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.1 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 nation."4 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.I n a speech to the Israelip arliament( Knesset), Ben- Gurionc laimed that efficiency was
the reason, among all the possibilities, for the reconstructiono f 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 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 discipline.5 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 integration,6 these 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 military."7 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 the army into
a "people's army" imbued with the democratic and civil (some added, egalitarian)s pirit characteristico f 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,10 was wholly inappropriatef or 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 integrativea pproacha nd to write abouth ow the nation-in-armsfu nctions "as a means to
survive in a hostile strategic environment."11T hese scholars ad-dressed neither the crucial role the army
played in controlling the Israeli-Arab citizens throught he militarya dministrationd uringt he 1950s and early
1960s nor their exclusion from participatingi n the nation-formationp rocess because they were exempt from
military service.12 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 OF THE 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.13 More
frequent wars meant that the nation-state was forced to tax the population more heavily, mobilize citizens
for combat, and demand absolute loyalty.'4 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 levee en masse,
in which the entire male populationw as conscripted.T he nation-in-armsw ould later extend this idea, in the
form of the moral and materialc ontributiono f the home frontt o the war effort and of the blurring of
differences between soldiers and citizens.15 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 Prussiat urnedF
rancea gain into a nation-in-arms,r eady for revenge through the Reveil national of the years 1910-14, a
rediscovery of patriotic ideals and vocabulary within large segments of French society.16 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 Prussiana rmy's reformsd id not reflect a surrenderb y 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 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."18 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 moder 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.19 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 Japanesel eaders are all paradigmatice xamples of a
moder 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 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.21 What follows is an analysis of how a nation-in-
armsw as formeda s 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
STATE ARMY CONSTRUCTS A NATION 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-armsc annot be trusted, we need trained people," Yadin was told. And:
"You cannot make a commando force out of vendors from the market."23 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.

Many of those who had set the tone in the military infrastructureb efore 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 understandw hy Ben-Gurionw as
so eager to tamperw ith 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 controversiess urroundingt he effortsb y
state's leaderst o 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 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 arrangementsf or 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 and within a
few years the country's population more than doubled.32 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
corer 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
arrangementsfo r laundryo r 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

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 Hebrewb ut Hebrew soldiering."37T he 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 Republic."38 THE PRACTICES OF 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-sturm.42 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-
armsa nd 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 obligation.43 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 extendcmilitary 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 majorityd emonstratingt
hatt he people's elected representa-tives unequivocally supported the idea of a nation-in-arms for Israel

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 security.49 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."50S o importantw as the motif of participatingi n 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 1911 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

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 demonization 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 war."54 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 combinedc ivil missions like
agriculturea nd land settlementw ith 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
entirelyo n militaryc onsiderations:T he he'ahzutw as 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. BenGurion called it "statist pioneering" (halutziut mamlakhtit), explaining
that even though Israel possessed a powerful instrumento f manifoldp erformance, meaning the state, it still
needed pre-state pioneer endeavors.58 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.6' 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
"paratroopsfr om 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 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 interpretationso f 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 throughf irst-persona rticlesa nd authenticp
hotographs.63T he 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. Althougha dmirationf or
the armyi ntensified,t he press continuedt o 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 describeda s "abandoners"a nd
as "thej oker 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 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 commitment.69 This 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 all.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 settlements. The
result was that non-government companies belonging to civil institutions, such as the HistadrutF ederationo
f Labora nd 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
fortresses.72 In 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
OperationW all in terms of its contributiont o the nation-in-armsm odel. 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 nonpeace. 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."76It s manifestationsi n that era were manifold. Thus, the Actions
Committee of the Histadrut labor union felt that the emergency situationa nd the war preparationsw ould
radicallyb oost the economy, increase tax collection, and lead to the total elimination of corruption and
speculation while motivating the young generation to new heights of voluntarism.77 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.80 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.81 In 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 nation."82 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
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."84W as Sharet'sc oncernj ustified?T he presenta rticles et 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"o f 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 subordinatedt o 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;p ublic transportationca me to a halt. The highly
oiled machine of the nation-in-armso peratedw ith 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"tw o days before. Articles began to appeari n 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 transformationin to a nation and harbingerso f
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 Sharm e-Sheikh, wrote that the soldiers had "stretched out a
hand to King 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.87T hus, the nation'sp ast, or its interpretationo f thatp ast, 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 moderatea fterward.88B ut the mechanismo f the nation-in-arms,t o 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 precedentsa nd the data on Israel, the nation-in-armss hould be seen as a form of
militaristicp olitics characterizedb y the attemptt o turnt he affairso f the military and the imminence of war
into the business of the whole popula-tion, making them the nation's occupation and concern. In contrastt o
the 1948 war, which was characterizedb y insufficientp repa-rations and the lack of a plan for activating the
entire population, the 1956 Sinai Campaignw as the result of lengthy preparationsb y 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 Stern'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
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 vote"-generally through various kinds of elected bodies.90 I sug-gest
a different model. According to the nation-in-arms described here, the population'st hrustf or political
participationa nd involvement, part of Israel's political culture, is channeled to non-liberal collectivistic
patterns of serving in the army for the sake of the nation.91 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-armsa n
importantm odel, 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."I srael is a nation-in-arms,n ot only because it continues to have a mass national army
that is involved in wars but because its wars and territorialo ccupationsa re not carriedo ut 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 of Nature-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 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-armsm eans, as
well, retiredg enerals, affiliatedw ith either left-wing or right-wing political parties, setting aside their
political differences to fight together against the "ultra-Orthodoxs hirking" 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