The Art of Military Innovation in Israel

"The Art of Military Innovation

By Edward N. Luttwak and Eitan Shamir

Harvard, 288 pages, $35

The Genius of Israel

By Dan Senor and Saul Singer

Avid Reader, 336 pages, $27

The history of Israel is a history of its wars. The first was fought in 1948, when Arab enemies sought to kill off a newborn state that barely had an army. The last was provoked when Hamas erupted out of Gaza to murder as many Jews as it could in the space of a few hours. Israel's wars don't end: Peace, when it comes, is a lull -- however prolonged -- before bloodshed starts anew.

The history of Israel is also a history of resilience, of an ardor to overcome the hatred of others. This resilience is on display -- righteous and unsentimental -- in Israel's pursuit of Hamas in Gaza. Grief hasn't paralyzed the Israelis, even as their heartsick nation mourns its slaughtered citizens.

Two books that capture Israel's self-confident (and sometimes cocky) spirit went to press before the invasion by Hamas on Oct. 7. Their authors' message is unmarred by the horrors of that day and is, in fact, made more eloquent by the way in which Israelis -- bitterly divided over the past year on the extent to which their unelected courts should have power over an elected parliament -- recovered their unity in response to an external attack.

The first, by Edward Luttwak and Eitan Shamir, is "The Art of Military Innovation." The title's echo of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is deliberate, and the book offers "lessons" from the Israel Defense Forces that policy makers in the Western world would do well to study. Messrs. Luttwak and Shamir make clear that theirs is not a history of the IDF and its wars. Instead they set out to explain why "the relatively small, relatively poor Israeli armed forces have long been exceptionally innovative." This inquiry is not unconnected to the questions pursued by Dan Senor and Saul Singer in "The Genius of Israel." In it, the authors -- who previously co-wrote "Start-Up Nation" (2009), a beguiling search for the roots of Israel's "economic miracle" -- seek to understand why Israelis are buoyed, not cowed, by the perpetual threat to their nation's existence. Both books are, in their own way, labors of love for Israel.

"The Art of Military Innovation" is rich with rare detail, much of it a result of the authors' access to the IDF's inner sanctums and their intimate knowledge of grand strategy and military history. Mr. Shamir is a former head of national security doctrine at the Israeli Office of Strategic Affairs; Mr. Luttwak, the author of more than a dozen books on defense affairs, volunteered for the IDF in his 20s after graduating from the London School of Economics, where he roomed with Richard Perle (later chairman of the U.S. Defense Policy Board under President George W. Bush). Although their writing is scholarly, one would be wrong to leave the endnotes unread for fear that they're too donnish. 

One such note, easily missed, reveals the startling fact that when Soviet-built MiG-29s fell into Western hands at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force failed to grasp that their design rendered the front of the plane transparent for helmeted pilots flying the craft. The IDF's experts, by contrast, picked up on the feature right away, adapting it for the F-35, which was vastly improved as a result.

The IDF's greatest strength, the authors tell us, derives from its moment of greatest weakness, when Israel was attacked on the day after it declared its independence. Israel had "no armed forces up and running, no army, navy, or air force ready for war." But there was "a hidden advantage" in the absence of these armed services: The IDF was able to "start anew as a single structure," the world's only one-service military, with no inter-services sniping, no wasteful multiplication of expenditure. It was an army of youthful soldiers and officers, unimpaired by old traditions that impede new strategies. A shortage of money and weaponry in its earliest years made the IDF open to "macroinnovation," the authors say -- the development of something new, not merely a "remediation" of existing weaponry.

Innovations include the Gabriel, the West's first antiship missile, deployed to devastating effect in the 1973 war; and the Merkava, the first tank with its engine placed in front, protecting the crew inside, instead of at the back -- "the only tank designed by tank soldiers based on their own experiences." The best-known innovation is the Iron Dome antirocket system that has intercepted thousands of deadly projectiles since it was deployed in 2011. It took just four years to develop, innovation at the speed of light made possible by the absence of bureaucratic hurdles.

Resolutely nonhierarchical, the IDF makes it possible for 19-year-olds to catch the ear of generals. In the 1967 war, a teen conscript suggested that the airstrikes that wiped out the planes of Israel's Arab foes while they were still on the ground be carried out at 8 a.m. instead of at the more conventional hours of dawn or dusk (when attacks would have been anticipated). Egyptian pilots, the conscript said, breakfasted at 8. What better time to strike? Other innovations include the use of women as weapons instructors for conscripts, females being more patient with greenhorns; and of autistic Israelis -- capable of detecting minute variations in apparently identical images -- to study thousands of aerial photographs in order to detect signs of terrorist activity.

"The Genius of Israel" is a more jaunty book, based on interviews with numerous Israelis, from chief executives to doctors to rabbis, but it helps give context and background to the civitas from which Israel projects its military power. Mr. Senor, a partner at an investment firm in New York, was once the top adviser to L. Paul Bremer, when the latter was the U.S. administrator of post-Saddam Iraq. Mr. Singer is a former editor at the Jerusalem Post. Writing together, the two ask why so many of Israel's sociocultural indices are better than those of other nations in the West. Why do Israelis live longer? Why are they more fecund, less addicted to drugs, more optimistic and -- underscoring the point made by Messrs. Luttwak and Shamir -- so notably inclined to innovate?

There is no single answer to such questions, but the authors point to a cluster of qualities that explain the genius they see in Israel's temperament and in the "reservoir of social solidarity that it can draw upon." Their anecdote-driven reportage sheds light on a larger question: How is a country so incurably divided also a country so resolutely united?

The authors identify social innovations that are unique to Israel. These include the kibbutz, which has nurtured communal spirit and a sturdy aversion to hierarchy; and the mechina, civic institutions where handpicked young leaders are hot-housed after high school in immersive gap-year programs. If that last concept is new to many non-Israelis, so are two others that Messrs. Senor and Singer credit as sources of Israeli cohesiveness and as antidotes to polarization. These are the hevre, or networks, which people establish at high school or university, in essence friendship circles that function as "supra-families"; and gibush, or group values that help forge bonds. It is possible to say, the authors tell us, that you "went on a hike with the hevre for gibush."

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Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University's Center on Capitalism and Society." [1]

1. REVIEW --- Books: Threatened, Embattled, Resilient. Varadarajan, Tunku.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 Dec 2023: C.7.