The Origins and Development of the NAHAL Brigade in the Israel Defense Forces, 1949-1999

by

Joshua Nathan Peters

Bachelor of Arts, Honours, University of Victoria, 2003

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the Graduate Academic Unit of History

Supervisor: David A. Charters, Ph.D. History

Examining Board: R. S. Turner, Ph.D. History, Chair Sean Kennedy, Ph.D. History Miron Rezun, Ph.D. Political Science and Economics

This Thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies

The University of New Brunswick

April, 2008

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1+1 Canada To my grandfather, the late Lazar Peters C.M. D.F.C. who inspired me to study history.

I am eternally grateful.

111 Abstract

The Fighting Pioneer Youth (known in Hebrew by its acronym NAHAL) is a unique formation in the Israel Defence Forces that combines agricultural work with traditional military service. Founded in the wake of the 1948 War of Independence,

NAHAL originally drew its membership from various self-contained cells from left- leaning Zionist youth movements that had pushed for its creation. This enabled the youth movements, who had been at the forefront of the Zionist project before the establishment of the State of Israel, to continue to have some influence in the post-1948 nation-state political reality.

Since its founding NAHAL has adapted to the changing military needs of the

IDF as well as to larger pressures facing Israeli society as a whole. The best means of understanding NAHAL is by placing the organization and its guiding ideology within a civil-military relations theoretical framework. With a theoretical framework in place, it becomes easier to show how and why NAHAL expanded both in military and non- military ways and what the results of that expansion imply.

111 Acknowledgments

I must firstly give thanks to my supervisor, Dr. David Charters, without whose support and enduring patience I would have never completed this thesis. I must also thank Dr. R.S. Turner of the University of New Brunswick History Department who I think has heard me talk about this thesis more than anyone else. I am very grateful to both of them for their continued support. I must thank the Gregg Center for the Study of

War and Society for providing me with the funds for my research trip to the IDF

Archives, Shirley Reuveni at the IDF Archives for her assistance and Judith Botbol for her translation help.

I would never have gone on to graduate work without the steady support of Dr.

Gregory Blue and Dr. David Zimmerman of the University of Victoria History

Department. Thank you to Dr. A. Peter Gary of Victoria B.C. for insisting that I have talent and sechel. Thank you to Katie whose support and patience has been endless, and to my friends and family, especially my father Michael, without whose help this thesis would never have seen the light of day.

IV Glossary

GADNA: Hebrew acronym for G 'dudei No 'ar, or Youth Battalions, a paramilitary organization run by the Israel Defence Forces as a means of preparing Israeli high school youth for their mandatory military service. GADNA serves both as a military indoctrination and youth movement program offering survival, marksmanship and orienteering courses.

Garin (plural: garinim): literally 'seed,' 'cell,' or 'nucleus.' A garin begins as a cell of a Zionist youth movement while its members are still in high school. When it is time for the garin members to be drafted, they volunteer to the IDF as a garin and are put in NAHAL.

Haganah: literally 'defence,' the Haganah was the mainstream underground defence force of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine.

He'achzut (plural: he 'achzuyot): a NAHAL military-agricultural settlement. Usually a he 'achzut is run according to the communal or co-operative ideology of the garin that is manning it.

IDF: Israel Defence Force.

IZL: Hebrew acronym for Irgun Tsva 7 Le 'umi, or National Military Organization. IZL is also known as ETZEL, NMO or simply the Irgun, and was the largest Jewish terrorist organization in Mandatory Palestine. The IZL was led by Menachem Begin.

Kibbutz (plural: kibbutzim): a communal agricultural settlement.

LEHI: Hebrew acronym for Lohamei Herut Israel, or Israeli Freedom Fighters. Led by Avraham Stern, LEHI was a small and radical right-wing Jewish terrorist organization in Mandatory Palestine. It was also known as the Stern Gang, and was responsible for the murder of UN special envoy Count Bernadotte.

MAPAI: Hebrew acronym for Mifleget Po 'alei Eretz Israel, or Land of Israel Worker's Party. Led by David Ben-Gurion, MAPAI was a left-wing social democratic party that dominated Israeli politics until the mid-1960's. It later helped found the Israeli Labour Party.

MAPAM: Hebrew acronym for Mifleget haPo 'alim haMe 'uchedet, or United Workers Party. A far-left Israeli Marxist-Zionist party with Stalinist leanings.

Moshav (plural: moshavim): a co-operative agricultural settlement.

NAHAL: Hebrew acronym for No 'ar Halutzei Lohem or Fighting Pioneer Youth. A formation in the IDF combining military service with agricultural and later urban

111 development activities. NAHAL is pronounced NA-chal with 'ch' representing a uvular fricative (like the German 'ach').

PALMACH: Hebrew acronym for Plugot Machatz, or Assault Companies. The P ALMACH battalions were the elite strike force of the Haganah during the late British Mandate period as well as during the 1948 War of Independence.

SHLAT: Hebrew acronym for Sherut L 'lo Tashlim, or Unpaid Service. SHLAT is the IDF designation for the period of time NAHAL members spend as farmers or labourers rather than as normal soldiers.

Yishuv: literally 'settlement,' the Yishuv was the name for the pre-1948 Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine.

VI Table of Contents

Dedication ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Glossary v

Introduction 1

1. Civil-Military Relations Theory, Zionism and NAHAL 12

2. The Establishment of NAHAL 40

3. Happy Days: NAHAL 1949-1973 63

4. NAHAL 1973 and Onwards: Decline and Reformulation 80

Conclusion 98

Bibliography 104

Curriculum Vitae

Vll VITA

Introduction

Military history is a field which relates two very different subjects. On the one hand, military history studies ideas and how they relate to warfare. More than just tactics and strategy, military history discusses the development of military technologies, the organization of military formations, analyses the impact of unquantifiable factors like morale and experience on the course of a battle, the ideologies which shape military development and even muses on the philosophy of war and peace. On the other hand, military history studies the violence humans have inflicted on one another since the beginning of, well, history. Military history examines the effect raw violence has on the individual, on societies, on the nature of warfare and how it is - or is not -fought. It is the interaction of these two subjects, violence and ideas, that informs my thesis.

During the course of my research, it surprised me to discover that while

Theodore Herzl's publication of Der Judenstaadt represented the beginning of Zionism as a popular liberal-bourgeois political movement in Western Europe, Zionism had been an active force among left-wing radical Jewish students in Eastern Europe for some time. Early bourgeois Zionism quickly gained the financial backing of notables like

Moses Montefiore and Edmund de Rothschilde, but it was the unemancipated, unassimilated students that would eventually be responsible for the successful mass settlement and founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. It would be these same young people who would go on to form the core of the Labour Zionist leadership which ran the

State of Israel for its first 29 years.

The Israel Defense Forces is a young army. As of this writing it is not yet 60 years old. But it is also an army comprised of young people, perhaps more so than any VITA other modern army. The standing conscript force of IDF combat troops has an average age of roughly 20 years old, junior officers and NCOs included. Everywhere within the

IDF, young people have always been given an unusually high level of responsibility.

Yitzchak Rabin was a brigade commander by the age of 26. Ilan Ramon was flying A-4

Skyhawks for the IAF by the age of 20, the normal age IAF fighter pilots graduate from fighter pilot training. Israeli submarine and missile frigate captains are considerably younger than their foreign counterparts. In Israel, youth has proven itself more than capable.

With this in mind, it is easier to imagine the circumstances which led to the founding of a peculiar formation in the IDF. In 1948, with the War of Independence in full-swing, the political leadership of the new State of Israel, at the instigation of the

Zionist youth movement, formed the No 'ar Halutzei Lochem, NAHAL - the Fighting

Pioneer Youth - out of 'cells' of the various Marxist-Labour Zionist youth movements in Israel. The NAHAL was seen as a means of combining the pioneering and military values of Labour Zionism within a formal military structure subservient to the state. It is the question of civil-military relations which is at the heart of this thesis: how does

NAHAL fit within the context of ongoing military professionalization and the normalization of civil-military relations in an ideologically changing environment?

What caused the IDF to create a unit based on the peculiar ideology of Zionism? How does Zionism fit into a civil-military relations theoretical framework? Is Zionism a pro- military ideology? Does the IDF wield significant power in Israeli society, and if so, is the professional officer corps of the IDF professional enough to foster objective civilian control? With these questions about ideas and ideologies in mind, this thesis examines VITA

how NAHAL's position within the IDF and Israel began, how it changed, and what were

the implications of these changes.

In order to properly understand NAHAL, it becomes necessary to delve into a

small branch of the social sciences called Civil-Military Relations Theory. Though one

might be tempted to consider it a type of political science, civil-military relations

theories draw enough from sociology, psychology as well as history, and are distinct

enough to be considered a separate discipline, at least for our purposes. Chapter One of my thesis discusses the civil-military relations model used to situate NAHAL for better

study. Though there are many theories available, two have been chosen for this

discussion. The overall theoretical framework I will be using here was formulated by

Samuel Huntington in his work The Soldier and the State. Though Huntington was writing for an American Cold War audience, with very little effort his main ideas can be expanded upon for the Israeli case.

Huntington's main idea is that ideology plays a crucial role in the formulation of civil-military relations within a modern nation state. Huntington expands upon what is essentially a Clausewitzian definition of civil-military relations: the soldier is subservient to the statesman because war is an instrument of government policy. What

Huntington does is explain how this subservience is created in relation to both the military and the various civilian groups that control the government. Moreover,

Huntington's discussion of ideology in relation to both the establishment of a professional officer corps and the civilian government's control of the military is important for this thesis. By relating military professionalism, military power within society and the ideology informing government and society, Huntington provides us VITA with a framework for understanding NAHAL's formulation and function within the IDF

and Israel. As well, Huntington's theoretical structure is modular enough to discuss

Military Role Expansion - the instances when military organizations like NAHAL perform non-military tasks - without major modification. What is really required here is to define the ideology that drives Israeli society and relate it to Huntington's theory.

I am therefore required to discuss whatever formulation of Zionism most Israelis

have found acceptable as the guiding ideology of their state, a task one must undertake with great trepidation and many qualifying statements. Zionism is neither simple nor non-controversial, nor have its tenets remained unchanged since its inception.

Furthermore this thesis does not present a particularly critical view of Zionism, nor

should it. It might be satisfying to some to criticize all things Zionist and Israeli, but for

our purposes it would be counterproductive. NAHAL exists because of the optimism

and dynamism of the Zionist youth movements that pushed for its establishment, the

Zionist soldiers who have filled its ranks and the Zionist officers who continue to fight

for its existence. Their perspective is what matters here. What I have done is follow

Huntington's format. This thesis examines Zionism as an umbrella ideology, while

occasionally delving into the more specific Labour- and Marxist-Zionist streams that had an important influence on NAHAL.

With a theoretical framework in place, it becomes possible to place the

formation of NAHAL within Israeli political and military historiography. Chapter two

consists of an analysis of the circumstances leading up to the decision to create

NAHAL. It is both a literary analysis of the historiography of the 1948-49 Israeli War

of Independence, as well as a discussion of the established political narrative that has VITA

dominated the historiography of the creation of Israel. NAHAL has always had a place

within that narrative as a by-product of David Ben-Gurion's political machinations vis-

a-vis the dismantling of the PALMACH.

The PALMACH has taken the lion's share of the credit for Israeli military

successes in the War of Independence and its legacy still persists in the IDF.

Ideologically, however, the PALMACH followed Marxist-Stalinist ideals. Politically,

the PALMACH was loyal to the MAP AM party which represented the far-Left in Israel

at the time. Though nominally under IDF control, the PALMACH had its own

headquarters and MAP AM meddling in the PALMACH's operations was not

uncommon. Objectively, this represented a threat to establishing normal civil-military

relations in Israel. It would not do to have powerful and prestigious military formations

within the army that had loyalties to a specific political party, rather than to the state

itself Ben-Gurion ordered the PALMACH to be disbanded, and actively hampered the

future IDF careers of most former PALMACH officers. Politics being what they are however, David Ben-Gurion's centrist MAPAI party clearly benefited from the

dismembering of the PALMACH, and this fact was not lost on the MAP AM at the time.

The establishment of NAHAL is placed in this political narrative as something of

an afterthought. Though the PALMACH and its party loyalties were unwanted, the pioneering values it embodied were still seen as the epitome of Zionism. Thus we note

the founding of NAHAL, a unit comprised of ideologically inspired pioneer-soldiers who were fully integrated into the new state structure.

From a top-down political perspective, this seems entirely satisfactory, despite having to reconcile David Ben-Gurion's personal political gains in the wake of the VITA

PALMACH's disbanding with his own deeply-held beliefs in pioneering and agricultural development. Nevertheless, NAHAL soldiers were drawn from the same left-wing organizations that Ben-Gurion was concerned about. The NAHAL was the direct inheritor of the PALMACH's collectivist-pioneering ethos. Why then, was a near-copy of the PALMACH created within the IDF?

The answer to this question is only hinted at in the English language historiography. In the Hebrew historiography however, the story becomes more complicated. This is because of the introduction of new actors in the political-military narrative: the various Zionist pioneer youth movements.

The Zionist youth, as I have already touched upon, were primarily responsible for supplying the manpower and passion for the founding of the State of Israel. It is difficult for North Americans to understand the importance of youth movements in

Israel even today, but a suitable though limited comparison one could make would be to the Scouts. At the time of the War of Independence however, the youth movements in

Israel were considered, both by themselves and by the population at large, to be the standard bearers and avant-guard of the Zionist endeavour as a whole. The youth movements were large, organized and had been instrumental in the Jewish resettlement of the land of Israel.

The political acumen of these organizations was also quite developed. When the pre-state Yishuv government informed the various non-governmental Jewish organizations that they should all be prepared for the necessary transition to a fully independent state, the youth movements reacted with considerable foresight. Seeing their traditional role as being threatened, they approached the Yishuv leadership and VITA

negotiated an agreement which would allow them to retain some of their power and position. This meant keeping youth movement groups (classes or cells) together for as

long as possible, even throughout military service.

Compounding these ideological and organizational needs within the youth

movements themselves, there existed growing military concerns as well. Many of the

youth movement cells volunteered en-mass into the PALMACH. This arrangement was

agreeable until the PALMACH instituted a draft in 1947, a cause for concern in the

youth movements. Though the PALMACH was an important organization, there were

other endeavours that needed attention and manpower: immigration, settlement,

education and cultural development. The youth movements represented the only

organized source of manpower reserves available for national development. The relationship between the youth movements and the PALMACH grew tense as it became

clear that military needs were increasing. Thus the youth movements insisted to the

government that their members be drafted into a different organization than the

PALMACH. The NAHAL was established as a means of protecting the organizational

and political integrity of the youth movements and their highly cohesive cells while the

PALMACH was seen by the new state as a growing cause for concern. Most

importantly, NAHAL was established at the insistence of the youth movements as a means of continuing their pioneering mission within the new state structure. It was this

confluence of political interests - the MAPAI-MAPAM struggle and the youth movements' own desires - that brought about the creation and integration of NAHAL

into the IDF. VITA

After the cessation of open hostilities in 1949, NAHAL began its work in

earnest. Chapters Three and Four move away from theoretical and political concerns

and instead shift the focus onto NAHAL and its soldiers themselves. In these chapters I make a point of emphasizing how the members of NAHAL viewed their organization

and their military-pioneering mission. I accomplish this by using NAHAL's own military magazine B 'Machaneh NAHAL (In NAHAL's Camp). B 'Machaneh NAHAL was written by and for NAHAL soldiers and is not quite the piece of propaganda one might think. This is not to say that B 'Machaneh NAHAL is a glowing example of

objective journalism, but everywhere in its pages are discussions of the values and worthiness of NAHAL's overall mission - and they are not all positive self-

congratulatory arguments! Most importantly, it is the overall impression gleaned about

NAHAL and its soldiers from analysing this source (from 1954 to 1990) that I have

found most useful.

Chapter Three examines NAHAL during the period from its founding in 1949 until the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This period was a happy time as the men and women of NAHAL busied themselves with their pioneering mission with the full

support of the highest levels of government. Hundreds of agricultural-security

settlements were founded by NAHAL during this time. Many would later develop into fully-fledged civilian settlements, either kibbutzim or moshavim. NAHAL actively

contributed to the development of the country in cultural and educational fields as well

as helped to expand the agricultural sector of the Israeli economy. NAHAL even exported itself as a model for agricultural development in Latin America and Sub-

Saharan Africa. VITA

Yet there were concerns among the senior officers of the IDF that NAHAL amounted to a waste of the country's best manpower. Instead of forming (or leading) highly cohesive, ideologically motivated elite combat units, NAHAL soldiers during this period spent more time learning how to farm than learning how to fight. By and large

NAHAL soldiers liked this arrangement, as they saw their agricultural tasks as more important to the overall Zionist project. However, by the mid-1950's NAHAL was asked to organize territorial patrol battalions as well as send its best men to form an elite paratrooper battalion.

This arrangement worked well for both the IDF and NAHAL. The army got a highly motivated, elite unit that performed well in the 1956 Suez War and even better in the 1967 Six Day War. NAHAL's overall image was improved in the IDF and in Israeli society as its paratrooper battalion accomplished amazing things. Between 1967 and

1973 NAHAL was not seen as a wasteful enterprise. Instead, new NAHAL settlements were founded in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Desert and Golan Heights and

NAHAL military participation expanded from the paratroopers to the armoured and artillery corps. On the eve of the Yom Kippur War, NAHAL was at its height. Then it all came crashing down.

Chapter Four discusses the disaster of the Yom Kippur War and the reformulation of NAHAL in the 1970's and 1980's. Again the primary source here is

B 'Machaneh NAHAL, however some secondary literature on the organizational changes that NAHAL underwent helps us better contextualize the overall discussion. In the Yom

Kippur War the NAHAL paratrooper battalion was decimated by the surprise attack of a division of Syrian tanks on the Golan Heights. This, combined with the shock and VITA sadness that overcame Israel as a whole, led to a deep shaking of confidence in the

Zionist mission NAHAL had held to for so long. The violence left a deep and profound scar on NAHAL. The organization's best men had been killed, and the hubris that had infected Israeli society since 1967 was linked directly to NAHAL's version of Labour

Zionism.

Almost immediately after the Yom Kippur War ended, NAHAL began a re- evaluation of its entire mission. Urban development activities had already been undertaken by NAHAL in the 1960's; these were expanded in the 1970's. The service track of NAHAL soldiers was also changed to reflect the expansion and overall professionalization the IDF was undergoing in the wake of the war. Throughout the pages of B 'Machaneh NAHAL one can read articles and discussions between senior

NAHAL officers, Ministry of Defence staff and NAHAL soldiers regarding their changing values and the role NAHAL should play in the IDF. There is a vocal lamenting of the decline of the kibbutz and moshav. There are photo-essays about travelling through Europe rather than travelling across Israel. There is an article bemoaning the fact that Palestinian labour was replacing Jewish labour on farms and wondering if it would be better for NAHAL to focus on urban projects and civic education. The Zionist pioneering ethos was in crisis and NAHAL's future was uncertain.

The 1982 Lebanon War provided NAHAL with a new lease on life. During the war, NAHAL infantry saw heavy fighting, and the patrol battalions that had existed separately until then were unified into a single brigade. This arrangement was formalized soon after, and by 1987 the NAHAL Brigade had its own beret, signifying its VITA establishment as a standing combat infantry unit. However, the pioneering and civic- duty ethos was maintained through a non-combat branch of NAHAL that was affiliated with the Education and Youth Corps of the IDF. Though greatly reduced, the non- military aspects of NAHAL still attract members of Israeli youth movements and anyone who wishes their military service to be more meaningful in the larger context of

Israeli society. Zionist pioneer idealism might be dead and the youth of Israel are increasingly apathetic, but there are still young people who seek to make their military service more meaningful by their contribution to NAHAL.

Thus NAHAL's foundation and development is the product of ideology and military necessity. Ideas and violence interacted in such a way that in order to properly understand the events surrounding NAHAL's founding and service to the Israeli state, it is necessary to establish a theoretical perspective that emphasizes civil-military relations and the role ideology plays therein. NAHAL is a clear manifestation of ideology's impact on civil-military relations, but this ideology comes from an unlikely place. The primary reason NAHAL was established was because of the empowerment and mobilization of youth and the willingness of these same youth to buy into the state structure. The Zionist project has always been a modernist, progressivist project and it is important to keep the perspective of youthful optimism in mind when studying it. VITA

Chapter One: Civil-Military Relations Theory, Zionism and NAHAL

Founded in 1949, the Israel Defense Forces' NAHAL Brigade is a military formation which combines communal agricultural work and nation-building with mandatory military service. Initially, NAHAL conscripts were drafted exclusively from left-wing Zionist youth movements and then set to work on border outposts while receiving training in agricultural and military skills. Today NAHAL is a standing conscript infantry brigade within the IDF, with an attached and non-compulsory agricultural pioneering branch. NAHAL soldiers no longer come exclusively from

Zionist youth movements, while those that do are not necessarily trained in agricultural skills. The men and women of NAHAL are often found in developing Israeli towns working as teachers and nurses where such professionals are lacking. Moreover,

NAHAL now offers business entrepreneurship courses to soldiers whose military service is nearing completion. The reasons behind NAHAL's evolution reflect both the changing nature of Israeli security needs and the changing nature of Israeli society as a whole.

NAHAL provides the historian with an opportunity to straddle several methodological approaches. NAHAL is a unique unit which has evolved since 1949 as the fortunes of Labour Zionism as an ideology rose and fell. This alone provides the necessary focus for an historical case-study and it is still possible to contend that

NAHAL is a unique formation in the militaries of the world. As the manifestation of

Labour Zionism in the IDF, NAHAL is made even more unique because Zionism - and

Labour Zionism in particular - is unlike any other nationalist ideology in existence.

Exploring the historical context of Jewish settlement in Israel and the evolution of VITA

Jewish armed forces within the Labour Zionist ideological context allows the historian to paint an accurate picture of just how unique the IDF's - and by extension, NAHAL's - development was.

By borrowing from the social sciences, a theoretical framework can be constructed allowing NAHAL to be categorized, juxtaposed and compared with other military units performing similar functions, even if NAHAL can still be deemed unique.

This paper will use civil-military relations theories developed in political science and sociology to understand where NAHAL and Labour Zionism fit in the grand scheme of how ideologies and militaries interact. Special attention will be given to the concept of

Military Role Expansion and its impact on civil-military relations. After exploring the basic tenets of a few civil-military relations frameworks, Labour Zionism will be evaluated using the theory developed by Samuel Huntington in The Soldier and the

State.1 This will provide a useful framework for evaluating the IDF and NAHAL, the latter being a clear example of Military Role Expansion in a post-Second World War era military.

Civil-military relations theories appeared as an offshoot of political science and sociology in the Cold War era. Indeed, before then, civil-military relations had been effectively laid out by Clausewitz' dictum that "war was the continuation of policy by other means."2 By defining war as a political action as an expression of power through force, war could be fit easily into the trinitarian framework Clausewitz constructed. The

1 Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964). 2 Carl von Clausewitz, On War. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds., trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Book 1 p. 87 VITA

Clausewitzian trinity is the basis for the civil-military relations model presented in On

War:

As a total phenomenon its dominant tendencies always make war a paradoxical trinity - composed of primordial violence, hatred and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.

The first of these three aspects mainly concern the people; the second the commander and his army; the third the government. The passions that are to be kindled in war must already be inherent in the people; the scope which the play of courage and talent will enjoy in the realm of probability and chance depends on the particular character of the commander and the army; but the political aims are the business of government alone.3

Clausewitz would go so far as to remind his (few) readers that the general was

always to remain subservient to the statesman. Because "policy is the guiding

intelligence and war only the instrument,"4 and war's "major lines are still laid down by

governments,"5 the commander of a nation's army had a well-defined role to play regarding policy making:

If war is to be fully consonant with political objectives, and policy suited to the means available for war, then unless statesman and soldier are combined in one person, the only sound expedient is to make the commander-in-chief a member of the cabinet, so that the cabinet can share in the major aspects of his activities.6

At most, generals were to inform the government if a given military action was viable.

A general's place was secondary to that of the statesman, as war was a tool of policy.

This subordination of the soldier to the statesman could not have been less popular. The

second edition to On War appeared in 1853 with a deliberate change in the italicized phrase above to: "that he may take part in its councils and decisions on important

occasions." This reversal of Clausewitz' original intent insisted that a general should

3 Ibid, Book 1 p. 89 4 Ibid, Book VII, p. 607 5 Ibid, Book VIII, p. 608 6 Ibid, Book VIII, p. 608 emphasis added. VITA influence the decisions made by the government, rather than government influencing the decisions of a general.

It is a simple historical exercise to show how effective Clausewitz' original construction was. Throughout the 19lh and 20th centuries, wars fought with the complete subjugation of a military to the directives of its government seem to have been more successful than a war arising out of a military's taking control of political decision- making. Examples of the former include the Franco-Prussian war, initiated by Prussia to humble France while establishing the 2nd Reich. Naturally, the First World War is an example of the latter state of affairs with respect to Germany. It seems that whenever the military consciously remains subservient to the political will and engages in a war with clearly defined political goals, the military performs more admirably than when the military garners enough power to dictate policy.7

However, with the advent of the Cold War, the Clausewitzian formulation needed some elaboration at least. The ideological fervour present in the Second World

War was so significant that, combined with the totality of the conflict, Clausewitz' simple trinity of People-Military-Government seemed insufficient to explain the fundamentally different ideologies the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the Western

Allies invoked during the global conflict. Ideology can be explained in terms of the trinity by subsuming it under the auspices of The People, that is, the passions for war inherent in the people.8 However, much of fascist, communist and liberal-democratic ideology was developed and communicated by the governments of the belligerents, thus

/ 7 This has certainly been the case in the Israeli experience, as demonstrated by the vaguely defined political and strategic objectives of the disastrous 1982 invasion of Lebanon in contrast to the successful limited war initiated in 1956 with the goal of weakening Egypt's military power. 8 Clausewitz, Book I p. 89 VITA leaving many questions about policy unanswered. At some level at least, those developers of ideologies were staunch believers in them as well. Because governments in the Second World War believed in their ideologies (at some level) rather than simply cynically invoking them for the masses alone, this is creates a problem for a

Clausewitzian analysis because, regarding war, the Government is supposed to deal in

"reason alone."9

One alternative theory of civil-military relations was formulated in the 1950's by

Stanislaw Andreski in his work, Military Organization and Society.10 In it, Andreski points out that the "influence of military organization on society has, on the whole, failed to attract the attention of social scientists."11 His aim is to examine how military

12 organizations influence social structure, with the stated goal of "bridling the monster" of war. Andreski's study is not historical, despite using many historical examples to make his case. He does not present a historical narrative nor does he really examine historical processes. Instead, Andreski looks at the phenomenon of organized conflict as a whole. In doing so, he makes one fundamental and reasonable assumption: "the struggle for wealth, power and prestige is the constant feature of the life of humanity."13

He attributes this to the "ineffaceable characteristics of human nature," 14 and while he may not be happy with this state of affairs, Andreski accepts it as the norm. However, the distinction is made between struggle and war: Nevertheless, even the assumption of innate pugnacity would not explain the existence of war because war means killing, and there is no evidence that there is in human beings

9 Ibid, Book 1 p. 89 10 Stanislaw Andrzejewski (Andreski), Military Organization and Society. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954). 11 Ibid, 1 12 Ibid,2 13 Ibid 7 14 Ibid, 7 VITA

an innate desire to kill their own kinds.. .Usually, killing is done for the sake of other ends.15

Significantly, Andreski asserts that "we are justified in saying that the prevalence of killing within our species is the consequence of the acquisition of culture."16 Yet perhaps most importantly, Andreski claims that "the causes of most violent frictions are economic."17

Andreski's model ignores the profoundly political nature of warfare and its effects on the political decision making process. By looking solely at systemic variables, Andreski ultimately does not consider any political forces in his model except as the outcome of cultural and economic interactions.18

This begs further elaboration. A nation-in-arms such as Prussia, Switzerland or

Israel does not simply materialize out of cultural or economic factors alone. There are political - that is, security - reasons why a nation would elect to conscript, train and equip the vast majority of its population, even in times of relative peace. Even if humanity is culturally predisposed towards violence (and this is debatable), there exist excellent political and economic reasons for a given society - or in the modern case, a given state - to avoid high levels of military expenditure.

In ignoring the political aspects of war, Andreski removes his model from the

Clausewitzian paradigm that has become a standard way of thinking about war and peace. This is not particularly worrisome. However, nowhere does Andreski define what exactly war is. Instead of replacing the Clausewitzian model, Andreski ignores

15 Ibid, 8 15 Ibid, 11 17 Ibid, 14. This is not to imply that Andreski was a Marxist materialist, regardless of his actual ideological persuasion. 18 While Andreski uses historical examples from around the globe to illustrate his points, political change always occurs as the result of material or cultural change. any deeper philosophical discussion of what war is, in and of itself. With this fundamental context eliminated Andreski constructs a system which does work at some level, though it does not help to explain the rise of the ideological forces so prevalent in the modern era, among other things. Because Andreski's model lacks contextual sensitivity as well as any understanding of the political nature of warfare, we must abandon his theories as too broad and imprecise.

We turn then to another civil-military relations theorist, Morris Janowitz. Like

Andreski, Janowitz is a sociologist. Unlike Andreski, at no point does Janowitz present a complete theory of civil-military relations in his work. Instead, one finds a collection of smaller, more case-specific theories on civil-military relations. There are two which are relevant to a study of Israeli civil-military relations and the NAHAL Brigade.

The first can be found in Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing

Nations, a work first published in 1963 and then revised in 1977. In it, Janowitz puts forth the hypothesis that military forces in developing nations serve a variety of functions depending on their place in the political structure of the state in question.

Clearly, the army of 1963 Congo plays an entirely different and much more repressive role in civil-military relations and the political process in general than say the army of

1963 India or Israel.19 Janowitz emphasizes that the standard civil-military relations models are not applicable because "the military has wider involvement in domestic economic, social and political change."20 Janowitz categorizes the developing nations' civil-military relations structures of 1963 into five different types, with Israel falling into

"democratic-competitive" group:

19 Morris Janowitz. Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing Nations. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp 86-87. 20 Ibid, 80. VITA

In the democratic-competitive system.. .civilian supremacy operates to limit the role of the military in part because colonial traditions implanted a strong sense of self-restraint on the military. In these countries, there are competing civilian institutions and power groups, as well as a mass political party which dominates domestic politics but permits a measure of political competition.21

More importantly, Janowitz' 1977 revision of Military Institutions and Coercion in the Developing Nations includes a discussion of coercion. Though Janowitz does not explicitly do so himself, coercion can be defined as those means by which a government can make its citizens obey its will. Means of coercion naturally include violence, as well as social and ideological pressures and institutions. Janowitz sees the traditional military as being either unable or unwilling to serve as a means of coercion, as it falls outside the traditional mandate of the modern military. Soldiers - and more importantly officers - are trained to use force against other militaries. Putting down civilian uprisings has always been a distasteful task for soldiers, and naked military force is often the least effective means available for the suppression of rioters while minimizing fatalities. Moreover, it is difficult for a developing nation's government to maintain its credibility when it deploys military forces to maintain order.22

Janowitz asserts that the means of coercion have been taken over by paramilitary forces around the world. The rise of gendarmeries, people's militias, national guards, border patrols, as well as relevant secret police formations, is a direct result of both civilian governments and militaries realizing that military forces and military force is not the ideal means to make citizens obey the government's will.'

21 Ibid, 82-83. 22 Ibid, 72. 2? Ibid, 70. VITA

While this formulation indeed reflects a growing trend to employ armed bodies to operate as both police and armies,24 Janowitz' definition of what constitutes a paramilitary organization is too broad. Indeed, the RCMP, the US National Guard, the

French Gendarmerie as well as any number of brutal, repressive organizations fall into

9 S

Janowitz' categorization. In the Israeli case, NAHAL, the universal reserve system as well as Mishmar ha 'Gvul (Border Guard) - the latter being a true paramilitary body - are all paramilitary forces. NAHAL deserves special mention as its mandate of nation- building and agricultural/urban development seems non-military enough to be deemed paramilitary. This would be a superficial diagnosis. The members of NAHAL are all volunteers who otherwise would be conscripted into other regular military units to serve more mundane mandatory terms as soldiers. This isn't to say that there is no coercion involved: NAHAL-mfc are still drafted after all. However, if there are any abnormal levels of institutional coercion on NAHAL soldiers, they stem from the Labour Zionist organizations the soldiers belonged to as high-school students which fostered their commitment to Labour Zionist ideology.

In The Professional Soldier, Janowitz outlines the "Constabulatory Force," his second model for civil-military relations.26 Janowitz outlines three mounting dilemmas for military leaders. Firstly, leaders now must "strive for an appropriate balance between conventional and modern weapons...perhaps the deepest dilemma is whether conventional military formations can be armed with tactical atomic weapons, and still operate without employing them." Secondly, military leadership must accurately estimate "the consequences of the threat or use of force against the potentials for 24 Which is exactly the definition of "paramilitary": lightly armed soldiers with broad police powers. 25 Janowitz, 27-29. 26 Morris Janowitz. The Professional Soldier. (New York: The Tree Press, 1960). VITA persuasion and conflict resolution." The third dilemma facing military leadership is that they "must make the management of an effective military force compatible with participation in political and administrative schemes for arms inspection and control that may emerge in the future."27 The constabulatory force is Janowitz' answer to the evolving demands made of military forces, during both peace and war, as well as a better means of establishing civilian control of the military within the framework of a democratic state.

The difference between a military force and a constabulatory force is that the latter "is continuously prepared to act, committed to the minimum use of force and seeks viable international relations, rather than victory, because it has incorporated a protective military posture."28 The constabulatory force makes no distinction between times of war and peace, instead it "draws upon the police concept," but "does not refer to police functions in this historical role."29

The constabulatory force provides solutions to the problems of the changing nature of military deployment and civilian control of the armed forces. Janowitz sees the constabulatory force as a military organization bordering on the paramilitary. While it would be interesting to fully outline Janowitz' formulation here, it would be easier to point out that most western militaries have moved towards a constabulatory model at least in part. One need only point to Canadian deployments in Bosnia and Afghanistan, the UN peacekeeping missions and other low-intensity conflicts where full military

27 Ibid, pp 417-418. 28 Ibid, 418. 29 Ibid, 420. force would be completely inappropriate. The US military's 3-Block War doctrine is another instance of a shift towards a constabulatory role for the military.30

The main failing with Janowitz' theories is that while they categorize much, they are neither very explanatory nor particularly predictive. There is a great deal of data presented, but little in terms of a comprehensive view. This is not inherently a bad thing, but Janowitz focuses most of his time on the case of the US military. Moreover, while there is some mention and applicability of these theories to Israel, especially those concerning coercion and paramilitary forces, there is little mention of how ideology affects civil-military relations.

A theory of civil-military relations contemporary to both Janowitz' and

Andreski's is that of Samuel P. Huntington, as outlined in his 1957 work The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations.31 Huntington situates civil-military relations as "one aspect of national security policy," with the aims of this policy being the enhancement of "the safety of the nation's social, economic and political institutions against threats arising from other independent states." National security policy is then divided into three forms. These consist of an "internal security policy" regarding threats of internal subversion, a "situational security policy" concerned with the threats arising from "long-term changes in social, economic, demographic, and political conditions" and finally "military security policy," which is

30 Charles C. Krulak, "The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War." Marines Magazine, January 1999, http: wvvw.nu.af.mil au-awv.-awcuatc tisnic stnuemc corporal.htm accessed February 3, 2008. 31 The Soldier and the State first appeared in 1957. This study makes use of the 1964 edition. VITA limited to dealing with threats designed to "weaken or destroy the nation by [external] armed forces."

Furthermore, national security policy exists at the operating and institutional level. "Operational policy consists of the immediate means taken to meet the security threat," while institutional policy "deals with the manner in which operational policy is formulated and executed. Civil-military relations is the principle institutional component of military security policy."33

With this categorization in mind, Huntington notes that the forces which shape a given nation's military institutions are societal and functional. The former comprise the ideologies and social imperatives which govern society's attitudes in general; the latter encompasses the actual military threats to a nation. It is "the interaction of these two forces [that] is the nub of the problem of civil-military relations."34 With this in mind,

Huntington then asks his American readers the central question to his thesis: "what pattern of civil-military relations will best maintain the security of the American nation?"35 The answer to this question begins with a detailed look at the "active directing element of the military structure.. .responsible for the military security of society:" the professional officer corps.36

Huntington asks what makes the professional officer corps professional. He notes that "professionalism distinguishes the military officer of today from the warriors of previous ages."37 In doing so, Huntington limits his theory of civil-military relations

32 Huntington, 1. 33 Ibid, 1. 34 Ibid, 2. 35 Ibid, 3. Huntington, 3. 37 Ibid, 7. VITA

to the modern era, which might not necessarily be a bad thing. The distinction

Huntington makes, however, is that what he means by 'professional' is not to be

contrasted with 'amateur' but rather associated with 'trade' or 'craft.' Indeed,

Huntington insists that the profession of officer is similar to the other professions

(lawyer, doctor, historian) in that "what distinguishes characteristics of a profession as a

special type of vocation are its expertise, responsibility and corporateness:"3 8

EXPERTISE. The professional man is an expert with specialized knowledge and skill in a significant field of human endeavor. His expertise is acquired only by prolonged education and experience...Professional knowledge is intellectual in nature and capable of preservation in writing. Professional knowledge has a history...

RESPONSIBILITY. The professional man is a practicing expert, working in a social context, and performing a service, such as the promotion of health, education or justice which is essential to the functioning of society. The client of every profession is society, individually or collectively.. .This social responsibility distinguishes the professional man from other experts with only intellectual skills...the professional man can no longer practice if he refuses to accept his social responsibility...

CORPORATENESS. The members of a profession share a sense of organic unity and consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen. This collective sense has its origins in the lengthy discipline and training necessary for professional competence, the common bond of work, and the sharing of a unique social responsibility.39

We can therefore conclude along with Huntington that military officers

constitute a profession. Officers are professionals, though Huntington does admit that

"officership probably falls somewhat further short of the ideal than either [medicine or law.]"40 Significantly, Huntington notes that "officership is strongest and most effective when it most closely approaches the professional ideal; it is weakest and most defective

when it falls short of that ideal."41

In terms of expertise, the professional officer has a unique skill, despite the fact that "the broad division of the corps into land, sea and air officers appears to create vast

38 Ibid, 8. 39 Ibid, pp. 8-10. 40 Huntington, 11. 41 Ibid, 11. VITA differences in the functions performed and the skills required."42 When one ignores the

finer technical differences between two different military specializations - be they as diverse as 'submarine captain' and 'infantry colonel' - one can call the skill that the professional officer practices "the direction, operation and control of a human organization whose primary function is the application of violence."43

The officer's responsibility is dictated by the special nature of this skill, and

clearly the professional officer's primary responsibility is to the society which sanctions the use of this skill. If "the military profession is monopolized by the state," then an

officer's "responsibility is the military security of his client, society."44 This cannot be more clearly emphasized. Warfare is state sanctioned violence. A professional military

officer must behave knowing that "his skill can only be utilized for purposes approved by society through its political agent, the state.. .he cannot impose decisions upon his

client which have implications beyond his field of special competence."45 Moreover, it

is within this framework of working for the state that the corporate character of the professional officer corps emerges. It is the state which bestows commissions much in the same way that it bestows medical licenses. Even a cursory glance at any given military officer is persuasive enough to delineate an officer from the rest of society, as officership is "symbolized by uniforms and insignia of rank."46

The existence of a professional officer corps is central to Huntington's theory of

civil-military relations. For what Huntington constructs is a fundamentally

Clausewitzian framework of civil-military relations using the professional officer corps

42 Ibid, 11. 43 Ibid, 11. 44 Ibid, 15. 45 Ibid, 15. 46 Huntington, 16. VITA as a fulcrum about which everything else moves. If the professional officer is a servant of the state, then war is a servant of policy. Huntington notes, as we have already seen, that "Clausewitz.. .contributed the first theoretical justification for civilian control [of the military.]"47

Then what of ideology? It is here that Huntington adds a new layer of theory onto Clausewitz' bedrock. The discussion of what makes the military officer corps a professional body allows Huntington to explore the ideology of the officer corps as a corporate whole. This ideology can be described as "Conservative realism:"

The military ethic emphasizes the permanence, irrationality, weakness and evil in human nature. It stresses the supremacy of society over the individual and the importance of order, hierarchy, and division of function. It stresses the continuity and value of history. It accepts the nation state as the highest form of political organization and recognizes the continuing likelihood of wars among nation states. It emphasizes the importance of power in international relations and warns of the dangers to state security. It holds that the security of the state depends upon the creation and maintenance of strong military forces. It urges the limitation of state action to the direct interests of the state, the restriction of extensive commitments and the undesirability of bellicose or adventurous policies. It holds that war is the instrument of politics, that the military is the servant of the statesman, and that civilian control is essential to military professionalism. It exalts obedience as the highest virtue of military men. The military ethic is thus pessimistic, collectivism historically inclined, power-oriented, nationalistic, militaristic, pacifistic, and instrumentalist in its view of the military profession. It is, in brief, realistic and conservative.48

With the military ethic (or ideology) properly delineated, Huntington then explores the variety of ways the civilian government controls the military. The basic question he asks is "how can military power be minimized?"49 He offers two answers.

The first is 'subjective civilian control,' which can be seen as "maximizing the power of civilian groups in relation to the military."50 This is unsatisfactory because this only means that certain civilian groups are empowered while others are not. "Civilian control involves the power relations among civilian groups. It is advanced by one

47 Ibid, 58. 48 Ibid, 79. 49 Huntington, 80. 50 Ibid, 80. VITA

civilian group to enhance its power at the expense of other civilian groups."51 This is

indeed ominous, as it "is always necessary to ask which civilians are doing the

controlling." ~

However, the emergence of the professional officer corps provides an

alternative. By maximizing military professionalism, Huntington develops the notion of

'objective civilian control.' By contrasting objective civilian control with its subjective

opposite, we obtain a sense that objective civilian control is

.. .that distribution of political power between military and civilian groups which is most conducive to the emergence of professional attitudes and behavior among the members of the officer corps.. .Subjective civilian control achieves its end by civilianizing the military. Objective civilian control achieves its end by militarizing the military, making them a tool of the state. Subjective civilian control exists in a variety of forms, Objective civilian control in only one. The antithesis of objective civilian control is military participation in politics.. .The essence of objective civilian control is the recognition of autonomous military professionalism; the essence of subjective military control is the denial of an independent military sphere"53

Obtaining objective civilian control therefore relies heavily on three factors: power, military professionalism and ideology. How much political power the military wields in a state depends on how much influence and authority the military commands.

It seems obvious that the military should be removed as much as possible from the day- to-day running of the state. However, if one considers the "military-industrial complex" as a manifestation of military power in the civilian sphere, then the problem of limiting military political power is not small in scope. The existence of military professionalism is not a given amongst the officer corps of many modern states. However, military professionalism seems at least somewhat contingent on how much political power the military wields, as well as the ideological atmosphere of a given society. For

51 Ibid, 80. 52 Ibid, 81. 53 Ibid, 83. VITA

Huntington it is ideology which provides the overall context in which objective civilian control is obtained, maintained or lost.54

Huntington outlines four basic ideologies to juxtapose with the professional military ethic and political power. These are Marxism, Fascism, Liberalism and

Conservatism. Of these four, only Conservatism (in the style of Edmund Burke) is considered a "pro-military ideology."55 Liberalism is inherently anti-military because of its positive view of human nature and its individualism, not to mention its opposition to large military forces and power politics.56 Fascism, on the other hand, is considered an anti-military ideology because

While the military man accepts [violence, struggle and warfare] as the facts of existence to be wrestled with as effectively as possible, the fascist glorifies as the supreme values of existence. The military man sees struggle inherent in human relations; the fascist glorifies struggle as the highest activity of man.. .The military man recognizes the necessity and uses of power; the fascist worships power as an end in itself.57

Lastly, Marxism is considered anti-military because of its emphasis on class struggle and economic power over all other forms of struggle and power. The professional officer is subordinate to the state. Unfortunately for Huntington, Marxism views the state as "merely an instrument in class warfare."58 Thus militaries are only 'good' if they are instruments of proletariat class conflict, while "the character of every military force is determined by the class interests for which it is fighting."59

In Huntington's trinity, the military can remain professionalized in the midst of a society which adheres to an anti-military ideology if it is willing to sacrifice political

54 Huntington, pp. 86-90. It should come as no surprise that we find another trinity in Huntington's Clausewitizian framework. 55 Ibid, 94. 56 Ibid, 90. 57 Ibid, 91. 58 Huntington, 93. 59 Ibid, 93. VITA

power. Huntington then permutes his three variables at "low" and "high" settings to

come up with five ideal types60 of which one is relevant to this study:

Promilitary ideology, high military political power, and high military professionalism. A society with continuing security threats and an ideology sympathetic to military values may permit a high level of military political power and yet still maintain military professionalism and objective civilian control. Probably the outstanding achievement of this variety of civil-military relations was by Prussia and Germany during the Bismarkian-Moltkean epoch (1860-1890).61

This brings us back to the topic at hand and to the major questions identified at

the beginning of this chapter. Since the NAHAL Brigade is described as the manifestation of Labour Zionism in the IDF, then it would seem that our first task is to

define Labour Zionism as an ideology. Only then can we place it - and NAHAL -

within Huntington's analytical framework.

Zionism is the movement to establish a Jewish national home in the land of

Israel. " While the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Israel is particularly ancient, what distinguishes Zionism from older religious visions of Jewish renewal in Israel is that Zionism is a secular nationalist movement. The literature on the development of

Zionist ideology generally concurs that Zionism was more than a simple reaction to

60 Huntingon acknowledges that there are actually eight possible permutations of the three factors, but due to his theoretical premises, only five are possible. 61 Huntington, 97. 62 The literature on the development and tenets of Zionist ideology is immense, varied and generally at odds with itself on many important issues. Some good overviews include: Shlomo Avineri. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Zeev Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism and the Making of the Jewish State. David Maisel, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Gershon Winer. The Founding Fathers of Israel. (New York: Bloch, 1971). David Vital. The Origins of Zionism. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), Shmuel Almog. Zionism and History: The Rise of a New Jewish Consciousness. (New York: St. Martin's; Jerusalem: Magnes Pr., Hebrew U., 1987), Yehuda Bauer. The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), Mitchell Cohen. Zion and State: Nation, Class, and the Shaping of Modem Israel. (Oxford Oxfordshire: New York: B. Blackwell, 1987). These monographs all discuss the primary sources quite well. There are countless Zionist philosophers to chose from as well, including, Ehad Ha'am. Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism. Leon Simon, trans. (New York: Arno Press, 1973), Borochov, Ber. Class struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays in Marxist Zionism. Mitchell Cohen, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J..: Transaction Books, 1984), Theodor Herzl. The Jewish State. London: Pordes, 1972; original 1896), Aaron David Gordon. Selected Essays. (New York: Arno Press, 1973). VITA modern racial anti-Semitism in secular Europe. Instead, Zionism developed as a

Western European Jewish response to post-Napoleonic emancipation, the Enlightenment and secularization as well as being one of many resurgent Eastern European nationalist movements arising in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Avineri writes that

Jewish nationalism was.. .one specific aspect of the impact of ideas and social structures unleashed by the French Revolution, modernism and secularism. It was a response to the challenges of liberalism and nationalism much more than a response merely to anti- Semitism, and for this reason it could not have occurred at any period before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.63

The emancipation of European Jewry and the overall secularization of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century allowed Zionism to develop. Emancipation created challenges that could not be answered in terms of the religious and social framework in which Jewish people had existed for nearly two millennia in Europe.

European Jews were no longer seen as a religious community in perpetual exile but rather as an ethnic minority; secularization and modernity meant that any new Jewish national identity had to be constructed in terms of language, culture and ethnicity rather than religion. Ehad Ha'am wrote that "it is not only Jews who have come out of the

Ghetto: Judaism has come out, too."64 Modernity required a nationalist outlook, and like other nationalist movements Zionism co-opted pre-existing symbols, using them as common ground to help foster cooperation between the disparate elements that exist in a given nation. Yet unlike other nationalist movements, Zionism's symbols crossed linguistic, cultural and national borders in order to meet its goals.65 In this sense

63 Avineri, p 13. 64 Ehad Ha'am "The Jewish State and Jewish Problem," in Ehad Ha'am. Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism, p. 43. 6:1 Hebrew was brought out of the realm of theology and Jewish liturgy and revived as a spoken language to further Zionist goals. Additionally, Yiddish was repressed by Zionist groups as the 'language of the ghetto,' despite the fact that Yiddish was spoken all across Europe until 1945. VITA

Zionism is unique, in that as a nationalist ideology it must apply to Jews from highly diverse social, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, not to mention national, backgrounds.

It is important to understand that when one speaks of Zionism, one is referring to an 'umbrella ideology' which covers a variety of sub-ideologies. That they all have the same overall goal of establishing a Jewish national home in Israel is clear; yet sometimes this is the only real agreement between any two flavours of Zionism. There are, however, some fundamental tenets besides the establishment of a Jewish state which can be discerned.

The first tenet is that anti-Semitism demonstrates that there will always be a need for a Jewish national home. Some societies may be more accepting of a Jewish minority than others, but persecution has been and will continue to be the normal state of affairs for Jews. Racial anti-Semitism only makes this fact of life more telling. It not only makes Judaism an inescapable fate, but it also casts suspicion on those who may have

Jewish ancestry alone by means of 'blood laws.'66

Second, Zionism emphasizes action, self-reliance and modernity. European

Jews had long been relegated to ghettos and were prohibited from a variety of professions. Even in Western Europe where Jews were eventually permitted into larger society, stereotypes of Jewish effeminacy, meekness and fragility abounded. Early

Zionists stressed the importance of agricultural labour in particular as a means of teaching Jewish self-worth, long since depleted after centuries of oppression.

Furthermore, Zionism made clear early on that those living on land would be responsible for its defense. While never going so far as to glorify militarism for its own

66 Racial anti-Semitism negates the possibility of converting out of the Jewish religion to escape persecution. Two prime examples of anti-Jewish blood laws would be those used by the Spanish Inquisition and more recently the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany. sake, Zionism turned the fanner-fighter into one of its central mythical archetypes: robust, stiff-necked and self-reliant.67

Third, Zionism is concerned with notions of social justice. This tenet has its roots in the Jewish religious tradition. Zionism insists that the new society being created in the Jewish state is to be modem: just, progressive and democratic. How this manifests itself exactly depends on which kind of Zionism one is referring to. Modern religious Zionism would have the State of Israel formulate its laws based on Jewish religious tradition. The political Zionism first expounded by Theodore Herzl embraces liberal democratic ideals. Marxist-Zionism naturally considers a society in which the

Jewish proletariat rules to be the most progressive and just.68

What is crucial to keep in mind when considering these three tenets is how much they leave unanswered. Thus far, there has been no discussion of how Zionism regards military force, power politics or anything relating to civil-military relations. This ceases to be a concern when one recognizes the underlying pragmatism that is so prevalent in

Zionism. Zionism is fundamentally pragmatic. The goal of building a state out of nothing, defending it and enabling it to grow was so central to the Zionist settlers in

Israel that any differences of opinion regarding policy had to be relegated to the sidelines in the face of this monumental task. It is this pragmatism that grants Zionism the flexibility to evolve under pressure. Zionism's goal itself justifies this pragmatism.

There is a perfect historical example to illustrate this point.

67 See Aaron David Gordon. Selected Essays. (New York: Arno Press, 1973) for one of the most prominent examples of a Zionist philosopher advocating labour as a source of Jewish national redemption. 68 See Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (the chapter on Rabbi Kook), Herzl The Jewish State, pp. 96-101, BerBorochov, Class struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays in Marxist Zionism. During the Israeli War of Independence, Jewish fighting forces could be divided into three categories. The first were the units fielded by the Haganah, the official armed forces of the underground Jewish government, the Yishuv. The second were the various

PALMACH battalions, the elite assault companies made up almost entirely of the

farmer-fighters Zionism lauds. While nominally acknowledging the authority of the

Haganah general staff, the PALMACH was very closely affiliated with the left-wing kibbutz (communal farm) movement and had its own general staff and officer corps.

Lastly, there existed the battalions of the LEHI and Irgun, both right-wing terrorist organizations which did not necessarily acknowledge the Haganah high command.69

These organizations cooperated in the early phases of the war until it became necessary to unify the armed forces in the face of the developing Arab invasion. The Irgun was disbanded in the summer of 1948 after a PALMACH unit sunk the Altalena D, a vessel carrying weapons for the Irgun, and killed some Irgun operatives. Irgun battalions were soon disbanded and its members distributed amongst IDF formations.70 The

PALMACH lost its complete autonomy as an organization in late 1948 when its units were subsumed into the IDF. However after the 1949 cease-fire, the PALMACH battalions of the IDF were disbanded and the organization's senior officers were actively discouraged from joining the new professional officer corps of the IDF in favour of officers who received formal military training (primarily in British service). 7 1

69 Martin Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), pp. 55-56. Amos Perlmutter, Military and Politics in Israel: Nation Building and Role Expansion (London: Frank Cass, 1969), pp. 40-45. LEHI is a Hebrew acronym which translates to "Freedom Fighters of Israel." The Irgun is short for Irgun Tsvci 7 Leumi, or "National Military Organization." 70 The orders to sink the Altalena D were given by the Yishuv high command, see Van Creveld, p. 81. 71 Ibid, pp. 81-91, Perlmutter p. 52, pp. 54-66. VITA

The reasoning behind such an organizational change, especially significant because PALMACH units had garnered the most prestige and were primarily responsible for the most important Israeli victories in 1948-49, ties Zionism's pragmatism directly to our topic of civil-military relations. The overarching goal of

Zionism is the establishment of a modern civil society in Israel. For this to have occurred, the new Israeli military had to be cohesive, subordinate to the civilian government and as professional as possible from the start. This was a recognized goal of the Yishuv leadership, especially David Ben-Gurion. After the 1948 War,

PALMACH brigades accounted for three of the twelve combat brigades in the newly formed IDF. Furthermore, most PALMACH officers were kibbutz members affiliated with the left-wing MAP AM party, the main rival to Ben-Gurion's MAPAI party. The army Ben-Gurion wished to form in the post-1948 period was one free of the internecine battles that plagued the Yishuv during the Mandate era, specifically the troubling conflict with LEHI and the Irgun.72 Moreover, although the PALMACH had been the archetypical Zionist fanner-fighter military formation, Ben-Gurion remained skeptical:

I do not believe that pioneering is the monopoly of the select few, a special privilege of a spiritual aristocracy. I am a great believer in the common folk, all Israel and every one in Israel, and if the seed of pioneering is sown in all army units, we shall be privileged to witness a blessed harvest. There is no need or justification for the setting apart or singling out of certain brigades as pioneering brigades or to consider all other brigades as non-pioneering ones.73

Accordingly, the first brigades to be demobilized were the three PALMACH brigades. Thus, Zionism's pragmatism allowed for the existence of many military organizations in the pre-state era. It can be argued that the multitude of underground

72 Van Creveld, pp. 89-90. 73 Quoted in Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz. The Israeli Army. London: Fakenham and Reading, 1975. p. 73. military organizations in the Mandate era gave a great deal of flexibility and what can be considered 'plausible deniability' to the Yishuv, in their armed struggle against the

British. Yet once the state was proclaimed it was clear that the IDF was to have the monopoly on military force in Israel and that its officer corps was to be professional and as apolitical as possible.

To summarize in relation to Huntington's civil-military relations framework,

Zionism is concerned with the welfare of the Jewish people and holds that the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish homeland in Israel is the best means of protecting the Jewish people in the long term. Zionism recognizes that anti-Semitism will not disappear and that like all prejudices it will change its form to adapt to a specific political and social context. This being the case, Zionism insists that the Jewish question cannot be adequately solved by anyone other than the Jewish people themselves and thus emphasizes self-reliance, initiative and action. It aims to break the traditional negative (and positive) stereotypes held of Jews and formulates a means of building Jewish self-esteem through action and self-defense. Significantly defense, both of the individual and of the Jewish people collectively, cannot come from outside the

Jewish community. Zionism is committed to social justice and the foundation of a modern progressive nation state, though this can take many forms depending on the interpretation of Zionism one adheres to. Most importantly, Zionism is pragmatic in its means towards its goals. This pragmatism reflects the Jewish historical experience. It allowed (and continues to allow) many questions regarding the form and function of the

Jewish state to go unanswered until they absolutely had to be decided. It is this pragmatism and commitment to modernity which allows us to label Zionism as a pro- military ideology in the context of Huntington's theory. A cursory examination of

Israeli politics since 1948 demonstrates then that the IDF wields significant political power, but that its officer corps is highly professional while still committed to Zionist ideals. Van Creveld notes that "in the half-century since the Israeli state was established it is virtually impossible to find a case where the military openly challenged the civilian authorities."74

It was in the Zionist context of nation-building that NAHAL, a formation unique to the IDF, was created in 1949. Despite Ben-Gurion's dislike of special 'pioneer brigades,' one of the first special units formed in the IDF was the PALMACH's direct descendant, NAHAL. This apparent break with Ben-Gurion's egalitarian, though politically motivated, policy regarding pioneering is not entirely contradictory, as it was recognized that "all through the War of Independence, the [border] settlements had served as the anvils, the Haganah as the hammer; and to a large extent, it was between these two that the State of Israel had been forged."75 Military expediency aside, there were more persuasive reasons for forming a pioneering unit. Ben-Gurion was a firm believer in the Labour Zionist ideology which emphasized the settlement of the land.

Although the PALMACH itself was undesirable because of its political affiliations, its methods were not. Even if one exonerates Ben-Gurion of any self-interest in forming

74 Van Creveld, p. 108. However, it would be absurd, given the premise that those who produce ideology also adhere to it, to claim that the IDF's professional officer corps is apolitical and non-ideological. However, it would also be absurd to claim that Huntington's ideals of military professionalism are ever attained in reality. Everyone is at some level influenced by ideology. 75Yigal Allon. Shield of David: The Story of Israel's Armed Forces. (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 233 VITA

NAHAL rather than keeping the PALMACH, the convergence of interests, namely

76 military unity and nation-building, was certainly a primary motivation.

Although NAHAL is now a fully independent elite infantry brigade with an auxiliary agricultural arm in the modern IDF, it began as a means of establishing secure borders and further boosting the rate of Jewish settlement of the land of Israel. NAHAL was, and still is, an expression of the Labour Zionist ideology so prevalent in the Jewish state and cast through the all-pervasive lens of Israel's security. NAHAL was also created as a means of consolidating the IDF's position as the single military force in the then newly founded State of Israel.

NAHAL's establishment can be seen as the IDF's compromise with the mythical farmer-fighter archetype idealized by Labour Zionism and made real by the PALMACH fighters in the 1948 War. The PALMACH's close affiliation with the kibbutz movement as well as the heroic reputation it garnered in 1948-49 made it dangerous as a political entity in the IDF, but the practical value of having soldiers who doubled as farmers was too great to ignore. Soldiers in NAHAL were originally tasked with the founding of communal agricultural settlements at locations determined by Israel's security needs. NAHAL soldiers worked the land while also serving as a given settlement's security force. This militarized form of nation-building is a clear example of military role expansion.77

Military role expansion can be defined simply as any instance where the armed forces expand its mandate beyond the application of state-sanctioned violence. The

76 Ze'ev Schiff. History of the Israeli Army: 1874 to the Present. (New York: MacMillan, 1985), p. 86. See also Yigal Allon, p. 234. '7 Conversely, NAHAL can be considered the militarization of a traditionally civilian occupation (farming). See Uri Ben-Eliezer, "A Nation in Arms." Comparative Studies in Society and History. (37) April 1995, p. 227. VITA military is ideally a highly organized and centrally directed organization, and its usefulness in non-military affairs and in promoting a sense of citizenship has been demonstrated countless times:

In the West, armies have played a very important role in providing technical training and even direct services in the process of industrial development... In the United States the Corps of Engineers, of course, played a central role in the whole development of the [American] West.. .The Brazilian Army has played an important part in opening the interior, in promoting the natural sciences...

[Military service] usually provides some form of training in citizenship. Recruits with traditional backgrounds must learn about a new world in which they are identified with a larger political self. They learn that they stand in some relationship to a national community.. .the recruit is likely to achieve some awareness of the political dimensions of his society.. .Armies in the newly emergent countries can thus provide...an appreciation of political action. In some cases this can lead to a more responsible nationalism.78

Military role expansion includes phenomena such as UN peacekeeping, and aid missions to civilian populations in need and disaster relief operations. Whether or not the increasing involvement of the world's militaries in operations not involving warfare is a positive development is perhaps beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say, however, that since states spend an inordinate amount of their limited resources on maintaining military forces, it seems inevitable that their militaries will be asked to justify their continuing existence in peacetime by providing something useful to society other than national security.

The Israeli case is particularly telling in this regard. The IDF was the first organization created by the new state and it was given the twin tasks of nation-building and national defense from the beginning. NAHAL fits perfectly into the idea of military role expansion and has actually served as an example for other developing nations to expand their militaries into nation-building entities. Indeed, one of Israel's primary

78 Lucian W. Pye. "Armies in the Process of Political Modernization." The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries. John J. Johnson, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 82- 83. intellectual exports to developing nations in Africa and South America in the 1960's was the NAHAL nation-building model.79 NAHAL has only continued to evolve throughout its existence to serve the nation-building and security needs of the State of

Israel. This unique evolution, when examined through the lens of civil-military relations theory, will provide a powerful barometer for the continually changing nature of

Zionism, the IDF and the State of Israel.

79 Irving Heymont. "The Israeli NAHAL Program." The Middle East Journal vol. 21, No. 3 (summer 1967), pp. 319-324. "As of 1966 at least 21 nations in Africa and ten in Central and South America had received Israeli training or instruction in NAHAL-type programs." (p. 314) Chapter Two: The Establishment of NAHAL

The 1948 Israeli War of Independence is the most important event in all of

Israel's history. Not only did the war produce the Green-Line borders of the new state,

as well as the Palestinian refugee problem, but 1948 also cemented the power of the

political elite of the pre-state Yishuv in the post-war era. The MAPAI party's hold on

power for the first 29 years of Israel's existence is a testament to the credibility and

confidence the Israeli populace entrusted to the Yishuv political elite as the new State of

Israel emerged. Much has been written about the War of Independence, both as a

conflict between Arabs and Jews, and as a backdrop for the internal transformation of

the Yishuv into the modern State of Israel.

One of the common misconceptions about the Yishuv in 1948 was that, aside

from the extremist LEHI and IZL organizations, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine

operated as a single cohesive social group. Though certainly the Jews were far more united than their Arab opponents, within the Yishuv itself there existed a power struggle

r* t I between various political parties. Nowhere was this struggle more intense than within

the Haganah, the Yishuv's military force. The power struggle over the shape and

outlook of the Israel's new standing army, the IDF, would become one of the defining

features of Israel's experiences in civil-military relations.

Civil-Military Relations theorists spend a great deal of time exploring the

foundational circumstances of any given state's military, and rightly so. Since modern militaries are bureaucratic entities which, in democracies, are supposed to operate under tight governmental control, the ideals and procedures established by a new state with VITA respect to its military tend to evolve into longstanding traditions. These help to define a procedural mode of civil-military relations that characterize a state and its military.

The Israeli case is no exception to this trend. The political struggle over the structure and nature of the newly established IDF in 1948-49 resulted in the emergence of the Israeli civil-military relations framework which exists to this day. And while not central to civil-military relations in Israel at the present, NAHAL was formed as a direct result of the political manoeuvrings that occurred before and during the 1948 war. The

Yishuv's political parties clashed over how to best create a military in accordance with their various Zionist ideologies. It will be crucial to understand the players involved, as well as what they stood for.

Significantly, the historiography of the establishment of the IDF and NAHAL has only a single overarching political narrative. In it, the head of the Yishuv, and

Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, recognized that the new state would require a politically neutral, unified military whose officers were committed not to one ideology in particular, but to the state alone.80 The new Israeli government, specifically

Ben-Gurion decided to do away with ideologically affiliated units on both the left and right of the spectrum, including the LEHI, IZL and PALMACH. What would take the place of a revolutionary army of guerrilla warriors would be a standing military led by

British-trained officers. In doing so, Ben-Gurion cemented a traditionally Western, rather than (Marxist) revolutionary, pattern of force-composition and thus of civil- military relations between the Israeli government and the IDF. Critics of this narrative

80 Amos Perlmutter. Military and Politics in Israel: Nation-building and Role Expansion (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 55. Martin Van Creveld. The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 108. VITA such as Martin Van Creveld naturally point out that in purging the IDF of ideologically connected units, especially the PALMACH, Ben-Gurion prevented the Marxist-Stalinist

MAP AM party from drawing strength from the PALMACH's military successes in the

War of Independence.81

The disbanding of the PALMACH on October 7th 1948 is the turning point in the political narrative. Though Ben-Gurion was perhaps the most ardent supporter of continued agricultural settlement in the land of Israel, he ordered that the PALMACH battalions and headquarters be disbanded, and actively discouraged its officers from continuing their military careers in the IDF. All of this occurred despite the

PALMACH's military experience and the fact that it combined military service with a deep ideological commitment to agricultural settlement in some of the most remote and hostile (both environmentally and militarily) locations in Israel. However, Ben-Gurion also ordered the founding of NAHAL, which was established as the continuation of the

PALMACH in spirit, albeit serving the interests of the state and the military as a whole.82

NAHAL's place within this larger historical narrative is entirely unsatisfying.

While David Ben-Gurion was certainly a man of great vision and determination, it is difficult to see just why NAHAL was created. Certainly the IDF was tasked with nation-building from the outset, but the traditional historical narrative which has linked the creation of NAHAL to the disbanding of the PALMACH leaves too many questions unasked, let alone unanswered. More recent research has provided a more comprehensive picture of the establishment of NAHAL amidst the backdrop of the War

81 Van Creveld, 89. 82 Perlmutter, 59-62. VITA of Independence, and the main historical actors discussed here deepen our understanding of the establishment of NAHAL as well as broaden and enrich our study of civil-military relations, ideology and military organization.

On the eve of Israel's independence, political Zionism had diverged into two major streams. Revisionist Zionism, formulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and put into practice by the likes of Avraham Stern and Menachem Begin, was largely an urban bourgeois phenomenon, radical and extremely nationalistic, occasionally bordering on the fascist. Labour Zionism, whose tenets were promulgated by a bevy of philosophers such as A. D. Gordon, Nachman Syrkin, and Berl Katznelson, to name a few, was the ideological foundation of the mainstream socialist Yishuv. However, Labour Zionism was further divided into two main sub-streams, those of Socialist Zionism and a more

Marxist Zionism (an unlikely synthesis if there ever was one). While the details of

Revisionist and Labour Zionism are important, of greater concern to this discussion are the political parties associated with each ideology, and their respective military organizations.

The Revisionist Herut party led by Menachem Begin was considered something of a wasteland, even a wilderness, for Israeli politicians until the Likud's victory over

Labour in 1977.83 This stigmatization was to a large extent due to Begin's actions as leader of the IZL Zva 'z Le 'umi (IZL).84 Responsible for the 1946 King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem and other attacks, Begin would lead the IZL during the 1948 War to even greater infamy. The Deir Yassin Massacre remains the most notorious of a

83 The Likud was the successor to the Herut party, both led by Begin. 84 National Military Organization. Some historians refer to it as ETZEL (its Hebrew acronym), others the NMO; lately Benny Morris and Marten van Creveld have used IZL; colloquially it has always been referred to as The Irgun. VITA string of war crimes committed by IZL forces during the war.85 However, what kept

Begin in de facto political exile until 1977 was another incident which would have a reverberating impact on the formation of the IDF.

The internecine conflict between Jewish underground military organizations reached a turning point over the Altalena D, a ship laden with munitions for the IZL. It arrived off the Mediterranean coast near the city of Netanya in late June 1948. While the IZL had by this time been officially absorbed into the IDF (which had been founded on May 28th 1948) according to an agreement hammered out between Ben-Gurion and

Begin on June 2nd, it was in reality operating seven separate battalions under nominal

IDF command. The armaments carried on board the Altalena were meant primarily for the IZL, and an IDF (PALMACH) unit was sent to seize the ship. While the agreement between Ben-Gurion and Begin called for all IZL units to be absorbed, Begin claimed that 20% of the weapons aboard the Altalena were to be assigned to IZL battalions. Ben

Gurion was incensed and ordered the ship sunk after fighting broke out. Sixteen lives

86 were lost. In the aftermath of the Altalena D affair, the IZL battalions were completely dismantled, and this incident led to a bitter feud between Begin and Ben

Gurion which had much to do with the political wilderness Begin's Revisionist Zionism represented until 1977. Moreover, "officers who had come out of these two movements

85 While it can be argued that the bombing of the King David Hotel was a legitimate act of resistance against the British Military (whose HQ was in the King David Hotel), this author has yet to find any credible justification for the Deir Yassin operation. At Deir Yassin, modern investigations have led to a body count of 100-110 Arabs, mainly civilians. Benny Morris. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), p. 209. 86 Van Creveld, 81, Amos Perlmutter Politics and the Military in Israel 1967-1977 (London: Frank Cass, 1978), p. 261. Ze'ev Schiff, History of the Israeli Army: 1874 to the Present (New York: MacMillan, 1985), pp. 46-47. [the IZL and LEHI] found their advancement in the IDF blocked during the early

1950's."87

The internal housecleaning that took place in the weeks following the formal founding of the State of Israel was focused on the military organizations on the right of the political spectrum. While the Altalena D incident brought the issue to the forefront early on, the forced dismantling of the IZL and LEHI seems inevitable in hindsight given the difficulty the Yishuv had controlling these two groups during the Mandate

Period and afterwards. LEHI's last official act before it was dismantled by the Haganah was the assassination of Count Bernadotte, the Swedish UN negotiator during the early stages of the 1948 war.88 Thus, it is important, though relatively simple, to fit the dismantling of the IZL and LEHI into the civil-military relations framework we have previously established.

The literature is clear in that regardless of how David Ben Gurion felt about

Menachem Begin, his primary aim in founding the IDF was to create a single army loyal

89 to the state. While proving that his goal was a western-style politically neutral military, that is to say objective civilian control, is beyond the means of this (or any) author, Ben-Gurion's later actions regarding the PALMACH would indicate that professionalization of the IDF and unity of command were the forces driving the political and organizational campaign against LEHI and IZL. Take for example the acronym LEHI, Lohemei Herut Israel, or Israel Freedom Fighters. The emphasis on

87 Schiff, 47 88 Amitzur Ilan, Bernadotte in Palestine. 1948: A Study in Contemporary Humanitarian Knight-Errantry (London: Macmillan/St. Antony's College, Oxford, 1989), pp. 193-222, 228-38. 89 See Perlmutter, Military And Politics in Israel, pp. 54-68, Nadav Safran Israel the Embattled Ally (Cambridge Mass., London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 143, Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1982) p. 75, Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, p. 89. VITA fighting, rather than soldiering, is an important one, and should not be overlooked as a simple linguistic choice in a metaphor-rich language such as Hebrew.90 The military advocated by LEHI and IZL was fundamentally less professional than the one that the

IDF represented. Similarly, the IZL was the National Military Organization, rather than the State Military Organization. It cannot be overemphasized that a National Army is fundamentally different in nature than a State Army, and that both the IZL and LEHI were waging above all, wars of national liberation. This was a direct result of the

Revisionist Zionist ideology that these groups were founded on and to which they adhered.

More importantly, LEHI and the IZL had already established a history of independent operations. While it was not always deserved, and in some cases had been encouraged, both groups were used as scapegoats by the Yishuv to deflect criticism away from the mainstream Zionist endeavour in Palestine, that is to say the Yishuv's own military operations. This was a direct result of the IZL and LEHI's willingness to commit war crimes and use terrorism against the British and Palestinians. As the

Bernadotte assassination and the Altalena D incident demonstrated, even with the

British gone, the IZL and LEHI were unreliable bodies that operated outside the authority of the state when it suited them.

With the dismantling of the right-wing radicals in LEHI and IZL, the Yishuv was able to successfully prosecute the 1948 War. There were, however, further complexities and considerations for total civilian control of the new military in the immediate post-

90 Joel M. Hoffman, In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language (New York: New York University Press, 2004.), pp. 187-210. It might be interesting to note that nahal is Hebrew for 'river.' This choice of name seems to be deliberate to the point of it never being explicitly mentioned in the literature. VITA war period. The Yishuv's military force, the Haganah, was a large underground army comprising of three main pools of manpower. The CHISH, or Field Corps, consisted of partially-trained young men serving in a part-time fashion as combat soldiers. The

HIM, (Guard Corps) was a reserve pool of generally older manpower used for settlement security in order to free up younger men for more active combat roles. The

PALMACH was the professional elite strike force of the Haganah, whose disposition will be discussed below. Figures vary, but on the eve of independence, one source lists the Hagana as having 6000 men in the PALMACH (in three brigades), and another

18000 men in CHISH (in six brigades).91 The Haganah was an embryonic army, organizing its own logistics branch, intelligence division and other non-combat arms as one would expect in a normal military.92 And although the Haganah as a whole was a leftist organization, its political loyalties lay with the MAPAI party which dominated the

Yishuv leadership, with the PALMACH being the exception in that its members were loyal to the far-left kibbutz movement.

The Haganah had been founded by decree on June 25 1921, by the Histadrut, the massive Yishuv (and later Israeli) labour federation, which to this day remains a central political structure in Israeli society. The Haganah's role was purely defensive, helping to protect new Jewish settlements as well as the more established urban populations from Arab attack. This role changed with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, which saw the

Haganah begin offensive operations with the founding of the Nodedet, an independent night-patrol in 1937. This would be followed by the establishment of the Special Night

91 Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army. (London: Falkenham and Reading, 1975), p. 34. 92 Van Creveld, pp. 78-81. 93 Perlmutter, (1969), 29 VITA

Squads by British officer Orde Wingate and finally the PALMACH in 1941.94

However, the Haganah was also a primary instrument in the further expansion of Jewish

settlement in Mandatory Palestine, which continued despite the harsh limits imposed on

Jewish immigration by the White Paper of 1939. It was this document which made it clear to the Yishuv leadership that a larger force was necessary for security and underground operations, hence the establishment of CHISH in 1939. More importantly, a Haganah General HQ was established that same year, furnishing it with a high level of organization and strategic thinking, at least at the senior levels.95 Finally, once David

Ben-Gurion took over the defence portfolio in 1947, he initiated a massive fundraising and mobilization campaign which properly prepared the Haganah for the coming conflict.96

Though the Haganah was the primary military body of the Yishuv, it was the

PALMACH that bore the brunt of the fighting before and during the 1948 War of

Independence.97 Created in 1941 as a response to British fears of an imminent German invasion of Palestine, the PALMACH served the Haganah as a highly mobile offensive strike force of elite, full-time soldiers. The members of the PALMACH, however, constituted a "youth movement in arms."98 Through an extraordinary arrangement with the left-wing United Kibbutz Movement, "in return for two weeks' labour every month, the [UKM] undertook to maintain the troops."99 By 1948 this arrangement also had the

94 Ibid, (1969), p. 13, p. 32 95 Luttwak and Horowitz, 16-17 96 Perlmutter (1969), 50 97 Van Creveld, 89 98 Luttwak and Horowitz, 21 99 Van Creveld, 47 VITA added benefit of providing the PALMACH, then an illegal underground organization in

British Palestine, with very good cover.

The PALMACH was the elite strike force of the Haganah, and its leadership claimed that "[PALMACH] embodied the pioneering values of Labour Zionism, and that it set an example for the rest of the Army."100 Yigal Allon, commander of the

PALMACH forces that took Safed in 1948, was even more enthusiastic:

The Palmach included all the pioneer youth movements, which combined their agricultural training for ultimate settlement with their military training for special battle exploits; at the same time [they] did not segregate or isolate themselves from the rest of their units, but formed a nucleus for the entire force which included masses from the rural settlements, the colonies, the cities and the new immigrants. This was a blend that enabled the unit to remain military in character even during agricultural training, and agricultural in character during military training.101

Yet, Allon's claim that the PALMACH was completely integrated with the rest of the

Haganah forces is refuted by Van Creveld:

PALMACH looked and felt much like a youth movement, complete with campfires, singsong, pranks played among the members, and the like. They also fostered an extremely strong team spirit that, as outsiders thought, was not always compatible with loyalty to Haganah as a whole.102

The PALMACH represented a left-wing, or even Marxist approach to warfare.

Like their ideological opposites in LEHI and the IZL, PALMACHniks referred to themselves as lochemim - fighters.103 Leaders had no special privileges, as rank was associated with a function, rather than with the status of the individual. There was little attention paid to discipline or any of the drill generally associated with soldiering.

100 Luttwak and Horowitz, 72 101 Yigal Allon in Luttwak and Horowitz, p. 73. 102 Van Creveld, 47 103 Ibid, 50 VITA

Instead, PALMACH training focused on individual independent action and total commitment to the task at hand. The PALMACH was "Israel's first elite corps," as well as "a role expansionist and ideologically motivated military structure imbued with a sense of mission directed towards national fulfillment."104 To further emphasize their separateness from the rest of the Haganah, the PALMACH had its own general headquarters. While nominally under Haganah command, the independent PALMACH

GHQ combined with a sense of elitism and ideological motivation was one of the major factors leading to the disbanding of the PALMACH in late 1948.

The 1948 War of Independence saw the PALMACH perform exploits which have since become legendary in Israel and abroad. Operating in three brigades under

IDF command, PALMACH battalions were instrumental in defending the new State of

Israel against the invading Arab armies after the outbreak of open warfare in May 1948.

Spectacular victories were achieved against the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Arab

Liberation Army in the north.105 In the Negev Desert in the south, the PALMACH

Negev Brigade contained and then defeated the Egyptian Army, which had managed to threaten the southernmost suburbs of Tel Aviv, and drove all the way to Eilat. Only in the center of the country around Jerusalem did the PALMACH encounter problems.

Though managing to relieve the siege of West Jerusalem, the PALMACHniks and others defending the Old City's Jewish Quarter were unable to hold out against the

British-trained and led Arab Legion. Furthermore, faulty Israeli intelligence on the composition of the Arab Legion forces at the Latrun fortress led to attack after attack being repulsed with heavy losses. PALMACH members also formed a significant

IM Perlmutter, (1969), 36 ltb The PALMACH's taking of the town of Safed in the Galilee has been the subject of at least two novels: The Source by James A. Michener, and Exodus, by Leon Uris. VITA portion of the officers and NCO's of the six former-CHISH brigades of the new IDF.106

This extraordinary level of prestige the PALMACH had garnered during the 1948 War was considerable, and was yet another major factor leading to its dissolution.

These reasons have been put forth to illustrate the separateness of the

PALMACH from the rest of the Haganah, demonstrating that while nominally under

Haganah command the PALMACH considered itself a distinct anny. The primary reason David Ben-Gurion decided to disband the PALMACH was, however, entirely political in nature. When the PALMACH was created in 1941 by the British and then later financed by the UKM, the matter of political oversight was of little concern. The

UKM, though further left on the spectrum than the ruling MAPAI party, was a partner in the coalition government leading the Yishuv. However, in 1944 the MAPAI party split and the UKM formed a new party on the left with the Marxist HaShomer HaTsa'ir, which by 1948 would become the left-wing MAP AM party.107

The result was that by the time the IDF was founded at the end of May 1948, all but two of the senior PALMACH commanders of the PALMACH general HQ belonged to the UKM, "as did forty percent of the rank and file."108 The Yishuv - later the Israeli government - had little to no political control over the PALMACH, and "it was only natural that the kibbutz movements, especially the UKM, should dictate much of the general staff policy, indoctrination, training and ideology of the PALMACH."109

Moreover, Van Creveld notes that the "PALMACH brigades ... expressed their lack of confidence in [IDF Chief of Staff] Yadin and the general staff, repeatedly refusing to

106 Luttwak and Horowitz, 45. 107 Luttwak and Horowitz, 25. MAP AM is an acronym for Mifleget haPo'alim haMeyuchedet, or United Workers Party. HaShomer HaTsa'ir, or Youth Guard is a Marxist political party and youth movement. 108 Ibid, 27 109 Perlmutter (1978) 259-260 VITA

carry out orders unless they had been transmitted to them by way of PALMACH's own

central headquarters."110 Without forcing the theoretical framework established in the

previous chapter directly onto the thoughts and actions of David Ben-Gurion, it is clear

that an elite unit affiliated with a radical political party which circumvents the chain of

command is not desirable when unifying a military and putting it under civilian control

in a nascent democratic state.

Critics of Ben-Gurion past and present are quick to point out that by ordering the

dissolution of the PALMACH on October 7 1948 he was able to stymie the political

power of the MAP AM party. Though small and representing the far-left, pro-Soviet111

streams of Labour-Socialist Zionism, the MAPAM party, as noted, was the party of the

PALMACH. This meant that with the PALMACH's well-deserved prestigious wartime

reputation, Ben-Gurion saw MAPAM as a serious political rival; Israel's proportional

representation electoral system would afford the smaller party with that level of prestige

a disproportionate amount of leverage in any coalition government.112 Neither was

MAPAM at all innocent of encouraging the PALMACH's separate status in the new

IDF, thus further exacerbating a nascent civil-military relations crisis.

"Depoliticization of the army was calculated to deradicalize it and to eliminate

the influence of the UKM."113 The disbanding of the PALMACH would have a lasting

effect on the IDF. The PALMACH HQ was dissolved on October 7, the individual battalions at the end of hostilities. "It was a move that the PALMACHniks never forgot

1,0 Van Creveld, 89 "1 In 1948 the worst atrocities of Stalinist anti-Semitism were not yet known. The MAPAM party would lose a great deal of credibility when the Doctors Plot was made public in the early 1950's. 112 This point cannot be overlooked, as history has shown that the coalition governments of Israel are always at the mercy of the smaller parties drawing support from key demographic sectors. The right wing religious parties like SHAS and MAFDAL enjoy such disproportionate power. 113 Perlmutter (1978), 262 VITA or forgave, and many of them left the IDF en masse as soon as the war ended.""4 The

PALMACH officers who remained were more often than not denied promotions in favour of British-trained officers whose political leanings were more neutral, or at least more pro-MAPAI. For example, Moshe Dayan and Yitzchak Rabin were

PALMACHniks but also MAPAI loyalists and "faithful disciples of Ben-Gurion," and were both later promoted as chief of staff over several of the other senior PALMACH officers who had remained.115

Where then, in the narrative presented thus far, does NAHAL fit? Yigal Allon, commander of the IDF Southern Front during the 1948 War and a PALMACHnik himself writes that NAHAL was a "new unit designed in part to replace the

PALMACH."116 In another text, he elaborates that:

The Israel Defense Forces, searching for a means to combine military service with agricultural life, finally evolved the concept that led to the formation of Nahal. Nahal, whose like existed nowhere else, was to make possible the settlement of isolated parts of the country, and thus considerably to increase [sic] Israel's defensive power in those critical areas.117

This all sounds suspiciously neutral in tone coming from a famous, successful

PALMACH officer. It must be mentioned however that Allon was a member of

MAPAI, and would later become a minister in the Labour government from 1961 to

1977.

114 Van Creveld 90 115 Perlmutter (1978), 262. Another PALMACHnik that went on to greatness in the IDF was Ariel Sharon, though he would gain political office along with Menachem Begin. 116Yigal Allon Shield of David: The Story of Israel's Armed Forces (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 39. 117 Ibid, 233. VITA

Significantly, Ben-Gurion has been portrayed as an instigator of NAHAL, as well as an opponent of specialized pioneering units, at least in reference to the

PALMACH:

I do not believe that pioneering is the monopoly of the select few, a special priviledge of a spiritual aristocracy. I am a great believer in the common folk, all Israel and every one in Israel, and if the seed of pioneering is sown in all army units, we shall be priviledged to witness a blessed harvest. There is no need or justification for the setting apart or singling out of certain brigades as pioneering brigades or to consider all 118 other brigades as non-pioneering ones.

Taken in the context of opposition to the MAPAM party and the campaign to disband the PALMACH, Ben-Gurion's comments are not particularly surprising. However,

Schiff writes that "the dream that Jews would one day be fanners in the Land of Israel was closely tied to the Jewish defense of Palestine.. .David Ben-Gurion dreamed of making the IDF a farmer's army."119 This idealism Schiff attributes to Ben-Gurion harkens back to left-wing Zionist thinkers such as A. D. Gordon, who stressed that the

Jewish people would be redeemed in their own land through agricultural labour.

Whether or not Ben-Gurion and the Yishuv leadership actually believed in the tenets of

Labour Zionism has been the matter of some recent debate,120 yet the fact remains that

Ben-Gurion did indeed order the founding of NAHAL. As well, he was the main instigator behind the IDF's service law that ordered every conscript to twelve months of agricultural service after basic training. Van Creveld explains that "this did not go over

118 David Ben-Gurion, "Letter to a Palmach Soldier," Davar (the official paper of the Histadrut), 29 October 1948. in Luttwak and Horowitz, p. 73. 119 Schiff, 58 120 Ze'ev Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism and the Making of the Jewish State. David Maisel, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 1-46. 55 well with his centrist coalition partners, and in the end a compromise was struck." 121 In this light, NAHAL appears to be an afterthought of Israeli independence. This is hardly the case.

Schiff, Luttwak and Horowitz delve deeper into the formation of NAHAL, although their analyses are brief and in one case entirely too enthusiastic. Luttwak and

Horowitz write that NAHAL's creation was "one of the side-effects of the abolition of the PALMACH in that the NAHAL was intended to carry over some of the functions of the PALMACH and its general ethos, but without its politics."122 As previously discussed, the PALMACH was a "youth movement in arms," and indeed the various

Zionist pioneer youth movements affiliated with the UKM were its main sources of manpower. Luttwak and Horowitz mention, however, that the pioneer youth movements "demanded and obtained a niche in the new Army." 1 23

Schiff s brief narrative on the formation of NAHAL is similar:

The idea of integrating military service and agricultural settlement appealed to the youth movements and to the members of the settlement groups they sponsored. With the encouragement of the kibbutzim, a delegation of youth movement leaders approached Ben-Gurion in 1948 to request that rather than be separated and sent to various army units they be inducted as groups and assigned to agricultural settlements for the duration of their national service. Ben-Gurion liked the idea.. .it was thus that NAHAL was born."124

Schiff later comments that while the NAHAL bore a resemblance to the PALMACH and thus "aroused the suspicions of Ben-Gurion's political opponents," the MAP AM and other parties, simply "misinterpreted Ben-Gurion's actions...The PALMACH's

121 Schiff 58, Van Creveld 155. For an example of an early proposal of the Israeli military service law which included mandatory agricultural service for all soldiers not in the Air Force or Navy, see "A Proposal for a Military Service Law," IDF Archive 2169/50/108, pp 4-13. 1-2 Luttwak and Horowitz, 421 123 Luttwak and Horowitz, 421. 124 Schiff, 60 VITA spirit of pioneering and self-sacrifice was worth preserving... Ben-Gurion sought to keep it alive in NAHAL."125

This is undeniably a tidy narrative which only leaves one minor question: if

David Ben-Gurion was so concerned about UKM and MAPAM political influence in the

IDF, why did he authorize the formation of a left-wing, UKM-driven pioneering unit that embodied everything about the PALMACH? Why not formulate some other plan involving military role expansion in a more traditional military unit or government body? These questions, non-existent in the English language literature, are essential to understanding the political forces operating during the last few years of the pre-state

Yishuv as well as the powerful ideological factors that were at play in the establishment of NAHAL and more conventional civil-military relations in Israel.

The youth movements that operated in pre-Independence Israel were a powerful and important segment of Jewish society. It would not surprise anyone to learn that organized youth have consistently played a role in revolutionary movements; the Zionist youth movements of Israel were no different.126 However, what distinguished the youth movements in Israel from organized youth (especially students) in other political movements was just how crucial they were to the entire endeavour of founding the State of Israel, both in terms of ideological function and real pragmatic action.

By examining the Zionist youth movements' actions during the War of

Independence, Shlomit Keren sheds much-needed light on the circumstances surrounding the establishment of NAHAL. Rightly pointing out that "most historians link the inception of the NAHAL with the dismantling of the PALMACH

125 Ibid, 60 126 These included groups such as the Hebrew Scouts (founded 1919), Shomer HaTsa'ir (1923), Federation of Zionist Youth (1910), Habonim Dror (1915), HaNoar HaOved (1926) and Beitar (1923). VITA

Headquarters,"127 Keren further explains that historians see Ben-Gurion's growing alarm at the emerging civil-military relations conflict at the time as the primary motivation for the establishment of NAHAL:

Severing the historical link between the pioneer youth movements and the PALMACH reinforced Ben-Gurion's goal to end the MAP AM influence on youth in the army and to institutionalize the pioneering legacy of the PALMACH in such a way as to integrate youth movements in its state structure. The inception of the NAHAL was based on this 128

view, as a tool for achieving political goals.

However, Keren's research has provided another explanation regarding the political and military situation in the new State of Israel. Her narrative "connects the establishment of the NAHAL with the changing demands facing the youth movements inherent to the passage from settlement to a nascent state and the 1948 war"129 Not only does Keren's work provide us with another historical narrative to explore, but it also profoundly implicates ideology as a primary force in civil-military relations.

The youth movements of the Yishuv were not minor organizations which provided extra-curricular educational activities to their membership. Rather, they considered themselves as the "standard bearers of Israel's settlement society's supreme values, and in turn they received the appreciation and support of the political parties."

More importantly, the youth movements were viewed by Yishuv society at large as the

"avant-garde which represented and fulfilled, through their way of life, the most basic needs of the Zionist project."130 This afforded the youth movements with a great deal of autonomy to implement their settlement pioneering programs. In the pre-state Yishuv,

127 Shlomit Keren. Ben HaShibolim Ve'haCherev. [Between the Crops and the Sword] Judith Botbol, trans. (Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1991), p. 1 '~8 Keren, 1 129 Keren. 2 130 Ibid, 1 VITA the youth movements were instrumental in founding kibbutzim and moshavim, settlements which were later considered the "anvil upon which the State of Israel was forged."131 And most importantly, the various left-wing youth movements such as

132 HaShomer HaTsa'ir were the primary sources of manpower for the PALMACH.

Keren's argument is that while the political situation in the newly established state may have provided favourable circumstances, NAHAL was "primarily a self- creation of the pioneer youth movements."133 The motivations for disassociating themselves from the PALMACH and buying into the emerging state structure by founding NAHAL, Keren explains, were numerous. Among them were two major concerns. The PALMACH had instituted a compulsory draft from the youth movements in 1947, "which led to the deep shaking of [the youth movements'] foundation."134

There had already existed tension between the PALMACH and the various youth movements on organizational issues and the continuation of youth movement traditions in the PALMACH. These became exacerbated by the PALMACH's draft, the building pressures of war as well as the emerging political conflict over the PALMACH's - and thus the youth movements' - position the Israeli military.

More importantly, the youth movements were gripped by a profound fear regarding their place in the emerging state. Youth movement "leadership feared that the traditional role which they played thus far had come to an end." 135 As a response, a

131 Allon, 233 132 With the exception of Beitar (founded by Jabotinsky), I am unaware of any Zionist youth movement that was not left-wing in orientation at that time. 133 Keren, 5 134 Ibid, 3 135 Ibid, 2 VITA memo was sent to the government following a meeting of the Shomer HaTsa'ir leadership on June 25 1948:

According to the memo, during the years prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, the pioneer youth movement stood in the forefront of the Zionist project: it constituted the main tool of the Zionist movement aimed at healing the Jewish people and establishing its roots in their newly rebuilt homeland.. .This perspective stood at the core of the Shomer HaTsa'ir request to the government to adopt a clear line in regard to the status of the youth movements in light of the new reality. The government had to stand by the [youth] movements against some voices in the government who intended to limit the activities of the youth movements and who were keen on adopting "innovative" educational and organizational methods. The leadership of the youth movements was seeking to ensure their future existence and their educational ways by lawful means and appropriate government measures.136

With the outbreak of the war and the centrality of the conflict to the entirety of Israeli society, the youth movements were forced to deal with integration into the war effort first and foremost. This was not an issue while the youth movement 'cells' volunteered

(or were drafted) en masse for the PALMACH as individual platoons or companies.

When the Israeli government instituted a draft of all 17-year olds in June 1948

(referred to as the class of '31), the youth movement members were forced to confront an institution that did not share nor implement the same left-wing egalitarian values.

Most importantly, the youth movements were concerned that their cells would be divided up and membership would be scattered to fill whatever positions the army saw fit. This was in direct opposition to the deep sense of collective identity and pioneering values the youth movements held to be as important as any military imperative. Their solution was to petition the army to establish a distinct framework which would "ensure their vocation even in times of war."137 Keren points out that the security establishment

136 Keren, 3 1,7 Ibid, 5 of the new Israeli state was facing pressure from immigration officials who were

concerned about the draft of the class of '31 from a manpower standpoint. The Zionist

youth movements were already the main source of manpower for the new state's

immigration and absorption infrastructure as well as cultural and educational efforts

since "following the Second World War, the Israeli youth brought up in the youth

movements was the only human resource left at the disposition of the pioneer settlement movement as a whole."138

What can be seen then is the interplay of a variety of political and security

factors allowing for a collection of ideologically motivated organizations to make

demands on the government leading to their integration into the state structure. This is

of great interest from a civil-military relations perspective, as it shows that, in the case

of the Zionist youth movements and NAHAL at least, the ideological imperative of

these youth movements provided the impetus to carve out a niche for themselves within the state's military structure. From this narrative's vantage point, David Ben-Gurion's high-level political motivations become secondary to the actions of the Zionist youth movements.

In conclusion, NAHAL's establishment cannot be seen as a simple byproduct of the machinations of the Israeli political elite. Instead, a confluence of interest occurred between the MAPAI party leadership, the IDF and the Zionist youth movements. David

Ben-Gurion's desire to see the MAPAM party's prestige dissipate with the dissolution

of the PALMACH does figure into the analysis, but then so do military considerations.

The PALMACH, like LEHI and the IZL, were ideologically driven units that did not fit

into the western-style state military ideal. Though they may have agreed in principle

138 Ibid, 5 VITA with the goals of the Yishuv establishment, when it came time for them to be subsumed into the military appendage of the State of Israel, they were unwilling to relinquish their autonomy. It was a relatively simple task to dismantle the right-wing fringe, despite the blood spilled over the contents of the Altalena D's cargo hold. Revisionist Zionism at the time represented a small, yet vocal counter to mainstream socialist Zionism. It would remain the unpopular alternative until 1977.

The dismantling of the PALMACH was a much more complicated affair.

Though far left-wing Zionism has been represented primarily by the kibbutz movement, itself a tiny minority in Israel, the prestige garnered by the PALMACH during the 1948

War of Independence afforded the MAP AM party and the UKM considerable power.

The PALMACH's unorthodox makeup and traditions combined with its adherence to the Zionist ideals of pioneering and settlement only made it that much more foreign to the rest of the IDF. The latter was being shaped by those officers who had received their less ideologically charged military training in the British army during the Second World

War. The lack of direct political control the Yishuv mainstream had over the

PALMACH was only going to lead to more difficulty. Objective civilian control does not allow for a single political party, in this case MAP AM, to have any real influence over the state military. Though it is ahistorical to put the term into the mouth of Ben-

Gurion, objective civilian control in the style of Great Britain or the United States was something the new Israeli political leadership was striving for. The PALMACH as it existed had to be dismembered.

However, as more recent research has demonstrated, NAHAL was not a simple

Zionist byproduct on the road to objective civilian control. Instead, it was also the direct VITA result of civilian pressure on the security establishment. The Zionist youth movements

were both central to the foundation of the State of Israel, as well as unique in that they

represented organized youth working towards the same goals as the political elite. They

had as much to lose as the PALMACH if they did not adapt to the new realities of

statehood - and they knew it at the time. This remarkable insight allowed them to

organize and petition the government: certainly both the youth movements and the

government agreed that the building of the state had only just begun. Both could also

see that the pioneering component of Labour Zionist ideology could be incorporated into

military requirements. The PALMACH had successfully done just that, after all. The

new NAHAL framework suited everyone: David Ben-Gurion, the IDF, Zionist ideology

and the Zionist youth movements. VITA

Chapter 3: Happy Days: NAHAL 1949-1973

With the establishment of the State of Israel, securing a ceasefire to end the first

Arab-Israeli War, and the internal housecleaning which took place within the IDF in the war's immediate aftermath, the Zionist project had accomplished a great deal.

However, there was a great deal more work to be done. In 1949, Israel was bereft of natural resources, possessed an underdeveloped agricultural sector, had negligible industrial capacity and little in the way of material infrastructure. Moreover, Israeli society was faced with the prospect of assimilating a rising tide of refugees, the majority of which originated from the Arab Middle East or post-Holocaust Europe. Regardless of origin, these new arrivals were by and large poor, semi-skilled and had no common language or cultural denomination beyond the Jewish faith. And even this commonality was strained, to say the least.139 To this problem too, the new Ben Gurion government had a solution ready: the IDF. Immigrants would be drafted into the army after residing in Israel for nine months.140 Thus, the centrality of the IDF as a baseline cultural experience cannot be underestimated.

The leadership of the state did anticipate that a nation-building tool would be required on a grand scale in order to properly assimilate and retain new arrivals in

Israel.141 Simultaneously, infrastructure, agriculture and industry would all require expansion in order to develop the new state into something more than a newly decolonized backwater. These pressures, combined with a longstanding tradition of

139 See Nadav Safran, Israel the Embattled Ally. (Cambridge Mass./London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 89-94, 162-165, Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 260, Tom Segev The First Israelis, Arlen Weinstein, trans. (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1986), pp. 93-152. 2 "Minute of the Meeting Regarding Soldiers Bom in 1931 and the NAHAL dated 24.3.49." IDF Archive 1308/50/442, p. 6. 141 Ibid, pp. 13-26. military role expansion within the Labour Zionist movement, made the IDF a natural instrument of nation-building. In the IDF, a new Israeli identity was to be formed as new immigrants learned Hebrew, trained as soldiers, learned a trade, met their future spouses and cultivated a circle of friends and contacts. Naturally, this was an idealized vision of a reality which also included the misery and drudgery of day-to-day military life, cultural and class prejudice, and all the risks of active military service. Yet, by and large the IDF was successful in helping to forge a specifically Israeli identity by providing every citizen with a common grounding of shared military experience.

Moreover, the IDF would help shape the lingua franca of political discourse in Israel.

NAHAL's role during the period between 1949 and 1973 fit snugly into the military role expansion ethos of Labour Zionism simply because both NAHAL and the

IDF's nation-building functions were products of the selfsame ideology. It is safe to say that during the first twenty-four years of NAHAL's existence the organization prospered and grew as Labour-Zionist Israel prospered and grew. However, despite the generally hospitable attitude towards Labour-Zionism in Israel there were two mutually opposing forces that made large demands on NAHAL during this early period.

The first such force was the IDF, which suffered from a critical manpower shortage during the 1950's and would suffer from major budgetary constraints until U.S. financial and military aid was obtained in the 1970's. The manpower shortage was in part due to the high immigration rate and the time required to bring immigrants to the acceptable Hebrew literacy level required for military service. This shortage was severe enough that the upper echelons of the IDF and Ministry of Defence viewed NAHAL as a waste of highly motivated, patriotic youth who would be of better use in regular VITA military formations (especially as officers and NCO's) than in haphazardly organized

communal agricultural/security settlements.142

The second force placing pressure on NAHAL, but in an opposite direction, was

that the rapid development of Israel's infrastructure became an even greater priority

after the influx of immigrants and the overall desire to see Israeli society enjoy all the trappings of Western-style industrial development. The NAHAL heretofore had focused

its efforts in agricultural development, also a pressing concern, but this simply wasn't

sufficient for the state's pressing urban development needs.

In another place or time, it is quite possible that NAHAL would never have

survived these two external pressures. However, Labour-Zionism falls into

Huntington's theoretical framework as a pro-military ideology; NAHAL was also blessed with an industrious and ideologically committed membership. Thus the period until 1973 saw NAHAL engaging in instances of expanding its military role, while

simultaneously attempting to expand its non-military functions.

During the period from 1949-1973, the NAHAL fit into this overarching identity-building role in several important ways. As the inheritor of the PALMACH tradition, the NAHAL viewed itself as the vanguard of the youth movements which provided it with manpower (and woman-power). Though the influence of the kibbutz youth movements would decline over this period due to the rapid rise of the urban population of Israel and the influx of immigrants who were not at all interested in - or welcomed by - the youth movements, initially the prestige of the kibbutzim and the

142 Van Creveld, pp. 113-117, Zeev Schiff, History of the Israeli Army: 1874 to the Present. (New York: MacMillan, 1985), p. 99, Safran, pp. 231-35. This was also a concern as early as 1949. See "Minutes of Meeting dated 24.3.49" above. VITA youth movements affiliated with them strengthened the hold these two organizations had on shaping the ideology of the state.

This concept of ideology shaping the state is extremely important for Israel.

Israel's very existence is the result of ideology, and so the question of which came first, the state or its ideology, can be easily answered. However, though the State of Israel was the primary consumer of Labour Zionism during this era, was it the main producer?

Not necessarily. In fact, it was the Labour Zionist kibbutz movements, flush with the knowledge of their pioneering role in settlement and their central part of the 1948 war:

The kibbutzim were the sources of the best fighters, the best military leaders and of the

PALMACH's ideology. The members of NAHAL understood this and took it upon themselves to become the providers of cultural education within the IDF.

NAHAL's two main cultural contributions to Israel during this early period were in the realm of the perfonning arts. The NAHAL Band, founded in 1951, served as the starting point for many of Israel's most famous singers and songwriters. The NAHAL

Band is not a marching band, nor does it perform traditional military repertoire. It was created by the NAHAL soldiers themselves, and reflected the folk and popular music sensibilities of Israeli youth. The NAHAL Band was especially active during the 1951-

73 period, performing across the country for both military and civilian audiences.143

Notably, the band's material was not overwhelmingly steeped in Labour-Zionist imagery, although agricultural and naturalist themes and lyrics do stand out among the many love songs written by and about homesick and heartbroken young soldiers.144 In

143 BeMachaneh NAHALfln NAHAL's Camp] 33. (January 1954) p. 14, 61. (September 1956), p.14, 82. (July 1958) p. 14, 145. (December 1963), p. 14, 151. (June 1964). p. 14. Henceforth, BeMachaneh NAHAL will be abbreviated BMN. 144 See for example, BMN, 82 (July 1958) p. 14. VITA

addition to popular/folk music, NAHAL took great pride in its folk dancing performances. Indeed, this was a direct result of the PALMACH and youth movement

origins of NAHAL and their folk dancing traditions. Folk dancing is another mode of

cultural expression and the NAHAL folk dancing performances generated a great deal of interest both in and out of the IDF.145

All this might be considered trivial, but NAHAL cultural activities set within the military framework of the IDF and the explicit context of national development at the very least contributed to the creation of a sense of purpose and the feeling among

NAHAL members that they were indeed contributing something to Israel through their military service. This provided NAHAL's defenders with a clear example of why it was necessary to maintain a unit such as NAHAL. However, though the cultural

contributions are important, NAHAL was still considered a nation-building tool for

agriculture and national infrastructure.

The first mission undertaken by the NAHAL class of 1931 cells was the construction of a 5km road between Ein Gedi and Sodom near the Dead Sea.146 This task is important not only because it was the first formal mission given to NAHAL

(which they dubbed 'Solel') but also because of the task itself. This NAHAL mission harkened back to the activities of the G 'dud Ha 'avoda (the Labour Brigade) which was active during the 1920's and 30's. The Labour Brigade was founded by members of the

Third Aliyah and had served as a roaming labour and defense force, used primarily to

145 Though one can argue that the youth movements set out to build a folk dancing tradition where there previously wasn't much of one. The Israeli folk dancing craze lasted well into the 1980's and beyond. 146 "Always on the Front Line." Forty Years of NAHAL. Judith Botbol, trans. BMN, 453. (November 1989), pp. 23-24. Prior to this, the only means of accessing Ein Gedi via Sodom was by a boat ride on the Dead Sea. VITA build roads once the British began modernizing Mandatory Palestine's infrastructure.147

It is unclear if the Solel mission was deliberately chosen for NAHAL as a means of bridging the Labour Zionist present with its past, but Solel took 550 NAHAL soldiers four days to complete under "unbearable heat" in 1949 and was deemed a resounding

148 success.

The draft of 1950 expanded NAHAL's manpower reserves by including garinim149 from the GADNA paramilitary youth battalions in addition to the youth movements150 and by 1954, NAHAL had gone on to found some 100 settlements of various types.151 Most of these settlements were he 'aehzuyot (sing, he 'achzut), NAHAL military-agricultural settlements which were established along the green-line border.

The purpose of the he 'achzut, first and foremost, was to ensure border security. The first such settlement was designated Nahalaim-A, and was established in 1951 just outside the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.152 Border security on the Gaza and West Bank frontiers was a critical issue during the early 1950's as Arab infiltration "threatened to subvert the whole border-settlement venture.. .some half-dozen moshavim.. .were completely depleted [i.e., depopulated] during this period."153 The NAHAL he 'aehzuyot and NAHAL contributions to the bolstering of civilian settlement were key elements in the critical task of solidifying the Green Line borders while simultaneously contributing

147 Anita Shapira. "Gedud Ha-Avodah: A Dream That Failed." Jerusalem Quarterly. 30. (1984): 62-76. 148 "Always on the Front Line" BMN, 453. (November 1989), p. 24. 149 Literally 'seeds,' 'cells' or 'nucleii' (singular: garin), these are the organizational cells (or chapters) of various youth movements in Israel. 150 Ya'ir Do'ar. Sefer Garinei HaNAHAL. [The NAHAL Garin Guide] (Ministry of Defense Press, Tel Aviv: 1989), p. 206. The GADNA (G 'dudei No 'ar) is a paramilitary youth corps created by the IDF that offers outdoors survival training and other military preparatory classes during high school. 151 BMN, 33. (January 1954), p. 14 152 "An Army With an Added Value" 40 Years of NAHAL Judith Botbol, trans. BMN, 453. (November 1989), pp 18-22. This settlement would later evolve into Kibbutz Nahal-Oz. 153 Benny Morris, 272. to agricultural output. In certain cases, the NAHAL soldiers were considered more effective than the locals they were called in to reinforce, primarily due to their ideological motivation. For example, in 1951 an urgent request went out for the immediate transfer of the NAHAL garin "Shpi'at-Erzat" (Calming Cedars) from Sde-

Akiva to Moshav Daniel in the Modi'in region near Jerusalem. The situation in Daniel was "extremely grave, because most of the members had already left due to the peril the settlement was in." The NAHAL garin, however, was expected to make deep connections with the land and the Daniel moshav thereby making it more secure with its members' military skills.154

Life on a he 'achzut in the 1950's and into the 1960's reflected the values and lifestyle of the kibbutz movements which spawned NAHAL. He 'achzuyot were (and continue to be) spartan affairs, with pre-fabricated buildings and little in the way of creature comforts, reflecting both military expediency as well as the pioneering spirit of the youth movements. When the NAHAL soldier was not working the fields, he or she was engaged in a wide variety of educational activities. Farming courses were ubiquitous with extra training available in a variety of agricultural fields. Courses in farm mechanics (tractor operation and maintenance being an important skill on any kibbutz) were also offered almost every season. Naturally, cultural education courses in a variety of subjects (and NAHAL Band performances) also took up NAHAL members' time.155 When NAHAL garinim were assigned to pre-existing civilian agricultural

154Letter sent by the Moshav and Organization Movement (a member of the Agricultural Workers' Union of Israel) to the IDF Chief of Staff, dated 5 April, 1951, IDF Archive 1559/52/38 155 For examples see BMN. 33. (January 1954) p. 14, 61. (September 1956), p. 17, 82. (July 1958), p. 14, 145. (December 1963), p. 14, 151. (June 1964), p. 14. Page 14 of the early-era BeMachaneh NAHAL magazine was usually a bulletin board-style page entitled "Hanahal Zorem" (The river flows) announcing upcoming or nearly complete courses, recent events and general happenings. VITA settlements (mainly moshavim, but also some kibbutzim), a contract would be signed between the garin and its host, delineating the duties and responsibilities both parties had to fulfill. The NAHAL members were paid according to their daily work, and were required to "carry out work, training and other tasks according to the requirements of the settlement." In return, NAHAL members were furnished with "one residence block and a meeting space," as well as a tailor, shoe-maker, medical services and laundry.156

Although the NAHAL garin was engaging in what was primarily non-military activity, military discipline was still in effect. Moreover, one day a week was allowed for group military training.157 It has been estimated that while on a farm or he 'achzut, NAHAL soldiers participated in, on average, some sixteen full days of military exercises a year.158 All this non-military activity while wearing IDF uniforms did have two results.

Early on, NAHAL soldiers began thinking of themselves as dual-role soldier/farmers, with fanning being their main military function. Moreover, whenever actual military training did occur, there was a twin sense of novelty and seriousness which worked at cross-purposes with the end result of inflating the importance and effectiveness of these military exercises within the NAHAL collective consciousness.159

In the early 1960's, NAHAL expanded its nation-building functions in two important ways. Both expansions occurred due to external pressures on NAHAL. The first of these is the export of the NAHAL structure itself to developing Third World countries in Africa and Latin America. In 1963, twenty officers from Ecuador and

156 "A Contract." IDF Archive 1308/50/442. 157 Ibid. It is important to mention that this one day a week of military training was bankable. That is, the NAHAL garin commander could save a number of 'military days' and then run a four day long military exercise with the entire garin. !58 Irving Heymont. "The Israeli NAHAL Program," The Middle East Journal vol. 21, number 3. (Summer 1967), 314-324. 159 BMN 33. (January 1954) pp. 8-10, BMN 35. (March 1954) pp. 5-17. VITA

Bolivia participated in an 85-day NAHAL training program run out of the Hadar hotel in

Netanya, Israel. The program was designed to teach the visiting officers "three fundamental points:

The first concerned [the visiting officers] with the NAHAL movement. This included lessons on the youth movements, their essential nature, their history, their qualities, and their integration as the first step towards NAHAL. The second, the GADNA. The third, the fundamentals of NAHAL itself: this familiarized them with the NAHAL service track, the he 'achzuyot and the kibbutz as the final stage in NAHAL goals.160

Seen as a means for "many developing nations.. .solving their problems,"161 the

NAHAL military role expansion model was thus exported as an Israeli intellectual and organizational product. This was seen by all parties involved as politically, socially and economically beneficial: Israel was eager to forge military and economic ties with non- aligned countries, and those countries were looking for means of spurring agricultural development. Often, forming a NAHAL-like structure was a condition for further US economic aid.162 Just how useful the NAHAL program actually was to Third World is unknown, but the limitations of the framework itself were known at the time:

Successful duplication of the [NAHAL] program without modification is probably impossible without the same combination of a socially approved and government encouraged form of agricultural organization and a highly motivated youth element who seek to perpetuate it.163

It is worth noting that a similar course was offered to French-speaking African military officers at the Hadar hotel a year later.164

Though the visiting military officers and the international recognition NAHAL was receiving certainly demonstrated NAHAL's usefulness, the NAHAL program's

160 Zvi Rimon, "A New NAHAL in Latin America." BMN, 144. (November 1963), pp 14-15. 161 Heymont, "The Israeli NAHAL Program," pp. 314-324. 162 Van Creveld, 156. I6? Heymont, 324. 164 BMN. 151. (June 1964), p. 14. VITA more lasting contribution to Israel's socioeconomic development during the 1960's and onwards was a response to rising urban development needs in Israel. NAHAL moved into the rapidly developing Israeli cities and towns both out of a grassroots desire to expand its national service mandate, while simultaneously showing its own worth to a sceptical IDF.165 Though the he 'aehzuyot were by then financially supported by both the Jewish Agency and the IDF, the problem of "working urban youth, those who had not achieved a high-enough standard in their education," became increasingly apparent, as Israel's urban centers grew rapidly. At the behest of Levi Eshkol, then Israel's minister of finance, the NAHAL program was expanded into "Industrial NAHAL:"

And thus a garin was founded from the vocational division of the No 'ar Ha 'Oved [Working Youth], and instead of a fanning garin, there was in its place an 'industry and trade' garin.]bb

However, the NAHAL ideology did not stop at simply training disadvantaged youth in industrial trades:

At the same time, there were development cities in difficult situations and we thought that members of NAHAL could be integrated into them and would contribute to the cultural and educational life of those cities. Thus they went to Dimona (the same garin that had completed Yotveta); a garin from the [Hebrew] Scouts went to Ma'alot, and among those who went to learn mechanical maintenance returned to settle in Ma'alot; one garin was in Kiryat Shemona. And in the Youth and NAHAL Department [of the Ministry of Defense] a section was established to oversee these garinim and the Department also oversaw the apportioning of their work.167

165 Elhanan Ishai, in David Koren, HaNAHAL: Tsavah im Orech Mosaf [The NAHAL: An Army with Added Value] (Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1991), p. 94. 166 Ibid, 95. 167 Ibid, 95. The term Development Towns (or Cities) is a direct translation from the Hebrew (Ir Pitu'ach), and I would rather use it than use 'frontier town' or 'border town' because of the connotations those terms have. Many of Israel's development towns/cities were nowhere near the Green Line. Dimona is a desert city in the Negev that would later gain infamy as the site of Israel's controversial nuclear facilities. Ma'alot is a town in the western Galilee and Kiryat Shemona is a town in the Huleh Valley in the northernmost part of the country. Yotveta is still a very successful kibbutz in the Negev which specializes in dairy production. VITA

Between 1964 and 1966, there were in total over 400 soldiers in Industrial-NAHAL. As the program began to expand, new jobs for NAHAL members appeared. NAHAL soldiers would visit new immigrants in their settlements and teach them Hebrew.

168 NAHAL members ran youth sports programs in development towns like Dimona, or even home economics courses in Hadera.169 While the majority of NAHAL garinim still engaged in farming and settlement activities, the number garinim that worked in the cities grew throughout the 1960's and earlyl970's. By 1971, some 233 garinim had worked in Israel's development cities.170

From 1949 to 1973 NAHAL had endeavoured to meet the needs of the Israeli government and fulfill its Labour Zionist mission of national development and self- redemption through agriculture. NAHAL had not only founded settlements for both agricultural and defensive purposes as per its original mandate, but it had also expanded its non-military activities into the cities. NAHAL soldiers became important extensions of the social-welfare apparatus of the state in Israel. Moreover, NAHAL cultural and educational activities helped to define a new Israeli identity in the face of massive immigration. All this alone, however, was not sufficient to justify the existence of

NAHAL to its parent body, the Israel Defence Forces.

The military problem NAHAL faced from 1949-73 was its self-motivated, ideologically driven membership. Furthermore, this membership drew its inspiration from its martial heritage dating back to the beginnings of Jewish defence forces in

Mandatory Palestine, and the exploits of the PALMACH during the War of

168 Koren, 98. 169 BMN. 145. (December 1963), p.14. 170 Do'ar, 219. It is nearly impossible to determine the exact numbers of soldiers in a garin as they were (and still are) very varied in their self-organization and membership. VITA

Independence. Had NAHAL been any normal military unit in any normal military, its exploits would have earned a remarkable reputation. However, among many officers in the IDF, NAHAL was seen as a frivolous waste of some of the country's best

171 manpower, those who had gone "out to play with tractors instead of training for war."

This was not an unreasonable view of NAHAL in the early years.

NAHAL was originally organized as a brigade consisting of three battalions of light (occasionally motorized) infantry. One battalion was the training battalion stationed at Camp Meir #80, the NAHAL agricultural/basic training camp. Two more battalions, the 906th and 902nd were the light infantry border battalions "NAHAL

Negev" and "NAHAL Kinneret," corresponding to their Southern and Northern areas of operation, respectively.172 On paper, this appears innocuous enough, but the two

NAHAL field battalions were rarely deployed as units themselves and were not usually quartered at any one particular location. These battalions were comprised of garin members who periodically trained for infantry duty; battalion level exercises were rare.

The most common military activities NAHAL soldiers performed were guard duty on their settlements, or manning border observation posts and conducting jeep-mounted patrols.173 It was not until 1954 and the personal intervention of Moshe Dayan, then

IDF Chief of Staff, that NAHAL infantry underwent advanced infantry training.174

Dayan was then attempting to modernize and professionalize the IDF and it was during the 1950's that arguments over the inherent value of the NAHAL program began to 171 Van Creveld, 156. 172 Koren p. 113. In Western terms, the early NAHAL would be a regiment of light infantry. However, there is no regimental system in the IDF, and the modern NAHAL Brigade has attached armour and artillery units. Brigade and Regiment are both standard translations of 'Hativah.' Yam haKinneret is Hebrew for the Sea of Galilee (the Galil is the northern region, rather than the lake itself, in Hebrew). 173 Yitzhak Mor, "The Situation Across the Barbed Wire Fence." BMN #62 (October 1956) pp. 9-10. 174 BMN. 35. (March 1954), pp. 5-17, and Ze'ev Schiff, History of the Israeli Army, p. 99. Advanced infantry training in the IDF would be equivalent to MOS Infantry training in the US Army. VITA

surface. Though a former PALMACH-nik himself, Dayan was a disciple of Prime

Minister David Ben-Gurion's, and a believer that the IDF had to be organized in a more

traditional Western, rather than Marxist-revolutionary PALMACH style.

Ben-Gurion, however, was a strong supporter of the NAHAL and other

pioneering efforts in Israel. Still, no matter how ideologically committed the Prime

Minister was, the Minister of Defence (also Ben-Gurion) did heed the advice of the

Chief of Staff. By March 1954, courses for demolitions, section command and an urban

combat training program175 were well underway. By December 1954, the NAHAL had trained its first sayeret (reconnaissance) company.176 Moreover, the NAHAL draft

intake was now split in two, with drafts in the summer and winter like the rest of the

IDF. This allowed for garinim to participate in agricultural activities before their actual

enlistment, freeing them up for more military training during their military service.

Starting in 1954, eligible NAHAL draftees were sent into the 890th battalion of the

Paratrooper Brigade. In 1955, NAHAL infantry were sent to their own battalion of the

Paratroops, the 88th.177

The 88th Battalion of the Paratrooper Brigade was the first standing military unit created out of NAHAL soldiers, and as such participated in the pre-emptive and reprisal raiding operations of the paratroopers during the early 1950's as Palestinian fedayeen activity intensified along the Egyptian and Jordanian borders of the new Israeli state.

The 88th Battalion was by then a part of Unit 202, which undertook these controversial

17SBMN. 33. (January 1954), pp. 15-16, BMN, 34. (February 1954), p. 14, BMN, 35. (March 1954), p. 8. 176 BMN 44. (December 1954), p. 15. Sayeret is now synonymous with Israeli commandos and special forces, but at this early stage, the NAHAL sayeret can be compared to rather effectively trained, well- motivated infantry. 177 Do'ar, pp 54-58. The 890th would later be merged with Ariel Sharon's Unit 101 to form Unit 202. The 88th Battalion's numbering comes from the sum of the numerical value of the three Hebrew letters comprising the acronym NAHAL: Nun = 50, Het = 8 and Lamed = 30. VITA actions under the command of Ariel Sharon.178 However, it was in the 1956 Sinai

Campaign that the 88th Battalion would distinguish itself in actions such as the initial

October 30th conquests of Kuntilah and Nakhl during the drive to link up with the IDF paratrooper force that dropped "in a pass (approximately 100km from the Suez

Canal.)"179 This was Mitla Pass, where on October 31, 1956,

Sharon, claiming the need to improve his positions against the anticipated counterattack from the north but defying Dayan's orders, sent his men into Mitla Pass. Three companies under Lt. Col. Mordechai Gur mounted their half-tracks and drove forward without attempting reconnaissance or securing the hills to both sides. Contrary to expectations they found the latter occupied by units belonging to Egyptian 2nd Brigade, which had not retreated the previous day. They came under heavy fire from invisible caves and had to be extricated, leading to a murderous battle in which the brigade's remaining forces outflanked the Egyptians.. .This action cost the Israelis thirty-eight dead.180

Those who followed Lt. Col. Mordechai Gur were primarily from the 88th battalion.181

Notably, there is no mention of this "murderous battle" in any issue of B 'Machaneh

NAHAL discussing the 1956 Sinai Campaign.182 Towards the end of the campaign, two^ companies of the 88th Battalion were dropped in the south-western Sinai desert and

183 successfully captured the airport at A-Tur.

After the Sinai Campaign, the 88th Battalion was expanded by forming a reserve battalion, the 901st. Meant to "complete the 88th Battalion," the aim was to form two companies of reservists out of NAHAL paratroopers who had either left IDF active

178 Van Creveld, 134, Herzog The Arab-Israeli Wars, p. 120. 179 BMN, 64. (November 1956), pp 2-9. Kuntilah's garrison fled before the paratroopers arrived. 180 Van Creveld, 146. 181 Mordechai "Motta" Gur was the 88lh Battalion's first commander. He would later become the IDF's Chief of Staff. 182 See Van Creveld, 150 for a discussion of the military censorship surrounding the 1956 campaign. There were criticisms of Sharon's decision to send troops through Mitla Pass among the officers of the IDF. However, the Israeli public did not know the circumstances surrounding this battle in the Sinai. 183 BMN, 64. (November 1956), p. 3. These two companies were commanded by Rafael Eitan, who would also later become IDF Chief of Staff. VITA service or who were still serving their last term as farmers before being discharged (an

IDF designation known as SHLAT: Sherut L'lo Tashlim, or unpaid service). In 1956 the 901st Battalion consisted of 43 reservists who had completed jump school, and 146 soldiers in SHLAT who were dispersed in 20 different settlements. This reserve unit would be activated either by public broadcast, private telegram or personal contact, depending on the disposition of the soldier being called into active service (SHLAT soldiers were to be activated by public broadcast and picked up by a military vehicle, reservists generally by telegraph). The 901st was to be the "responsibility of the 88th

Battalion, Paratroopers, after the initial organization into companies is completed."184

By the mid-1960's the arrangement between the Youth and NAHAL Department and the IDF itself (both parts of the Ministry of Defense) had worked well. Most male

NAHAL draftees aspired to serve in the 50th Battalion of the Paratrooper Brigade (the

88th having been redesignated the 50th soon after the Sinai Campaign), and those who were unable to become paratroopers became GADNA leaders, full-time border patrollers, or were sent to a variety of positions within the IDF (when not on a NAHAL settlement).185

The 1967 Six Day War was a watershed for NAHAL and the Labour Zionist pioneering movement as a whole. This stemmed both from the war's outcome as well as from the actions of the NAHAL reserve battalion of the Paratroopers (then renumbered the 55th battalion, and still under command of Motta Gur). The NAHAL infantry battalions fought in the West Bank and around Jerusalem,186 and the 55th

184 "The Organization of the Reserve NAHAL Unit - 901." IDF Archive 641/58/137 185 This included such interesting units as Sayeret Gamalim, a camel-mounted border patrol (interview with Uri Levi, December 2002). 186 Koren, 106. battalion liberated the Old City of Jerusalem, bringing the Temple Mount, Western Wall

1 87 and the entire city under Jewish control for the first time since the year 70 CE.

Moreover, with the conquest of the Golan Heights, West Bank, Gaza Strip and all of the

Sinai Peninsula, a new era of NAHAL settlement activity began in earnest. New

NAHAL settlements were founded by September of 1967 in all of Israel's recently 188 acquired territories, and the prestige of the NAHAL paratroopers rose considerably.

The period between 1967 and 1973 saw the renewal of the Labour Zionist movement due to the settler-pioneering activities in the Occupied Territories. Moreover, the IDF became increasingly convinced of its own invincibility. In the words of one former 189

NAHAL officer: "we thought we were indestructible, invincible and invisible!" On the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, NAHAL had refocused its efforts on urban development and was leading the settlement movement in the Territories. Moreover, in addition to the NAHAL battalion of the paratrooper brigade, the IDF established a

NAHAL mechanized infantry battalion, as well as armour, artillery and engineering 190 companies.

Between 1949 and 1973, NAHAL had risen to the twin challenges of nation- building and military relevancy and was an Israeli success story. The NAHAL Band had established itself as an Israeli cultural institution. NAHAL had ventured into the cities to help in urban development and to 'rescue' underprivileged youth. NAHAL was on the front lines of Hebrew education, especially to new immigrants. Most 187 The significance of this accomplishment was not overlooked despite the fact that most NAHAL personnel were highly secular if not downright atheistic in outlook. 188 As a small sample: NAHAL founded settlements at Banyas (Golan Heights) and the Etzion Block (West Bank) in September 1967. There were more NAHAL settlements at El Arish (Northern Sinai Peninsula) and Kuneitra (Golan Heights) by October of that year. Middle East Report vol. 3, 1967. p. 289. See also Koren, pp. 105-112. 189 Interview with Uri Levi. See also Van Creveld pp. 195-216 for examples of post-1967 Israeli hubris. 190 Koren, 113. importantly, NAHAL had contributed to the founding and continued prosperity of hundreds of Israeli settlements. The youth movements had, through their willing integration into the new state, continued to maintain their status as the vanguard of the

Zionist project.

Militarily, NAHAL had proven its worth as an organization that produced some of the IDF's best soldiers. In the early 1950's NAHAL soldiers acquitted themselves well while in Unit 202. The NAHAL paratroopers were in the thick of the fighting at the Mitla Pass in 1956. 1967 saw NAHAL soldiers - including reservists - victorious in

Jerusalem and in the Sinai. Though the occasional voice of dissent could be heard,

NAHAL's military contributions were at least no longer seen as a waste of motivated and talented soldiers. Unfortunately, the stunning successes of 1967 and the expansion of NAHAL settlements beyond the Green Line led to overconfidence and hubris. The youthful idealism NAHAL embodied would not survive the October War. VITA

Chapter 4: NAHAL 1973 and Onwards: Decline and Reformulation

The last glory days of the NAHAL program were the six years between June 10th

1967 and October 5th 1973. While the Air Force and Armoured Corps landed the knockout blows against Israel's enemies in 1967, the NAHAL paratroopers were responsible for re-establishing full Jewish sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and the

Temple Mount. However, with the stunning victory in 1967 came a level of heretofore unseen hubris in Israel, and Labour Zionist leadership in particular.191 On the morning of October 6th 1973, the IDF would be shocked to discover that its opponents were quite capable of learning from their defeats. One of the IDF formations that would pay a heavy price for Israeli arrogance in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War was the 50th

Battalion of the Paratrooper Brigade, an elite light infantry unit comprised of NAHAL volunteers. Stationed in bunkers on the south-eastern Golan Heights border with Syria

(referred to as the Purple Line), the 50lh Battalion lay in the direct path of an entire

Syrian armoured division's assault. After the IDF counterattacked, what was left of the

50th was withdrawn, reinforced, and sent to capture the city of Suez at the southern entrance of the Suez Canal, as part of the operation which encircled the Egyptian 3ld

Army.192

Once the hostilities were over and the dead buried, the IDF began a major reorganization and expansion in the wake of this costly victory. The hubris which led to the mauling of the 50th Battalion and the near-loss of the Golan Heights manifested itself

191 Safran, Israel the Embattled Ally, pp. 95-97, 312-316. Avraham Harman "The Voice from Jerusalem: Perspective." The Yom Kippur War: Israel and the Jewish People, Moshe Davis ed. (New York: Arno Press, 1974) pp. 271-275. Van Creveld, pp. 198-199 (Quoting Nietzche: "War makes the victor stupid"). 192 Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1975), pp. 75-95, 133, 140. Safran, 288-300. Abraham Rabinovitch, "Shattered Heights: Part 1" The Jerusalem Post Sept. 25 1998. URL:http://info.jpost.com/C003/Supplements/30YK/art.23.html VITA in many ways: an intelligence failure on a strategic scale,193 ill-prepared reservists,194 a battlefield doctrine which assumed that Arabs could not fight effectively, an armoured doctrine which ignored the advent of man-portable anti-armour rockets and an air power doctrine which dismissed radar-guided AAA and advancements in SAM technology as inapplicable to the Israeli context. Though the fighting in 1973 still demonstrated the superiority of IDF men and materiel over their opponents, the simple fact remained that the Israelis had rested on their laurels since 1967. Any reorganization of the IDF would necessitate a complete re-examination of its overall function in Israel.

Since 1973, NAHAL has been an implicit part of most discussions surrounding the changing nature of the IDF's nation-building role in the State of Israel, because by

1973 NAHAL was a significant contributor to Israeli cultural and socio-economic development and a major component of the IDF's nation-building efforts. The questions in the wake of the Yom Kippur War regarding the military's professionalization and expansion had everything to do with reducing the IDF's non- military tasks and increasing its capacity for fighting. Some new questions arose to join those that had been asked since the formation of NAHAL in 1949: did the IDF really need a unit of pioneer-soldiers who, despite their impressive list of military achievements, represented the very ideology and hubris which led to the disasters of the

Yom Kippur War? Why were so many capable, motivated men serving out their draft duty as farmers, teachers, factory workers and daycare supervisors rather than as full- time soldiers? Could the inheritors of the PALMACH tradition really constitute a viable military force on the modern battlefield?

193 Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars, p. 233, Safran, pp. 282-286. 194 They are apocryphal, but the stories of reservists getting to their units wearing sandals and makeshift uniforms in October 1973 are legion. VITA

The simple answer to all these questions was that it didn't matter. The heyday of

Labour Zionism had ended as soon as Israelis realized that their senior leadership for the past 25 years or more had allowed such a catastrophe to occur in the first place. By

1976, the major figures of the Labour Zionist movement had either resigned (Golda

Meir, Yitzchak Rabin, Moshe Dayan) or were discredited politically. In 1977

Menachem Begin and the Likud party came to power. The Likud represented

Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionist ideology and after being sidelined for nearly 30 years,

Begin led his party to victory in large part due to the Israeli public's dissatisfaction with

the Labour party. What this meant for NAHAL was that the ideological climate in

which it had previously so happily functioned was now gone. The left-wing Zionist

idealism that had fostered NAHAL was dealt a mortal blow on the morning of October

6th 1973 and it has never recovered. What replaced it was an ideology that called for the

settlement of the Land of Israel according to a different kind of nationalism and for increasingly religious reasons.

Regardless, NAHAL has remained as an active unit in the IDF to this very day with a decidedly ideologically inspired Military Role Expansion mission. However

NAHAL's overall function within the IDF has changed. Though the he 'achzuyot exist in a vestigial fashion, NAHAL members still participate in a variety of educational and social welfare programs throughout Israel, figuring prominently in the education of underprivileged youth and the absorption of new immigrants. More interestingly, while

NAHAL's military formations are fully integrated into the regular IDF, the NAHAL

Brigade has become an experimental testing ground for military formations that reflect new trends in Israeli society as a whole. This chapter will trace the development of the VITA modern NAHAL program from its reorganization following the 1973 Yom Kippur War through the establishment of the NAHAL Brigade following the 1982 Lebanon War, and then will discuss the current status of the NAHAL Brigade and its programs.

It is difficult to convey the trauma of the Yom Kippur War on NAHAL separate from the trauma of Israeli society as a whole. The 50lh Battalion of the Paratroopers, consisting entirely of NAHAL volunteers received, in the words of one former NAHAL officer, a "real schtupping"195 on the Golan Heights. However, there were other units, especially tank formations, which also sustained severe casualties in the Yom Kippur

War. The most effective means to demonstrate the impact the Yom Kippur War had on

NAHAL is by a discussion and comparison of the issues of BeMachaneh NAHAL immediately before and after the War.

September 1973 saw the publication of a two part issue of BeMachaneh NAHAL.

The first part was the regular issue (No. 261) while the second was a special "Rosh

Hashanah 5734 Edition" supplement.196 The cover of the regular issue featured a picture of a half-dozen NAHAL soldiers pulling a small sailboat or perhaps a wind- surfing board towards the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The foreground was dominated by three male soldiers coming out of the water wearing tight lycra bathing suits. Their toned, masculine physiques were positioned prominently in the centre of the page and are reminiscent of the photographs found in fundraising calendars featuring firefighters. Behind them was their sailboat. Upon the sail is the large sword and sickle of the NAHAL emblem and above that a NAHAL flag. The photo was probably candid

195 Interview with Uri Levi, December 2002. 'Schtupping' is Yiddish for 'plugging,' but it has a much more vulgar usage in conversation. 196 BMN,"l 1-261. (September 1973), and BMN 1-261 (Septemberl973). Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. The latter BMN issue cited here is the Rosh Hashanah supplement. VITA

but was perfect propaganda regardless. The contents of the regular issue included a

feature on the draining of the Huleh Valley (once swampland) in the north of Israel,197

an article entitled "I Love the Army," on NAHAL 1st Lieutenant 'Arieh,' who had

signed on for an additional three years of professional military service,198 a short article

on a group of NAHAL soldiers, including the deputy commander of the NAHAL, who

swam across the Sea of Galilee,199 a two-page spread of photos taken by one former

NAHAL soldier as he hitchhiked through Europe,200 and a one-page feature on Major

General (Res.) Dan Laner, the former commander of armoured units in the Sinai

Peninsula, and his return to driving a tractor on his kibbutz.201 The Rosh Hashanah

supplement, published on the 30th of September, consisted of a bizarre mix of secular-

socialist kibbutz movement propaganda and traditional Jewish religious motifs, with an

article discussing some recent Israeli archaeological finds added for good measure.202

Long gone were the articles on various NAHAL military training exercises. Even the

announcements for upcoming courses on fanning, folk dancing and home economics had disappeared.

The next BeMachaneh NAHAL would not be published until December 1973. Its

cover presents a stark contrast to the happy days of that last September. "The NAHAL

at War" cover showed six separate pictures of individual soldiers on a dark background.

They are all tired and unshaven. One is wounded and has dried blood and mud on his

face. They look less like Greek gods and more like regular, tired combat veterans. A

197 Ibid, pp 3-5. 198 Ibid, pp. 6-7. I99BMN. 11-261. (September 1973), p. 19. 200 Ibid, p. 10. 201 Ibid, p 23. The former tank commander is quoted as saying "I love the earth." 202 BMN. 1-261. (September 1973) Cover, and pp. 26-29. VITA candid seventh photo shows a makeshift NAHAL barrack with three soldiers outside cleaning weapons and smoking cigarettes.203 The contents of the issue focused primarily on the actions of the various NAHAL units during the Yom Kippur War.

NAHAL trainees participated in operations in the Sinai; one article featured four soldiers who crossed the Suez with Ariel Sharon's division;204 another discussed the activities of female NAHAL soldiers who packed combat rations for distribution to the front. The various patrol activities of soldiers on SHLAT duties were featured, as were the settlement activities of a few of the NAHAL garinim.206 For propaganda purposes however, the activities of the NAHAL paratroopers and NAHAL tank crews figured prominently in this issue.207 Yet, nowhere was there any of the usual casual optimism and ideological fervour. Throughout there are pictures of tired sdldiers, while the main article about the paratroopers recounts the efforts to rescue those soldiers who were pinned in bunkers behind Syrian lines after the main assault bypassed their positions.208

In the immediate aftermath of the war the members of NAHAL had sensed that the Yom Kippur War marked a turning point. Indeed, Colonel Asher Dor's (the

NAHAL commander) Order of the Day for November 1973 is particularly telling:

NAHAL Soldiers! In the month of November 1973 we observe the 24th anniversary of the founding of NAHAL. We still stand at the moment at the end of war, one which dealt severe blows to the State of Israel. In spite of the fact that we were surprised in this war, we can thank the bravery, self-sacrifice, strength, spirit and resourcefulness

203 BMN. 263-264. (December 1973), cover. 204 Ibid, 5 205 Ibid, 4 206 BMN. 263-264. (December 1973). pp. 13-26, 31-34. 207 Ibid, pp. 8-12 and 27-29 respectivelv. 208 Ibid, p. 8 VITA

demonstrated by the soldiers and commanders of the IDF above and beyond what we knew of before - the IDF has finished this campaign with profound understanding. The fighters of NAHAL were among the finest members of the armour, artillery and paratroopers. From the Suez Canal to the Golan Heights, we will be telling stories of the bravery of NAHAL soldiers for many years. Even in the border outposts we did not wash our hands [of the war], and in spite of the many hardships, the soldiers of the outposts busied themselves tirelessly in swift security activities and on sustaining the outposts, and this is proof enough of the future, when the attention turns away from the front. For this, they should be praised. We are, at the moment, exhausted and depleted by the difficulty and intensity of modern warfare, which demands of us to remain constantly alert, knowing that the war's dangers have not yet passed. It will be up to you, the soldiers of NAHAL, to perpetuate and to serve in the combat units and the border outposts and to guide them through the post-war period. Indeed, our immediate security depends on our military and political strength, but an important part of our future lies in settlement, that we settle abandoned territories and generate the infrastructure necessary for further immigration. In the past year, we have founded border outposts in the Jordan Valley and the Gaza Strip, and we have settled into farms. We will hope that in the coming year we will increase the rate of establishing and developing settlements and that we will be able to shift our efforts from the sword back to the ploughshare.209

Though Dor mentions the centrality of settlement in the NAHAL mission and the wish to return from war back to the farm, there is a hesitant recognition that modern warfare may not be compatible with the NAHAL that existed before October 6th 1973.

This would be confirmed as early as March 1974 when Col. Dor convened an in- depth discussion with a mixed group of NAHAL soldiers.210 The meeting's goal was

"to think, discuss and to listen to [the NAHAL soldiers], so that in the end it will help us

211

- in the decision making process - if not tomorrow - then in the next few months."

Clearly whatever changes were in the offing for NAHAL in the wake of the Yom

209 Colonel Asher Dor, in BMN, 263-264. (December 1973), p 2. Emphasis added. 210 BMN, 267. (March 1974), pp 3-7. 211 Colonel Asher Dor in BMN, 267. (March 1974), p. 3. VITA

Kippur War, they were going to be made soon. Even the basic values of the NAHAL program itself were not sacred:

Major Eitan [an IDF Education officer]: I wanted to ask you all if the values that the youth movements impart were really useful in actuality? If not, then what values are, in your opinions, worthwhile for the education and guidance of youth?212

The discussion revolved around the values the youth movements were imparting on its membership and the motivations soldiers had for joining NAHAL. Some soldiers had "trouble connecting any one specific value to something in the youth movement.

Maybe a value is picked up at the home, or in school." Other soldiers emphasized that the youth movements were "very helpful in allowing us to adjust in basic training with our garin," due to the ideology imparted before mandatory service. However "the youth movements themselves did do enough to tie our garin to the farm." One soldier claimed that he "had not learned anything from the movement.. .we demanded to do our SHLAT term in a development city.. .but they [the youth movement] did point us in the right direction."213

There was a general agreement that "patriotic and democratic" values needed to be transmitted through the youth movements.214 Yet it was "forbidden to perform brainwashing," and that it was much preferable to have young people participate in tours of the nation, have superior leadership that would "awaken young people to the issues at hand and then silently stand to the side, allowing them to act on their own.""

Strikingly, some soldiers asked:

212 Ibid, p. 3. 213 BMN. 267. (March 1974), p. 3. 214 Ibid, p 4. 215 Ibid, p. 4. VITA

Why shouldn't the youth movements teach people to be 'Good Samaritans' in the city, and not just in the context of a collective agricultural society? Take the SHLAT. This is the ultimate expression of our values. The outstanding garin can contribute to the country in so many ways that it was a waste to send good people to the kibbutz, rather than the city, where there is more trouble. It's not right that the movements only talk about settlement. First we have to teach good citizenship and after that at the age of eighteen before NAHAL it will be possible to ask: 'do you want the kibbutz or not?'216

While these discussions went on within NAHAL itself, similar discussions began between the Youth and NAHAL Department of the Ministry of Defence and the head of the NAHAL Command. There was a growing sense of worry that the IDF was viewing the NAHAL program as a waste of manpower, while soldiers who worked the farms and settlements were no longer seen as being on a "righteous path." Between May and

October 1974, the kibbutz movement complained about an IDF that was "increasingly unwilling to consider the establishment of new he 'achzuyot. Even the Jewish Agency was not interested."217 However, this political pressure was also applied on the Minister of Defense and on the Minister for the Galilee. Furthermore, the number of recruits that would be volunteering for NAHAL in 1974 and 1975 were the largest the program had

218 ever seen. The reasons for this are probably three-fold: The teenagers of the 1974 and 1975 IDF drafts were born in 1956 and 1957, immediately after Israel's victory in the Sinai Campaign and the decline in border conflicts between Israel and her neighbours. Moreover, these drafts would include the children of many of the immigrants who arrived in Israel in the 1950's. Lastly, there "was a feeling that soon enough there'd be talk of peace [between Israel and Egypt] and the he 'achzuyot would

216 Ibid, p. 5. The term used by the soldier was "Eclipatnikim" which is Hebrew slang for "someone who cares." 'Good Samaritan' has been used in this instance, but perhaps 'Good Citizens' is a better translation. 217 Koren, 119. 2,8 Ya'ir Do'ar, 209. VITA help draw the borders of the state."2'9 This drew in many volunteers who wished to make a contribution. NAHAL grew so much in those two years that the formation grew to encompass ten battalions.220 In the end, an agreement was reached in October 1974 regarding a new service track for NAHAL soldiers consisting of:

Basic training: 3 months He 'achzut 6 months Advanced training: 6 months SHLAT: 6 months Military Operations: 6 months SHLAT: 9 months.221

This arrangement did not survive 1974 and was soon changed to:

Boys: Girls: Basic training: 3 months Basic training: 2 months Advanced training: 6 months He'achzut: 6 months SHLAT: 6 months SHLAT: 16 months Military Operations: 6 months SHLAT: 9 months (with 6 months of military operations interspersed)

Total: 36 months 24 months222

The latter arrangement was explained to the members of NAHAL as "a change in means, not in goals." NAHAL's goals remained the same: "A: to guarantee the settlement of volunteer garinim. B: to create the infrastructure for new settlement.. .all according to the needs of the IDF." 223 The main concern for NAHAL was that the

"women stay in uniform longer" and that "the garin stays together for longer periods of time, in order to establish a more solid group."224

219 Koren 120. 220 Ibid, 120. These battalions were not all combat battalions, but rather reflected the overall organization of the NAHAL. Most of their operations were border patrol-oriented. "2I Ibid, 119. This service track applied only to male recruits. 221 Koren p. 120 223 BMN. 285-286. (October 1975), p. 3. 224 Ibid p. 4. VITA

While the NAHAL was enjoying a surge in manpower in the mid-1970's, its

service track was changed again in 1976, in 1981 and in 1982.225 While its settlement

activities on he 'aehzuyot continued unabated, there were rumblings within NAHAL

concerning growing problems. The kibbutz movement itself was beginning to decline.

Israel's growing urban centers were encroaching on kibbutzim, especially in the coastal plain and on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Moreover, as one NAHAL writer put it,

"fanning is losing its central position in our nation's economy and in our lifestyle.. .our

226 youth are drawn to the pleasures of the city and forget about their roots." This was

seen as an ideological challenge to NAHAL, but other questions were also being asked:

"We're Zionist. So What?" was the title of an article in the December 1975 issue of

BeMachaneh NAHAL?21 In the wake of the change in service track in 1976, to which

NAHAL soldiers responded primarily by asking more questions regarding the fate of their youth movements and the NAHAL garin!he 'aehzuyot system,*" NAHAL members began wondering aloud if menial labour -"Arab Work" -was to be their life: The sheer amount of Arab labour has begun to expand immeasurably when previously it was a small amount. And even though the regulations of our Movement is quite clear about the centrality of our own labour, moshavnikim are unwilling to give up such a cheap source of labour. The Settlement Movements may protest, threaten92 an9 d denounce all they like, but they have had no real impact on this trend."

225 Koren, pp. 120-121, 137-138. 226 "Who is Afraid of the City?" BMN, 287. (December 1975), p. 2 227 "We're Zionist. So What?" BMN, 287. (December 1975), p. 11. "So What?" can also be translated here as "Big Deal." 228 "The New Service Track - First Responses." BMN, 288. (January 1976), pp. 5-7. This new service track established two permanent NAHAL mechanized patrol battalions, the 93 Is' and 932nd, while the 50th Battalion still remained attached to the Paratroopers. 229 "(Arab) Work - Our Life?" BMN. 289. (February 1976), p. 4. A moshavnik is a person who is a member of a moshav, a cooperative farm (much like a kibbutznik is a member of a kibbutz, a communal farm). Cheap Arab labour from the Occupied Territories was being used by moshavim instead of NAHAL soldiers who, even while serving their SHLAT terms, were paid higher wages than their Arab competitors. More troubling was the fact that the employment of

Arab labour itself contradicted some of the most deeply held values of the Labour

Zionist movement. No matter how NAHAL changed its service track for its soldiers, there was no denying that the era of the hard-working Zionist pioneer who saw manual

labour as a reward in its own right was coming to a close. Compounding matters,

NAHAL's pioneering activities would be further curtailed by the signing of the Camp

David Peace Accords of 1978 which called for the return of the Sinai Peninsula to the

Egyptians in exchange for a peace treaty. While no one could (or would) deny the

enormity of this event, it would mean the dismantling of all NAHAL settlements in the

Sinai desert.230 In response, NAHAL would refocus its efforts on developing the Negev

Desert, bringing NAHAL's pioneering ideology full circle to what David Ben-Gurion had originally seen as the future of Israel.231 However, it would require yet another transition in Israeli society as a whole to effect any change in NAHAL's structure.

If the 1973 War marked the end of NAHAL as it once was, then the 1982

Lebanon War marked a new beginning for the program. NAHAL soldiers participated

in much of the fighting: two he 'achzut battalions, the two mechanized patrol battalions,

two battalions of section commander trainees (destined for the 50lh Battalion) and the

th

NAHAL basic training battalion all saw action in addition to the 50 Battalion of the

Paratroopers. Those NAHAL paratroopers who were on SHLAT terms were also put

2,0 "By By, Sini [sic]" BMN, 324. (February 1979), p. 12. 231 "The Negev: The Future on Paper." BMN, 328. (June 1979), pp. 4-6. 92 into individual units in addition to individual companies attached to other units. 121

However, the IDF suffered from a lack of regular infantry units at the outset of the

Lebanon War, and the NAHAL was asked to form a temporary brigade of regular infantry in July of 1982. This formation was filled by NAHAL soldiers from the mechanized patrol battalions as well as from NAHAL paratroopers who were serving their SHLAT terms. NAHAL women and those men who were unfit for infantry duty served in support roles throughout the brigade. The NAHAL Brigade (formally the 933ld

Brigade) was made a formal regular infantry brigade by January 1983, and was subordinated to the Central Command of the IDF by 1985. The 50th Battalion was, in

1983, transferred from the Paratroopers to the NAHAL Command, while the two

NAHAL mechanized patrol battalions (931 and 932) formed the bulk of the standing

NAHAL Brigade.233

What has followed since the formation of the NAHAL Brigade is something of a denouement. In 1984, the NAHAL program received the Israel Prize in "recognition for

NAHAL's special contribution to the country's security, settlement and youth education.. .Through its activities, the NAHAL has fulfilled the best of Jewish and

Zionist values, and continues as the standard bearer of the pioneering and settlement movement."234 Also in 1984, NAHAL emphasis would change again to reflect the

Likud government's aggressive settlement and security programs in the Occupied

Territories. According to the Likud's 'Greater Israel' ideology, there was "no conflict"

232 Koren, 143. 233 Ibid, pp. 143-147. The 50th Battalion was still part of the Paratrooper Brigade until 1988. The soldiers of the 50th Battalion of the NAHAL Brigade proudly wear their red paratrooper boots, though the parachute course is now a thing of the past. 234 "Always on the Front Line" Judith Botbol, trans. BMN 453. (November 1989), p. 23. VITA

between the security needs of the State of Israel and the settlement movement.235 The

NAHAL Brigade itself focused on improvements in

Training, discipline, exercises and esprit de corps...the Brigade began developing its own training framework, one which included the garinim on various he 'aehzuyot.. .The NAHAL graduates of the IDF officer school would often be sent to he 'aehzuyot to achieve these goals. In the opinion of [NAHAL Brigade Commander] Yoram Gilboa, it was impossible to be a good NAHAL-ist without first being a good soldier.236

Throughout the 1980s NAHAL continued to enjoy a great deal of support in the

Israeli government, especially once the National Unity Coalition was formed, bringing

Yitzhak Rabin to the position of Minister of Defence.237 The former PALMACHnik

considered "settlement a supreme national value that requires no political or military justification." This dovetailed nicely with his view that "the role of NAHAL is to watch

over the potential of young people for settlement." Yet most importantly, Rabin stated

for BeMachaneh NAHAL that "the NAHAL Brigade is good for the IDF, and good for

the NAHAL [program]."" The NAHAL Brigade would later see extensive service in

the Occupied Territories, especially during the early months of the First Intifada, where

it performed no worse than other IDF units.239 However, the NAHAL Brigade garnered

a poor reputation in the Israeli public after six NAHAL soldiers were killed by a

Palestinian terrorist on November 26 1987, known as the Night of the Gliders. This

235 Koren, 148. 236 Ibid, 150. 237 There was always some debate as to NAHAL's overall usefulness, however. The Jerusalem Post November 24, 1987, p. 2. 238 Yoram Tahar-Lev, Boneh Tirush and Nili Lahav. "Interview With the Defense Minister." BMN, 409. (May 1986), pp. 7-9. 239 For a critique of the IDF's actions during the early months of the First Intifada, see Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, pp. 342-347. VITA

contributed to the impression that the NAHAL Brigade performed poorly during the

First Intifada.240

NAHAL gained equivalent standing to the other IDF infantry brigades however,

when it received its official bright (nearly-neon) green beret in 1987.241 The NAHAL

Brigade was also expanded to conform to the specifications of the rest of the standing

infantry brigades of the IDF: a 'special troops' battalion with reconnaissance,

engineering and anti-tank companies was added in the mid-1990's. The service track

for NAHAL by then consisted of:

Boys: Girls: Early SHLAT 2 months 2 months Basic training 4 months 1 Vi months Brigade 6 months NCO course or Brigade: 6 months He'achzut 6 months 6 months Advanced training 6 months SHLAT: 6 months 6 months Brigade: 6 months SHLAT: 4 months Total: 40 months 21 months242

The SHLAT and he 'achzut terms for infantrymen now only apply to the 50th

Battalion of the NAHAL Brigade which is the only unit in NAHAL still drafting

243 garinim. The other two regular battalions consist of soldiers who serve in the IDF like any other regular infantryman. Until 1997 the non-combat aspects of the NAHAL program were organized under the auspices of the Youth and NAHAL Department of

240 The Jerusalem Post. November 26 1987 p. 1, November 29 1987, p. 2, December 2 1987, p. 2, December 4 1987, p. 4. Palestinian terrorists used hang-gliders to infiltrate an IDF camp. The NAHAL Brigade guards responded badly (one soldier fled). This is not to say that the NAHAL performed well during the First Intifada, just that its poor reputation was already being established by the time of the Night of the Gliders. See also Aaron Wolf, A Purity of Arms, (New York: Doubleday, 1989) pp. 208- 225. 241 The NAHAL Brigade's nickname is the "Sticklight Brigade" in honour of their bright green berets. 242 BMN 453. (November 1989), p. 24. 243 In many cases, such garinim are composed of new Jewish immigrants to Israel or foreign Jewish volunteers. In fact, NAHAL is the only unit in the IDF which has specific service tracks for foreign volunteers in both infantry and non-combat roles. the Ministry of Defence, which would later be combined with the Education Department to form the Youth and Education Department. Also in 1997, the NAHAL Brigade was put under direct command of the IDF Central Command's 162nd Armoured Division.

The NAHAL Command, responsible for the military role expansion aspects of NAHAL, was subsumed under the Education and GADNA Corps of the IDF. This reorganization represents the vestigial nature of the NAHAL program today. While the NAHAL

Brigade itself is has a solid reputation comparable to the other regular infantry brigades of the IDF, the non-combat aspects of NAHAL are now relegated to an entirely separate entity. The public services the NAHAL still performs are useful and admired; they are organized under the auspices of the Education and GADNA Corps. The only way to tell if an IDF teacher, GADNA guide or worker is a member of NAHAL (without asking) is either by their bright green berets or if they return to a he 'achzut periodically.

There are two other special battalions that are or were affiliated with NAHAL that are worthy of mention. The first is the ' Caracal' mechanized infantry battalion, the only infantry formation in the IDF where men and women serve together. This formation was at first open only to NAHAL members (it is now an independent IDF battalion) and currently patrols the Jordanian and Egyptian borders.244

The second and more interesting formation from the perspective of changes in

Israel's overriding ideological concerns is the Netzah Yehudah battalion, otherwise known as the NAHAL Haredi battalion. This unit is no longer formally attached to the

NAHAL Brigade, but consists entirely of ultra-orthodox volunteers to the IDF.

Traditionally the ultra-orthodox have not served in the IDF, but since 1999 the NAHAL

244 Women do not serve as infantry in the IDF otherwise. Marten Van Creveld has a great deal of things to say about women serving as infantry in the IDF, none of them positive. See The Sword and the Olive, pp. 117-123,361. VITA

Haredi battalion has attracted a large amount of attention because of the increasing numbers of ultra-orthodox volunteers to the IDF.245 The establishment of this haredi formation heralds the increasing participation in the IDF by the religious Jewish community as a whole, and the ultra-orthodox in particular. The implications thereof are numerous, but beyond the scope of this thesis.

It is unsurprising that both the Caracal and the Netzah Yehuda battalions were first formed within the NAHAL framework. Since its inception NAHAL has undergone profound changes in its organizational structure and its operational goals. NAHAL has always adapted to the pressures applied on it, both from Israeli society at large and from the IDF and military establishment. If there is a place for an experimental unit to grow and develop within the IDF, it is within the overall NAHAL framework.

Israeli society underwent a profound change during and after the Yom Kippur

War. During the self-evaluation that occurred afterwards, the Labour Zionist movement, flush with a false sense of infallibility from its stunning victory in 1967, was dealt a mortal blow. Within four years, the Revisionist Likud would come to power and begin a slow process of moving Israel away from a Labour-Socialist society. While this occurred, the IDF performed its own self-evaluation. The happy-go-lucky army of 1956 and 1967 had to be replaced by something more serious, more professional and simply more military. Hence the IDF looked at its cadre of pioneer-soldiers, the NAHAL, and began to wonder aloud if the pioneering movement had any place in the army.

Thus, it is a marvel that NAHAL survived at all. Its most prestigious combat soldiers, grouped into one elite battalion of paratroopers, suffered greatly in the early

245 The IDF has always had Orthodox Jewish conscripts. The Haredi are distinguished by their exemption from the draft (dating back to an agreement formulated in the first few years of Israel's existence) and by their adherence to a very strict and distinct form of Orthodox Judaism. VITA days of fighting on the Golan Heights. Perhaps because its most elite soldiers were depleted, NAHAL had no choice but to adapt to the coming changes within the IDF. It certainly helped that through all the trauma of the 1973 War and the fallout afterwards that the NAHAL still considered its missions of settlement and youth education to be of paramount importance to the continued development of Israel. That is to say it helps to have hope and faith in one's ideology, no matter how bad things look. The honesty and ease with which NAHAL performed its introspection is astounding, given the hidebound nature of most military organizations. Then again, NAHAL has always had a tradition of self-examination and open discussion, even if its guiding ideology had verged on the

Stalinist from time to time.

Regardless, NAHAL did survive the turbulent nine years between the Yom

Kippur War and the First Lebanon War. Moreover, when NAHAL commanders saw an opportunity in the wake of the First Lebanon War to reformulate the composition of

NAHAL to better suit the needs of the IDF, they exploited it in a savvy manner. The

NAHAL Brigade fulfilled the needs of the IDF as well as the youth and settlement movements of Israel. The NAHAL program itself survives under the auspices of the

Youth and Education Corps, and both the infantry unit and the non-combat unit still contribute to the establishment of settlements and community service projects throughout Israel. Despite the decline of the ideology that drove its creation, NAHAL continues to contribute due to the values and ideals of the organizations which serve as its manpower base, the youth movements of Israel. VITA

Conclusion:

Many North Americans have, over the last half-century, encountered Israel through the kibbutz movement. Spending some time on a kibbutz either as a volunteer or on a Hebrew work-study program, is a common way for many Jewish visitors to experience Israel. That is, they experience a tiny, unique, and now vestigial aspect of

Israeli society. It is striking then, that many outside Israel still conjure up images of the kibbutznik as the stereotypical Israeli and the image of the farmer with a rifle (or Uzi submachinegun) slung over his shoulder is still alive and well, if entirely outdated.

It was NAHAL that perpetuated this soldier-pioneer stereotype, and to their own benefit.

However, this thesis is not about the image NAHAL constructed of itself for public consumption, but rather it is about how NAHAL and those serving in it viewed themselves and their organization. This thesis indirectly studies the changing ideological climate in Israel by using NAHAL as a barometer of sorts. When the Zionist revolt in Palestine resulted in the State of Israel, the ideological circumstances surrounding NAHAL's founding changed profoundly. The State of Israel has always been a social-democratic entity but it has never embraced the Marxist-Socialist collectivist ideals of the Labour Zionist kibbutz movement, despite the latter's prominent role in the founding and early development of the Jewish settlement in

Palestine.

It was the Labour Zionist movement's prominence which led to the founding of

NAHAL in 1949 and its continued existence through the first two decades of Israeli statehood. However, Labour Zionism is no longer the pre-eminent ideology in Israel, and while the state is still a socialist entity, its domestic political discourse has drifted increasingly to the right in recent years. Yet despite the fact that the ideological climate and the military factors have changed, NAHAL continues its highly ideological mission of nation-building, settlement and good citizenship. What I have attempted to do in this thesis is construct a theoretical framework to better understand how ideology affects the structure and organization of modern militaries. It was then my goal to explain the establishment and continuing evolution of NAHAL and situate its reasons for existing within this theory. The questions I asked at the beginning of this thesis bear repeating: how does NAHAL fit within the context of ongoing military professionalization and the normalization of civil-military relations in an ideologically changing environment?

What caused the IDF to create a unit based on the peculiar ideology of Zionism? How does Zionism fit into a civil-military relations theoretical framework? Is Zionism a pro- military ideology? Does the IDF wield significant power in Israeli society, and if so, is the professional officer corps of the IDF professional enough to foster objective civilian control? With these questions about ideas and ideologies in mind, I have endeavoured to place NAHAL within the greater context of civil-military relations by examining the circumstances around its creation and continued evolution since 1949.

Chapter One addresses the generally unacknowledged problem with military history and theory. Namely, there is no accepted grand theory of military history and this necessitates borrowing theories from other academic fields. What was required for this thesis then is a theoretical structure with a historical outlook: something informed by military history specifically and which deals with the relationship between the military and the state. These criteria were met in Samuel Huntington's theory of civil- VITA military relations as found in The Soldier and the State.246 Huntington remains wholly within the overall Clausewitzian framework, while expanding Clausewitz by accounting for the effects of ideologies on civil-military relations. By using Huntington's theoretical model for civil-military relations, it is possible to emphasize ideological forces and their impact on the formulation of a nation-state's civil-military relations system. Huntington's model is also particularly modular and well-suited to expansion.

By adding Zionism as another ideological category, it becomes possible to utilize

Huntington's trinity of political power, ideology and military professionalism in the

Israeli case.

Zionism, for our purposes, is an ideology with one very clear goal in mind: the establishment of a Jewish national home in the land of Israel. Zionism is a modernist project, a secular answer to a question of religious and ethnic identity. Zionism recognizes that the Jewish people require a homeland for security and national self- worth. It seeks to mobilize and unify the Jewish people by putting them to work and making them responsible for their self-defense. Most importantly, Zionism is pragmatic

- many would argue ruthless - in the extreme. This allowed and continues to allow the

Zionist project, i.e. the State of Israel, a great deal of leeway in meeting its objectives.

Zionism is also, for our purposes, an umbrella ideology encompassing the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum.

In terms of civil-military relations, this has a direct bearing on NAHAL and the

Israel Defense Force. In Huntington's terms, Zionism is a pro-military ideology; as an entity, the IDF maintains high levels of political power and military professionalism and

246 Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964). VITA

there exists in Israel objective civilian control. This arrangement was deliberately imposed on the Haganah and the nascent IDF by David Ben-Gurion at the founding of the State of Israel and the IDF in 1948. Zionism's overall pragmatism allows for objective civilian control because of its modernist and secular tenets: Zionism's goal was a modern nation-state. This pragmatism extends even to the Marxist and Labour

Zionist streams of the overall movement, despite their Utopian and revolutionary tendencies.

The revolutionary tradition celebrated in the Marxist-Zionist PALMACH, however, did not lend itself to the establishment of objective civilian control. Within the

PALMACH itself a certain democratic tradition existed to be sure. Yet as a military formation its loyalties lay with the Marxist-Stalinist MAP AM political party.

Pragmatically, the PALMACH was able to look beyond the internecine struggle that gripped the civilian pre-state political establishment, and subsumed itself within the larger Haganah defense framework while the Jewish community of Palestine fought for independence. However, once the war for independence was over, the PALMACH's own political leanings combined with its exemplary wartime achievements made it both the centerpiece of the struggle between MAP AM and MAPAI for political dominance as well as a necessary sacrifice for objective civilian control. The PALMACH's loyalties were Marxist, and as such lay outside the ideological boundaries required for a professional military.

Our theoretical framework allows us to better understand the circumstances surrounding the founding of NAHAL in the second chapter. NAHAL was a pragmatic

Zionist compromise between Labour Zionist idealism, the necessity for objective VITA civilian control in a modern nation-state and the pressing developmental needs of a newly-established and militarily insecure Israel. The desires of the vanguard of the

Zionist project, the youth movements, were thus placated. NAHAL served as a means of integrating highly-motivated young people into a military structure that did not necessarily share the same overall values. Moreover, all this was accomplished within the overall framework of increasing military professionalism within a standing conscript army under objective civilian control. The youth movements may have had their party loyalties, but once in NAHAL, a garin served the state first and foremost. NAHAL also kept the Jewish pioneer-fighter ideal so central to Labour Zionism alive and flourishing well into the 1970's. This was a reflection of the real contribution NAHAL made to the agricultural, cultural and infrastructural development of the State of Israel. NAHAL embodied the successful compromise between Ben-Gurion's desire for objective civilian control of the military and the youth movements' wish to maintain some of their prominence within the post-independence reality.

NAHAL's fortunes after 1949 reflected political and military necessity as well as larger ideological trends in Israel. This thesis is therefore a study in the fortunes of

Labour Zionism as seen through the all-pervasive lens of Israeli national security. The

IDF was considered a nation-building tool from the outset and it would be NAHAL that would take up the ideal of national redemption through agricultural labour and youth empowerment. Until 1973 NAHAL's mandate dovetailed well enough with the overall security concerns of the state to enable it to function more or less as it had originally been envisioned. Indeed, NAHAL flourished during this period and contributed in lasting and meaningful ways to Israeli society. NAHAL was able to survive the IDF's drastic changes in the post-1973 and post-1982 eras because of the strong commitment its membership had to its non-military mission and its fundamentally pragmatic Zionist ideological origins. NAHAL could respond well to new challenges because the Labour Zionist movement was malleable enough to admit that changing circumstances necessitated changing policies. NAHAL had to be flexible in order to better respond to calls for a more professional IDF. As well, the changing ideological outlook of Israeli society favoured NAHAL's emphasis on non-military, socialist activities less and less. Thus, the NAHAL Brigade of today represents the current outcome of a long-evolving compromise: the need for objective civilian control and increasing military professionalism on the one hand, and Zionist youth ideology, nation-building and military role expansion on the other.

Finally, from a theoretical perspective, this thesis discusses Israeli youth as an empowered and active force within a military body. Contrast this with the English- language literary tradition of the death of youth - metaphoric or literal - when it goes off to war. Israeli society has a similar attitude towards sending its 18-21 year-olds off to fight, yet there is a sense too that youth is more empowered and politically conscious as a whole in Israel. This is certainly the case with regards to the establishment and continued existence of NAHAL. I wonder then, if historiography should treat youth, or perhaps age, the same way it treats race, class, culture and gender: not solely as a demographic figure, but also as an avenue of historical research and analysis. VITA

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Joshua Nathan Peters

University of Victoria, 1995-2003, Bachelor of Arts in History (honours), Mathematics