Israeli Military Research Articles

Emergent Veteran Identity: Toward a New Theory of Veteran Identity in Israeli Society

Israeli society has seen a gradual decrease in the proportion of compulsory and reserve soldiers amid growing criticism of the military from those who have previously served. This criticism is connected to a willingness on their part to organize collective action for postservice benefits and influence other postservice-related issues. We argue that a new theoretical concept of an “emergent veteran identity” could explain this new social phenomenon for both the Israeli military and others. In this study, 248 Israeli veterans completed questionnaires designed to investigate emergent veteran identity. The results reveal that emergent veteran identity was explained by the perception of the role of the military in society, by the organizational dimensions of veterans’ transition into society, and, to a lesser extent, by combat experiences. Female veterans had a higher emergent veteran identity and exhibited higher transformation limbo. The article also discusses the utility of this new concept for the study of veterans in general and the results’ implications for threats to and the loss of military identity.

The everyday art of resistance: Interpreting "resistancescapes" against urban violence in Palestine

In 2002, the Israeli military performed one of its most extensive operations on occupied Palestine. One outcome of this war was the enforcement of an Israeli Segregation Wall that severs the sensitive Palestinian urban fabric and secludes Palestinians in isolated enclaves. Consequentially, the eight-meter-high wall stands as a physical reminder of the spatial violence behind its existence, which targets the normality of Palestinian everyday life by restricting mobility and confirming invisibility. The imposed hegemonic wall became part of the public realm, converting the latter into a traumascape where memories of war are continuously emitted to the public. Since then, eager international and Palestinian artists have been utilizing the concrete panels as a medium for art expression. On the Segregation Wall, graffiti expresses the historic and ongoing struggle that embodies Palestinians' collective memory and national identity. Through graffiti, Palestinians find moments to grieve losses and cognitively imagine a liberated future for their cities. This paper offers an in-depth reflection on the Palestinian graffiti on the Segregation Wall. Through ethnographic research, the study explores the role of Palestinian graffiti in transforming the Israeli-imposed traumascape into what we term a resistancescape. By provoking urban dialogues around trauma sites, Palestinian graffiti offers an example of creative everyday resistance, empowering Palestinians to claim their right to the city. Challenging the oppressor's hegemony by spreading graffiti on the imposed Segregation Wall helps Palestinians negotiate everyday life, keep their Sumud, and demand spatial justice.

Popular Resistance against Israeli Territorial Expropriation: Beita as a Model

AbstractThe Israeli‐Palestinian conflict dates back to the early 1930s. The most crucial factor that prolongs it and prevents any glimmer of hope is Israel's insistence on displacing the Palestinians from their lands and implanting Israeli citizens in their place. Motivated by inference theory, this study aims at investigating the latest wave of popular civil resistance against territorial expropriation in the town of Beita. The study shows that territorial confiscation is carried out systematically by Israeli settlers, aided by the army. It also shows that Beita's nonviolent approach to resistance enhances its legitimacy domestically and internationally and encourages a wider base of grassroots participation. Beita has always employed popular types of civil resistance, such as weekly protests and night‐confusion tactics at Jabal Sabih, to defend itself and expel settlers. Despite the high price Beita has paid and the settlers’ evacuation of the outpost, the Israeli military has turned the site into a base. The conclusion is that popular civil resistance has the potential to challenge occupiers in a powerful way.

Life and Health Under Israeli Military Occupation During COVID-19: Report from the West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territory.

This qualitative study explores lived experiences of Palestinians in the West Bank during the COVID-19 pandemic intersecting with life under Israeli military occupation, structural violence, and racism. Insight is provided into the pandemic's effect on daily life and health and into coping and support mechanisms employed under apartheid conditions. Forty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted among a stratified sample of Palestinian adults. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. During the pandemic, Palestinian social lives were interrupted, jobs were lost, and incomes declined. Families fell into social and financial crises, with strife, insecurity, uncertainty, and fear negatively affecting physical and mental health. Pandemic effects were compounded by the Palestinian Authority's shortcomings and policies not taking into account citizens' rights and social protection and by Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights. Social solidarity was instrumental for coping during the pandemic just as it was during intensified political violence. One key feature that helped Palestinians survive promoting their cause for freedom, sovereignty, and self-determination is their social solidarity in times of strife. This has proven to be a crucial component in overcoming threats to the survival of a people during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century.

“Hold your nose and harness these men”: Sexual vulnerability in a hyper-masculine organization – A barrier or a resource?

Based on 34 in-depth interviews with women in the Israeli military, this article explores how the sexual vulnerability of women in power positions is used as both a disciplining power and a resource for agency that enables them to negotiate a hyper-masculine organizational culture. Juxtaposing theoretical insights from the CMS literature on sexuality within organizations with those arising from the Butlerian conceptualization of vulnerability, we offer an analytical framework for understanding women’s sexual vulnerability in hyper-masculine environments, not exclusively as a victimization process but also as a significant survival practice designed for coping with their organizational exclusion. Accordingly, the theoretical contribution of this article allows for a nuanced examination of subjects experiencing exclusion and devaluation as they constitute their political subjectivity in hostile work environments.

A qualitative study of equine-assisted therapy for Israeli military and police veterans with PTSD-impact on self-regulation, bonding and hope.

Equine-assisted therapy (EAT) is an increasingly popular form of treatment for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who, for one reason or another, find psychotherapy and other traditional treatment approaches unsuitable or unhelpful. However, the concomitant growth of research in the field is yet to engage with key factors relating to EAT; specifically, there are few studies considering the phenomenological perspective of patients, and the embodied knowledge deriving from the lived experience of PTSD patients who participated in EAT-based intervention programmes. Based on a qualitative-phenomenological study, interviews were conducted with 12 PTSD patients who had completed an EAT-based intervention programme. From these, three main themes characterising the meanings they gave to participation in an EAT-based treatment programme were identified: the ability to relax (self-regulation); establishing a relationship (bonding) and transformation and hope for the future. The findings of this study point to a process whereby participation in an EAT-based treatment programme facilitates the ability to cope with PTSD symptoms in a way that bridges the patient's emotional, social and spiritual-existential dimensions. The findings suggest that EAT can contribute to the healing process of veterans suffering from PTSD.

Problematika Antara Israel dan Palestina

This article examines how Indonesian diplomacy takes place in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Armed friction and clashes between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli military still occur and can even affect Palestinian civilians. Judging from the history of Indonesia's closeness to Palestine, Indonesia is one of the countries that actively call for the independence of Palestine with a two-state solution. This article is described using conflict resolution theory. Furthermore, the author finds the findings of Indonesian diplomacy in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Indonesia plays an active role through its role as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Ludd and Lydda: A Tale of Two Plans

This article discusses a half century of urban transformation in one relatively minor town in Palestine, situated on a major road, under two regimes: the late Ottoman Empire and British Mandate. The changes in Ludd/Lydda are examined through the planning prism. Given the lack of any systematic, official planning in that town before World War I, an attempt is made to reconstruct such a plan out of available documents. Both the real plan one produced by the British colonial mind and the imagined one—produced so to speak by the Indigenous inhabitants as reconstructed here—serve as case study for tracing how the town’s Palestinian inhabitants coped with different regimes until their town was occupied by the Israeli military and they became refugees.

High‐Risk Transnationalism: Why Do Israeli‐Americans Volunteer in the Israeli Military?*

This study investigates how second‐generation Israeli Americans explain their voluntary enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). By using 63 interviews, I compare enlistment motivation narratives of three groups: IDF enlistees with a background in Tzofim, an Israeli‐Zionist youth movement in the U.S.; same movement participants who did not enlist; and IDF enlistees with no movement background. The findings illustrate the importance that life circumstances, instrumental considerations, and a search for belonging have for enlistment. Respondents whose future life course was clear were more likely to opt for college, while those without a clear life course joined the IDF in a quest for belonging and future opportunities. Ideological motives were mostly subsidiary, and enlistees without a movement background were even less likely to express them. The study brings together the scholarship on migration and nationalism with the sociological theory of high‐risk participation. It thus investigates the largely uncharted territory of homeland military service among diaspora members, an underexplored yet highly relevant topic in the current era of mass migration. The study also offers a novel contribution to high‐risk collective action theory as it brings attention to two largely overlooked groups: non‐participants and participants who have not undergone movement socialization.

Military Leadership by Intellectual Officers: A Case Study of the IDF

Morris Janowitz believed that for an army to be victorious it needs to be led by as many intellectual forces as possible, just as any organization needs organizational intellectualism to prosper. It is agreed in scholarly literature that the intellectual must author various articles and manifestos to express their viewpoints, mindset, and philosophy in the public sphere. Based on Janowitz’s belief and using the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as a case study, this research offers a model for a generic research methodology that can be practiced elsewhere. The mission was to find the extent to which the higher echelons of the Israeli military engage in writing academic articles concerning matters of strategy and army professionalism. Among other conclusions, the authors point out that, with certain reservations considered, the number of articles authored by the IDF’s senior officers proved to be low. If publication indeed reflects intellectualism, the few articles produced over seven decades by the IDF’s leading echelon ought to sound a warning for Israel’s military decision-makers.

Ізраїльський досвід післявоєнного відновлення економіки

Objective. The main objective of this article was to study the Israeli experience of post-war economic reconstruction and to define the factors effecting the growth and development of the economy of Israel. Methods. We used such general and specific methods as comparison, analysis, synthesis, graphic method and grouping in order to gain this objective. Results. As a result of this research we defined the main indicators of economic development of Israel and its position in world ratings. We also defined the main indicators of development of Israel as a state, among which are international support, issue of government bonds, reparation from Germany, and development of the New Economic policy, establishment of the Israeli Military Force culture and inflow of human resources. Launching of major infrastructure projects played a significant role in economic recovery, such as water supply system construction, sea ports and processing plants. Moreover, state supported agriculture and light industry. The economy of Israel is highly developed due to support to research and development achievements made by scientists, thus, it is based on gaining new knowledge and its practical implementation. The basis for Israel’s economic miracle is science, the development and implementation of new technologies with their further adaption for real manufacturing. Israel’s experience is a valuable example of post-war reconstruction of a country and the way to bring the country out of ruins. It is worth taking Israeli experience into account while developing Ukraine’s Marshall Plan when it goes about taxation, state production support, human capital accumulation, development of innovations and their implementation into processing industry. Scientific novelty. In the research the authors proved that the phenomenon of Israel’s economic miracle is unique and its experience is a positive example of how to make the economy innovative out of nothing. Practical significance. The research defined the factors effecting the establishment of the economy of Israel. These factors may be used in the Ukrainian reality, while developing the recovery plan. Key words: economy competitiveness, innovative economy, technology and innovation, post-war reconstruction, international experience, global economy, development.

Food attitudes and consumer behavior towards food in conflict-affected zones during the COVID-19 pandemic: case of the Palestinian territories

PurposeGlobal lockdowns and restrictions linked to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have affected food environments and consumption patterns. Conflict-affected countries are disproportionately affected from economic and food security perspectives. In this regard, the Palestinian territories (namely West Bank and Gaza Strip), which face a number of issues such as Israeli military and economic control, overcrowded cities and refugee camps (especially in Gaza Strip), rising poverty and food insecurity, are an especially interesting case study. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the selection and intake of foods and drinks, as well as consumer behavior and attitude toward food in the Palestinian territories.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws upon an online survey in the Palestinian territories administered in Arabic through the Survey Monkey platform from September 15 to October 10, 2020, with 322 adults. The survey findings were analyzed using descriptive statistics and several nonparametric tests. Particularly, the U-Mann Whitney test was used in dichotomous, categorical independent variables (e.g. gender), while the Kruskal–Wallis test was run to analyze multi-choice responses (e.g. occupation).FindingsThe results reveal that food attitudes and consumer behavior towards food have been widely affected. First, they reveal that Palestinians try to have healthier diets but ate more between meals (e.g. snacks). Second, the pandemic transformed respondents' shopping behavior and induced panic buying, negatively affecting food affordability due to increased prices of some foods (e.g. fruits and vegetables). Some food behaviors were shaped by negative psychological determinants (e.g. depression and anxiety). The pandemic effects are moderated by different sociodemographics (age, education and income). COVID-19 negatively affected food security but also opened a “window of opportunity” to trigger the transition towards more sustainable diets.Originality/valueThe paper results show that the eventual effects of COVID-19 will most likely vary from country to country, based not only on the epidemiological circumstances but also, among other factors, on the baseline socioeconomic situation and shock resilience. The findings contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on food behaviors in the Palestinian territories, which would have several policy implications.

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History

Negative Impoliteness and Reconstruction of Identity: Cyberpragmatics Analysis of Palestinian Conflict News Comments on Arab Youtube Channel

This study aims to explain the negative impoliteness in the comments on the news of the Palestinian conflict on the Arab Youtube channel. This descriptive qualitative research took the source of data in the form of 5 news of the attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque complex by the Israeli military on the Al Jazeera youtube channel as a data source. The internet archive documentation technique and free-of-conversation listening technique were used at the data collection stage. Meanwhile, the identity method by referring to the stages of qualitative analysis was used as a guide in data analysis. The researchers found 310 negative impoliteness speeches consisting of 5 types: frighten found at 17 speeches (6%); condescend, scorn or ridicule at 113 speeches (36%); invade the other’s space at 72 speeches (23%); explicitly associate the others with negative aspect at 97 speeches (31%); put the other’s indebtedness on record at 11 speeches (4%). The negative impoliteness has a context in the form of criticism of the political policies of Arab countries in responding to the Palestinian conflict. Speakers seek to construct a new community identity for Arab countries in the context of fighting against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Hi-Tech-Oriented National Service: The Free Choice of Religious Women Recruits and the De-Monopolization of the Israeli Military

In recent years, Israel has witnessed two significant processes that challenge the dominant republican discourse that prioritizes military over national-civic service (known as The Israeli national-civilian service—NCS)in terms of contributing the constitution of citizenship and of the material and symbolic convertibility offered to service candidates. The first is related to the expanding range of roles offered in the NCS. The second, related process, which is our current focus, occurs among young religious women from the urban upper-middle class who respond to this expansion by seeking to serve in technological roles, given their high qualifications. Combined, these processes transform the status of the NCS and accelerate the de-monopolization of military service. To examine the contribution of religious young women to the change in the status of service in Israel, we conducted a narrative analysis of interviews with service candidates. Our analysis revealed their strategic use of four different discourses: the neo-liberal economic discourse, the liberal rights and self-realization discourse, the ethnonational discourse, and the religious gender discourse. The way the participants negotiated the four discourses to justify their selection of either military or national-civic service structured their agency as actors transforming the power equation between the two types of service.

Sonic masquerading in Israeli popular music: self-Imitation, accent, and mockery

ABSTRACT The Mistaʿarvim are Jewish undercover agents who masquerade as Arabs in order to infiltrate Palestinian and other Arab societies in the service of the Israeli military. The first Mistaʿarvim unit, which served in the pre-1948 Palmach Zionist militia, was based on Jews of Arab origin. Arabs in appearance and in speech, these undercover Jewish agents masqueraded as Arabs to blend into Arab communities without raising suspicion. They successfully executed their operations only by transforming their Arab selves into a performative imitation of ‘Arabs’ as Others. Complying with the Zionist binary separation between ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ as two different identities, they broke their originally hyphenated Jewish-Arab identity, and in return they gained heroic acceptance into the exclusively Jewish nation in Israel. In this article, we examine how the military-oriented tactic of histaʿarvut (the infinitive form of acting as Mistaʿarvim) sheds light on performative acts in the field of popular music, whereby a Jewish Israeli identity is asserted through a ‘masked’ performance of Arabs. As an act of self-imitation, ‘cultural histaʿarvut’ includes symbolic borrowing of visual, linguistic, or musical elements from Arab and Palestinian cultures in order to stage a masked performance that ‘crosses’ the cultural lines to ridicule or demean Arabs and their culture, as a means of Jewish Israeli entertainment. Drawing on this, we introduce the term ‘sonic masquerading’ to elaborate on the specific performative uses of the Arabic accent and musical features as an example of cultural histaʿarvut in the work of the Israeli musicians Shefita, Daniel Saʿadon, and Tuna.

Militant Kites and Balloons: Anti-Colonial Resistance in Palestine's Great March of Return

This paper examines the Palestinian use of incendiary kites and balloons that emerged during Gaza's Great March of Return. Kites and balloons are rarely thought of as unstoppable weapons in contemporary theatres of war and resistance. Yet, for an extended period the Israeli military was unable to halt these aerial explosives from burning large quantities of agricultural fields and natural forests surrounding the Gaza Strip. The article critiques the security literature that discusses this new method of Palestinian resistance as another instance of terrorism. Instead, by drawing on Palestinian and Fanonian theorisations of violence in anti-colonial movements, I attempt to make the kites and balloons legible as a form of indigenous resistance to settler colonialism that can be an internally mobilising tool for Palestinians. The paper argues that the low-tech aerial explosives were mobilised as a response to high-tech militarism and long-standing settler colonial processes still shaping dynamics on the ground. These innovative forms of resistance momentarily broke the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and in burning trees planted to cover destroyed Palestinian villages open up questions surrounding the struggle over land in Israel/Palestine. The paper concludes by delineating how despite some immediate breakthroughs, it remains questionable whether these militant kites and balloons are long-term politically viable techniques of resistance.

Your House Does Not Look Like You Anymore

In her paper ‘Your house does not look like you anymore: On repair, restoration and destruction in Gaza’, Mona Kriegler uses stories of damage and transformation in the Gaza Strip to explore how the act of repair should be considered as culturally significant and valid as restoration. Referencing Sartre’s belief that destruction to a valued object impacted one’s psyche, she demonstrates how the act of repair can acknowledge - and begin to resolve - the trauma of breaking by highlighting - rather than redacting - the experience of the damage. Kriegler does this through telling the stories of how artists and craftsmen in Gaza are repairing objects broken by time and conflict while leaving visible the historical, cultural and psychological legacy of the damage. Two of the case studies show that, while the repairs (to fractured antiques and a deteriorated mansion) share the same ethos of the South Asian repair technique kintsugi, those doing the repairs have indigenized the process due to the reality and needs of those living in the beleaguered, besieged Gaza Strip. When repairs are made with the limited materials available or through Linebaugh’s social ‘commoning’ process, the transformation of the object (from broken to repaired) symbolizes the ongoing breaking and recovery of those living in the Gaza Strip. The third case study (on a cultural centre bombed by the Israeli military) reflects on whether repair can still happen in the face of total destruction. She concludes that an object can still live on, even in its absence, if those that value it (in this case, the Gazan cultural community) use their collective memory and imagination to reconstitute what is lost.

Rifle bullets comparison by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and chemometric analysis

Despite Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory announcing the discontinuation of bullet lead examinations, knowledge of the composition of the bullets has been used as an alternative means of identifying their origin, achieving success in some case studies. In this work, wavelength dispersion X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) and chemometrics were used for the analysis of rifle bullets, in order to identify the spectral similarities of these samples. For this purpose, 54 lead core fragments from 7.62 mm rifle bullets from 5 different manufacturers were obtained: Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC), Israel Military Industries (IMI), Federal Cartridge (FC), Fray Luiz Beltrán (FLB) and Zavod Vlasim (ZV). Principal components analysis (PCA) discriminated the five groups of bullets according to their manufacturers in a three-dimensional scores graph, where 3 principal components accounted for>99% of the variability between the samples. The spectral region for Sb and the scattering region together proved to be determinant for discrimination of the groups. The dendrogram presented in the hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) showed the formation of five groups. The k-nearest neighbor algorithm (k-NN) and soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) correctly classified all samples of the test set. X-ray scattering spectrum were used for the first time in the analysis of the fragments and contributed to the grouping of samples from the same manufacturers. The results indicate that the WDXRF technique is suitable for forensic purposes in case studies, as, besides being quick and relatively simple, it has the advantage of preserving evidence.

The rise and decline of the Israeli offensive

In recent decades there has been a clear decline in both the scale and how deep the Israeli military had penetrated into enemy territory. The article first examines how Israel managed to gain impressive victories in high intensity wars, mostly in 1967, by carrying out large scale ground offensives. Then the article argues that in fighting non state actors (Hezbollah/Hamas) in the 1990s, and in the 2006, 2008-2009 and 2014 wars, Israel relied too much on air power and not on a major ground offensive. The reasons for this approach were fear of the political ramifications. Israel also strongly wished to avoid heavy casualties, of both Israelis and Arab noncombatants.