six authors participated in the publication of these 167 works. About half of the works—eighty publications—have a single author, and for the majority of researchers, writing about the Israeli military was a “one-night stand.” Twenty-six authors published among them eighty-seven publications (52 percent of the total). It is these twenty-six individuals who form the “core” of research about the military and security in Israel.6 Most of the publications are article-length works published in journals (109 of them). We also found thirty-two books, twenty-three articles in books, and three edited collections. In addition, the major language of publication about things military in Israel—as in Israeli academe in general—is English: fully 126 works, or 76 percent of the total, were published in English. Finally, the central area in which there have been publications is that of military and politics in the wide meaning of the words (74 works). This finding should not surprise us, given the centrality of politics in Israeli society and in the study of “Israeli society” in particular.7 Other salient areas are military and stratification (17 works), military and culture (16), military and gender (15), and military and economics (12). K E Y F E AT U R E S O F T H E K N O W L E D G E P R O D U C E D

A number of features characterize the academic production of knowledge about the Israeli military over the past three decades or so. First, as is evident from our quantitative findings, since the early 1980s there has been enormous growth in the number of

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 465 academic works dealing with these topics. So great has been this growth that, in the past decade, dozens of English-language books and articles—and often a number of Hebrew-language titles—have been published each year. Second, this quantitative expansion has been accompanied by an increased diversification of subject matter. Most works published until the mid-1980s tended to focus on the broad political aspects of civil–military relations.8 Indeed, a significant part of contemporary research continues these lines of analysis.9 During the past two decades, however, scholars have begun to research hitherto little studied issues such as the economic links and effects of war on Israel’s “military–industrial complex,”10 the links between military service and employment and stratification structures,11 the impact of security considerations on land use,12 and reactions to the threat of chemical warfare.13 Other studies have focused on the internal organizational aspects of the IDF.14 Finally, scholars have examined the “cultural” place of the IDF and of wars in Israel through studies of central sites such as Masada and military cemeteries,15 rites such as Remembrance Day and Independence Day,16 the means of affecting social memory,17 and the link between the military and the gender regime dominant in Israel.18 Third, the diversification of subject matter has been accompanied by a strengthening tendency to examine the Israeli case using comparative research strategies. This propensity has strengthened a small number of earlier attempts to place Israel in a comparative perspective19 and shows a significant departure from many previous works that tended to emphasize the uniqueness of the Israeli case. To provide just three examples: while Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak contrast Israel and Britain as two Weberian ideal types of civil–military relations,20 in a series of articles Uri BenEliezer compares the Israeli case with those of France, Japan, and the Soviet Union to examine Israel’s potential for praetorianism or a military coup,21 and Eyal Ben-Ari contrasts Israeli and American definitions of, and attitudes toward, enemies.22 Fourth, along with the diversification of subject matter there has been a growing pluralization of theoretical orientations. In the period lasting until the 1980s, structural functionalism as manifested in the “armed forces and society” approach provided the central paradigms for research into things military in Israel. In the later period, the “state-making and war” perspective made its appearance on the Israeli scene, contributing to a great degree to the kinds of theoretical questions asked about things military. Moreover, it is no longer possible to point to any one or two such dominant perspectives. Along these lines, one development has been the introduction of much more sophisticated theoretical and analytical tools to tackle broad, macro-level problems. Thus, for instance, Daniel Maman and Lissak have used an advanced social network approach to map out and explain the relations between military and other elites in Israel.23 Other areas in which the growing pluralism of theoretical orientations is apparent are studies of the military from feminist perspectives24 and investigations into the links between citizenship and military service.25 Fifth, theoretical pluralization has been complemented by a move to hitherto little studied levels of analysis. Numerous studies are now examining the micro level, and especially macro-micro links. On the micro level, the stress is now placed less on various therapeutic or remedial approaches to “battle fatigue” than on tackling other analytical issues. For example, Tamar Liebes and Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Sara Helman, and Ruth Linn have used very different theoretical frameworks to examine how

466 Zeev Rosenhek et al. individual soldiers handle participation in “unjust wars”—for example, Lebanon and the Intifada.26 Similarly, Amia Lieblich uses propositions from developmental psychology to consider military service as a transition to adulthood.27 O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L A N D S O C I A L C O N T E X T S

What factors may explain these patterns of numerical growth, application of comparative frames, diversification of subject matter, theoretical pluralization, and addition of analytical levels in studies of the military in Israel? Let us begin with the internal, organizational circumstances of the IDF within which research in the social sciences takes place. Armed forces around the world are typified both by the establishment of “in-house” research arms and a wariness of publishing their findings outside.28 For example, of the great amount or social research carried out within the government offices in charge of defense in France, we are told, its conclusions are used for internal purposes in decision-making, and “of course, reports are not available for outside users.”29 In Austria, only a small amount of the research carried out in the Ministry of Defense’s psychology wing is published openly,30 and in Italy much of the work produced within the military establishment is labeled secret and therefore not published.31 Finally, classification as “secret” discourages many academics in Korea from studying topics related to the military, and internal research has not been released to the external public.32 Further, while the end of the Cold War has brought about a slightly more open attitude in regard to the study of European armed forces, the general tendency, when compared with other social institutions, is still toward relative closure.33 Like other military establishments in the industrialized world, the IDF combines relative closure to research by external scholars with a number of internal arms that carry out research and only very rarely release or publish their findings in publicly accessible forms. Indeed, an ironic indicator of the restricted nature of the IDF’s behavioral sciences department is an essay that its former head wrote in which almost no citations are given for internal research.34 Indeed, Willem Scheelen’s ironic observations about the Netherlands from more than a decade ago, appear appropriate to the IDF, as well: a predilection for secrecy and loathing to wash one’s linen in public characterizing the armed forces have led to the conclusion that carrying out research in the military “can best be described as an exercise to test one’s capacity for frustration.”35 This situation stands in stark contrast to the German Armed Forces Institute for Social Research (SOWI), which by law has a great deal of autonomy, designed to ensure public, transparent, and intelligible social inquiries through internal (but publicly available) publications, an independent ability to set part of its research agenda, and membership of its researchers in international scholarly associations.36 No such guarantees are found in regard to the IDF’s behavioral sciences department, although the Israeli army’s School for Leadership Development does occasionally publish its research findings (usually only in Hebrew).37 To be fair, over the years the IDF has allowed some access to scholars based in academe or research institutes, as is evident in the work of such people as Ari Shirom and Reuven Gal.38 In addition, mention must be made of the Israeli Institute for Military Studies. Established by Gal, a former head of the IDF’s behavioral sciences de-

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 467 partment, the institute—and its successor, the Carmel Institute for Social Studies— has long carried out research projects related to the military and security, often in conjunction with the IDF. But the overall pattern has been one marked by difficulties related to publication. For example, the project on immigrants and military service carried out by Victor Azarya and Baruch Kimmerling was initiated by the first author.39 Although the two researchers did receive some help from the IDF, when the project was completed, they were forbidden to publish their data. Only after negotiations and a certain level of censorship was exercised were they finally allowed to publish their findings in scholarly journals. Along these lines, the general trend in the IDF has been for strong limitations on research by external scholars. It is for this reason, we believe, that many works that have been published about the Israeli military are based on external sources such as media reports,40 digests released by the IDF spokesperson’s office, or research based on reservists who have left the military.41 Similarly, we suggest that it is for the same reason that scholars have tended to study civil–military relations and the ties between the Israeli state and its armed forces to the (relative) neglect of internal aspects of the IDF as an organization. Yet as we have shown, despite the relative closure of the military, its centrality in Israel and the participation of the IDF in various kinds of conflict have led to a situation in which an abundance of investigations have been carried out since the 1980s. Indeed, the liveliness of such research is apparent in other indicators. When compared with other small societies, such as Austria,42 Belgium,43 Greece,44 the Netherlands,45 or Switzerland,46 the sheer amount of military-related research is very substantial and covers both universities and public and private research institutes. Similarly, although introductions to various aspects of the IDF seem to be written every decade or so,47 no comparable volumes can be found for societies such as Austria48 or the United Kingdom.49 And finally, over the past decade or so, the Israel Sociological Association, the Israel Anthropological Association, and the Political Science Association of Israel have regularly held sessions and panels related to the military during their annual meetings. We are led back to the question about the circumstances that may explain the increase and diversity of research into the Israeli military. Our argument is twofold: first, that the diminution of the legitimacy of the IDF and the weakening of the consensus about “national security” and its broad socio-political meanings have led to an accelerated acceptability of publicly challenging and disputing things military in Israel; and second, that it is the flow of these attitudes into Israeli academe that has led to the increase and diversification we have documented. In short, it is the changed social context of the IDF that explains, foremost, the rise in the sheer number of works dealing with war and the military and the opening of new areas and perspectives in research and scholarship. Although the seeds of this trend were sown in the period after the war in 1973, it was Israel’s incursion into Lebanon between 1982 and 1985 and its continued military presence there until recently that led to basic questioning and intense public debates about such issues as “just wars,” national service, and individual sacrifice for the state. These questions were intensified in and around Israel’s repression of the Palestinians during the Intifada (the Palestinian uprising).50 Our contention is that, during this period, many of the major premises characterizing Israel’s hegemony have been undermined. The term “hegemony” encompasses

468 Zeev Rosenhek et al. ideas about, and practices related to, a socially legitimated and maintained hierarchy between alternative arrangements and the centrality of the state (and its agents) not only in controlling material and political resources, but also in dominating the very conceptual categories through which Israeli Jews think about the reality within which they live. Hegemony, following Raymond Williams,51 is a process rather than a state: as the system of domination and inequality becomes so lodged in cultural belief, it comes to appear natural and inviolate. Along these lines, contemporary Israel is the site of debates about, and interrogation of, many of the fundamental hegemonic assumptions that have undergirded it as the Jewish nation-state: about the ethnic character of nationhood and statehood; the role of the Jewish diaspora vis-a`-vis Israel; the legitimacy of Jewish “ethnic pluralism”; the meaning of the Holocaust; the privatization of social life and the spread of consumerism; and the weakening of the centralized state as the agent of social transformation affecting, for instance, housing, language, health, technology, production, dress, and child-rearing.52 Most pertinent to our analysis is that one important consequence of these internal conflicts and struggles appears to have been a significant erosion in the almost sacred status once enjoyed by state institutions—especially the military—among the majority of the Jewish population. A central assumption now being questioned by many groups is that of the centrality of the military in society and in definitions of “Israeli-hood” and full citizenship.53 Despite the hard line taken by many of Israel’s governments, many groups in contemporary Israeli society are no longer willing to grant the IDF its previous status of unquestioned professionalism and to view state-security considerations as the only (or primary) criteria for national decision-making. In this context, new questions have arisen in and around a profusion of topics, such as motivation for military service, the legal responsibility of commanders for casualties, the tension between private and public representations of commemoration, the links between conscripts’ families and military authorities, and the official reasons given for suicides within the military.54 Moreover, since the 1980s public discussions about war and the warrior ethos have dealt more with their traumatic aspects than with their sublime or glorious “face”; such deliberations have stressed the individual at the expense of the Israeli “collective” and personal burdens rather than contributions to society. In the past decade, this trend appears to have strengthened through the special emphasis placed on articulating private mourning and personal pain. Difficult pictures of troopers depicted as victims, of soldiers with shocked faces crying at funerals for their friends, and the wailing and screaming of family members on such occasions accompany Israelis daily through personal participation or (more commonly) through portrayals in the media.55 Parents have become central actors within the public debates about war and the military in contemporary Israel. Their current engagement with the IDF is especially noticeable in comparison with the early years of the state. Parents now use a variety of formal means (such as the IDF ombudsman and appeals to members of the Knesset) or informal practices (such as letters and telephone calls to commanders) to criticize the conditions under which their children serve.56 Parents also use the judicial system to make claims dealing with deaths due to accidents, means of personal commemoration allowed by the Ministry of Defense,57 and ownership of fallen soldiers’ bodies.58 In the political sphere, their activities are organized both in protest movements initi-

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 469 ated during the Lebanon war (Parents against Silence); later, the Intifada (Parents against Burnout); and currently against the continuing stay in Lebanon (Four Mothers) and in support of Israeli military activity through Mothers for Israel. These trends should be seen as part of how, in recent decades, Israel has been steadily transformed into a society marked by greater individualism, liberal democracy, civilian considerations, and consumerism. On the one hand, this situation implies that as the relations between families and the military are changing, it has become much harder to justify not only deaths of soldiers in battle but, much more problematically, the ubiquitous death in traffic accidents and even more in training exercises (given that Israel has left the Lebanese “scene,” such considerations will probably grow stronger). On the other hand, these developments signal a greater potential for democratization in terms of the emergence of various “watchdogs” overseeing the IDF. These include the state comptroller, the Knesset (Parliament), the judiciary, and perhaps most important, the media.59 Although one could make a similar argument about how decreasing legitimacy leads to greater misgivings related to Israel’s education system, there seems to be something here which is especially true of the study of the military. Gwyn HarriesJenkins and Charles Moskos suggest that critical discussions of the past and future state of the sociology of military institutions necessarily involve controversy about the political and personal values which are dominant in this field of study. Although such controversy may be present in all areas of social science research, these critical discussions are particularly visible and marked when social scientists deal with the major and awesome questions of war and peace in contemporary society.60

Almost any topic that the social sciences deal with is subject to a host of connotations, viewpoints, and preconceptions. The topic of the military is one where these understandings may be particularly strong. For example, we would cautiously suggest that because the U.S. military is viewed in terms of the Vietnam debacle, it is often understood as somehow morally tainted and therefore not “worthy” of much of sociological or anthropological research. In contrast, given the constitutive role played by war and things military in the Israeli state and society, the declining legitimacy of the military has led to growing academic consideration of these topics. In the Israeli context, the IDF is viewed through a number of prisms: that of the Israeli–Arab conflicts (of which the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is only one); that of popular glorification or moral denigration attendant on the Israeli military following the war in Lebanon and the Intifada; and that of greater acceptance of cultural pluralism and individualism that have been coupled with challenges to the subordination of individual considerations to collective goals. The basic trend in Israel—lowered legitimacy of the military leads to more academic scrutiny—should not, however, be seen as the sole pattern for such developments. Israel offers a stark contrast to European cases. As Michel Dandeker and Louis Martin observe, Britain and France have been characterized by the extended dominance of sociological theories that have not paid much attention to the military or war and a deep-rooted suspicion of sociology of the military by military commanders, policy-makers, and the general public.61 Similarly, the general hostility of military commanders to social research that characterized Italy until the end of the 1980s has

470 Zeev Rosenhek et al. also led to a scarcity of research inside the armed forces.62 This situation in turn has led to a relative dearth of relevant studies of the military in all three countries for most of the post–World War II period. In our case, the growing misgivings about the IDF and its actions that have emerged in the wake of the war in Lebanon and the Intifada could not—given the centrality of things military in Israel—have led to scholarly neglect. In fact, as we have found, these growing doubts and questions have led to a veritable burst of studies. We would cautiously suggest that research about the military and war has now become a central concern, a core professional preoccupation, for a number of Israeli social scientists. T H E A C A D E M I C C O N T E X T: A S M A L L , PERI PHERAL COMMUNITY

To attribute the burst of studies of things military only to changed social and political circumstances, however, implies too narrow a view. To begin with, in the past two decades not only have Israel’s eight universities expanded greatly in terms of numbers of students and faculty and fields of research, but new academic colleges have also been established at an unprecedented rate. Thus, for example, the number of tenured faculty members in Israeli institutions of higher education grew by 60 percent between 1969–70 and 1996–97. In addition, the proportion of faculty members in the social sciences and humanities out of this total grew from 40 percent in the mid-1970s to 47 percent today.63 It is these trends that have contributed to the great upsurge in the amount of research carried out in relation to Israeli society and to a much more pluralistic scholarly arena in which a variety of theories and approaches are now used. It is these developments that in turn have allowed many more scholars to take up investigations into the military and war in Israel. Thus, it is in the wake of the expansion of the higher-education system that began in the late 1970s that the study of things military—like the study of many other aspects of Israeli society—expanded and diversified.64 Yet a number of features of the study of the military and of war in Israel remain that demand explanation: the vast majority of works on the Israeli military have been published in English; most but not all of these works have been written by Israelis; and about half of them have a single author. For example, in our sample, 126 items were published in English versus 41 items in Hebrew (or 75 percent to 25 percent). How can we account for these patterns of language and authorship? To borrow from Lea Shamgar-Handelman, to understand the character of the social-scientific studies of Israel’s military, we need to ask about such issues as where a certain work is published, in what kind of journal or press, and the selection process leading to publication.65 To begin with, there is clearly a very strong incentive structure in Israeli academic life to publish in English. Indeed, an intriguing indicator in this respect are four pieces that have been published both in Hebrew and in English, thereby signifying the importance of publication in external academic forums. This situation contrasts with that of French and German academics, who regularly publish in their own languages.66 In general, the publication of scholarly work on Israel may be explained as the outcome of three trends: the dynamics of “publish or perish” related to academic

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 471 careers; a conscious attempt to keep up with major developments in the central socialscientific communities of the United States and (to a lesser extent) Britain and France; and a never-ending endeavor to escape imputations of provinciality. These circumstances imply, for example, that more weight is attached to publication in peerreviewed journals than in unreviewed journals or collections, and that articles or books have a single author and should be brought out in what are perceived to be the centers of world scholarship (usually in the United States). Moreover, it has by now become a prerequisite for advancing one’s career either to be trained or to spend significant amounts of time abroad.67 Thus, it is not too difficult to find Israeli sociologists—like social scientists in general—who regularly publish with U.S. or British journals and imprints.68 The “logic” at base of this system is that that works reviewed and accepted by peers in these world centers meet the standards of excellence that Israeli universities are concerned about upholding. It is for this reason that one finds Israelis writing about the military or civil–military relations publishing their work in such journals as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Theory and Society, Armed Forces and Society, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, European Journal of Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, and Anthropological Quarterly. This logic also explains why most publications about the Israeli military tend to have single authors. Single authorship in many disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, or political science (but not, for example, in clinical psychology) is seen as the preferred pattern demanded of individuals pursuing tenure and promotion.69 The outcome is that, although we are situated in a Hebrew-speaking country—our professionalization is carried out within the Englishspeaking world. Although Israelis may be in a similar situation to, say, Austrians or some Swiss scholars who regularly publish in German-language forums, the Israelis do so in a language that is not their own. However, how can we explain the fact that—according to our impression—more non-Israelis are writing about the military than about other areas, such as political sociology? In our data, eighty-one authors (77.1 percent) are Israelis or migrants from Israel, and twenty-four (22.9 percent) are non-Israelis. Indeed, if we were to take only the English-language publications, the percentage of non–Israelis would be even higher. The reason for this model of authorship has to do, we suggest, with the great interest that the IDF and its experience in wars have for people outside of Israel. One indicator of this interest is the literature on various aspects of the military that uses the Israeli case to theorize or generalize whether this is in relation to civil–military relations70 or psychotherapy dealing with battle shock.71 Another indicator is how the Israeli case is represented in many collections published about military matters.72 When viewed more closely however, there seems to be an underlying pattern to the manner by which external influences filter into the scholarship about the Israeli military. This pattern is related, we would argue, to what can be called the world system of academe and the place of the social-scientific study of the military within it. In Bernard Boene’s felicitous terms, within this world system, the United States is the field’s dominant national tradition, the unrivaled world center.73 It is primarily in America that there have been major figures to consolidate the field and journals to stimulate and legitimate research.74 It is there, for example, that the main specialist journals appear—Armed Forces and Society, Journal of Political and Military Sociol-

472 Zeev Rosenhek et al. ogy, and (to a lesser extent) Journal of Conflict Resolution—and that the main academic publishing houses specializing in the study of the military are located. It is also in the United States that many of the central figures of the field, such as Morris Janowitz, Charles Moskos, David Segal, and Charles Tilly—have worked and published. Finally, the scholarly association bringing together scholars interested in things military—the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS)—was established in the United States. Indeed, after World War II, the IUS operated on an international scale, with Americans definitely in the center, to provide institutional support for scholars and a forum to promote and routinize the conduct of research on armed forces around the world.75 Thus, it is not surprising to learn that in a variety of contexts, such as France, scholars of the military who felt isolated turned to colleagues abroad—especially in the United States—for intellectual exchanges.76 In the Israeli case, it has been the interweaving of the centrality of the United States in military studies (they are relatively weak in Europe) and the personal networks of scholars pursing such themes that seems very important. Take participation in the IUS. While every meeting of this association is attended by a sizable contingent of representatives from Israel, the interpersonal links created within this organization bear wider implication. It is these networks that historically have formed a major conduit for the introduction and application of ideas first developed in the United States to Israel. The older generation of Israeli scholars, such as Horowitz and Lissak, first applied Janowitz’s ideas to Israel,77 just as Harries-Jenkins used these notions in regard to Britain78 and Jaques van Doorn used them in regard to the Netherlands.79 In a similar manner, it is Gal who has applied Moskos’s Institutional/Occupational model to Israel,80 just as Haltiner has applied this model to Switzerland,81 Jan van der Meulen to the Netherlands,82 and Nuciari to Italy, although with a more critical eye.83 Our conclusion from this short overview is that Israel combines diverse international contacts with strong dependence and relative theoretical peripheriality in the context of a world system of the social sciences of the military. It is in this respect that the empirical rather than theoretical stress at the base of much of the socialscientific study of the Israeli military should be seen. Although many studies of Israel use theories developed elsewhere, only very occasionally have Israeli data been used to develop major theories related the military and war or to offer alternative theoretical models to those dominant in Western (mainly U.S.) social science. A closely related set of examples involves studies that are explicitly theoretical yet center on applying or testing (through the Israel case) externally developed formulations. This set of cases would include Azarya and Kimmerling’s application of the civil–military paradigm to immigrant groups,84 Yehuda Ben Meir’s employment of concepts of civilian control of the military,85 and Ben-Eliezer’s attempt to test some of Stanislav Andreski’s hypotheses about the use of the military for internal repression.86 Where there have been some conceptual innovations, they have usually been understood outside the country as being limited to theorizing the Israeli case. Kimmerling’s work on the conceptual framework of the “interrupted system” is a case in point.87 Thus, while Kimmerling attempted to suggest an innovative marriage of military studies with disaster studies, his publications were understood by scholars outside the country as being focused exclusively on Israel.88 Two other examples are Gal’s development of a model linking combat effectiveness, unit cohesion, leadership, and stress,89

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 473 and Ben Shalit’s volume about a model of behavior in battle.90 A more recent attempt at building a theory based on Israel is the concordance approach proposed by Rebecca Schiff.91 Significantly, this proposal has come from a scholar located outside Israel and has been developed as little more than a sketch or suggestion. This kind of theoretical stress is a general characteristic of all of the social-scientific fields like sociology in Israel.92 To be clear, we are not arguing that the study of the Israeli military lacks theory or is a-theoretical. Israel is unlike the case of some countries, such as Austria, where no systematic approach has been theoretically developed to make sense of the empirical data gathered by social scientists of the military.93 Israel is more similar to the French case, where, according to Martin, the participation of French scholars in such associations as the IUS “helped French military sociological research to survive, at the same time as it favored its Anglo-Saxonization; hence the often—there were exceptions—derivative character of themes and issues treated, even of theoretical perspectives.”94 The fields of scholarly study of things military in Israel contain serious attempts at theorization, but the theories are generally not our own. In fact, these very trends are reflected in the patterns of citation in works about the Israeli military. As in other fields,95 citations of academic work by Israelis are provided to justify the subject of research, to substantiate findings, or to stress uniqueness. However, to legitimate the analytical, interpretive, or theoretical positions, most authors refer to non–Israeli publications, even when studies by Israelis have much to offer. Although a preoccupation with patterns of citation may seem frivolous or petty, we would argue that they indicate something of wider importance: the reproduction, through citations, of our professional scales of prestige and relative standing in relation to the academic centers of the world. As Shamgar-Handelman insightfully suggests, in current social science, theory is of higher standing than empirical work.96 But in the context of the socialscientific study of the Israeli military, theory is identified with foreign scholars— mostly, but not exclusively, Americans—and thus the patterns of quotation and references serve to constitute the hierarchical relationship between foreign and native scholarship. This situation, it seems, is like the one found in Italy, where many of the major works on military sociology begin with “ritual” reviews of American works.97 As we previously showed, this kind of situation does not imply that no critical approaches to the IDF and military service have developed in Israel. As Uri Ram has persuasively demonstrated for Israeli sociology in general, the very connectedness of Israelis with external intellectual developments in the world system of academe also allows and promotes critical approaches.98 Thus, “radical” approaches developed in the West from the late 1960s and 1970s have been readily and regularly incorporated into Israeli social sciences and applied to the analysis of the Israeli case. This incorporation has been the result of the fact that Israeli academics read (and publish in) the journals and books of the centers of the United States and Europe, participate in international forums in which intellectuals from these centers appear, and teach their students the theories and findings of these same people. From our perspective, an excellent example of this pattern has been the importation into Israel of what Dandeker terms neo–Machiavellian ideas about how war and the military are related to state-making.99 Israelis followed the development of these newer, critical ideas as formulated by such scholars as Charles Tilly and Anthony

474 Zeev Rosenhek et al. Giddens.100 The introduction of these ideas from abroad was first carried out by Avishai Ehrlich and Kimmerling.101 Kimmerling, for instance, opened questions related to the state and militarism in Israel by exploring the assumptions at the bottom of Israel’s military doctrine and state institutions. His argument—which, given the historical memories on which Israel is based, has met much resistance among Israeli older scholars—is that this society is characterized by a cognitive militarism: by modes of thought and action in which security considerations are pre-eminent. These ideas were later elaborated by Helman, Ben-Eliezer, and Yagil Levy.102 Indeed, as we mentioned earlier, this approach, sometimes called the “state-making and war” paradigm, has probably been the single biggest addition to the set of studies critical of the place of the military in contemporary Israel. C H A N G E A N D C O N T I N U I T Y I N T H E S T U DY O F T H E I S R A E L I M I L I TA R Y

Israel, as we mentioned previously, has been undergoing a profound rethinking of many of what were thought to be the major hegemonic assumptions and conceptions that undergirded it as a nation-state. Questionings of the relationship between Israel’s armed forces as the state’s arm and civil society and of definitions of Israeli-ness have opened spaces for more, and more critical, studies of such issues as the military and war. In turn, these critical studies have contributed to the intensification of public debates and questioning of previously hegemonic conceptions. In this section, we further develop this argument but show how certain hegemonic assumptions about what is “worthy” of research have, in unintended ways, continued to be embraced by scholars working in the past decade or so and even by scholars taking an explicitly critical perspective on Israeli society. The major expression of the acceptance by many Israeli scholars of state-defined assignments during the country’s first decades was the stress on the non-military roles of the army. It is no surprise, then, that given the relative newness of Israel, Israeli scholars—like scholars in India and Turkey103 —carried out work on the military as a modernizing agent, as the institution capable of handling the multiple tasks related to the creation of the nation-state. Consequently, for many years the major emphasis in much of the relevant scholarly writing was on the “integrative” role of the IDF vis-a`vis diverse groups such as immigrants and disadvantaged youths.104 This kind of scholarly acceptance of, and mobilization toward, national aims should be seen, however, as part of two wider patterns characterizing this period. On the one hand, much of Western sociology of the military of the time was explicitly devoted to exploring the place of the armed forces in the process of nation-building.105 On the other hand, scholars of the military followed a general trend initiated by other Israeli social scientists who were caught up in the process of nation-building.106 This kind of emphasis has continued in some publications centered on the persisting importance of the non-military roles of the IDF.107 Some of the newer studies, such as Malka Shabtay’s analysis of Ethiopian immigrants,108 have developed a much more dynamic picture of military service but basically still proceed from the same premise of the IDF as a social integrator. Indeed, in the late 1980s, the former head of the IDF’s behavioral sciences department explained how, despite the centrality of the

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 475 military (and implicitly in contrast to many “Third World” countries), Israel has propounded positive and challenging solutions in terms of a democratic and open society.109 Yet many, if not most, contemporary studies tend to consider the Israeli–Arab conflict not as an exogenous factor but, rather, as constitutive of Israeli society and the state, and thus to problematize previously taken for granted scholarly and popular notions about the IDF and the kinds of actions in which it participates. At the risk of oversimplification, we suggest that there are two central themes common to many of these newer approaches to things military in contemporary Israel. The first is the role of war and the military in the constitution of membership in Israeli society and polity and in the social construction of collective and individual identities. The overwhelming stress in much of the newer scholarship is on how the Israeli army has been and still is used (via recruitment, assignation, and retention of personnel) as the central mechanism for constructing different levels of inclusion and exclusion into the polity.110 It is in this light that studies of the relations between gender and the military, or the incorporation of “minorities,” homosexuals, and religious groups should be seen.111 All of these studies show how military service serves as a mechanism for both building and legitimating a complex hierarchy of social groups and as an indicator of this hierarchy. The second theme common to many recent works centers on the ways in which the “sense of existential threat” to Israel has been created and used by the state and its representatives to gain and maintain legitimacy, to define standards for the distribution of resources, to shape public culture and the life worlds of individuals, and to construct the very agenda of Israeli social sciences.112 Thus for example, critiquing Ben-Ari’s earlier work,113 Robert Paine has shown how despite carrying out policing roles during the Intifada, soldiers justified their action in military terms touching on the very survival of the state.114 In other words, in comprehending the Intifada as a “normal” or “natural” military situation, their activities were linked to the notion that military actions by Israeli soldiers are related to the ultimate Zionist text: to the safety and security of the country. Or, to take another example, Yaron Ezrahi has carefully examined the central narratives of Zionism—centering on defense—that govern the ways in which most Israelis understand wars, political action, and the definition of enemies.115 In a related manner, Meira Weiss examined the ways in which the Israeli state has consistently propagated an “ideology of bereavement” to sustain national boundaries, an ethos of sacrifice (allowing the continued mobilization and retention of soldiers), and collective identities.116 In a different manner, Levy has contended that war has consistently been used to mobilize a population composed by immigrant groups and marked by deep hierarchical divisions.117 Yet despite the emergence of these newer critical perspectives there seem to be some rather complex patterns of continuities. Let us begin with a simple detail. The stress found in almost all of the psychological, social-psychological, and sociological literature is on studying “warriors” or combat soldiers to the almost total exclusion of other kinds of soldiers. To be sure, this kind of stress is not accidental, as the “uniqueness,” the peculiar expertise, of the military lies in its relation to the legitimate use of the means of violence.118 Accordingly, one would expect that the majority of studies of any armed force would be biased in the direction of those individuals and units charged with this expertise in violence. Yet in Israel this emphasis is magnified for a

476 Zeev Rosenhek et al. number of reasons. First, historically the abundance of combat situations in which “excellence” is said to have figured as the primary element deciding victory or defeat has accentuated the role of these soldiers. Second, an emphasis on their excellence and professionalism has long served the interests of Israel’s military authorities in setting up examples for recruits and in justifying the kinds of rewards the army offers its troops. Our argument is thus that it is the general interest coupled with the organizational stake in such soldiers that explains the heavy scholarly engrossment with them. But there is yet another reason for the preoccupation with fighting units and troops. The expertise and relative success of the IDF has long drawn the attention of students of other armies to its elite forces as a model to emulate.119 Thus, in almost any book devoted to the social psychology or sociology of combat, the Israeli case is given pride of place. In many studies written abroad, the Israeli case is used alongside other examples to construct general arguments. Prime instances are the comparative work of William Henderson, who took Israel as one of four case studies for an analysis of cohesion,120 and Richard Holmes or Hugh McManners who use Israeli material in their studies of the behavior of soldiers in battle.121 Similarly, in a closely argued book about the processes by which soldiers learn to kill, Dave Grossman uses Israeli data (again, among others) to make his argument.122 In an interesting manner, the patterns of citations in such works tend once more to echo those found in studies written by Israeli scholars: theoretical references are drawn from U.S. and European sources, while Israeli mentions are empirical. The result of this kind of scholarly activity is that, with the exception of a few isolated studies,123 very little attention has been devoted to the many administrators, clerks, and support troops that staff the Israeli military institution.124 Indeed, even when support troops are mentioned, they are often analyzed in terms of how warriors view them.125 Similarly, where the place of women in the IDF has been studied, it is usually in terms of their proximity to, or distance from, combat.126 In analytical terms, the problems with this kind of scholarly perspective are related not only to the dearth of information or documentation about soldiers who are not combatants. Rather, because the making of soldiers is a relational process, it would seem to be of prime importance to understand their relations with various “significant others.” Although the scholarly preoccupation with combat soldiers may be understood in terms of the peculiar expertise of the military, there is an added dimension to the Israeli case. In short, a great deal of the research on the Israeli military has focused on soldiers in their compulsory term of service, to the almost total neglect of regulars or reservists.127 Thus, not untypically, Lieblich interviewed men who were reservists, but it was their term of compulsory enlistment that interested her.128 Ben-Ari investigated a unit of reservists but wrote about models of soldiering common to all parts of the IDF.129 And Edna Lomsky-Feder, who also interviewed soldiers who were already reservists, was interested primarily in how the 1973 war that they had experienced in their compulsory term of duty had an effect on their lives.130 Indeed, could it be that because the compulsory term of service is the definer of citizenship and the crucial link to the collective that we social scientists have unquestioningly focused on these soldiers as both normative and social-scientific ideals?131 The final feature of contemporary studies of the military is—again barring very few exceptions132 —the fact that since the late 1980s there are almost no studies devoted to

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 477 the sociology or social psychology of combat. In contrast to the many studies that were published after the wars of 1967, 1973, and 1982, the past decade has seen almost no relevant investigation. It could well be argued that the reason for this situation is that the IDF has not been involved in wars since the early 1980s. Yet the presence of the Israeli armed forces in southern Lebanon for more than twenty years in low-intensity conflict would seem to have created a very “rich” set of experiences for research. Similarly, the IDF’s participation in a host of policing activities in the Occupied Territories could also have led to writing about the actual “military” work carried out there. To be sure, while both cases—the low-intensity conflict in Lebanon and policing in the Occupied Territories—necessitate different kinds of military expertise in violence, very little has actually been written about them. The IDF’s activities in Lebanon and the Intifada have spawned a host of scholarly studies, but they often have to do with the moral decisions taken by soldiers or with the political implications of these tasks for civil-military relations.133 What can account for this lack of scholarly attention to the use of military expertise in situations of low-intensity conflict and policing? We suggest three (inter-related) hypotheses. The first is that it is the contested political nature of both arenas and the continued mix of “successes” and “failures” of the IDF in them that has led to a relative dearth of scholarly interest. The IDF may have carried out some internal studies in this regard, but its relative closure has come in face of publication of books and articles in the scholarly field. The second reason is related to the long-term process by which the status of the ground forces is steadily lowering. With organizational budgets and attention moving more and more into technologically rich units such as the intelligence corps, air force, computer centers, and signals corps, there is a gradual desertion of interest in the ground forces—those very forces that have traditionally figured as the arena for the study of combat. The third reason entails the massive entry of consultants into the behavioral sciences departments of the IDF. This trend has resulted in a situation in which there is less potential for external scholars to find potential coalition partners inside the IDF for joint research. Indeed, this pattern may have been intensified by the fact that, while the greatest innovations outside the IDF have been carried out by qualitative-oriented scholars, the majority of researchers within the Israeli military are still quantitatively oriented. CONCLUSION

In this article, we have traced the social and academic conditions within which knowledge about the Israeli military is, and has been, produced. Our argument has been that as the IDF has ceased to be a taboo subject, and as it was gradually opened up for public scrutiny, it met with a growth in the number of scholars interested in the military and a more general openness to greater academic investigations. Our claim centers on a notion of recursive feedback. We suggest that academic knowledge— embodied in articles and books—is itself in part built on and derived from the disputes and spaces for critique that are found outside academe. This academic knowledge in turn is thus constantly used and redeployed in both the public arenas outside universities and research institutions and within the military itself. In terms of the content and form of the knowledge produced, our contention has

478 Zeev Rosenhek et al. been that, although the case of Israel—or, more correctly, cases from Israel—have been important in formulating comparative generalizations about the military and in advancing certain theoretical contentions, the Israeli social-scientific study of things military has not been very central to the field. A distinction between parochial and peripheral social science may be important to understand the “non-centeredness” of sociological study of the Israeli military. On the one hand, some social-scientific communities are, from the view of the center, parochial or insular; they have their own research agenda, use locally produced analytical frameworks, and write for local audiences. On the other hand, some communities are peripheral in the sense that, although they also write about local cases, they tend to “import” theories developed at the center and write for both local consumption and consumption at the center. Moreover, the center is for this peripheral scholarship the crucial reference group. In terms of the knowledge produced, the distinction is between vernacular knowledge and knowledge that is cosmopolitan. The picture that arises out of our analysis is one of social-scientific study of the military and war in Israel that is marked not so much by parochialism as by marginalization or peripherialization in terms of the world system of scholarship. As BenYehuda suggests, the very exposure of Israeli scholars to work outside it prevents it from becoming parochial.134 In terms of theoretical innovation in the field, then, Israelis—like most European scholars—are linked to the latest ideas and concepts emanating from the world center in the United States but are at the periphery in that they usually apply these notions to the study of their own society. Indeed, one indicator of this pattern is the fact that, barring a very small number of exceptions, Israelis— unlike scholars in Britain, France, or the United States135 —do not study the military establishments or civil–military relations of societies outside their own country. Within Israel, however, the continued centrality of the IDF and the contestations over its place in society and culture will keep ensuring that the lively research developed over the past two decades will continue in the future.

NOTES

Authors’ note: We thank Noa Vaisman for her excellent help in research. Thanks also to Stuart Cohen, Reuven Gal, and Boas Shamir for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the following institutions for financial aid toward completion of this project: Shaine Center for Social Research, Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, Eshkol Institute, Harvey S. Silbert Center for Israel Studies, and Smart Center of the Department of Communications (all of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). 1 Reuven Gal and Stuart Cohen, “Israel: Still Waiting in the Wings,” in The Postmodern Army: Armed Forces after the Cold War, ed. Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams, and David R. Segal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 224–41; Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Epilogue,” in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 301–12. 2 The key words we used include military and militarism, civil-military relations, soldiers and soldiering, weapons, war, and all of the combinations of such words with others, such as military service, military and politics, or army career. 3 Such categories include, for instance, economics, politics, organization, state-military, psychology, and gender. 4 Christopher Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in Great Britain: The Prospects of Military

The Study of War and the Military in Israel 479 Sociology,” in Military Related Social Research: An International Review, ed. Jurgen Kuhlman (Munich: Sozialwissenshaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr, 1989), 1–34. 5 Our definition of Israeli scholars includes scholars working in Israel and Israelis working in foreign institutions. The overwhelming majority of Israeli scholars in our data work in Israeli universities and research centers. 6 To place these figures in comparative terms, Caforio estimates that in all of Italy there are no more than ten scholars who regularly research the military and that they are joined by about ten to fifteen scholars who carry out relevant investigations only occasionally: Giuseppe Caforio, “Military Sociological Research in Italy,” in Military Sociology: The Richness of a Discipline, ed. Gerhard Kuemmel and Andreas Prufert (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), 116–27. 7 Nahman Ben-Yehuda, “The Dominance of the External: Israeli Sociology,” Contemporary Sociology 26 (1997): 271–75. 8 See, for instance, Moshe Lissak, “Paradoxes of Israeli Civil–Military Relations: An Introduction,” Journal of Strategic Studies 6 (1983): 1–12; Yoram Peri, “Political–Military Partnership in Israel,” International Political Science Review 2 (1981): 303–15; Amos Perlmutter, “The Israeli Army in Politics: The Persistence of the Civilian over the Military,” World Politics 20 (1968): 606–43. 9 Eva Etzioni-Halevy, “Civil–Military Relations and Democracy: The Case of the Military–Political Elites’ Connection in Israel,” Armed Forces and Society 22 (1996): 401–17; Moshe Lissak, “Civilian Components in National Security Doctrine,” in National Security and Democracy in Israel, ed. Avner Yaniv (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 55–80; Yoram Peri, “The Arab–Israeli Conflict and Israeli Democracy,” in Israeli Democracy under Stress, ed. Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1993), 343–57. 10 Aharon Kleiman, Israel’s Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: PergamonBrassey’s, 1985); Aharon Kleiman and Reuven Pedatzur, Rearming Israel: Defense Procurement through the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991); Alex Mintz, “Military–Industrial Linkages in Israel,” Armed Forces and Society 12 (1985): 9–27. 11 Yael Enoch and Abraham Yogev, “Military–University Encounters and the Educational Plans of Israeli Officers,” Armed Forces and Society 15 (1989): 449–62; Daniel Maman and Moshe Lissak, “The Impact of Social Networks on the Occupational Patterns of Retired Officers: The Case of Israel,” Forum International 9 (1995): 279–308. 12 Arnon Soffer and Julian Minghi, “Israel’s Security Landscape: The Impact of Military Considerations on Land Uses,” Professional Geographer 38 (1986): 28–41. 13 Brenda Danet, Yosefa Loshitzky, and Haya Bechar-Israeli, “Masking the Mask: An Israeli Response to the Threat of Chemical Weapons,” Visual Anthropology 6 (1993): 229–70; Mario Sznajder, “The Israeli Home Front and the Gulf War,” Defense Analysis 11 (1995): 91–107. 14 Stuart Cohen, “The Peace Process and Its Impact on the Development of a ‘Slimmer and Smarter’ Israel Defence Force,” Israel Affairs 1 (1995): 1–21; Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, “Total Quality Management and Power/Knowledge Dialectic in the Israeli Army,” Journal of Thought (1997): 9–36. 15 Nahman Ben-Yehuda, “The Masada Mythical Narrative and the Israeli Army,” in Military and Militarism, 57–87; Don Handelman and Lea Shamgar-Handelman, “The Presence of Absence: The Memorialism of National Death in Israel,” in Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience, ed. Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 85–128. 16 Eliezer Don-Yehiya, “Festivals and Political Culture: Independence Day Celebrations,” Jerusalem Quarterly 45 (1988): 61–84; Don Handelman and Elihu Katz, “State Ceremonies of Israel: Remembrance Day and Independence Day,” in Israeli Judaism: The Sociology of Religion in Israel, ed. Shlomo Deshen, Charles Liebman, and Moshe Shokeid (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995), 75–85. 17 Emmanuel Sivan, The 1948 Generation: Myth, Profile and Memory (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 1991). 18 Dafna Izraeli, “Gendering Military Service in the Israeli Defense Forces,” Israel Social Science Research 12 (1997): 129–66; Nira Yuval-Davis, “Front and Rear: The Sexual Division of Labour in the Israeli Army,” Feminist Studies 11 (1985): 649–76. 19 Moshe Lissak, “Modernization and Role-Expansion of the Military in Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 9 (1967): 233–55; idem, “Center and Periphery in Developing Countries and Prototypes of Military Elites,” Studies in Comparative International Development 5 (1969–70): 139–50.

480 Zeev Rosenhek et al. 20

Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 21 Uri Ben-Eliezer, “A Nation-in-Arms: State, Nation, and Militarism in Israel’s First Years,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1995): 264–85; idem, “Rethinking the Civil–Military Relations Paradigm: The Inverse Relation between Militarism and Praetorianism through the Example of Israel,” Comparative Political Studies 30 (1997): 356–74; idem, “Is a Military Coup Possible in Israel? Israel and French Algeria in Comparative Historical–Sociological Perspective,” Theory and Society 27 (1998): 311–49. 22 Eyal Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998). 23 Daniel Maman and Moshe Lissak, “Military–Civilian Elite Networks in Israel: A Case in Boundary Structure,” in Restless Mind: Essays in Honor of Amos Perlmutter, ed. Benjamin Frankel (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 49–79. 24 Izraeli, “Gendering Military Service”; Yuval-Davis, “Front and Rear.” 25 James Burk, “From Wars of Independence to Democratic Peace: Comparing the Cases of Israel and the United States,” in The Military, State and Society in Israel: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Daniel Maman, Zeev Rosenhek, and Eyal Ben-Ari (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, forthcoming); Menahem Hofnung, “Ethnicity, Religion and Politics in Applying Israel’s Conscription Law,” Law and Policy 17 (1995): 311–40; Sara Helman, “Citizenship Regime, Identity and Peace Protest in Israel,” in Military, State and Society; Baruch Kimmerling, “Political Subcultures and Civilian Militarism in a Settler-Immigrant Society,” in Concerned with Security: Learning from Israel’s Experience, ed. Daniel Bar-Tal, David Jacobson, and Aharon Kleiman (Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press, forthcoming). 26 Tamar Liebes and Shoshana Blum-Kulka, “Managing a Moral Dilemma: Israeli Soldiers in the Intifada,” Armed Forces and Society 27 (1994): 45–68; Sara Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of Community,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 25 (1997): 305–32; Ruth Linn, Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as Moral Critic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 27 Amia Lieblich, Transition to Adulthood during Military Service: The Israeli Case (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 28 Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Charles Moskos, “Trend Report: Armed Forces and Society,” Current Sociology 29 (1981): 1–43; Nihal Kara, “Military-Related Research in Turkey: A Critical Review,” in Military Related Social Research, 225–43. 29 Jean Pierre Thomas, “Recent Defence-Related Social Research in France,” in Military Related Social Research, 67–72. 30 Udo Rumerskirch and Joachim Giller, “Social Sciences and the Military in Austria,” in Military Related Social Research, 99–117. 31 Giuseppe Caforio, “Military Sociology in Italy,” in Military Related Social Research, 119–70. 32 Doo-Seung Hong, “Research on Armed Forces and Society in the Republic of Korea: A National Report,” in Military Related Social Research, 269–97. 33 Caforio, “Military Sociological Research in Italy;” Christopher Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in the United Kingdom: A Review of British Military Sociology,” in Military Sociology, 68–90; Joseph Soeters, “Military Sociology in the Netherlands,” in Military Sociology, 128–39. 34 Shlomo Dover, “Military and Military–Society Research and Activity: The Case of the IDF,” in Military Related Social Research, 245–68. 35 Willem Scheelen, “Recent Research on Armed Forces and Society in The Netherlands,” in Military Related Social Research, 35–66. 36 Heinrich Geppert, “Commissioned Military Research: The Military’s Point of View,” in Military Sociology, 55–67; Paul Klein, “Sociology and the Military in Germany,” in ibid., 44–54. 37 Ilan Gonen and Eliav Zakay, ed., Leadership and Leadership Development (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 1999); Micha Popper and Avihu Ronen, ed., On Leadership—Theory of Leadership, Leadership in the IDF and Leadership Development (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 1993). 38 Ari Shirom, “On Some Correlates of Combat Performance,” Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1976): 419–32; Reuven Gal, A Portrait of the Israeli Soldier (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986). 39 Victor Azarya and Baruch Kimmerling, “New Immigrants as a Special Group in the Israeli Armed Forces,” Journal of Strategic Studies 6 (1983): 129–48. 40 Cohen, “Peace Process.”

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Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers; Helman, “Militarism and the Construction”; Lieblich, Transition to Adulthood; Edna Lomsky-Feder, As if There Was No War: The Life Stories of Israeli Men (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998). 42 Rumerskirch and Giller, “Social Sciences and the Military in Austria.” 43 Philippe Manigart, “Military Sociological Research in Belgium,” in Military Sociology, 10–21. 44 Dimitris Smokovitis, “Military Sociology in Greece,” in Military Related Social Research, 187–98. 45 Soeters, “Military Sociology in the Netherlands.” 46 Ruth Schweizer and Hand Jorg Schweizer-Meyer, “Recent Military-Related Social Research in Switzerland,” in Military Related Social Research, 73–98. 47 Samuel Rolbant, The Israeli Soldier: Profile of an Army (Cranbury, N.J.: Thomas Yoseloff, 1970); Gal, Portrait of the Israeli Soldier; Martin Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Forces (New York: Public Affairs, 1998). 48 Rumerskirch and Giller, “Social Sciences and the Military in Austria.” 49 Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in the United Kingdom.” 50 This situation seems to be very similar to the one found in France, where the process of decolonization brought about serious questionings of the military and a multiplication of scholarly works about the country’s armed forces: Michel Louis Martin, “French Military Sociological Research: A Still Promising Field,” in Military Sociology, 22–43. 51 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 52 Myron Aronoff, Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1989); Virginia Dominguez, People as Subject, People as Object: Selfhood and Peoplehood in Contemporary Israel (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). 53 Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, “Citizenship and Stratification in an Ethnic Democracy,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (1998): 408–27. 54 Gal and Cohen, “Israel: Still Waiting in the Wings.” 55 Lomsky-Feder and Ben-Ari, “Epilogue.” 56 Tamar Katriel, Communal Webs: Communication and Culture in Contemporary Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). 57 Meira Weiss, “Bereavement, Commemoration, and Collective Identity in Contemporary Israeli Society,” Anthropological Quarterly 70 (1997): 91–101. 58 Handelman and Shamgar-Handelman, “Presence of Absence.” 59 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 60 Harries-Jenkins and Moskos, “Trend Report.” 61 Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in the United Kingdom;” Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” 62 Caforio, “Military Sociological Research in Italy.” 63 Shlomo Hershkovitz, Higher Education in Israel: Trends and Developments (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Statistical Reports, 1997). 64 Eva Etzioni-Halevy and Rina Shapira, “Contemporary Sociology in Israel,” Sociological Papers 1 (1992): 1–27; Zeev Rosenhek, “New Developments in the Sociology of Palestinian Citizens of Israel: An Analytical Review,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (1998): 558–78. 65 Lea Shamgar-Handelman, “Family Sociology in a Small Academic Community: Family Research and Theory in Israel,” Marriage and Family Review 23 (1996): 377–416. 66 Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” 67 This trend is consistent with the wider pattern found in Israeli academe in which close to a third of all faculty members of institutions of higher education received their training abroad: Hershkovitz, Higher Education in Israel, 67. 68 Ben-Yehuda, “Dominance of the External.” 69 This pattern is again consistent with the general trend in Israeli scholarship. Although 95 percent of publications in the humanities have a single author, the corresponding figures are 67 percent for the social sciences and 33 percent for the hard sciences, respectively: Hershkovitz, Higher Education in Israel, 59–69. 70 Martin Edmonds, Armed Forces and Society (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988). 71 Richard Gabriel, No More Heroes: Madness and Psychiatry in War (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987). 72 Mordechai Bar-On, “Education Processes in the Israel Defense Forces,” in The Draft: A Handbook of

482 Zeev Rosenhek et al. Facts and Alternatives, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 138–66; Avishai Ehrlich, “Israel: Conflict, War and Social Change,” in The Sociology of War and Peace, ed. Colin Creighton and Martin Shaw (London: Macmillan, 1987), 121–42; Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari, “From ‘The People in Uniform’ to ‘Different Uniforms for the People’: Professionalism, Diversity and the Israel Defence Forces,” in Managing Diversity in the Armed Forces, ed. Joseph Soeters and Jan van der Meulen (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1999), 157–86. 73 Bernard Boene, “Social Science Research, War and the Military in the United States: An Outsider’s View of the Field’s Dominant National Tradition,” in Military Sociology, 149–254. 74 Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” 75 James Burk, “Morris Janowitz and the Origins of Sociological Research on Armed Forces and Society,” Armed Forces and Society 19 (1993): 167–86; Klein, “Sociology and the Military in Germany”; George Kourvetaris and Betty Dobratz, “An Overview of Sociology of the Military,” in World Perspectives on the Sociology of the Military, ed. George Kourvetaris and Betty Dobratz (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1977), 3–42; David Segal and Wallace Sinaiko, “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen,” in Life in the Rank and File: Enlisted Men and Women in the Armed Forces of the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, ed. David Segal and Wallace Sinaiko (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1986), 1–8. 76 Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” 77 Dan Horowitz, “Is Israel a Garrison State?” Jerusalem Quarterly 4 (1977): 58–65; idem, “The Israel Defence Forces: A Civilianized Military in a Partially Militarized Society,” in Soldiers, Peasants and Bureaucrats, ed. Roman Kolkowitz and Andrzej Korbonski (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 77–105. 78 Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in Great Britain.” 79 Scheelen, “Recent Research on Armed Forces and Society in The Netherlands.” 80 Reuven Gal, “Israel,” in The Military: More Than Just a Job, ed. Charles Moskos and Frank Wood (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988), 267–77. 81 See Schweizer and Schweizer-Meyer, “Recent Military-Related Social Research in Switzerland.” 82 Jan Van der Meulen, “The Netherlands,” in The Military, 227–48. 83 See Caforio, “Military Sociology in Italy.” 84 Victor Azarya and Baruch Kimmerling, “Cognitive Permeability of Civil–Military Boundaries: Draftee Expectations from Military Service in Israel,” Studies in Comparative International Development 20 (1985– 86): 42–63. 85 Yehuda Ben Meir, Civil–Military Relations in Israel (Tel-Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 1995). 86 Ben-Eliezer, “Is a Military Coup Possible in Israel?” 87 Baruch Kimmerling, The Interrupted System (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985). 88 Baruch Kimmerling, personal communication. 89 Reuven Gal, “Commitment and Obedience in the Military: An Israeli Case,” Armed Forces and Society 11 (1985): 553–64. 90 Ben Shalit, The Psychology of Conflict and Combat (New York: Praeger, 1988). 91 Rebecca Schiff, “Civil–Military Relations Reconsidered: Israel as an ‘Uncivil’ State,” Security Studies 1 (1992): 636–58; idem, “The Indian Military and Nation Building: Institutional and Concordance Theory,” in To Sheathe the Sword: Civil Military Relations in the Quest for Democracy, ed. John Lovell and David Albright (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 119–30. 92 Ben-Yehuda, “The Dominance of the External.” 93 Rumerskirch and Giller, “Social Sciences and the Military in Austria.” 94 Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” 95 Shamgar-Handelman, “Family Sociology.” 96 Ibid. 97 Caforio, “Military Sociology in Italy.” 98 Uri Ram, The Changing Agenda of Israeli Sociology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). 99 Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in Great Britain,” 4. 100 Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985). 101 Ehrlich, “Israel: Conflict, War and Social Change”; Baruch Kimmerling, “Patterns of Militarism in Israel,” European Journal of Sociology 34 (1993): 196–223.

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Helman, “Militarism and the Construction”; idem, “Citizenship Regime, Identity and Peace Protest.” Ben-Eliezer, “A Nation-in-Arms”; idem, “Rethinking the Civil–Military Relations”; idem, “Is a Military Coup Possible in Israel?” Yagil Levy, Trail and Error: Israel’s Road from War to de-Escalation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). 103 Stephen Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Nihal Kara, “Military-Related Research in Turkey: A Critical Review,” in Military Related Social Research. 104 Azarya and Kimmerling, “New Immigrants as a Special Group”; Moshe Lissak, “The Israeli Defence Forces as an Agent of Socialization and Education: A Research in Role Expansion in a Democratic Society,” in The Perceived Role of The Military, ed. M. R. van Gils (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1972), 325–40. 105 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968); Morris Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). 106 Ram, Changing Agenda. 107 Daniella Ashkenazy, ed., The Military in the Service of Society and Democracy: The Challenge of the Dual-Role Military (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994). 108 Malka Shabtay, “The Experience of Ethiopian Jewish Soldiers in the Israeli Army: The Process of Identity Formulation within the Military Context,” Israel Social Science Research 10 (1995): 69–80; idem, Best Brother: The Identity Journey of Ethiopian Immigrants (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Cherikover, 1999). 109 Dover, “Military and Military–Society Research and Activity.” 110 Sara Helman, “From Soldiering and Motherhood to Citizenship: A Study of Four Israeli Peace Protest Movements,” Social Politics 6 (1999): 292–313; Levy, Trail and Error; Alon Peled, “The Politics of Language in Multiethnic Militaries: The Case of Oriental Jews in the Israeli Defence Forces, 1950–1959,” Armed Forces and Society 26 (1999): 587–606. 111 On gender and the military, see Iris Jerbi, The Double Price: The Status of Women in Israeli Society and Women’s Service in the Military (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1997); Edna Levy-Schreiber and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Body-Building, Character-Building and Nation-Building: Gender and Military Service in Israel,” Studies in Contemporary Judaism (forthcoming); Orna Sasson-Levy, “Subversion within Oppression: Constituting Gender Identities among Female Soldiers in ‘Male’ Roles,” in “Hear My Voice”: Representations of Women in Israeli Culture, ed. Yael Atzmon (Tel-Aviv; Hakkibutz Hameuchad, forthcoming); Susan Sered, What Makes Women Sick? Maternity, Modesty and Militarism in Israeli Society, (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2000). On minorities, see Hillel Frisch, “The Druze Minority in the Israeli Military: Traditionalizing and Ethnic Police Role,” Armed Forces and Society 20 (1993): 51–68; Alon Peled, A Question of Loyalty: Military Manpower Policy in Multiethnic States (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). On homosexuals, see Danny Kaplan, David, Jonathan and Other Soldiers: Identity, Masculinity and Sexuality in Combat Units of the Israeli Army (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 1999); Danny Kaplan and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Engaging or Building Walls? Managing Gay Identity in Combat Units of the Israeli Army,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (2000): 392–432. And on religious groups, see Stuart Cohen, The Scroll or the Sword? Dilemmas of Religion and Military Service in Israel (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997); idem, “From Integration to Segregation: The Role of Religion in the IDF,” Armed Forces and Society 25 (1999): 387–405. 112 Ehrlich, “Israel: Conflict, War and Social Change”; Kimmerling, “Patterns of Militarism in Israel”; Uri Ram, “Civic Discourse in Israeli Sociological Thought,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 3 (1989): 255–72. 113 Eyal Ben-Ari, “Masks and Soldiering: The Israeli Army and the Palestinian Uprising,” Cultural Anthropology 4 (1989): 372–89. 114 Robert Paine, “Anthropology beyond the Routine: Cultural Alternatives for the Handling of the Unexpected,” International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 7 (1992): 183–203. 115 Yaron Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 116 Meira Weiss, “Bereavement, Commemoration, and Collective Identity in Contemporary Israeli Society,” Anthropological Quarterly 70 (1997): 91–101. 117 Levy, Trail and Error.

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Bernard Boene, “How Unique Should the Military Be? A Review of Representative Literature and Outline of Synthetic Formulation,” European Journal of Sociology 31 (1990): 3–59. 119 See Martin Van Creveld, “Military Lessons of the Yom-Kippur War,” Jerusalem Quarterly 5 (1977): 114–24. 120 William Henderson, Cohesion: The Human Element in Combat (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1986). 121 Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle (New York: Free Press, 1985); Hugh McManners, The Scars of War (London: HarperCollins, 1994). 122 Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston: Little Brown, 1995). 123 For example, Michael Feige and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Card Games and an Israeli Army Unit: An Interpretive Case Study,” Armed Forces and Society 17 (1990): 429–48. 124 See Eyal Ben-Ari with Galeet Dardashti, “Tests of Soldierhood, Trials of Manhood: Military Service and Male Ideals in Israel,” in The Military, State and Society in Israel. 125 Liora Sion, Images of Manhood among Combat Soldiers: Military Service in the Israeli Infantry as a Rite of Initiation from Youthood to Adulthood (in Hebrew), Shaine Working Papers no. 3 (1997), Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 126 Nancy Goldman and Karl Wiegand, “The Israeli Woman in Combat,” in The Military, Militarism, and the Polity: Essays in Honor of Morris Janowitz, ed. Michael Martin and Ellen McCrate (New York: Free Press, 1984), 201–30. 127 An exception is Helman, “Citizenship Regime, Identity and Peace Protest in Israel”. 128 Lieblich, Transition to Adulthood. 129 Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers. 130 Lomsky-Feder, As if There Was No War. 131 Zevik Lehrer, personal communication. 132 Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers. 133 Liebes and Blum-Kulka, “Managing a Moral Dilemma”; Linn, Conscience at War. Reuven Gal, ed. The Seventh War: The Effects of the Intifada on the Israeli Society (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1990). 134 Ben-Yehuda, “The Dominance of the External.” 135 Dandeker, “Armed Forces and Society Research in the United Kingdom.” Martin, “French Military Sociological Research.” Boene, “Social Science Research, War and the Military in the United States.”