Udi Lebel

Civil Society versus Military Sovereignty: Cultural, Political, and Operational Aspects

From its inception and throughout the military sovereignty era, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were endowed with a religious status. In Israeli society, bereaved parents of fallen soldiers enjoyed a special relationship with the army, and their bereavement afforded them a unique place in the shaping of public opinion about security policy. However, as this paper shows, after the first Lebanon War (1982) cracks began to appear in this special union. From the early 1990s, bereaved parents supported by new social movements and a symbiosis of the judicial arena and the media challenged the security-defense-military arena and its policies of commemoration of the dead, treatment of soldiers, accident prevention, secrecy, and even appointments. Using the High Court and the media to directly influence defense and security policy, civil society succeeded in changing the IDFs tactics, the treatment of Palestinian detainees, and thus elevated human rights and international law over security considerations.

When parents lay their children to rest: Between anger and forgiveness

A hermeneutic-phenomenological study of 13 bereaved parents of fallen soldiers or victims of terrorism describes their grief, anger, and forgiveness in relation to their struggle with personal loss. The findings indicate anger as a major variable among participants, aroused by three sources: (i) the circumstances of the loss; (ii) the institutionalized response to the loss; and (iii) a certain policy and its makers. A salient finding is that the ‘enemy,’ the target of the most anger, was never the one who actually killed their son, but a political leader who participants perceived to be responsible for the loss. Forgiveness was scarcely relevant to participants. A proposed explanation focuses on the meaning of the respective representations of the dead child in the participants’ inner and social worlds, and their lack of readiness for the necessary transformation of that representation. Recommendations include the institutionalized responses that may benefit the parents personally and assist them in reaching forgiveness and reconciliation with their defined enemy.

Penetrating the Shields of Institutional Immunity: The Political Dynamic of Bereavement in Israel

To understand and overcome the tendency of public organizations to conceal information, this article analyses the dynamic interaction between a new social movement and the Israeli defence establishment. The study shows how parents whose children were killed in training and operational accidents while serving in the military form social movements to force the latter to release information concerning these accidents. In doing so parents define personal tragedy as a social problem and use the various public arenas – cultural, media, legal, political and social – to bypass barriers imposed by the army and to bring about organizational changes within the army.

Parental Discourse and Activism as a Response to Bereavement of Fallen Sons and Civilian Terrorist Victims

ABSTRACT This study is a phenomenological exploration of bereavement among a population of Israeli parents who became demonstratively activist following the death of their offspring either as soldiers in the line of duty or as victims of terrorism. It illuminates how an anger-forgiveness continuum gives a politically charged significance to the bereavement experience regardless of party or ideological orientation. Strong nationalist identification with the armed forces is overlaid with intense personal emotions of guilt and blame assignment. Mourning as a career may follow pathological or normative courses. Political leaders emerge who mobilize similarly situated mourners to protest against military and civilian policy related to the perceived nexus between security matters and the personal loss. The dynamic between factors which assuage personal needs and simultaneously endanger national consensus regarding the performance of leading state institutions–the government and the defense establishment—is underlined in the conditions which both facilitate and impair any transition from anger to reconciliation.

“Casualty Panic”: Military Recruitment Models, Civil-Military Gap and Their Implications for the Legitimacy of Military Loss

This article addresses the issue of what defines “Casualty Panic,” which in recent years has impacted upon military policy in liberal-democratic states. The author claims that the hesitation to enter into military engagements for fear of incurring casualties is a consequence of “moral panic” among the political and military leadership. This moral panic is engendered by elite groups who have ready access to the media and key political decision-makers influential in formulating the political agenda. Individuals from the ranks of the combatants and military command are salient actors in these elite groups. There is a connection between the mode of military recruitment and the civil-military gap–the larger the gap, which ranges from a civilian to a private army, the less likely the appearance of “Casuality Panic” influencing military strategy and tactics. The case study draws upon the period from Israels incursion into Lebanon (1982) to the second Lebanese incursion (2006).

‘Blackmailing the army’ – ‘Strategic Military Refusal’ as policy and doctrine enforcement: the formation of a new security agent

The study shows how ‘strategic military refusal’ in Israel developed as a rational and institutional means to influence security policies. As opposed to the perspective that sees military refusal as a spontaneous individual act, the study illustrates how organizations operate to distribute military refusal in order to pressure decision-makers to change their military policies. This strategy has proven to be effective when the military is involved with groups that threaten it with refusal – which threatens the militarys operational ability and its official and apolitical image. These include soldiers whose civilian authorities, rather than their military commanders, are perceived as an epistemic authority regarding security issues. The case study refers to the impact of strategic military refusal in Israel on security policies and the military doctrine. This was influenced by leftist groups, which, although they belonged to the parliamentary opposition, had dominant presence in the military ranks. Furthermore, the study examines the effect of the use of strategic military refusal on the model of military recruitment.

The Creation of the Israeli ‘Political Bereavement Model’—Security Crises and their Influence on the Public Behaviour of Loss: A Psycho-Political Approach to the Study of History

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 the matter of bereavement has constituted a central plank in the shaping of relations between civil society and the defence and political establishments. Bereaved parents’ forgiving attitude to the establishment, and especially their faith in it, provided psycho-political legitimization of the first order to the policies shaped by the country’s prime ministers. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973 bereaved parents, widows and bereaved families began for the first time to speak out against the political leadership which in their eyes bore the responsibility and guilt for their loved ones’ deaths. In fact, it was at this time that one finds the beginnings of what can be termed ‘bargaining’ over the Israeli model of bereavement, involving the ‘Hegemonic Bereavement Model’ and the ‘Political Bereavement Model’. This involved political behaviour on the part of bereaved parents, who became leading political and media figures, demanding reforms, taking steps so as to bring influence to bear on the shaping of policy and even bringing about a change of regime and a removal of leaders from the political stage. The subject of this article is the fashioning of the Political Bereavement model which emerged after the Yom Kippur War, intensified after the Lebanon War of 1982 and has remained an integral part of Israeli society to this day. Since the Yom Kippur War, bereaved parents, widows and orphans have acquired a dominant public presence by virtue of which they

Settling the Military: the pre-military academies revolution and the creation of a new security epistemic community – The Militarization of Judea and Samaria

The article describes the establishment of the pre-military academies in Judea and Samaria as cultural agents preceding the militaristic habitus of these areas. It follows the development of the security epistemic community in these areas which formed a new identity of the settlers. The increase of religious-Zionist youth in combat units and officer courses in the IDF due to these academies altered the positioning of the settlers and all religious Zionists in Israeli society vis-à-vis non-religious elites, the ultra-orthodox, and religious-Zionist groups who did not join the pre-military academy revolution. Judea and Samaria became a ‘security zone’ identified with sacrifice, heroism, giving, a pedagogical partnership with the army, reflected in higher percentages of activities in educational, religious, and cultural institutions encouraging meaningful army service.

“Second Class Loss”: Political Culture as a Recovery Barrier—The Families of Terrorist Casualties' Struggle for National Honors, Recognition, and Belonging

Israeli families of terrorist victims have undertaken initiatives to include their dearest in the national pantheon. The objections opposed the penetration of “second-class loss” into the symbolic closure of heroic national bereavement. The “hierarchy of bereavement” is examined through the lens of political culture organized around the veneration held for the army fallen and their families, which has symbolic as well as rehabilitative outcomes. Families of civilian terror victims claims for similar status and treatment had to frame their loss as national in the eyes of the social policy. The article claimed linkage between collective memory and rehabilitation.

Perceptions of suicide and their impact on policy, discourse and welfare

In recent years, there has been an increase in suicide rates throughout the Western world. However, psycho-social responses to the problem are limited, as is public awareness of suicide and its consequences. This article presents findings from a survey on public attitudes toward suicide in Israel. The survey was conducted among a representative sample, and examined the extent to which the problem is a public priority for developing interventions aimed at preventing and reducing the rates of suicide. The findings revealed that despite the prevalence of suicide in Israel, and even though many of the participants had been personally acquainted with the families of suicide victims, suicide still ranks low on the hierarchy of bereavement. The Israeli public is ignorant about suicide, and does not consider it a problem that calls for government intervention and accountability. The study highlights the need for social workers to play an active role as social agents in an attempt to change the social ‘bereavement pyramid’ perception and effect on government policy toward suicide.