An Army Like No Other: How the Israeli Defense Force Made a Nation

by Haim Bresheeth

A history of the IDF that argues that Israel is a nation formed by its army.

The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, who believed that 'the whole nation is the army'. In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was the instrument that might transform a diverse population into a new people. Since the foundation of Israel, therefore, the IDF has been the largest, richest and most influential institution in Israel's Jewish society and is the nursery of its social, economic and political ruling class.

In this fascinating history, Bresheeth charts the evolution of the IDF from the Nakba to the continued assaults upon Gaza, and shows that the state of Israel has been formed out of its wars. He also gives an account of his own experiences as a young conscript during the 1967 war. He argues that the army is embedded in all aspects of daily life and identity. And that we should not merely see it as a fighting force enjoying an international reputation, but as the central ideological, political and financial institution of Israeli society. As a consequence, we have to reconsider our assumptions on what any kind of peace might look like.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Middle East, Israel, War, Ebooks

416 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2020

Reviews

[Noelle]

You can download a free copy here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3168...

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Zionists operate fake ‘antisemitism’ campaigns in many countries, whose goal is not to target actual anti-Semites but rather left anti-Zionist activists, most of whom are Jewish.” “Resistance to Zionism had been relabeled new antisemitism and weaponized.” “Ironically, then as now, the main readers of Zionist texts are anti-Zionists.” Zionism puts Jews in harm’s way. “A double contradiction exists: Jews can and do live safely in other countries, while they cannot in Israel. They can never be safe, certainly not as safe as Jews living in London, Paris, or New York.” The powers behind Zionism were Britain, France and the United States – basic settler-colonialism based on treating the Palestinian land as “terra nullius.” “Without Britain, the Zionist project could not have been initiated, nor would it have succeeded.” The US has used its veto power “hundreds of times” to give Israel a free pass for its criminality. Who knew today it was moral to give violent bullies free passes? Israel became “a large American aircraft carrier beached on the eastern Mediterranean coast” just where it needed to be to outcompete Britain and France.
During the 1936-39 Arab Rebellion (in response to having their land stolen) Britain imported 25,000 soldiers, previously they had only needed 1,000. But for the author, Israel’s “genocidal ‘cleansing’ process started during 1948.”

“At the formation of the Jewish State in 1948, religious Jews were a small minority of the 650,000 Jews then living there, with 85% being secular; by 2010, only 42% of Israelis described themselves as secular.” “Israel cannot be a ‘Jewish State’ with millions of Palestinians under its control, unless it becomes a full-fledged apartheid state, justifying the lack of human rights for millions through racialized ideology.” “Palestinians are not seen as having a right to self-determination.” What you have presently is the “democracy of the master race”, herrenvolk democracy, lifted directly from Hitler’s dream. Ben Gurion understood this was best achieved by placing the army at the center; how does anyone sustain an illegal occupation without force? Who in their right mind welcomes occupation? And so, “Israel spends far more per capita on its military than any other society.” It seeks to turn the old Jew, concerned with non-violent tikkun olam (healing the world) into the New-Jew Sabra, who shoots first and doesn’t even care to ask questions later. The old Jew was quickly, sadly, and successfully labelled cowardly. Jewish powerlessness and vulnerability against the Nazis in WWII got pseudo cleansed by simply taking it out on an innocent third party. Shooting Peter, to hurt Paul; the logic of an illogical sociopath. Just be sure to call your occupied “terrorists”, et voila, and congrats, you are doing the Zionist Tango.

Israel does all this because it found that “war is the best, almost the only way of advancing the settler-colonial agenda.” “Nations do not generally offer their land willingly to foreign occupiers, and Palestine is no exception. To continue and extend the occupation, Israel must use ratcheted up force and violence.” Who knew tikkun olam, or merely wanting peaceful coexistence, was for losers? In addition to occupation, illegal settlements also create security issues and more Palestinian resistance; but you can simply call all who whine about it terrorist sympathizers and US liberals will rush to buy it. Liberal Zionists believe in an “enlightened occupation”; we’ll take your shit and then somehow you won’t complain. The author says actual “Liberal Zionism has never existed and cannot exist by definition” as “there is no liberal colonialism.”

Note how the IDF went from fighting armies to fighting civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Not far back Prussia was called “not a country with an army, but an army with a country.” Israel has proudly taken Prussia’s place. In Israel, “when military action does not work, it is seen as an indication that insufficient force was used.” Bully Logic: If your girlfriend doesn’t do what you want, beat her even more. “In Israel, the use of military option comes first”. While US liberals kept their heads in the sand, Israel went “from the famed People of the Book, to the People of the Gun.” When the 1917 Balfour Declaration was signed “Jews, mostly non-Zionists, only made up less than 8% of Palestine’s population” – all Zionists had to do then “was take over the whole country and dispossess its indigenous population” – easy peasy if you are callously willing to adopt Hitler’s settler-colonial plan for the Slavs in WWII. All you had to do was jettison 2,000 years of Diasporic history and manufacture the image of Zionists as Sparta Redux. The process used in 1948 by the IDF could only be termed racialized genocidal expulsion.” Even Zionist Benny Morris admitted that ethnic cleansing had taken place. If you shamelessly want stolen land to stay yours, these were “the necessary steps of wide-ranging intentional ethnic cleansing.” Joseph Massad argued that “I hold it that the Nakba is a historical epoch that is 127 years old and is ongoing.”

The first three hours of Israel’s six-day war determined the whole war; the IDF was left “ruling the sky”. The author calls Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza “brutal as well as useless” yet “some 95 percent of Israelis justified and supported the operation.” The joys of choosing to be “a Spartan society” knowing full well that Sparta soon went the way of the Dodo. Tikkun olam was replaced by Ha’olam Kulo Negdenu (the whole world is against us). Institutionalized paranoia and eternal victimhood became the New Black. Dictators propped up by the US need Israeli war products to use against their own population because Israeli products have been battle tested against its captive population. If so, perhaps there’s also a market for Jeffrey Dahmer cutlery? If you want to feel less safe, its easy, just start an illegal occupation and start ethnic cleansing; thanks to that, Jews feel less safe in Israel, than anywhere else on the planet. Achievement unlocked. The author says Israel became “a society that perceives reality through the gunsight.” IDF elite squads are “a euphemism for the death squads unleased on the Palestinian civilian population.” After living through the Holocaust, why not force another group of innocents to undergo what you went through? Voila La Nakba. Yeah, that’s the ticket. In Kielce, Poland in 1946, 42 returning Jews were killed by an antisemitic mob – yet today Palestinians, not Poles, are considered terrorists. You just can’t beat good PR.

“Hebrew was, like Latin, a dead language.” Speaking Hebrew stopped around 400 AD. The softness and poetry of Yiddish (which had virtually no military vocabulary) was replaced by ancient Hebrew reborn for pugilism. Herzl thought Hebrew was a dead language. To make Hebrew modern, it had to import tons of words from other languages. Ben-Gurion forced Hebrew on the Palestinian community, treating it as an “urgent national task”. What confuses some is that Yiddish is also written in the Hebrew alphabet.

What to do with the ruins of Palestinian towns destroyed in 1948? Build baby build. Can’t have people asking what was here before under the rubble? Tel Aviv University was built atop what was Sheikh Muwanis. “All universities and colleges make up much of their income from running training programs for the IDF and security services.” Gotta make that occupation profitable. “All fourteen-year-old Jewish high-school students go through paramilitary training in the Gadna.” As Graham Nash sings, Teach Your Children well. To continue getting mileage off the Holocaust, each roadblock to Israeli domination is called the new Hitler from Nassar to Saddam Hussein and beyond; “whoever criticizes or opposes Israel is an anti-Semite and continues the work of Hitler”. “The myth of a tiny Israel, surrounded by enemies, isolated and outnumbered.” Not discussed was “the non-Jews who now constituted 37 percent of the people living under Israeli rule, between the Jordan River and the sea.”

The 1967 War: This was when “the IDF started functioning as an army of occupation” and when the IDF became the Israeli Occupation Forces. After 1967, Israel couldn’t implement Nakba II against the occupied territories because it knew the world was still watching. Instead, the dominant narrative was “Until we can push them all out, we can make their life so miserable that many will leave of their own accord – which we shall facilitate.” “The model was the herrenvolk democracy of South Africa, which physically removed its black population to the Bantustans.”

1967 War Aftermath: Moshe Dayan said he understood “without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house (euphemizing the continuation of their settler-colonial aims). As Noam wrote, in 1967 Israel actively chose expansion over security, and so “since 1967, ‘security’ has filled every last nook and crevice of Israeli existence – guards in cinemas, clubs shopping malls, and schools.” Call it the world’s “largest laboratory of conflict” all “tried in conflict.” Why didn’t Israel annex the new stolen lands? Because then it would have to “give civil rights to the population under occupation.” Oh, poor baby! What Israel wanted was “annexing territories without their inhabitants.” And “two weeks after the guns fell silent, Israel annexed Jerusalem, despite repeatedly stating it did not fight to gain territory.” That’s like “stating” to your date, you only “want to get the tip wet”.

In 1973, Israel shoots down a Libyan airliner killing 103 civilians and crew.” In the first week of the 1973 war, “Israel lost half its tank force and almost half its jet fighters, without seriously denting the Arab offensive.” Kissinger reins in the IDF and forces Israel to negotiate. Israeli leaders finally had to open a dictionary to find out what did “negotiate” mean? What? It involves no force, a level playing field, and the concept of fairness? Impossible! Israel lost 2,500 soldiers and had 10,000 wounded – no wonder the ’73 war isn’t discussed much. The ’73 war was the last war the IDF fought against an Arab army; next up was fighting against resistance fighters and the thrill of e-z war crimes against civilian populations. The ’73 war opened the door for the right to take power and “Begin’s Likud won in a landslide in 1977.” After the ’73 war Israel sought shelter under US benevolence, where it has stayed ever since.

In 1981, Israel bombs an Iraqi nuclear facility in an effort to normalize Israel’s right to strike anywhere, anytime “under the pretext of self-defense.” This gave Israel seemingly the “exclusive right to act illegally wherever it chose.” “To question Israel was to be antisemitic, Prime Minister Begin often stated.” Jean Genet was one of the few Western Intellectuals with the courage to support Palestinian liberation. He wrote about “the grotesque gestures of the dead fermenting in the sun under clouds of flies.” Israel’s Apartheid Wall is visible from space. Under Sharon, “Israel turned into a typical settler-colonial society – even more militaristic, aggressive, and inured.” Sharon branded “Israeli society with the hot iron of the IDF.”

Then comes Israel’s Longest War (in Lebanon). Military planners concluded (as they usually do) that not enough force had been used, leading to “an unrelenting escalation in Israel’s military brutality” (which we amply see today in Israel’s 2024 genocide). Israel’s Lebanon war ironically led to the emergence of Hezbollah as the strongest political and military force in Lebanon, and it soon became “the effective voice of resistance in the country.” Old Islamic fundamentalists were financed by and beholden to the US, but the new Hezbollah and Hamas were free from Western bootlicking. “Hezbollah’s central political tenet is its opposition to Israeli occupation in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.” Because they didn’t ass kiss the West, The US, UK and European Union rushed to proscribe Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations [while the rest of the world considered the US and Israel the real terrorist organizations]. The West wanted Hezbollah and Hamas removed from “resolving the Palestine question.” The Lebanon war was a failure in its goals to remove Hezbollah. “Israeli intelligence was caught with its pants down” and Israel was “an occupying power in Lebanon for eighteen years.” For the Sabra & Shatila Massacre of 1982, “Sharon gave the order for the IDF to enter West Beirut and surround the camps, letting the Phalangists ‘do their work’.” “The IDF forces were stationed yards away from the crimes” yet they comically said they “managed not to notice anything for 38 hours of mayhem.” Those who did notice were told to go “have a rest.” The Second Lebanon War of 2006 introduced the Dahiya Doctrine where Israel demanded disproportionate force and introduced the fantasy of calling all civilian villages military bases.

Israeli settlers turned the West Bank “into the Wild West of Israel” as settlers are “heavily armed, protected by the IDF and paramilitary border guard” where they engage in “stealing, burning, pillaging, killing, and maiming.” Yitzhak Rabin, killed because he wasn’t extremist enough, asked the IDF on TV to “break their bones.” And that’s an Israeli moderate. Scientists in the IDF then designed a vehicle that “catapulted large amounts of gravel towards protestors” and water cannons that sprayed them with the dreaded skunk water that makes you throw up – ah, the most moral army in the world (except for all the rest). Hamas spent the first few months of the First Intifada non-violently sitting on the sidelines because it was financed by the Israeli secret service (good luck AIPAC telling you that) as an alternative to Fatah. The first Intifada injured 30,000 Palestinian children and killed 1,200. The IDF brought in women and young girls to serve and look good in promotional videos. The Palestinians fought for “freedom, sovereignty and equality” while Hasbara comically reduced those standard human aspirations to sheer terrorism. “Israel has never been held to account since 1948.”

2005 Gaza Pull Out Fantasy: In 2005, the real reason Israel pulled out of Gaza was to “lower the cost of the occupation.” “Even when it evacuated Gaza in 2005, Israel had not relinquished control; if anything, it was now in total control of the lives of two million Palestinians who were living in a massive ghetto, without recourse to any form of international justice, law and order, aid, medicines or food.” In fact, “Israel had a stranglehold on Palestinian existence; it controls water resources, the airways and the radio spectrum, the telephone spectrum and apparatus, all international exit and entrance points, and the hundreds of checkpoints on all roads.” What Zionist trolls won’t tell you is that after pulling out of Gaza in 2005, Israel moved back into Gaza in December 2008 with enormous force. “Almost 1,500 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians, of which more than 400 were children. The devastation in Gaza was more intense than in any previous IDF assault” They took out the electricity, gas and water systems – all beyond repair. This was the Dahiya doctrine in action, which happened again in 2012 and 2014. So much for the Zionist troll fantasy that Israel permanently pulled out of Gaza in 2005 (until 10/2023) – case closed.

Israeli Armaments and Mercenaries: Note that morally challenged Israel had no problem supporting Idi Amin of Uganda, the Rwandan genocide, and Zaire’s Mobuto “who plundered his country for more than three decades.” Should that not be enough, in 2017 Israel “supplied arms to the Myanmar killers of the Rohingya”, General Pinochet in Chile, and the military in Haiti, Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Israel: We MAKE a Killing, While You DO the Killing. “In terms of population, Israel is the nation most overrepresented in the marketplace of mercenaries.” Killing for hire, such a noble cause. “For Israel, selling arms promotes a rightwing, pervasive anti-rights ideology and practice, shaping the global political landscape and serving and perpetuating injustice and brutality.” “The Israeli armament industry would never prosper without the massive support of the United States.”

By December 2015, 13% of Israel’s Jews lived in illegal settlements – living illegally outside Israel’s boundaries. “Since the state’s establishment in 1948, more than 65 laws have been used to restrict the rights of Palestinian citizens in all fields of life, with more being passed every year.” Both facts made Israelis feel even less safe. “There is never likely to be a majority of Israelis for democracy and just peace.” When Israel’s economy is having trouble being sustained, the normal solution is to invade Gaza or Lebanon or somewhere, or to reduce social benefits to those who are not the chosen Ashkenazi. “

When you translate Israel’s Proclamation of Independence into English, there is zero mention of the word democracy. Oops… “Israeli democracy is an oxymoron; it is not even a democracy for its Jewish population, let alone its Palestinian citizenry.” Some call Israel an ethnocracy, others call it an ethnic democracy, herrenvolk democracy like South Africa was, or settler-colonial racialized fascism (Nazism Redux anyone?). Israel never adopted a written constitution because that would have denied some citizens full rights making it clearly an apartheid state. In 1950 the Law of return was passed which gave every Jew in the world the “inalienable right to full citizenship”. But this meant Israel became “the first and only state that denied its nationality, where its citizens may not hold nationality.” Another law was then passed to make it impossible for Palestinians who leave to get their land back (clearly illegal under the Geneva Convention and international law).

Israel has two options left today: genocide or racialized expulsion. The vast majority won’t tolerate the obvious third option of simply ending the occupation and giving Palestinians equal rights because there would go the cherished wet dream of Zionist settler-colonialism taken to its nasty and violent conclusion. The author states, “Israelis only feel safe in armed conflict” – how pray tell is that ANY different from Hitler’s dream? Zionist Paradox: “Israelis cannot imagine themselves living without the apparatus of security, which brings them no security.” “Israel may be the only state which does not comprise all of its citizens and, conversely, belongs to a group that is mostly non-citizens.” Review ends in comment section.

[Paras · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Army Like No Other by Haim Bresheeth came out last year and has laid out the reality of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) out in the open perhaps for the first time in such detail. Bresheeth is a son of two Holocaust survivors who moved to Palestine (newly liberated Israel) in 1948. Having seen the horrors of holocaust and later a life as a refugee, his parents were against Zionism and thus the weapons training that Israel was offering at the time to its Jewish settlers. Despite consuming the Zionist agenda of Israeli state since the beginning, Bresheeth witnessed his first moment of truth when he was selected in IDF and had to join it reluctantly. He fought the 1967 Arab-Israeli war while being stationed at Golan Heights and that is where he saw firsthand the harrowing war crimes of IDF.

Bresheeth’s book is an eye-opener where he delves into the history of the State of Israel, the foundation of IDF, the Zionist settler-colonialism and violence of Israel as a necessity to contain and amplify its power. The amount of insecurity of Israeli state felt from the publication of the book could be gauged from the fact that the author’s system was hacked before publication making all copies of the book unstable and rendering his PC inoperable.

The book provides a history and an inside account of how the Israeli society is socialized into accepting the narrative of Zionism where school, community, and most of all, the IDF plays a significant role, and more importantly, his historical analysis on how Zionism is based on anti-Semitism.
An Army Like No Other is extremely informative and research based book. It’s a shame that literary giants like FT have published reviews that are questioning and challenging of the author’s views at best. A big shout out to @versobooks for their continuous coverage of Palestinian struggle, Israeli atrocities and for making this book and Ten Myths About Israel free on their website.

(full review with excepts on my bookstagram @ofcoffeeconversations)

[Peter Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“An Army Like No Other: how the Israeli Defence Forces made a nation,” by Haim Bresheeth-Žabner (Verso, 2020). The argument is that Israel (which he continually calls the Zionist Project), a racist creation by European colonialists, is little more than its army. Citing document after document, he reports that the Zionists knew from the beginning that they would have to eliminate the local inhabitants, the Palestinians, to create their nation. They never expected or planned to live peacefully with these neighbors. They engaged in constant violence to dominate and drive out the Palestinians. The war for independence, he says, had a foregone outcome: The Zionists had been planning, training, arming themselves for decades. They were better equipped, better organized, better led than the Arab, whose military he describes as little more than armed mobs. The Suez war? Long-planned, and aimed at expanding Israeli territory. The 1967 war? Provoked and expected by the Israelis. Only the 1972 war took the complacent Israelis by surprise. Through all this, the IDF is inside the DNA of the nation. You must be a veteran, and especially a general, if you expect to have any place in the government. The US (and Europe to some extent) subsidizes Israel far beyond its actual needs. And now Israel is by far the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the Mideast. Israel is now one of the world’s greatest arms manufacturer. It exports military and security technology everywhere. Israeli mercenaries are found all over the world. The country is an armed camp. But Bresheeth-Žabner continually downplays any hostility to Jews, discounts the role of antisemitism in driving the creation of Israel, ignores as much as possible any agency of the Palestinians or Arabs. Two-state solution? A pipe-dream, especially today. The settlers now dominate Israel. Did Palestinians and Arabs reject or ignore chances for any sort of settlement? No, he says. They were never real. Was there a Holocaust? Yeah, I guess, but that’s not really important; that’s not what drove the creation of Israel. It is now, he says, an apartheid state, where a minority of the population completely controls the lives of the rest. The Israeli government is increasingly right-wing and intolerant. Israelis would be happy if Palestinians just disappeared. I am almost convinced. The current situation in Israel is not sustainable, though any sort of peaceful solution---any solution outside catastrophe---seems impossible. But he ignores the real resistance, the real obstacles, the real existential threats Israel faced from before Day One. They may have been better organized at the start, but there really were Arab armies out to destroy them from the beginning. He never mentions the fact that the UN created two states and the Palestinians refused to accept that. I think that today Israel really faces no existential threat. None of its neighbors threaten its existence (though they would if they could). But Israeli Jews seem to be in a situation where they fear that loosening up anywhere would let loose a whirlwind. This book was very hard to read. And one cannot argue that the author doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His parents were Holocaust survivors who were liberated from the extermination camps. Once in Israel (where they did not want to go but had no choice), his father was jailed as a conscientious objector. He himself was in the Golani brigade during the 1967 war, as a staff officer (where he witnessed second-hand the killing of Syrian POWs). So he comes at the story from the inside.


https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the analysis in this book I find interesting, particularly the present-day social problems in Israeli society. It's also very easy read for a work that is very much an academic thesis. However, most of this book is an intense leftist critique that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, from its ridiculous use of Freud to analyze 21st century matters, to a rather pointed praise for pacifism in the face of cataclysm, t0 some historical howlers that left my mind boggled. In the end this was written with a clear agenda...an agenda that doesn't resonate with me at all. For others, there will no doubt be a different response. Polarising is the word that comes to mind...

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most certainly a strong 4.5. it should be noted that while this book was given away for free in Ebook format last May from Verso books it is not for the beginner. To really grasp it's text it is important to have some level of understanding of what has happened in Israel-Palestine over the course of the last century. With that noted, Bresheeth delivers a well crafted argument backed up with a large amount of evidence. The major parts this book is broken up into make sense and deliver the argument to the reader effectively. The final chapter in the Afterword ended this volume on a strong note as well. The only thing stopping it from 5 stars is the sometimes dense academic language but that being said I have read far worse in my studies.

[Baher Soliman · Rating 4 out of 5]

في قلب منطقةٍ تضجّ بالصراعات، تشكّلت دولة إسرائيل على أنقاض أحداث كبرى، وبرز جيشها، جيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي، بوصفه عمودها الفقري. لكن كيف أصبح هذا الجيش أكثر من مجرد قوة عسكرية؟ كيف صار مؤسسةً سياسية وثقافية تُعيد تشكيل هوية الدولة والمجتمع؟.

في كتابه "جيش ليس ككل الجيوش: كيف زيّف جيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي أمّة"، يخوض المؤلف بريشيث زابنر في أغوار هذا السؤال، مقدمًا قراءةً نقديةً عميقة لدور الجيش الإسرائيلي، ليس فقط كأداة قمعٍ عسكرية، وإنما كمنظومةٍ أيديولوجية تزرع روايتها في عقول مواطنيها، وتشكّل طبيعة الدولة ذاتها.

يستعرض المؤلف كيف نشأ الجيش الإسرائيلي من قلب الميليشيات الصهيونية مثل "الهاجاناه" و"الإرغون" وغيرهما، وكيف لعب العنف دورًا حاسمًا في تأسيس الدولة. لم يكن العنف في نظر هذه الجماعات مجرد وسيلة للبقاء، بل كان أداة لإعادة تشكيل الجغرافيا والديموغرافيا، حيث طُرد الفلسطينيون من ديارهم في نكبة 1948، وأعيد رسم الخارطة السكانية قسرًا.

لكن، لم يكن الجيش مجرد مؤسسة قتالية، بل كان جزءًا من مشروع صهيوني أوسع يهدف إلى "صهر المهاجرين" في هويةٍ إسرائيلية موحدة. فتحت مظلته، لم يكن الوافدون الجدد يكتسبون فقط التدريب العسكري، بل كانوا يُعاد تشكيل وعيهم لينسجم مع الرواية الصهيونية للدولة والمجتمع.

منذ تأسيسها، خاضت إسرائيل سلسلةً من الحروب التي عززت مكانة الجيش في قلب الدولة. حرب 1956، ثم 1967 التي غيرت قواعد اللعبة تمامًا، حيث تحولت إسرائيل من دولة صغيرة إلى قوة إقليمية تهيمن على أراضٍ واسعة. يشرح الكتاب كيف لم تكن هذه الحروب مجرد مواجهاتٍ عسكرية، بل كانت مشاريع سياسية تهدف إلى توسيع النفوذ الإسرائيلي وترسيخ أسطورة الجيش الذي لا يُقهر. بالنسبة لحرب أكتوبر 1973 رغم أن إسرائيل است��ادت المبادرة في نهاية الحرب، إلا أن القيادة الإسرائيلية أصبحت أكثر تطرفًا بعد الحرب، حيث استخدمت صدمة 1973 كمبرر لتوسيع الاستيطان وتشديد القبضة العسكرية على الفلسطينيين.

ومع تصاعد الصراع، أصبح الجيش ليس فقط أداة الدولة، بل صانع سياساتها. فبدلًا من أن يكون تحت سلطة الحكومة، باتت الحكومات الإسرائيلية تتشكل وفقًا لمصالحه. قادة الجيش، بعد تقاعدهم، تحولوا إلى رؤساء حكومات ووزراء دفاع، مما أضفى على إسرائيل طابعًا عسكريًّا مستمرًا.

واحدةٌ من الأفكار الجوهرية التي يطرحها الكتاب هي كيف تحول الجيش الإسرائيلي إلى مؤسسة تكنولوجية ضخمة، فإلى جانب تطويره لقدراته العسكرية، أصبح محورًا لصناعة التكنولوجيا الفائقة في إسرائيل. فالشركات التي أسسها ضباط سابقون في الجيش باتت تقود الثورة التقنية في مجالات الأمن السيبراني والمراقبة. وهنا يشير المؤلف إلى مفارقة مثيرة: في حين تسوّق إسرائيل نفسها كدولة ديمقراطية، فإن صناعاتها التقنية تُستخدم لقمع الفلسطينيين ومراقبة الشعوب الأخرى عبر تصدير تكنولوجيا التجسس إلى أنظمةٍ ديكتاتورية حول العالم. ( شرح هذه النقطة بالتفصيل كتاب مختبر فلسطين الذي سبق وكتبنا عنه).

يركز الكتاب على كيف تحول الجيش إلى مؤسسةٍ ثقافية تُعيد تشكيل وعي الإسرائيليين، خصوصًا عبر التعليم والإعلام. فالخطاب العسكري حاضرٌ بقوة في المدارس، والأطفال يُدرَّبون منذ صغرهم على فكرة "الدفاع عن الوطن"، مما يجعل الخدمة العسكرية ليست مجرد واجب، بل طقسًا مقدسًا يعبرون من خلاله إلى "المواطنة الكاملة".

وبهذا، يوضح المؤلف أن الجيش ليس فقط أداة حرب، بل هو القوة التي تعيد إنتاج القومية الإسرائيلية وفق منظورٍ عسكري، حيث تصبح الدولة بلا حدود واضحة، والهوية الإسرائيلية مرتبطةً بالخطر الدائم، مما يبرر استمرار عسكرة المجتمع والسياسة.

يختم الكتاب بسؤالٍ جوهري: هل يمكن لإسرائيل أن تتحول إلى دولةٍ طبيعية غير قائمةٍ على العسكرة؟ يشكك المؤلف في ذلك، إذ يرى أن الجيش لم يعد مجرد مؤسسة، بل هو العمود الفقري للدولة، مما يجعل من الصعب تخيل إسرائيل من دونه، فإسرائيل لا يمكن أن تعيش بدون حرب، أما السلام، يرى زابنر أن اتفاقية السلام مع مصر عام 1979 كانت سلامًا استثنائيًا لم يشمل القضايا الجوهرية مثل اللاجئين الفلسطينيين والجولان، مما جعل إسرائيل تستغل هذا السلام لتعزيز سيطرتها في المناطق المحتلة.

لكن مع ذلك، يشير إلى أن تصاعد النقد الداخلي، خصوصًا من بعض المثقفين الإسرائيليين، قد يفتح باب التساؤل حول مستقبل هذه البنية العسكرية. فكلما زاد الانخراط في مشاريع الاحتلال والقمع، زادت احتمالات الانفجار الداخلي، وهو ما قد يغير المعادلة في المستقبل.

هنا نأتي إلى لحظة تأمل في العنوان الذي اختاره زابنر " جيش ليس ككل الجيوش" لنسأل ما الذي يجعل الجيش الإسرائيلي "مختلفًا" ؟ يشرح الكتاب أن دافيد بن غوريون، أول رئيس وزراء لإسرائيل، كان يؤمن بأن "الأمة كلها هي الجيش"، أي أن الجيش لم يكن مجرد مؤسسة عسكرية، بل كان مسؤولًا عن صهر المهاجرين في هوية واحدة، وتشكيل ثقافة الدولة، والسيطرة على الاقتصاد والسياسة والمجتمع. إسرائيل لم تفصل بين المدني والعسكري؛ بل اعتمدت على سياسة عسكرة المجتمع، بحيث يصبح الأمن والعنف جزءًا من الهوية الوطنية. هذه الحالة المستمرة من "الخطر الوجودي" تبرر الاحتلال والتوسع العسكري.

من الأمور المثيرة في ضوء فرضية الكتاب الأساسية بأن جيش الدفاع الإسرائيلي ليس مجرد مؤسسة عسكرية، بل هو قوة أيديولوجية تشكل الدولة والمجتمع، يُحلل الكتاب شخصية بنيامين نتنياهو باعتباره أحد أبرز القادة الذين عززوا هذه العلاقة بين الجيش والسياسة، ودفعوا إسرائيل نحو مزيد من العسكرة والتوسع الاستيطاني، رغم أن نتنياهو لم يصل إلى رتبة عسكرية عالية إلا أنه بالغ في تصوير دوره العسكري لإضفاء الشرعية على قيادته في بيئة سياسية تهيمن عليها النخبة العسكرية.

في إسرائيل، حيث يتمتع الجنرالات بنفوذ سياسي واسع، كان لا بد لنتنياهو من تعويض نقص خبرته العسكرية عبر سياسات أمنية متشددة وتحالفات مع قادة الجيش. دفع نتنياهو نحو إعادة تشكيل الجيش ليعكس سياسات اليمين الديني المتطرف، من خلال تعيين ضباط من خلفيات أيديولوجية متشددة والتعاون مع الأحزاب الدينية.

يُحلل الكتاب دور دونالد ترامب في تعزيز سردية الجيش الإسرائيلي كأداة لصنع الأمة والدولة، مع التأكيد على الدعم الأمريكي غير المشروط لإسرائيل خلال رئاسته الأولى. ويركز المؤلف على عدة نقاط رئيسية، منها التخلّي عن حل الدولتين وشرعنة الاستيطان. في 2019، أعلن ترامب أن الولايات المتحدة لم تعد تعتبر المستوطنات الإسرائيلية غير شرعية، مما اعتُبر ضربة قاضية لحل الدولتين. من خلال نقل السفارة الأمريكية إلى القدس والاعتراف بـ ضم إسرائيل للجولان، أعطى ترامب إشارات واضحة بأنه لا يرى أي ضرورة للحفاظ على الحياد في الصراع، بل إنه يدعم المواقف اليمينية الإسرائيلية بلا شروط.

بالنهاية يُعدّ كتابًا مهمًا لفهم طبيعة الدولة الإسرائيلية من منظور جديد، حيث يُظهر أن الجيش لم يكن مجرد قوة لحماية الدولة، بل كان الأداة الأساسية لبنائها سياسيًا واقتصاديًا وأيديولوجيًا. يتميز الكتاب بتحليل تاريخي دقيق وأسلوب نقدي واضح، مما يجعله مصدرًا قيمًا للباحثين والمهتمين بالصراع العربي-الإسرائيلي. قد يعيبه أسلوبه الأكاديمي بالنسبة للقارئ العادي، كما أن الترجمة العربية بها بعض الهنات التي يجب استدراكها، لكنه يبقى كتابًا قويًا.

[Geoff Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very educational in-depth account by a Palestinian Jew of how the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), the army of Israel, is the Spartan core of the current super aggressive military-political industrial super power of the Middle East, with all its mythistory of being a Chosen people persuading its people of the justice of generations of settler-colonialism, and the current hierarchy of social and political status, with long-suffering indigenous Palestinian Arabs at the bottom of the pyramid.

[Frumenty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve left this unreviewed too long, despite my good intentions. Everybody should know about Israel’s crimes against the people of Palestine. If a book review can spread the word then I really should have taken the time to review this one, but I haven’t so it’s better at least to acknowledge that I’ve read it and tell you that it’s worth reading.

[Luke Pickrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide ranging and thorough history! Very much the book to read for folks interested in the “conflict” (a horrible euphemism). Long live Palestine.

[Nick Bersin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot in this book (published in 2020) that sheds light on the current crisis; I'll just share the final paragraph, which is chilling to read now:

"I hope that this monograph serves as a clear warning. Such admonitions now abound—unfortunately without evidence that they are being heeded or that Israel’s political, military, and financial supporters are seriously reconsidering their misguided and unjustified stance. The explosion that appears to be coming is not necessarily in the interest of the West, yet it may take place if nothing is done to stay the strongest military machine in the Middle East, one that is ready and waiting to inflict decisive blows within the region as it has done in the past. With Israeli society more inclined than ever to inflict lethal damage on the Palestinians and their aspirations for freedom and equality, denial of the potential for regional disaster is no longer an option."

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well written history of the Israeli Army and it’s influence and control of the Palestinians. The IDF is at the heart of the transformation of Israel from it’s Social Democratic founders, to the apartheid state its has become. I recommend this book, but I have more hope that this story will have a happy ending. The Israelis need to realize that they need to accept the end of this racist state and create a multinational democratic society. There is no Jewish national identity other than the Israeli created society. The unity of this state is only accomplished by the continuing war with the Palestinians. They can not continue with the settler movement and the required military expenditures. At least I hope that Israel can adapt to become a more equitable society.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good supplemental read after you've digested the likes of Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe. Illuminates and fills in the things you probably didn't learn in Hebrew School or at Camp Ramah. Also ably demonstrates how Israel's post-October 7 Military assault is nothing new, and very much a predictable next step, by laying out all the past attempts, statements and antecedents, nearly 3 years before October 7, 2023.

[Merricat Blackwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit one-sided--definitely very focused on Israel's aggression against its neighbors rather than the reverse--but given how under-played that side of the story is in a lot of media, the focus seems justified and compelling. Not a lot of original research, mostly a summary of the greatest hits of the Israeli new historians.

[Tarek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating and highly recommended

The book offers a very interesting line of inquiry into the evolution of the role of the Israeli army. Fine analysis and consistent logic through out the chapters of the book.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a good read to understand histories behind the current political climate on top of another book that I am currently re-reading called 'A Tale of Love and Darkness'

[Shireesh Pareek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost everything one should know about Israel and the way Israel operates.
A great read.

[Heidi C · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's shockingly terrible with no actual data.

[Tish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Military history can be dull but worth the read for the insight on political factions and demographics within Palestine and Israel.

[Piper Sterling · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing overview of the zionist settler project and it’s history since the illegal creation of israel in 1948. news sth goes in just enough detail to give the full story while also provoking critical analysis by the reader. i seriously recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about israeli colonialism and it’s continuing implications.

[DONNA M ORR · Rating 1 out of 5]

On any street corner

How do you line a bird cage with an E-book ?
This is husband Dale NOT Donna , thank you.