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The Sword And The Olive: A Critical History Of The Israeli Defense Force
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About the Author
Martin van Creveld is a military historian at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Transformation of War, Command in War, and many other books, several of which are required reading for all US Army officers. Two of his children have served in the Israeli Defense Force.
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Product details
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (July 15, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 158648155X
ISBN-13: 978-1586481551
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.8 out of 5 stars
12 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,253,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a good, comprehensive history of the IDF from it's beginning until about 2 decades ago. It appears to have been written by someone who is not a super fan of the IDF, but is objective if not partisan. I don't know too many people who don't think that pound for pound the IDF isn't the best fighting force on the planet and can still probably take the Arab armies today, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been some slippage and that is pointed out in this book along with constructive criticism, not just disparaging remarks. I think it could be a useful reference for those who would like to learn more.
Martin Van Creveld does an masterful job at writing about the rise and the decline of the IDF. The first part of the is about how the IDF was improvised in the early phases of the First Arabi-Israeli War. According to Van Creveld those who originated from the PALAMCH companies were much more effective in combat compared to their British trained compatriots within the Israeli army. In the middle section Van Creveld criticizes is the IDF's performance in the Suez Canal campaign and the Six Day War. Van Creveld credits the airforces of the British and French in making the Israeli's campaign successful, but the Israelis committed numerous mistakes such the as the paratroop landing at Mitla Pass that was a militarily useless objective. The next chapter Van Creveld questions the IDFs effectiveness during the Six Day War. Van Crevled theorizes that contrary to public opinion the IDF did not practice the much vaunted indircet approach. The IDF mainly attacked the northern and central Egyptian forces in the Sinai. This allowed those Egyptians in the southern sector to escape. The only general to practice the indirect approach was Yoffe, but since Yoffe was an reservist he never received the publicity and the credit that was due to him. The IDF also never made use of combined arms except in the case of Sharon's operations in the Sinai. Van Creveld harshly condems Israeli operations in the opening phases of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The overcentralized yet disoganized command structure of the IDF led to near disasterous defeats in the early phases of the Yom Kippur War. Van Creveld then evaluates the IDF's performance in Lebanon during the early nineteen eighties. The IDF tried to put too many armored vehicles in a country that had a scarcity of roads. As a result the IDF became bogged down in traffic jams and the PLO was allowed to escape. The IDF proved itself to be incapable of dealing with insurgencys as to seen in their response to the Palestinian uprisings of the late eighties. The IDF would send it's most ill trained sildiers to deal with the uprising. As a result the IDF either used excessive force or prudence, both of which led to defeat. Van Creveld states the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is slowly stagnating the IDF and that the Israelis must pull back from these territories. Another aspect that is mentioned in the book is the situation of manpower within the IDF. In the first phase of it's history the IDF was a compact, highly trained, and motivated fighting force. But in the seventies and eighties the force became bloated and ineffective. The IDF accepted so many conscripts that all but the elite units were trained effectively.Van Crevled opionizes that the conscription of women has only made the problem worse. Van Creveld tells about how ill educated IDF officers are compared to their foreign counterparts. Unlike most Western nations the IDF has no formal service academy. Instead IDF officers had to prove their leadership ability while as an NCO and then go to officer training school. The attempt to introduce a defense university has only met with failure in Israeli history. In the eighties and nineties a vast majority of educated Israelis opted out of the IDF officer corps. But very ill educated but religious Israelis became a large percentage of the current Israeli officer corps. Van Creveld believes that these new religious officers pose a great threat to Israelis democracy. The only criticisms that I have with the book is that Van Creveld glosses over Israeli operations in the Golan Heights during the 1967 and 1973 wars. Other than these minor criticisms this is by far the best book about the history of the IDF.
This was an excellent overview of the history of one of the greatest military machines ever to exist. Van Creveld, himself a veteran, writes with an engaging style, if not overly technical in some places. The book was originally written in Hebrew, so some words unique to the language will slow down a lot of readers. Van Creveld also translated (and transliterated) the book into English himself, so some spellings may be different that what a reader would normally be used to. The thesis and conclusions may shatter some illusions that you may have about the IDF, but they are completely accurate. A must read for anyone interested in Israeli history, especially recent history.
good, scholarly history of Israeli army - its ethos and tactics - by top military historian; maybe we can press publisher to update??
Detailing the evolution of the Israeli Defence Force from its pre -world war one beginning as a private company of guards (Ha-shomer), through its War of Independence and its "finest hour" in the 1967 Six Day War, and up to the 1990s with its failure to act during the 1991 first Gulf War and first Intifada (1986-1993), "The Sword and the Olive" is a compelling portrait of Israel's army, and, as the IDF is one of Israel's central institution, of the Israeli State and of Israeli society in the 20th century.A world renowned military historian, Martin van Creveld's book is very well written and highly informed. It covers the military, social and economic aspects of the IDF, touching on almost everything, be it the role of nuclear weapons in Middle East, gender roles in the IDF (most controversial is van Creveld's thesis postulating an inverse relationship between the role of women in the Army and its prestige p. 361), or the similarities between the IDF's strategy and that of the Whermacht.I often lament the shortages of maps in Military history books, but van Creveld's book is more offensive then most in this regard, normally there is only one map to each campaign, and I doubt anyone but the initiated can follow van Creveld's description of Israel's wars.I am no expert in Israeli military history, most of which I gather from reading Israeli newspapers, but I was particularly surprised of van Creveld's assertions that a main motive behind Nasser's commencement of hostilities in the Six Day War was his fear of the Israeli Nuclear program. Van Creveld emerges as a critic of Israel's policy of nuclear policies, arguing that opacity failed to prevent the Six Day war and the Yom Kippur war (pp. 220-221). As a cause for the Six-Day war, van Creveld hardly mentions the internal political consideration of the Arabs, particularly in Egypt (see Michael B. Oren's brilliant "Six Days of War" for a very different perspective).I never realized how limited the Egyptian military's moves were in the Yom Kippur war (van Creveld always refers to it as 'The October war'). In essence, Israel's maintenance of the Bar-Lev line, on the west bank of the Suez canal, was costly in terms of human life and military material, and made little or no strategic sense. By fighting on the line, Israel subjugated itself to heavy anti-aircraft and anti-tank fire, and thus did not enjoy the superiority it had in mobile warfare as in the Six Days war and the 1956 war. Israel utterly failed to take advantage of the strategic qualities of the Sinai desert as a barrier against attack on itself.The subtitle of "The Sword and the Olive" is "A Critical History", and critical it is. Van Creveld does not spare criticism of the early pre State Israeli forces and personnel, as well as of Israel's army in the first twenty-five years of its existence, blaming Israelis for inciting Syrian fire on its tractors and questioning performances in the Six Day War.After the 1973 war, though, van Creveld's criticisms become truly devastating. As heads of state, Golda Meir "frankly admit[ed] she did not know exactly what a division was", and Menachem Begin "kept meddling [with army affairs] even though his military knowledge had been acquired during his kindergarten years and barely developed thereafter" (p. 108). Nor is van Creveld kinder to generals: Moshe Dayan "failed to carry his point of view in the Cabinet" and "as usual" "found a way to shift responsibility [for the Bar Lev line] to others" (pp. 211-213). General 'Motta' Gur's "greatest intellectual achievement[s]" were "a series of children's books about Azzit, a heroic shepherd she-dog" (p. 249). The general intellectual poverty of the Israeli high command was manifested in Rafael Eytan "for whom wider cultural horizons simply do not exist" (p. 263).About the current state of the Israeli army van Creveld doesn't mince words. The state of the Israeli moral is so devastating that the army had to suppress research about it. "In an army that once prided itself on truthfulness, lying has become institutionalized" van Creveld writes (p. 350). Great public outcry about accidents led to a pre-approbation of exercises and to a sharp decrease in the quantity and quality of training (p.349). Indeed, the IDF has become "soft, bloated, frequently undisciplined and undertrained", and although every successive IDF chief of staff has promised to make the army "lean and mean" again, none delivered the promise (p. 318).Van Creveld has little doubt as to the cause of the malaise: The Occupation and the war against the Palestinians. "War... is an imitative activity in which... the two sides will learn from each other and tend to resemble each other. Thus he who fights the weak will himself become weak, and he who by "fighting" the weak behaves like a coward will end up turning into one" (p.352).You do not have to agree with every point of van Creveld opinionated study in order to appreciate its knowledge and learning. A Superb source about the IDF, "The Sword and the Olive" is a must read for anyone interested in Israel, the Middle East, or Military history.
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