Eyal Ben-Ari

Why Don't They Fight Each Other? Cultural Diversity and Operational Unity in Multinational Forces:

This article poses the question of how multinational forces can achieve a working level of cooperation and coordination despite their high cultural diversity? It first illustrates the range of cultural diversity in multinational forces. Then, relying on the literature on diversity in organizations and cross-cultural differences in value priorities, and on an analysis of the circumstances under which such forces operate, the possible implications of high diversity for their operations are discussed. On the basis of further theoretical analysis, as well as existing literature and documents, a number of possible integrating conditions and integrating mechanisms are described that enable the forces to function as integrated units. Finally, the article suggests a number of research questions derived from our theoretical analysis.

Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants: Moving between the Civilian and Military Worlds

This article suggests a new perspective for examining the particular social and organizational characteristics of military reserves forces and the special experiences of serving in the reserves. To illustrate the unique social position of reservists, the authors develop a theoretical model that likens them to transmigrants. Accordingly, the authors suggest that society may benefit from looking at reserves both as sorts of social and organizational hybrids or amalgams—they are soldiers and civilians, they are outside yet inside the military system, and are invested in both spheres—and as continual migrants journeying between military and civilian spheres. The authors end by suggesting that it may be fruitful to study three segments of the military, each of which has its own dynamics: regulars, conscripts, and reserves. This differentiation allows society to examine different patterns of motivation, cohesion, political commitment and awareness, and long-term considerations that characterize each segment.

Cohesion during Military Operations A Field Study on Combat Units in the Al-Aqsa Intifada

Military leaders and social scientists often regard unit cohesion as the key element in combat motivation and fighting resilience. However, a close look at today’s battlefield calls for rethinking this assumption. This study is based on observations of combat units during the current Arab-Israeli conflict (the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”). In contrast to the usual depiction found in the scholarly literature, these units were characterized by some rather unique features. Instead of socially cohesive structures (based upon mutual, continuous, and common experiences), the action of these combat units during operations is based upon temporary frameworks based on short-term, ad hoc, and diverse components. In general, the components comprising these ad hoc frameworks do not have a common background and do not belong to the same organizational arms of the Israeli military. Nevertheless, the fighting power of the emergent amalgamations has not been diminished or damaged. Our study depicts several possible explanations for the social dynamics of such “instant units” and focuses on the importance of “swift trust” to their functioning.

Epilogue: A “Good” Military Death

As an epilogue to the present volume, this article picks up its central themes. It elaborates some of the main points about casualty aversion that are made in the preceding contributions. At the same time, by adding its own themes and insights, this article is complementary in character. It focuses on how a “good” military death is defined by cultural scripts and how, in accordance with those scripts, death is dealt with by the military organization and its guild of experts. Cultural scripts change over time and may differ from one society to another. As a consequence, the practices of dealing with military death may differ too. Generally speaking, though, military organizations throughout the West echo the ways in which casualties nowadays are looked upon by parent societies.

Terror, Aid and Organization: The Haredi Disaster Victim Identification Teams (ZAKA) in Israel

Terror attacks are forms of social and cultural disasters that cause extensive harm to humans and the social order. Yet despite the sudden chaos they wreak and their prevalence during the last decade or so, most societies have only recently created organizational forms that can manage and handle their threatening potential. This article analyzes the relations between terror attacks and the emergence of new organizations specializing in death and disaster. We explore this issue through the case of ZAKA, the Ultra-Orthodox Identification Teams for Victims of Disasters in Israel. This organization sheds light on how in highly complex and bureaucratized countries new types of specialists in death by terror developed. From an anthropological point of view, organizational specialists in death by terror are expected to act proficiently on the basis of existing cultural norms and principles. Such organizational bodies are not only expressions of social responses to the unexpected disorder produced by terror but are also powerful cultural agents that produce new meanings. Concretely, not all organizations gain trust and support from the general public to allow its members to touch, treat and recompose the bodies of the dead, we contend that ZAKA legitimizes its goals and actions through the amalgamation of three unique elements: (a) Given that ZAKAs practices are grounded in Jewish traditions concerning death and burial, the organization use these cultural roots to gain acceptance of treating victims of terror attacks. In this way, the actions of ZAKA volunteers are legitimized since they fulfill central religious (Talmudic) duties concerning death and the treatment of corpses. (b) The organization mixes practices and knowledge from different institutions and bodies such as the police, military or medical organizations. Moreover, ZAKA cooperates with various state organizations that specialize in death events and disasters. This combination not only reinforces the legitimacy of their actions but turns them into social experts for dealing with the victims of terror and mass death. (c) During a terror event the organization deals not only with death but also with aid to, and treatment of, the injured. By giving them social permission to treat, touch and recompose the human flesh, society also sanctions them to touch the very basis of social order: treating the human body and dealing with questions of life and death in the public sphere. We end by offering a number of thoughts about the wider implications of our case study.

Israeli snipers in the Al-Aqsa intifada: killing, humanity and lived experience

This article is an analysis of Israeli military snipers who served during the Al-Aqsa intifada. It takes issue with the scholarly consensus that, for such acts to take place, perpetrators have to somehow dehumanise their enemies. Based on interviews with 30 individuals, it shows that snipers do not always need to dehumanise their targets and that they experience killing in conflicting ways, both as pleasurable and as disturbing. The snipers simultaneously deploy distancing mechanisms aimed at dehumanising enemies and constantly recognise their basic humanity. The article ends on a cautionary note: violence should not be seen as only belonging to the realm of the pathological. Rather we must be aware of rules of legitimate violence, the culturally specific ideology of violence at work in specific cases. This kind of ideology may ‘humanse’ enemies but still classify them as opponents against which violence may be legitimately used.

‘Hungry, Weary and Horny’: Joking and Jesting among Israel's Combat Reserves

The aphorism used as the title of this article – ‘hungry, weary and horny’ – is frequently employed by Israeli soldiers to characterize their experience upon entering reserve duty. In its comic tone it encapsulates the main features of this military experience: reserve duty as a special time/space separated from civilian life; the different norms of behaviour and expression allowed while on duty; and the various hardships and difficulties associated with army life. In its bawdy emphasis on basic physiological needs – food, sleep and sex – it also hints at the masculine nature of soldiering in all-male groups. Finally, it underscores the selfreflective commentary that is an ever-present part of military life, the commonality of this experience for many (Jewish) Israelis, and humour itself as a major ‘definer’ of the reserve experience. This study examines the place of humour in the social and organizational life of Israeli soldiers serving as combat reserves. By humour we refer both to joking relations comprising the ongoing witticisms, banter and pranks that form part of a soldier’s informal social life and joke telling that entails those more constructed events in which a series of jokes are told. The analysis has focused on two battalions of infantry reservists that represent different kinds of combat soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF): high quality troops that are considered equivalent to the detachments of the permanent forces (the standing army); and older soldiers of lower fighting quality who are given lighter tasks and missions. In both popular and academic treatises, the main images of the IDF centre on young men during the compulsory term of service in combat roles or on senior commanders who stand at the head of large formations of

Fundamentalism's encounters with citizenship: the Haredim in Israel

This paper centers on the challenge that fundamentalist groups – such as the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community (the Haredim) – pose for citizenship. It focuses on two issues: challenges centering on contribution to and sacrifice for the Israeli nation-state; and alternatives that fundamentalism poses to definitions of citizenship. Empirically, it is based on research in three arenas: service in the Israeli military; a voluntary organization aiding state agencies after terror attacks (ZAKA), and a charitable association offering help in health and social welfare (Yad Sarah). Two trends – challenges to concepts of security and the state, and the weakening of the state in the economic sphere and social services – have opened up spaces for fundamentalist groups to operate in civil society and complement the state. The Haredi community has gradually developed a new concept of inclusion that both fits the state-centred view of citizenship and their own fundamentalist perspective.

A Bureaucrat in Every Japanese Kitchen

This article represents an analysis of the cultural assumptions that are involved in the implementation of coproduction schemes. Through a case study of a garbage disposal scheme in a Japanese city, two interrelated themes are examined: (a) the nature of programs of coproduction as universal arrangements for the creation and delivery of urban services, and (b) the peculiar Japanese models and premises that form part of the implementation of such programs in that sociocultural context. The article also includes an examination of how the Japanese case may contribute toward an understanding of the assumptions that lie behind the introduction of coproduction arrangements in other cultural contexts.

Managing Diversity in Context Unit Level Dynamics in the Israel Defense Forces

This article is an exploratory study of the factors influencing the management of diversity at the unit level. This management is carried out through ongoing negotiations between troops and commanders and is heavily influenced by the character of the unit within which bargaining takes place and involves the active role of both sides. The most important factors are the unit’s structural characteristic (dominant military roles or social composition) and ethos of action (a combat or service orientation). Diversity is thus simultaneously managed as formal policy (intentionally organized) and is self-organized as phenomena emerging at the local level through agreements between the military and individuals and groups serving within it. The analysis is based on qualitative research carried out within the Israel Defense Forces within combat, white-collar, and service units.