Israel's Materialist Militarism

Israel's Materialist Militarism
Author: Yagil Levy
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2007
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780739119082

Israel's Materialist Militarism examines the decade of fluctuations in Israel's military policies, from the peace period of the Oslo Accords to the al-Aqsa Intifada, when the military's use of excessive force led to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and on to the Second Lebanon War of 2006, which reversed the moderating tendencies of the withdrawal from Gaza a year earlier. These dynamics of escalation and deescalation are explained in terms of materialist militarism, the exchange between social groups' military sacrifice and their social rewards, which in turn increases or decreases the level of militarism in society. Levy thus lays down a theoretical framework vital to tracing the fluctuating levels of militarism in Israel and elsewhere. Israel's Materialist Militarism is recommended for those interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict and military-society relations in general.

Israel’s Death Hierarchy

Israel’s Death Hierarchy
Author: Yagil Levy
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814738338

2012 Winner of the Shapiro Award for the Best Book in Israel Studies, presented by the Association for Israel Studies Whose life is worth more? That is the question that states inevitably face during wartime. Which troops are thrown to the first lines of battle and which ones remain relatively intact? How can various categories of civilian populations be protected? And when front and rear are porous, whose life should receive priority, those of soldiers or those of civilians? In Israel’s Death Hierarchy, Yagil Levy uses Israel as a compelling case study to explore the global dynamics and security implications of casualty sensitivity. Israel, Levy argues, originally chose to risk soldiers mobilized from privileged classes, more than civilians and other soldiers. However, with the mounting of casualty sensitivity, the state gradually restructured what Levy calls its “death hierarchy” to favor privileged soldiers over soldiers drawn from lower classes and civilians, and later to place enemy civilians at the bottom of the hierarchy by the use of heavy firepower. The state thus shifted risk from soldiers to civilians. As the Gaza offensive of 2009 demonstrates, this new death hierarchy has opened Israel to global criticism.

Israel and its Army

Israel and its Army
Author: Stuart A. Cohen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2008-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 113414640X

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) plays a key role in Israeli society, and has traditionally been perceived not only as the guardian of national survival, but also as a 'people's army' responsible for the custody of national values. This volume analyses the circumstances currently undermining these perceptions, and explores both the changes occurring

Militarism and Israeli Society

Militarism and Israeli Society
Author: Gabriel Sheffer
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2010-03-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0253004209

Challenging the established view that the civilian sector in Israel has been predominant over its security sector since the state's independence in 1948, this volume critically and systematically reexamines the relationship between these sectors and provides a deeper, more nuanced view of their interactions. Individual chapters cast light on the formal and informal arrangements, connections, and dynamic relations that closely tie Israel's security sector to the country's culture, civil society, political system, economy, educational system, gender relations, and the media. Among the issues and events discussed are Israel's separation barrier, the impact of Israel's military confrontations with the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern states -- especially Lebanon -- and the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Israeli case offers insights about the role of the military and security in democratic nations in contemporary times.

Israeli Nationalism

Israeli Nationalism
Author: Uri Ram
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2010-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136919953

This study of the construction of Jewish-Israeli nationalism combines a sociological study of a national culture with an analysis of the national discourse, exploring the categories of thought that constitute the Jewish-Israeli "nation" as an historical entity, as a social reality and as a communal identity.

Israel's Foreign Policy Towards the PLO

Israel's Foreign Policy Towards the PLO
Author: Amnon Aran
Publisher: Apollo Books
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781845194833

This detailed examination of Israeli foreign policy towards the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) between the 1967 war and the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip focuses on the impact and process of globalisation on the Israeli state's politics, economy, society and culture. In order to determine how interfacing developed between foreign policy and globalisation a theoretical framework is presented that brings together two established approaches that hitherto have advanced in parallel: foreign policy analysis and globalisation theory. This is the first attempt within the discipline of International Relations to theorise the relationships between foreign policy and globalisation. Causal relationships underpinning Israeli foreign policy -- involving government, the state, the economy, social stratification, and the media -- are linked to globalisation by specific example. Conventional accounts of this relationship strip military and political factors of any significance in terms of the conceptualisation of globalisation and its causes, in favour of spatio-temporal and economic dimensions. The state is viewed as being compelled to transform in response to the pressures of globalisation. But in the case of Israel the state acted proactively by using foreign policy towards the PLO as a key site of action to capture the opportunities and cope with the challenges presented by globalisation. To date there have been only partial historical accounts of Israeli foreign policy towards the PLO in the context of globalisation. It is generally understood that foreign policy towards the PLO became entangled with globalisation due to the socio-economic and cultural globalisation of Israel in the mid-1980s, but this study shows that the increasing impact of military and political globalisation during the Cold War on the Arab-Israeli conflict resulted in Israeli foreign policy towards the PLO, and globalisation effects in Israel, becoming entwined from the early 1970s.

Generals in the Cabinet Room

Generals in the Cabinet Room
Author: Yoram Peri
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781929223817

A dramatic shift of power has taken place within Israel's political system; where once the military was usually the servant of civilian politicians, today, argues Yoram Peri, generals lead the way when it comes to foreign and defense policymaking.

Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War

Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War
Author: Dalia Gavriely-Nuri
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739185950

The surprise of the Yom Kippur War (1973) rivals that of the other two major strategic surprises in the twentieth century—Operation Barbarossa, the German surprise attack on the Soviet Union and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The major difference between these events is that Israeli intelligence had a lot more and better quality information leading up to the attack than did the Soviet Union or the United States prior to those attacks. Why, then, was the beginning of the Yom Kippur War such a surprise? While many scholars have tried to explain why Israel was caught unawares despite its sophisticated military intelligence services, Dalia Gavriely-Nuri looks beyond the military, intelligence, and political explanations to a cultural explanation. Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War reveals that the culture that evolved in Israel between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War played a large role in the surprise. Gavriely-Nuri’s analysis provides new and innovative insights into the relationship between culture and socio-political phenomena and security.

Israel's Strategic Agenda

Israel's Strategic Agenda
Author: Efraim Inbar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317997352

Divided into two clear parts, the first part of this book examines political and economic factors in the global strategic environment including, the approach of US and EU foreign policies towards Israel, global trends in the field of defence industries and the energy sector and their implications for the Middle East and Israel. The second part focuses on Israel’s strategic agenda as reflected in its military force design and doctrine, the dilemmas the country has faced in the course of fighting its wars of attrition, the relations between military and civil sectors in Israel, the struggle against Israel on the part of non-governmental organizations, Israel’s main security challenges and national grand strategy. This book was previously published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.

Civil–Military Relations in Israel

Civil–Military Relations in Israel
Author: Elisheva Rosman-Stollman
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014-08-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0739194178

This book, a collection of essays in honor of Stuart Cohen, examines a variety of issues in civil-military relations (CMR) in Israel and abroad. Beyond honoring Cohen’s work, this collection makes a substantial contribution to the field for a number of reasons. First, it brings together prominent scholars from different disciplines in the field, from both Israel and abroad, sketching its boundaries. The chapters in the collection deal with a variety of issues, theoretical and empirical, including topics that are usually neglected in English works, such as the control the military in Israel has on building construction permits in the civilian sector and the relations between the security establishment and the judicial system. Other chapters offer new theoretical perspectives such as the context within which Israeli CMR should be examined, and a more general look at the focus of CMR. Second, it gives non-Hebrew speaking scholars and laypersons alike a better idea of what the main issues in the field of civil-military relations in Israel are today. This book will allow university professors and laypersons to access quality scholarship while still offering a broad spectrum of topics.