A Nation-In-Arms: State, Nation, and Militarism in Israel's First Years

Uri Ben-Eliezer

Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1995), pp. 264-285.

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A Nation-in-Arms: State , Nation, and
Militarism in Israel's First Years
URI BEN-ELIEZER
Tel-Aviv University

Like many other states, Israel was forged through the struggle of a national
liberation movement that likely drew inspiration from an ethnic past and that
certainly worked to establish a political framework. Once the state existed,
however, its leaders did not regard the ethnie as an objective category that
would in large measure determine whether a nation would emerge.2 Instead,
they viewed the ethnie as a subject susceptible, in varying degrees, to manipu-
lation, invention, domination, and mobilization.3 As the prime minister of
Piedmont said, "We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians"; or as
Israel's first prime minister, Ben-Gurion, put it in April 1951 during the
election campaign: "I see in these elections the shaping of a nation for the
state because there is a state but not a n a t i ~ n . " ~
This essay deals with the first years after the founding of the Israeli state. My
main concern is to examine the way in which the state constructed an ethnic
population into a fighting nation, a nation-in-arms. Usually, states construct
nations through various means, such as the school system, the media, and the
army. In a speech to the Israeli parliament (Knesset), Ben- Gurion claimed that
efficiency was the reason, among all the possibilities, for the reconstruction of
the Israeli nation, primarily by the army:
I have been a Zionist all my life and I do not deny the existence of Israel, heaven
forbid . . . but . . . even the English nation was not always that nation . . . but was

Anthony D. Smith, "State-Making and Nation-Building," in John A. Hall, ed., States in

History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 25 1.
An ethnic community, or ethnie, shares a common myth of origins and descent, a common
history, elements of distinctive culture, a common tenitorial association, and sense of group
solidarity. A nation is much more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group.
It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its coherence, unity, and
particular interests. See, Anthony D. Smith, "Ethnie and Nation in the Modem World," Millenni-
um, 14:2 (1983). 128-32; Peter Alter, Nationalism (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), 17.
3 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982);
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990); Ernest Gellner, Nation and Nationalism (New York: Cornell University Press,
1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).
4 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 44-45; Ben-Gurion in Mapai's meeting,
from Eyal Kafkafi, A Country Searching ForIts People (Tel-Aviv: Hakibut Hameuchad, 1991), 3.
0010-417519512387-0548 S5.00 + . I 0 0 1995 Society for Comparative Study of Society and H~story
composed of different tribes . . . fighting one another. And only after a development
of hundreds of years did they become one nation. . . . We do not have hundreds of
years, and without the instrument of the army . . . we will not soon be a nation. . . .
We must guide the progress of history, accelerate it, direct it. . . . This requires a
framework of duty . . . a framework of national dis~ipline.~

Israeli military sociologists have accepted Ben-Gurion's rationalization.

Relying on theories of nation building and modernization that perceive the
army as an agent of development and i n t e g r a t i ~ nthese
, ~ sociologists wrote on
"the many and varied functions of the Israeli army" and on its expanding role
in the civil sphere. The army was said to contribute to immigrant absorption,
act as a melting pot for Jewish ethnic groups, help in conquering the wilder-
ness and in further settlement, educate for good citizenship and for love of
country, and foster culture. Virtually no area of life seems to have escaped the
eyes of the scholars who probed "the non-military use of the m i l i t a ~ . "As
~ for
the army's involvement in internal politics or the chances of a military coup,
this possibility, most scholars claimed, was not real, since Israel is a nation-
in-arms.
The nation-in-arms was portrayed as a model of relations between the civil
and military sectors, in which the boundaries between the two are frag-
mented.8 These permeable boundaries, some scholars believed, allowed the
two sectors (and the two elites) to interact across a wide range of situations
and to benefit from reciprocal influence after agreeing on the rules of the
game. It made it possible, on the one hand, to conceive of expanding the
army's role and intervention in building the nation, a phenomenon that
Horowitz and Lissak termed (partial) militarization of the civil sector. At the
same time, it was said to bring about "civilianization," in which civilians
increase their influence and involvement in the military sector, for example,
through Israel's unique system of service in the reserves, which transformed

5 Kneset Protokol, August 19, 1952.

John J. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1962); Lucian W. Pie, "Armies in the Process of Political Moderniza-
tion," in Johnson, The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, 69-89; Moshe Lissak,
Military Roles and Modernization (California, Sage, 1976).
Moshe Lissak, "The Israel Defence Forces as an Agent of Socialization and Education," in
M. R. Van Gils, ed., The PerceivedRole of the Military (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press,
1971) 325-39; Dan Horowitz and Baruch Kimmerling, "Some Social Implications of Military
Service and the Reserve System in Israel," Archieve European Sociologie, 15 (1974), 262-76;
Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1977), 25 1-80; Idem., Military and Politics in Israel: Nation Building and Role E.rpansion (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969); Victor Azarya and Baruch Kimmerling, "New Imm~grantsin
the Israeli Armed Forces," Armed Forces and Society, 6:3 (1980), 22-41.
A. R. Luckham, "A Comparative Typology of Civil-Military Relations," Government and
Opposition, 6 (1971), 17-20; David Rapoport, "A Comparative Theory of Military and Political
Types," in Samuel Huntington, ed., Changing Patterns-of Military Politics (New York: Free
Press, 1962), 71-100; Adam Roberts, Nation in Arms, The Theory and Practice of Territorial
Defence (London: Chatto and Windus, 1976).
the army into a "people's army" imbued with the democratic and civil (some
added, egalitarian) spirit characteristic of the general society.9
Overall, these studies tended to focus on the army's integrative mission,
ignoring its instrumental role of wielding the means of organized violence.
The integrative approach, doubtful enough in research on the third world,lo
was wholly inappropriate for Israel, which had experienced plenty of wars
with violent confrontations in the intervals between them. Interestingly, even
the few scholars who went beyond the civil role of the Israeli nation-in-arms
and dealt with its military, instrumental aspect, preferred to stay within the
integrative approach and to write about how the nation-in-arms functions "as a
means to survive in a hostile strategic environment."ll These scholars ad-
dressed neither the crucial role the army played in controlling the Israeli-Arab
citizens through the military administration during the 1950s and early 1960s
nor their exclusion from participating in the nation-formation process because
they were exempt from military service.'*
The question that should be asked is whether it makes sense to view the
nation-in-arms as a functional mechanism for avoiding military coups, as a
response to needs of survival, or as a means of modernizing; perhaps it should
be seen as a political means that conscious political actors use to legitimize the
idea of solving political problems by military means through the attempt to
make the business of the military the preoccupation and concern of the entire
nation.

THE FORMATION O F T H E NATION-IN-ARMS

Ever since the nation-state became the central organizing principle in Europe,
both in principle and in practice, this system has produced both internal and
external wars. l 3 More frequent wars meant that the nation-state was forced to
tax the population more heavily, mobilize citizens for combat, and demand

9 Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Out of Utopia (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 195-230;
Dan Horowitz, "The Israeli Defense Forces: A Civilianized Military in a Partially Militarized
Society," in Roman Kolkowicz and Andrei Korbonski, Soldiers, Peasants and Bureaucrats (Lon-
don: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 77-106; Eduard Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli
Army (London: Allen Lane, 1975); Yoram Peri, "Political-Military Partnership in Israel," Inter-
national Political Science Review, 2:3 (1981), 303- 15.
'0 Vicky Randall and Robin Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1985), 67-98.
l 1 Dan Horowitz, "Strategic Limitations of A Nation in Arms," Armed Forces and Society,
13:2 (1987), 277-94.
12 On the tendency to ignore the Palestinians in the Israeli Sociology, see Baruch Kimmerling,
"Sociology, Ideology, and Nation-Building: The Palestinians and their Meaning in Israeli Soci-
ety," American Sociological Review, 57:4 (1992), 446-60.
13 F. Gilbert, ed., The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1975), 159-77; Michael Howard, "War and the Nation-State," in his The Causes of Wars (Lon-
don: Unwin Paperbacks, 1984), 23-35.
absolute loyalty.14 It was within this context that the nation-in-arms was
formed.
France after the revolution, Prussia following its defeat by Napoleon, and
Japan in the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) are examples of states
which constructed a nation for the purpose of war. The wars that France
waged for more than twenty years had one distinctive feature that its adver-
saries lacked: national passions. France's wars were those of a nation, a fact
given legal affirmation by the leve'e en masse, in which the entire male
population was conscripted. The nation-in-arms would later extend this idea,
in the form of the moral and material contribution of the home front to the war
effort and of the blurring of differences between soldiers and citizens.I5
Napoleon, who inherited the Jacobin nation-in-arms, exploited it craftily
for the purpose of waging war. Half a century later, the 1870s humiliating
defeat to Prussia turned France again into a nation-in-arms, ready for revenge
through the Reveil national of the years 1910-14, a rediscovery of patriotic
ideals and vocabulary within large segments of French society. '6 Even more
than France, Prussia is an historical example of how a nation was constructed
or invented from above with the conscious aim of winning wars. The cardinal
expression of the new concept was the reforms carried out within the Prussian
army after Napoleon defeated it in 1807. These included a gradual transition
from a standing army composed of mercenaries and foreign troops to a mass
army which included a national militia. 17
The Prussian army's reforms did not reflect a surrender by the government
to nationalist, radical, or liberal tendencies but were, even more than in the
French case, a calculated manufacture of national feeling to help in winning
wars. Vagts labels the Prussian generals who fomented the changes in the
army and in the general conception of war Prussia's military Jacobins. And
aptly so. Total mobilization enabled the state to indoctrinate the conscripts
with a nationalist-militarist outlook which, after their discharge, they trans-
ferred to the rest of the population. Gradually Prussia-Germany became a

l4 Samuel E. Finer, "State and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military," in
Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), 84-163; Richard Bear, "War and the Birth of the Nation State," The
Journal of Economic History, 33 (1973), 203-21; Anthony Giddnes, The Nation State and
Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1987; Karen A. Rasler and William R.
Thompson, War and State Making (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989).
l5 Carlton J. H. Hayes, "Jacobin Nationalism," in his The Historical Evolution of Modern
Nationalism (New York, Russel and Russell, 1931), 43-83; Hans Kohn, Nationalism, Its Mean-
ing and History (Malabar: Robert E. Kreiger), 65, 82, 27-29; Alfred Vagts, A History of
Militarism (New York, Meridian Books, 1959), 104-28; Richard D. Challener, The French
Theory of the Nation in Arms (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965).
l 6 David B. Ralston, The Army of the Republic, The Place of the Military in the Political
Evolution of France, 1871-1914 (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1967); Douglas Porch, The
March to the Marne, The French Army, 1871-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981).
I7 Gilbert, The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze, 208; Vagts, A History of Militarism, 129-52.
state almost constantly at war, blurring the boundary between civil and mili-
tary to the point where war became everyone's project. All that remained was
to spur the nation to war, a goal that General Baron Colmar Von Der Goltz,
for example, set himself, at the turn of the century. "Wars," the general
noted in his book, The Nation in Arms, "are the fate of mankind . . . in our
day not only the rulers must be familiar with the art of war: wars are of the
nation."l8
The aim of Japan's leaders at the advent of the twentieth century was to turn
their country into an empire able to stand on an equal footing with the
European empires. War was one avenue to that goal, albeit not in the tradition-
al sense. A Japanese military academy report explained:
A characteristic of modem war is a fight with the total strength of nations. War in
earlier times was decided by the side with the strongest military power. In modem war,
fighting is on the level of financial war, ideological war, and strategic war, in addition
to the military war. l 9
In the years following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan had the ambitions
of a great power but the resources of a small power. By applying universal
conscription, Japan's leaders embraced a plan to use the army as a school for
the population, a means to inculcate national and militaristic values. The vast
reserve system applied from that time on turned Japan into a "nation-in-
reserve. "20
The French Jacobins and then Napoleon, the Prussian reformers, the impe-
rial Japanese leaders are all paradigmatic examples of a modem phenomenon:
Wars are no longer fought by the nobility or by mercenaries but by mass
armies imbued with a nationalist spirit and backed by active civilian sup-
port. The nation-in-arms model ascribes an important place to the state in
creating-or exploiting-nationalist sentiment, and in linking it to the need
for war and then to the army as the state's instrument for waging war, thus
placing the army in a position of no longer being considered alien and separate

18 Martin Kitchen, The German Officer Corps, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968;
Emillio Willems, A Way of Life and Death, Three Centuries of Prussian-German Militarism
(Nashville: Vanderbllt University Press, 1986) 49-1 12; Geoff Eley, "Army, State and Civil
Society: Revisiting the Problem of German Militarism," from h ~ Unification
s to Nazism (Boston:
Allen and Unwin, 1987), 85-109; Geoffry Best, "The Militarization of European Society 1870-
1914", in J. R. Gillis, ed., The Militarization of the Western World (New York: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 1989), 13-29; Colmar Von Der Goltz, The Nation in Arms (London: Hugh Rees,
1913), 470-71.
lY Theodore F. Cook, "The Japanese Reserve Experience: From Nation-in-Arms to Baseline
Defense," in Louis A. Zurcher and Gwyn Harnes-Jenkins. Supplementarj Milrtary Forces (Lon-
don: Sage, 19781, 265.
20 Ibid, 259-73; Hakwon H. Sunoo, Japanese Militarism, Past and Present (Chicago: Nelson-
Hall, 1975), 1-65; Meirion and Susie Harries, Sheathing the Sword: The Demilitarization of
Japan (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987); J. B. Crowley, "From Closed Door to Empire: The
Formation of the Meiji Military Establishment," in Bernard S . Silberman and H. D. Harootunian,
eds., Modern Japanese Leadership: Tradition and Change (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
1966).
from society at large. For that reason, perhaps, the nation-in-arms does not
excel in military coups; but it is certainly not immune to militarism, which
makes wars a normative and legitimate solution for political problems.?l
What follows is an analysis of how a nation-in-arms was formed as a way to
legitimize the solution of political problems by military means. The first
section deals with two causes, party politics on one side and national politics
on the other, that induced the state's leadership to develop the new mode of
mobilization. The second section deals with the practices that have built the
nation-in-arms construct, and the third section illustrates how this construct
was culturally legitimized. The last section examines the relations between a
fighting nation and the possibility of war.

A S T A T E ARMY CONSTRUCTS A N A T I O N
A state is not a legal entity that derives its existence solely from a declaration
(in this case, May 14, 1948). In the seminal period of Israel, various political
actions were carried out in an attempt to construct the state. One such action
involved the transition from a militia and an underground force to a full-
fledged army fighting a war. Beginning in December 1947 and reaching a
peak the following summer, this change was marked also by mobilization on
the basis of order and duty.22 Israel still did not resemble a nation-in-arms.
When that idea was first raised in a small forum by the acting chief of staff,
Yigael Yadin, it was rejected. "A nation-in-arms cannot be trusted, we need
trained people," Yadin was told. And: "You cannot make a commando force
out of vendors from the market."Z3
Statism (mamlakhtiut) was the principle of action that the state's leaders
invoked in order to transfer to the state the responsibility and control of most
functions from the voluntary bodies usually attached to political parties in the
pre-state era. The state would thereby concentrate the bulk of power in its
hand. The process included, for example, the attempt to eliminate the differ-
ent educational tracks; the formation of an independent state bureaucracy;
and, most crucial, the placement of a monopoly on the means of violence, so
cardinal to every state.24
The process of forming one army, however, encountered serious obstacles.

2' On the concept of militarism, see Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The H i s r o ~of an
Internarional Debare, 1861-1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 31-36; hli-
chael hlann, "The Roots and Contradictions of Modem Militarism," in his Srares, War and
Capitalism (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 166-87; Kjell Skejelsbaek, "Militarism, its
Dimensions and Corollaries: An Attempt to Conceptual Clarification," in Asbjorn Edie and Narek
Thee, eds., Problems of C o n t e m p o r a ~Militarism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980),77-105.
Z2 Yoav Gelber, "Ben-Gurion and the Establishment of the IDF," Jerusalem Quarterly, 50
(1989), 56-80.
23 Ben-Gurion's Diary, March 17, 1948, Ben-Gurion Archive.
24 Peter Y. Medding, The Founding of Israeli Democracy 1946-1967 (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1990), 134-37; Charles Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel
(Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1983), 81-122.
Many of those who had set the tone in the military infrastructure before the
state's establishment and during the war were identified not with the ruling
party, Mapai (Israel Labor party) but with the more left-wing opposition,
Mapam. Attempts by Mapai, led by Ben-Gurion, to obtain influence in the
army before and during the war were not always successful. The army was
rife with party factionalism, even in the war's darkest days, which often left it
unable to act.25 Now, citing the creation of the state and his authority as its
elected leader, Ben-Gurion aspired to form a state army not saddled by party
politics. Naturally, Mapam objected. In August 1949, when the government
submitted to the Knesset a law on security, Mapam said it feared that such an
army would produce a militarist, technocratic elite estranged from the nation's
needs. As an alternative, Mapam proposed a militia strongly resembling the
forces of the pre-state period that would draw its strength from the people, not
the state bureaucratic apparatus that operated by law and fiat.26 Mapam, in
fact, had raised the idea of a people's army based on the notion that the people
themselves, not the state, would determine the use of arms. Unlike the nation-
in-arms, the people's army implies that the state's authority is weakening or
being rejected.27 Mapam's underlying rationale was obvious. If its proposals
were accepted, the party would gain a huge political advantage and would
dislodge Mapai's foothold in the army. But even many in the ruling party,
Mapai, could not understand why Ben-Gurion was so eager to tamper with the
power centers in which their party wielded influence and to transfer full
political weight to the state. Ben-Gurion's political view was clear. The devel-
opment of political parties in public life had not necessarily accorded his party
a superior position and during the pre-state period had often paralyzed its
ability to act. It was this inclusion of political parties in public life that
enabled Mapam to influence security forces. Statism, Ben-Gurion hoped,
would give a tremendous power advantage to those who headed the state and
controlled its centralist and autonomous mechanisms. Thus, to the query of
Mapai activists-"Is it conceivable that the party will not be active in the
army?"-Ben-Gurion replied, "It is for the good of the state and not to the
detriment of the party."28
The controversies surrounding the efforts by state's leaders to form a supra-
party mass army recalled disputes generated by the Junkers' attempts to re-
form their army. They, too, ostensibly acted against their own interests by
demanding such reforms. But their calculation was clear. A strong Prussian

25 Anita Shapira, The Army Controversy, 1948, Ben-Gurion's Struggle for Control (Tel-Aviv:
Hakibutz Hameuchad, 1985; Yoav Gelber, Why the Palmach Was Dissolved (Jerusalem: Shoken,
1986).
26 August 15, 1949, Kneset Protokol (Israel's parliament); Mapai Center, February 2, 1950,
Mapai Archive.
27 Roberts, Nation in Arms, 37. 28 Mapai Secretariat, August 7, 1949, Mapai Archive.
army under indirect Junker control would serve Junker politics better than a
weak and depleted Junker army, which would risk defeat in a war.29
The analogy between the Prussian and Israeli cases is even more compre-
hensive. If Ben-Gurion had established a strong professional standing state
army, he would have played into the hands of the Mapam opposition by giving
a basis for their fear that the army would be isolated from society's needs. The
nation-in-arms was the appropriate formula for avoiding this potential criti-
cism. This is a formula of an army that is not a militia but exhibits the ele-
ments of a militia: an army controlled by the state, not by the people, but in
which the people participate. Likewise, in order to neutralize liberal and left-
wing criticism against a strong standing state army, the Prussian reformers did
not stop with general conscription to form an hierarchical, regimental, formal
mass army, the Landstrum, but combined with it a militia element, the less
rigid and more populist Landwehr. This enabled the Prussians to present the
reformed army as representing the people and the modem, rather than the
traditional, political order.30
Party politics was only one reason for the nation-in-arms. Neither the
Prussian, Japanese, nor French model of the nation-in-arms was built in
routine times. Japan faced a change of leadership following the defeat and
overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogun. Intrusions by Western nations into Japa-
nese internal affairs were crucial in triggering the Meiji Restoration. France
was under threat of invasion and facing a desperate military situation, while
Prussia had been defeated in a war, and its leaders defined reality in terms of
national catastrophe. These vicissitudes were appropriate for the leaders to
establish new social arrangements for mobilizing the population.
Israel, too, was facing tremendous upheaval. The 600,000 Palestinian Ar-
abs who had left the country during the war were waiting for permission to
return, and those who had remained were placed under military govern-
ment.31 This situation could threaten Israel no less than the fact that most
states did not recognize the new state's borders, which did not follow the
United Nations 1947 partition resolution but were redrawn according to war
gains. Under these circumstances, the leadership wanted to prepare the popu-
lation for the possibility of a second round. The formation of a strong mass
ethnic army was the main means to achieve that goal, although it was not
enough by itself. Almost concurrently with the Arab's mass exodus, about

29 Vagts, The History ofMilitarism, 59-60.

30 Ibid, 138-9. As for the French case, Challener's book, The French Theory of the Nation in
Arm.r, provides an excellent discussion of the connection between party politics and the nation-in-
arms.
3 1 Benny Moms, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ian Lustick, Arabs in a Jewish State (Texas: University of
Texas Press, 1980).
200,000 Jews streamed into Israel at a rate of 15,000 to 30,000 per month;
and within a few years the country's population more than d0ubled.3~The
immigrants turned Israel into a state in which one ethnic group constituted the
majority. But was it a nation?
The Jewish immigrants came from every corner of the world. They brought
a babel of languages, a bewildering array of customs and outlooks. Some
were Ashkenazi (like the majority in the pre-state period), but most of them
were Sephardi (from North Africa and the Middle East). Few were acquainted
with the Zionist movement and its realization in the pre-state period. When
the prime minister visited a battalion commanders' class in the army, he
described his impressions, saying that he saw only "one race, Ashkenazis." "I
see no greater danger," he added, "than if the commanders are from a 'noble'
race and the rank and file from a low race."33
Ben-Gurion resisted the possibility that the Sephardi and Ashkenazi com-
munities would become focal points of identification. The Israeli leadership
designated the army as the means for making the new immigrants part of both
the nation and its ethnic army. A case in point was the army's involvement in
the ma'abarot, the squalid camps in which the majority of the new immigrants
were housed in that period. Beginning in 1950 the army assumed respon-
sibility for many of these camps. Its involvement-teaching, looking after the
children, doing maintenance work, dispensing medical aid, and supplying
food and clothing-extended even to making arrangements for laundry or for
communications facilities in the camps.34
The army's presence in the ma'abarot drew it closer to the new immigrants
and prevented the creation of a possible barrier between the two groups. As
the journal for the Israeli Defense Force stated, "The army's help . . . will
teach the new immigrant that the army and the uniform he sees are in fact
his." And, again: "The army's help is further proof that the soldier is really the
right-hand of the civilian."35 The army, then, was not depicted in terms of its
primary function, as the instrument of organized violence in the society, but
was given a civil image of an intimate friendly force. Newspapers of the
period ran numerous features titled, "Soldiers Take Good Care of the Kids,"
"Female Soldiers Teach Hebrew," and the like.36 This intimacy attested not
only to an ethnic sympathy but, more broadly, to the immigrants' mobilization
to the security missions of the new state.

32 July 5, 1949, Kneset Protokol; Tom Segev, The First Israelis (New York: Free Press, 1986);
Varda Pilovski, ed., Transition From 'Yishuv' to State 1947-1949 (in Hebrew) (Haifa: Haifa
University, 1988); Mordechai Naor, ed., First Year to Statehood, 1948-1949 (Hebrew) (Jerusa-
lem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1988).
33 Mapai Secretariat, June I , 1950, Mapai Archive.
34 Bamachane (IDF's Bulletin), November 23, 1950; Kneset Protokol, January 29, 1951,
Bamachane, September 20, 1951; Kneset Protokol, December 20, 1951.
35 Bamachane, November 2 3 , 1950; Bamachane, April 5, 1951.
36 Bamachane, September 20, 1951.
 I S R A E L AS A N A T I O N - I N - A R M S 273

Now the army was involved in civilian tasks, just as the immigrants would
soon take part in the military. Ben-Gurion left no doubt about the purpose of
the institutional affiliations forged between the new immigrants and the army.
They would learn, he said, "not army Hebrew but Hebrew ~ o l d i e r i n g . "The
~~
army's involvement in educating the new immigrants was part of a vast
project meant to turn the Israeli Jewish population into a fighting nation along
the lines of the classic French example presented in the French assembly in the
following terms: The young men were to go forth to battle; the married men
would forge arms; the women were to make tents and clothing; and the aged
were "to preach hatred of kings and the unity of the R e p ~ b l i c . " 3 ~

T H E PRACTICES O F A NATION-IN-ARMS

On August 23, 1793, the Jacobin state gave organizational expression to the
aim of creating a strong army. The levee en masse made it mandatory for all
French males to enlist. Three hundred thousand were mobilized immediately.
Within little more than a year the army would number over one million
soldiers.39 The Israeli military service law of August 1949 and a number of
subsequent amendments gave legal validity to the special arrangements in-
tended to establish a strong, professional, mass army in Israel. Particularly
notable was the decision to create a four-tier military system: a career army, as
well as a regular army; the reserves; and the border settlements. The army
comprised men and women alike, even those in the age group of fourteen to
eighteen years old were placed within a security framework (Gadna) to pre-
pare them for military service by means of a few hours of activity each week.
The duration of compulsory service for males, in those days considered very
lengthy, was two years; from 1952, it was two and a half years.40
The suppositions of some scholars notwithstanding, the purpose of Israel's
extensive reserve corps was not to introduce civilian patterns into the army.41
The historical example can be helpful here too. Prussians who completed their
five-year stint in the army (three years as a conscript and two of reserve duty)
were transferred to the Landwehr militia, which had no professional officer
corps and lacked the severe discipline of the regular army. Nevertheless, the
Prussian militia was an extension of Prussian militarism, not its antithesis.
The army was backed up by the first Landwehr, then by the second Landwehr,
and in the last resort by the entire remaining male population, the Land-

37 Kneset Protokol, August 18, 1952.

3S Challener, The French T h e o v of the Nation in Arms, 3 .

39 Piene Birenbaum, States and Collective Action: The European Experience (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988). 55-66.

Kneset Protokol, August 29, 1949.
4 1 Lissak, "The Israel Defence forces as an Agent of Socialization and Education"; Horowitz

and Kimmerling, "Some Social Implications of Military Service and the Reserve System in
Israel"; Horowitz, "The Israeli Defense Forces: A Civilianized Military in a Partially Militarized
Society."
274 URI B E N - E L I E Z E R

s t ~ r m . ~In* Japan, too, where leaders wanted to create a nation capable of

standing on an equal footing with the West, an efficient conscript system was
developed. The example of the French nation-in-arms and the German mili-
tary model were never far from the minds of Japan's leaders when they backed
up the men in active service with an extensive system of organized reserves.
After two years of service the soldier passed into the First Reserve for a period
of five years and four months, then to the Second Reserve for ten years. This
amounted to seventeen years and four months of military 0bligation.~3
The pattern recurred in Israel, where the aim was to establish a mass army
of conscripts, called up by state order, combined with professional officers,
for whom being a soldier was their only job. This was backed up by the
reserve army of citizens trained to be soldiers in every respect and who
demonstrated excellence, among other ways, by their ability to shift, quickly
and efficiently, whenever called upon, from civilian to soldier status.44 Such
an army had one purpose only: to win in a war. Hence, Ben-Gurion's reply to
the left-wing Mapam's idea of a voluntary militia: "We must forget the roman-
ticism of the army. . . . We will make war not with a local militia but with an
army of rapid movement and heavy firepower, activating large formations,
various corps . . . in combined operations . . . with uniform planning and
command."45
In 1952 Ben-Gurion used this same spirit to justify the government's decision
to extenqmilitary service by an additional six months. Israel's security, he
stated, was based on training the entire nation-people of all ages capable of
bearing arms-to fight when threatened. Ben-Gurion declared that if Israel was
not wiling to be a fighting nation, it could not be a living nation and certainly not
an independent one.46 The Israeli prime minister aspired to construct a new
Israeli, even as the Jacobin state had constructed a new Frenchman. The ideal
was described by Barere, the strong man of that Jacobin state, in his memoirs:
"In France the soldier is a citizen, and the citizen a soldier."47
Moreover, Ben-Gurion explained, when he offered reasons for prolonging
army service, "quantity is also decisive." It was a comment in the style of
Napoleon's "God walks with the big battalions." Not surprisingly, the over-
whelming majority of the Israeli parliament, including the right-wing opposi-
tion Herut party, led by Menachem Begin, supported the proposal to extend
army service by six months. The vote was seventy in favor and eleven against,
a very impressive majority demonstrating that the people's elected representa-
tives unequivocally supported the idea of a nation-in-arms for
42 Gilbert, The Historical Essays
. . Otto Hintze, 208; Finer, "State and Nation-Building in
of
Europe," 153.
4 3 Cook. "The Ja~aneseReserve Experience," 260-2

44 Kneset ~rotokdl,August 29, 1949. 45 Kneset Protokol, November 9 , 1949.

Kneset Protokol, August 18, 1952.
47 Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism, 43-83.
48 Kneset Protokol, August 18, 1952.
 I S R A E L AS A N A T I O N - I N - A R M S 275

The government lost no time in implementing the law of August 1949. In

March 1950 the daily press reported that citizens would be called up for
reserve duty. This was explained as another important step in deploying all the
branches of the Israeli security forces to meet any situation. And just to
prevent self-satisfaction on the part of those not yet called up, the newspapers
explained that until now these people had been given "a kind of break" but
would henceforth share in responsibility for the state's ~ e c u r i t y . ~ 9
In July 1950, Phase Two of the mass call-up began. Initially, all those who
had already served in the IDF were assigned to the reserves. Now came the
turn of all males below the age of fifty who had not yet done military service
(mainly new immigrants). The military reserve system then encompassed
almost the entire Jewish male population. The army journal noted: "One thing
is clear to us all-that the main strength of our state, in addition to the
conscript army and the staff of the career army-is the army of the nation,
namely, the nation itself."5O So important was the motif of participating in the
nation-in-arms that the army bulletin boasted about the reserve call-up of
mules every year and described the way in which the poor animals were
processed and incorporated in their military unit. The implied message was
clear: If livestock could be drafted, so could the new immigrants.51
General Yadin first described the Israeli citizen as a soldier on ten months'
leave. In Japan, Tanaka Gi'ichi', one of the founders of the Imperial Military
Reserve Associate, commented in 191 1 that "all citizens are soldiers."52 In
both cases, the idea went beyond serving in the army under legal obligation: It
implied civil virtue and a non-formal criterion of citizenship. The organiza-
tional arrangements, which guided all Israelis who would be, directly or
indirectly, involved in military affairs, formed the social basis for Israeli
militarism. The concept also entailed a singular definition of reality.

A BROAD CONCEPT O F SECURITY

Immediately after the end of the 1948 war, in reply to a question from the
army's journal, Ben-Gurion described the situation as a "temporary truce."
During the Knesset debate on the military service law he spoke of an "armed
peace." No one should harbor illusions about the future, the prime minister
asserted, warning about the dangers of a "false peace."53 On another occa-
sion, Ben-Gurion said that a "mini-war" was being conducted between Israel
and its neighbors, for which the blame lay with those states in the region that
were caught up in a maelstrom of disturbances, coups, political chaos and
political assassinations-a volatile situation with unknowable consequences
which could spread anywhere. The Knesset listened in silence to the demoni-

4y Haarerz (daily newspaper), March 12, 1950. s"amachane, July 20, 1950

5' "Draft-Cards for Mules," Bamachane, July 31, 1952.

s2 Cook, "The Japanese Reserve Experience,'' 271.

53 Bamachane, October 17, 1949; Kneser Prorokol, August 29, 1949.

zation of Israel's neighboring countries, and only one member, from the
Communist Party, called out: "This is a prelude to the order, it is preparation
for ~ a r . ' ' 5 ~
Ben-Gurion presented a broad concept of security. Security, he had ex-
plained in 1949, meant more than the army. It entailed stepping up the birth
rate and populating empty areas.55 With the passing of time, Ben-Gurion's
definition of security would be broadened still further; and the civil sphere
would shrink correspondingly. Militarism became something universally
shared when Ben-Gurion declared in 1955: "Security is not possible without
immigration . . . security means settlements . . . the conquest of the sea and
air. Security is economic independence, it means fostering research and scien-
tific ability . . . voluntarism of the population for difficult and dangerous
missions. "56
One of the means resorted to by the leadership to create a broad definition
of security was Nahal (the acronym for Fighting Pioneer Youth). This special
unit combined civil missions like agriculture and land settlement with combat
roles. The civil missions, however, were part of the broad definition of
security. Whenever a dispute arose between the Defense Ministry and the
kibbutz movements over settlement sites for the youth movements' graduates
who comprised Nahal, the ministry had the last word. To prevent such fric-
tion, the he'ahzut, the security settlement, was created. Its purposes were
based entirely on military considerations: The he'ahzut was the most complete
expression of using settlement for military purposes.57
Nahal, thus, reconstructed settlement and army into Siamese twins, never
to be separated. If a certain civilian image was attached to Nahal in the
soldiers' dress, their lax discipline, their loose sexual mores, in the informal,
communal relations within their units-and if the army made no effort to
reverse such tendencies, the goal was clear. The statist professional army in
uniform was likely to arouse opposition in a country in which the socialist
ethos prevailed, labor parties ruled, and ideology strove as much to create a
voluntaristic society as to form a new state. The special arrangements and
practices that brought about the nation-in-arms constituted the leadership's
formula for reconciliation and effectively merged voluntaristic with coercive
elements. The IDF was not to be a classic state army based on coercion only
but was to display elements of voluntarism, emotion, pioneering, comrade-
ship, and a militia-like ethos, all imputed to the nation's needs. Ben-

% Kneset Protokol, August 19, 1952; Davar (daily newspaper), August 19, 20, 1952. See also
Baruch Kimmerling's article about Israel's conception of peace ("Exchanging Territories for
Peace: A Macrosociological Approach," The Journal ofApplied Behavioral Science, 23: 1 [1987],
13-33).
s5 Mapai Center, January 12, 1949, Mapai Archive.

56 Kneset Protokol, November 7 , 1955.

s7 Asnat Shiran, The Policy of Settlement During the Independent War and After (in Hebrew)

(Tel-Aviv: M. A. thesis, Tel-Aviv University, 1992), 197-98.

 I S R A E L AS A N A T I O N - I N - A R M S 277

Gurion called it "statist pioneering" (halutziut mamlakhtit), explaining that

even though Israel possessed a powerful instrument of manifold performance,
meaning the state, it still needed pre-state pioneer endeav0rs.5~Nahal was,
then, an extreme example of the general pattern, a fusion of the statist,
coercive, bureaucratic mechanism of mobilization with an emotional and
communal element, a synthesis that helped to mobilize the Israeli Jewish
population. 59
Mass maneuvers were another means that served to construct a broad
concept of security. "Every exercise has its own mission," the daily news-
paper, Ha'aretz, informed its readers in the autumn of 1953, going on to
describe how that year's maneuvers differed from previous ones of 1951 and
1952. Nor did the paper pass up the opportunity to publicize the army's
slogan: "And you, the citizen, share in their mission and their success."60 The
large-scale maneuvers, like the reserves system, were the handiwork of the
chief of staff, Yigael Yadin. Through them Yadin wanted to test the idea of a
nation-in-arms. To dramatize his point, Yadin in 1950 sent military police to
arrest the secretary of the Finance Ministry, who had the impression that his
position exempted him from service. Yadin also demanded that at least one
exercise be held with 100,000 troops participating-virtually the entire army
that Israel would put into action in the event of a war.61
The mass maneuvers blurred the distinction between two types of time:
peace and war. The press provided daily reports on the exercises: "A surprise
attack by the 'Reds' on the 'Blacks' in the air force maneuvers," one paper
wrote. A few days later "paratroops from the country of the 'Yellows' "were
reported to" have landed on the soil of the 'Blacks.'" And three days after-
ward readers learned that "efforts by the 'Greens' to breach the lines of the
'Blues' were thwarted." The entire population was involved, as befitted a
nation-in-arms. While the maneuvers were in progress, a number of incidents
occurred on the Egyptian border, blurring the line between training exercises
and real attacks. The uncertainty was heightened when Israel denied, at first,
that its soldiers had entered the demilitarized zone, ascribing everything to the
Egyptians' over-vivid imagination. The press wrote that travelers in the Gal-
ilee (where the maneuvers were being held) were caught up in a war atmo-
sphere. The country's president, escorted by the chief of staff, toured the area
of what were labeled battles. The day after his visit the IDF raided the
Jordanian village of Qibiyeh, this time "for real," killing some fifty inhabi-
tants and blowing up about forty houses. The United Nations and the Great
Powers were outraged at the scale of the operation, its brutality, and Israel's

s8 Mapai Council, June 19, 1948, Mapai Archive.

59 Uri Ben-Eliezer, "Israel's Myth of Pioneering and the Elusive Distinction between Society
and State," in Megamot (forthcoming, 1995).
Haaretz, September 28, 1953.
6' Shabtai Tevet, Moshe Dayan (Tel-Aviv. Shoken, 1971), 355.
 violation of the armistice accords. The government, in contrast, continued to
hold what it called "thorough discussions on security."62
The Arab states had difficulty in accepting the idea that Jewish state could
exist in the Middle East. They, too, prepared for a second round. Concur-
rently, Palestinians continued to infiltrate into Israel. At first these were
refugees seeking to return to their homes, and then they were sabotage-
and-murder squads. The Israeli sense of security, however, cannot be under-
stood as the direct result of an objective situation. Rather, it was the prod-
uct of a politics that presented military action as the only viable alternative
to the Arab threats. Throughout the early 1950s, border incidents-triggered
mainly by conflicting interpretations of the armistice agreements, the sta-
tus of the demilitarized zones, and the exact location of the boundaries-
occurred with Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The government decided to react vig-
orously. After Moshe Dayan was appointed chief of staff, at the end of 1953,
Israel opted particularly for reprisal, usually using the paratroops to carry
It out.
Reporters for the army weekly accompanying the fighting forces on their
missions acquainted every family in Israel with the daring bravery of the
soldiers through first-person articles and authentic photographs.63 The reprisal
raids gradually spawned a myth of heroic warriors; the nation esteemed its
military emissaries and made them symbols of the new Israel. Every young-
ster who was drafted insisted on joining the Red Berets (the paratroops), and
those who were accepted became the pride of the family or neighborhood.64
In themselves, the border disputes and the infiltrations did not attest directly
to an imminent war but legitimized the creation of a crisis atmosphere and
justified the possibility of war as a means of solving political problems, a
phenomenon which is defined as militarism.
Although admiration for the army intensified, the press continued to demon-
ize the enemy and downplay the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The army journal,
for example, ran a series of articles by a Dr. Sasson Ashriki which were meant
to enlighten the reader about "the Arab problem." In them the refugees were
described as "abandoners" and as "the joker in the hands of the Arab states."
There was no refugee problem, the writer claimed, stating that the refugees
were not interested in returning but were being incited by their leaders. Dr.
Ashriki also had a scoop: "Forty percent of the abandoners who receive aid
from the U.N.-do not even exist."65 By the mid-1950s the Jewish population
was given the opportunity to demonstrate its national commitment.

62Haaretz, October 7, 12, 15, 21, 1953.

63Bamachane, September 18, 1956; October 3, 1956.
Teveth, Moshe Dayan, 399; Uzi Benziman, Sharon, an Israeli Caesar (New York: Adama
Books, 1985), 50; Uri Milstein, By Blood and Fire (in Hebrew; Tel-Aviv: Levine-Epstein, 1975)
176-93.
65 Bamachane, October 5 , 12, 1955.
A N A T I O N READY FOR W A R

At the end of September 1955, the arms deal between Czechoslovakia and
Egypt was made public; and a wave of popular voluntarism swept the country
in the form of contributions for arms purchases through what was called the
Defender Fund (Keren Hamagen). The new immigrants, the so-called Second
Israel, now shared in a collective effort aimed at supplying the army with
funds. The press published the amounts donated and described the donors,
noting "the general enthusiasm and manifestations of mass voluntarism never
before seen in the country."66
On October 21, the newspapers published price lists of weapons; and the
public began buying them. The Teachers' Association contributed an amount
sufficient to purchase one warplane and one tank. The Haifa City Council
decided to contribute a torpedo boat to the navy. The Artisans' Association
purchased a warplane. The City of Ramat Gan bought a transport plane and
one hundred parachutes. Discount Bank collected enough for a tank. The
town of Ramle's elected representatives decided to purchase a tank to be
called "Ramle 1." At the same time the popular manifestations continued. As
the cabinet was deliberating the Defender Fund, an elderly woman appeared
and donated an ancient Venetian glass vase. A second woman turned up at the
Prime Minister's Office with a heavy bracelet made of pure gold. Lydia
Balulu, mother of ten, who had received a childbearing prize of 100 pounds
sterling, donated it to the fund. Schoolchildren organized street parades, and
Yadin, the former chief of staff, made an emotional appeal: "Parents, buy a
suit of iron, a suit of armor for the defense of your children."67
The spontaneous organizing attested to a sense of partnership, to proto-
national bonds.68 The leadership lost no time in directing this outpouring of
feelings into channels it found desirable. Parades and mass demonstrations
were organized, booths for donations and special offices were set up; informa-
tion pamphlets were distributed; and two former chiefs of staff headed a
public committee which declared that it intended to raise $25 million for
purchasing weapons. This intense activity was based on both the leadership's
guidance and the public's active ~ o m m i t r n e n tThis
. ~ ~ activity indicated the
success of a political method that sought to blur any distinction between
politics from above and from below. This was the nation-in-arms manifested
not only as a policy of the leadership or any other state agent but as a project
of a11.70
Another expression of the "nation's finest hour" at that time was Operation
Wall (Mivtza Homa). The army did not want to budget funds for obviously
defensive purposes, such as developing civilian support or fortifying settle-
66 Davar, October 21, 23, 1955. 67 Davar, October 24, 25, 1955; November 5, 6 , 1955.

68 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 10-1 1

69 Histadrut Political Committee, December 28, 1955, Histadrut Archive.

70 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 46.

ments. The result was that non-government companies belonging to civil

institutions, such as the Histadrut Federation of Labor and the Jewish Agency,
rallied to the cause of improving the defenses of border settlements. Workers
from the big cities volunteered to help in the construction. The operation was
made viable, thanks to the cooperation typical between the civilian companies
and the army, a clear indication that security was no longer purely a project of
the state and its bureaucracy but an enterprise of the people. Gradually, the
campaign gathered momentum, becoming a mass movement that ultimately
encompassed more than 100,000 volunteers and 300 settlements.71
The Jacobins in France spoke of the need to turn houses into f o r t r e ~ s e sIn
.~~
Israel a similar notion was put forward. As early as March 1951, Ben-Gurion
had stated in the Israeli parliament that it was essential for every settlement
and locality to be strengthened and trained to face the enemy.73 A few years
later a Defense Ministry official, Shimon Peres, explained the significance of
Operation Wall in terms of its contribution to the nation-in-arms model. Peres
noted that, until the nineteenth century wars had been fought by professional
soldiers whose goals were military strongholds. However, as national senti-
ment developed and as nations emerged, wars ceased to be a matter for
mercenaries and military strongholds were no longer their only target. Nowa-
days, he noted, soldiers and civilians were interchangeable. Today's soldier
would be tomorrow's civilian, and vice versa; today's civilian settlement
would be tomorrow's military stronghold, and vice versa.74
The Jacobin state endeavored to keep its citizens in a state of permanent
activity. Something of the same sort was also discernible through the mass
participation elicited by the Defender Fund and Operation Wall in the new
Israel. This state of constant mobilization also led to the dominance of a
conception that found advantages in the special situation of "neither peace nor
war." It was Dayan's formulation, and around the same time the newspaper of
the ruling party published an article explaining that this should be regarded
not only as a description of the actual, but also of the desirable, situation. The
absence of peace, the article stressed, was not entirely a negative condition: It
highlighted the nation and its mobilization, underscored the success of Israel
and the IDF as the "melting pot" of the exiles, and helped reduce class,
communal, and even party disparities.75
In the state's first years, the leadership described reality in terms of non-

7' Mordechai Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Am-Oved, 1992), 86-97;
Mordechai Bar-On, Challenge and Quarrel, The Road to Sinai 1956 (in Hebrew) (Beer-Sheba:
Ben-Gurion University, 1991).
7 2 Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism, 43-83.
7 3 Kneset Protokol, March 5 , 195 1.
74 Histadmt Central Committee, July 19, 1956, Histadrut Archive.
75 Chagai Eshed, "No Peace-No War," Davar, October 26, 1955.
peace. Now, however, that reality was defined in the affirmative. In the profes-
sional literature, a frame of mind like that underlying the news article is known
as "positive militarism."76 Its manifestations in that era were manifold. Thus,
the Actions Committee of the Histadrut labor union felt that the emergency
situation and the war preparations would radically boost the economy, increase
tax collection, and lead to the total elimination of corruption and speculation
while motivating the young generation to new heights of v ~ l u n t a r i s m . ~ ~
The existence of positive militarism indicated that the nation was ready for
war. Ben-Gurion was well-aware of this situation when he decided, on Octo-
ber 23, 1955, that Israel must go to war. Dayan supported the decision
enthusiastically and began preparing the army.78 The clock ran out quickly.
The IDF launched Operations Detonation in order to provoke Nasser into
starting the war.79 During the spring and summer nearly all the IDF's reserve
units were called up for training exercises. The deputy chief of staff, Major
General Haim Laskov, issued a set of stringent new orders, which became the
talk of the army, to streamline the mobilization of the reserves in a war
situation .go
In Jacobin France, Lazare Carnot was able to put the economy on a war
footing in order to arm and equip the troops. Coaches and horses were nation-
alized; artisans' workshops were converted to sewing uniforms; even church
bells and ritual objects were supposedly donated. Even writers and artists
rallied to the cause.81In Japan, as well, readiness for war involved the whole
population. When the China Incident occurred, in the summer of 1937, the
purpose of the massive call-up was quite clear. A military academy report
described it: "National mobilization is intended to control and utilize all
human and material resources in order to concentrate all available power in
the most effective manner. . . . Human resources include not only the actual
number of soldiers, but also the spiritual power, technical ability, and labor of
the nati0n."~2 Similarly, in Israel, the home front now also was readied for
war. The government set up two civilian committees to consider placing the
economy on an emergency footing, while the Knesset passed a law for the
mobilization of civilian vehicles and heavy machinery for military purposes.83
In June, Moshe Sharet, the moderate, left the government. "Once again I

76 "Militarism," in Kerning, Mar-rism, Communism and Western Society

77 Berl Reptur, Histadrut Central Committee, November 10, 1955; Histadrut Archive.
7 V n e s e t Protokol, November 2, 1955.
7 9 Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza. 59-67; Bar-On, Challenge and Quarrel. 47-50.
80 Bar-On, Challenge and Quarrel, 82.
Albert Soboul, The French Revolution, 1787-1799 (New York: Vintage Books, 1974),
268-9.
82 Cook, "The Japanese Reserve Experience."
R 3 Kneset Protokol, June 4, 1956; Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza, 103-4; Bar-On, Challenge and
Quarrel, 83-84.
asked myself," he wrote in his diary, "whether the emergence of the assump-
tion that we are on the brink of war and instilling [that idea] in the minds of
the masses may not by itself become a factor which will finally bring about
war."s4 Was Sharet's concern justified? The present article set out not to count
causal variables for war but to deliniate the way in which a fighting nation was
constructed with the idea of war as a reasonable, justifiable means for solving
political problems if there were no other choice. However, preparations for
war, certainly if they consist both of a massive callup of reserves and of
mental adjustment, might operate not only as a condition for waging war but
also as one of its causes.85
The Prussian-German case is very interesting in this regard, as the
Blitzkrieg, Carl von Clausewitz's famous military strategy, turned into a poli-
tics of war through his loyal pupils. Count Helmuth von Moltke's idea of
"people's war," or that of the "nation-in-arms" of his military successor,
General Baron Colmar Von Der Goltz, proved how narrow the gap was indeed
between a strategic means and a political end. Total war became the ultimate
and only possible option; the whole of society was subordinated to it, even in
peacetime; and Prussia-Germany became a warfare state.86 The Israeli case
and the Prussian-German case are so dissimilar that it is precisely their
common elements that are interesting and worth examining.
When the Israeli-Egyptian war finally broke out, it was the hour of the
whole nation. Jewish citizens were quickly mobilized, with the help of civil
institutions, like town halls or the bus company. Soon, no men of military age
were to be seen on the streets. Many left work; public transportation came to a
halt. The highly oiled machine of the nation-in-arms operated with consider-
able efficiency to wage a quick, offensive, and successful war.
The victory was not only ascribed to the entire nation but linked to its past.
Fourteen hundred years earlier, Ben-Gurion told the Knesset, Jewish indepen-
dence had existed on the island of Yotvata (Tiran), south of Eilat, which had
been "liberated" two days before. Articles began to appear in the press about
Israel's historic right to the Sinai Peninsula. Davar, the newspaper of the
leading party, described the city of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula as "the cradle
of our transformation into a nation and harbingers of hopes for the future."
The nation's historical attachment to Mount Sinai was also reiterated (not-
withstanding that its exact location is unknown). But no one outdid Ben-
Gurion, who in a message to a military ceremony summing up the fighting at
S h a m e-Sheikh, wrote that the soldiers had "stretched out a hand to King
84 Moshe Sharet, Personal Diary (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Maariv Library, 1978), 1385 (April
3, 1956).
8 5 This was also proven in the waiting period of July 1967 that preceded the Six-Days War. See
Horowitz, "Strategic Limitations of 'A Nation in Arms,"' 285.
E . g . . Stig Forster, "Facing 'People War': Moltke the Elder and Germany's Military Options
after 1871," The Journal of Strategic Studies, 10:2 (19871, 209-29; V. R. Berghahn, Germany
and the Approach of War in 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1973).
Solomon" and that the occupied areas would become part of Israel, part of
"the third Jewish kingdom." The message was replete with biblical expres-
sions and images, including a quotation from the Song of the Sea, which
warns other nations that Israel is strong and triumphant because the Lord is
with them.87Thus, the nation's past, or its interpretation of that past, was also
mobilized in order to justify war and conquest.
In short order, however, Israel was forced to withdraw from Sinai under
pressure from the United Nations and an ultimatum of the superpowers. It is
possible that Ben-Gurion learned a lesson from Sinai, as his views became
more moderate afterward.88 But the mechanism of the nation-in-arms, to the
creation of which Ben-Gurion contributed so powerfully, continued to func-
tion decades later.

CONCLUSION
Based on the literature which emphasizes the centrality of the state and the
state's elite in the making of a nation, this essay dealt with the way in which
an ethnic population was constructed as a nation-in-arms. Following the his-
torical precedents and the data on Israel, the nation-in-arms should be seen as
a form of militaristic politics characterized by the attempt to turn the affairs of
the military and the imminence of war into the business of the whole popula-
tion, making them the nation's occupation and concern.
In contrast to the 1948 war, which was characterized by insufficient prepa-
rations and the lack of a plan for activating the entire population, the 1956
Sinai Campaign was the result of lengthy preparations by the state. It included
not only the creation of a strong mass army but also practices that blurred the
distinction between civil and military, a broad definition of security, and the
inculcation of the ideas that war is not always the less-preferred choice and
that peace is not always worth the price.
Scholars of Israeli military sociology have tended to cite the nation-in-arms
as a mechanism that enables regular civilian life to proceed under conditions
of war. It does not prevent democracy and does not encourage military coups
because it provides a link between the needs of the nation and the interests of
the army in a situation of war. These scholars continued the tradition that
started perhaps with Frederick Stem's famous, but politically biased 1957
book, The Citizen Army, and continued with Janowitz, Rappoport, Luckham,
and others89; all can be labelled under the category of the "civil-military
paradigm." This article describes the Israeli nation-in-arms differently-as

87 Davar, November 7, 1956; Bamachane, January 18, 1957; Bar-On, Challenge and Quarrel,
328.
88 Yonatan Shapiro, The Road to Power, Herut Partj in Israel (New York: SUNY Press, 1990),
153-9.
8y Fritz Stem, The Citizen Army, Key to Defense in the Atomic Age (New York: St. Martin
Press, 1957). See also note 9.
one in which the population was constructed as a fighting nation, not for the
sake of a liberal democracy but for the purpose of war. Although the current
theory claims that since the modem state required the population to under-
write its expenditures as taxpayers or to serve in the wars as conscript sol-
diers, it was forced to pay attention to the opinions of its subjects and,
therefore, gave them a voice-in the Swedish expression: "one soldier, one
rifle, one voteu-generally through various kinds of elected bodies.90 I sug-
gest a different model. According to the nation-in-arms described here, the
population's thrust for political participation and involvement, part of Israel's
political culture, is channeled to non-liberal collectivistic patterns of serving
in the army for the sake of the
In analyzing Israel as a nation-in-arms, in historical and political, rather
than in functional terms, I intended not to demonstrate a case of an excep-
tionally high degree of manpower mobilization for a possible war but, rather,
to present the nation-in-arms as a mechanism composed of both rational and
emotional elements, thereby blurring the difference between civilian and mili-
tary institutions and turning them into one entity. Thus, the business of war
becomes something embedded within the spirit of the nation, a part of the
order of things. In this respect, the Israeli case resembles France, Prussia, and
Japan during certain historical periods. Another similarity lies in the fact that
in these cases the nation-in-arms is the result of both party and national
politics. It is in fact the combination of these two variables, the internal and
the external, which makes the nation-in-arms an important model, not perhaps
as an explanatory variable for wars but certainly as a variable for describing
the cultural conditions that make war a legitimate, even necessary, possibility.
Ever since the Sinai Campaign, Israel has been a nation-in-arms as the
result of an institutional process that began with a deliberate policy and ended
with a mechanism that embodies "the will of the nation" no less than "the
power of the state." Israel is a nation-in-arms, not only because it continues to
have a mass national army that is involved in wars but because its wars and
territorial occupations are not carried out by the army alone. In practice, this
means that various organizations that are supposed to be civil-such as the
bus monopoly (Egged), the civilian armed settlers and the Civil Administra-
tion in the occupied territories, the Society for the Preservation o f ' ~ a t u r e -
are all engaged in security missions and tasks.
Israel, as a nation-in-arms, displays as well, social institutions that are
located on the seam between the civil and the military and function to fuse the
two spheres into one entity. To enumerate some of them: Galei Zahal, a radio
station staffed by both civilians and soldiers; voluntary associations, like the

40 S . E. Finer, "State Building, State Boundaries and Border Control," Social Science Infor-
mation, 13 (1974), 79-126; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 80.
91 Uri Ben-Eliezer, "The Meaning of Political Participation in a Non-Liberal Democracy: The
Israeli Example," Comparative Politics. 25:4 (June 1983).
Civil Guard (Hamishmar Hae'zrahi) that de-emphasize differences between
the soldier and the citizen and between civilian support and the military's front
line; and Keren Libi, a fund for raising money from the public for the army.
A nation-in-arms means, as well, retired generals, affiliated with either left-
wing or right-wing political parties, setting aside their political differences to
fight together against the "ultra-Orthodox shirking" of military service or
organizing in order to demonstrate comradeship with one of their number who
is attacked in the media for not ever taking part in a combat war.92 It means
also the parents who take an active part, with the army's encouragement, in
their children's military service.93 Despite some changes within the last few
years, one could still find many more examples in Israel of social institutions
and arrangements that contribute to a situation in which the entire nation is
preoccupied with, and mobilized in, matters pertaining to organized means of
violence and places this preoccupation at its center.

92 Yediot Achronot (daily newspaper), November 29, 1988.

93 Yediot Achronot, May 12, 1992; Davar, May 15, 1992,