Rabin’s reaction was especially surprising since he had been the IDF chief of staff during Israel’s Six-Day War. Farkash continued the story: “So I told him, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, this individual sergeant is not alone. It was not a mistake. All the soldiers in Unit 8200 must know these things because if we limited such information to officers, we simply would not have enough people to get the work done—we don’t have enough officers.’ And in fact, the system was not changed, because it’s impossible for us, given the manpower constraints, to build a different system.”7
Farkash, who today runs a company that provides innovative security systems for corporate and residential facilities, quipped that compared to the major powers, Israel is missing four “generals”: “general territory, general manpower, general time, and general budget.” But nothing can be done about the shortage of general manpower, Farkash says. “We cannot allocate as many officers as other countries do, so we have sergeants that are doing the work of lieutenant colonels, really.”
This scarcity of manpower is also responsible for what is perhaps the IDF’s most unusual characteristic: the role of its reserve forces. Unlike in other countries, reserve forces are the backbone of Israel’s military.
In most militaries, reserve forces are constructed as appendages to the standing army, which is the nation’s main line of defense. Israel, however, is so small and outnumbered by its adversaries that, as was clear from the beginning, no standing army could be large enough to defend against an all-out assault. Shortly after the War of Independence, Israel’s leaders decided on a unique reserves-dominated military structure, whereby reservists would not only man whole units but would be commanded by reserve officers as well. Reserve units of other militaries may or may not be commanded by officers from the standing army, but they are given weeks or even months of refresher training before being sent into battle. “No army had relied for the majority of its troops on men who were sent into combat one or two days after their recall,” says Luttwak.
No one really knew whether Israel’s unique reserve system would work, because it had never been tried. Even today, Israel is the only army in the world to have such a system. As U.S. military historian Fred Kagan explained, “It’s actually a terrible way to manage an army. But the Israelis are excellent at it because they had no other choice.”8
Israel’s reserve system is not just an example of the country’s innovation; it is also a catalyst for it. Because hierarchy is naturally diminished when taxi drivers can command millionaires and twenty-three-year-olds can train their uncles, the reserve system helps to reinforce that chaotic, antihierarchical ethos that can be found in every aspect of Israeli society, from war room to classroom to boardroom.
Nati Ron is a lawyer in his civilian life and a lieutenant colonel who commands an army unit in the reserves. “Rank is almost meaningless in the reserves,” he told us, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “A private will tell a general in an exercise, ‘You are doing this wrong, you should do it this way.’ ”9
Amos Goren, a venture capital investor with Apax Partners in Tel Aviv, agrees. He served full-time in the Israeli commandos for five years and was in the reserves for the next twenty-five years. “During that entire time, I never saluted anybody, ever. And I wasn’t even an officer. I was just a rank-and-file soldier.”10
Luttwak says that “in the reserve formations, the atmosphere remains resolutely civilian in the midst of all the trappings of military life.”
This is not to say that soldiers aren’t expected to obey orders. But, as Goren explained to us, “Israeli soldiers are not defined by rank; they are defined by what they are good at.” Or, as Luttwak said, “Orders are given and obeyed in the spirit of men who have a job to do and mean to do it, but the hierarchy of rank is of small importance, especially since it often cuts across sharp differences in age and social status.”
When we asked Major General Farkash why Israel’s military is so antihierarchical and open to questioning, he told us it was not just the military but Israel’s entire society and history. “Our religion is an open book,” he said, in a subtle European accent that traces back to his early years in Transylvania. The “open book” he was referring to was the Talmud—a dense recording of centuries of rabbinic debates over how to interpret the Bible and obey its laws—and the corresponding attitude of questioning is built into Jewish religion, as well as into the national ethos of Israel.
As Israeli author Amos Oz has said, Judaism and Israel have always cultivated “a culture of doubt and argument, an open-ended game of interpretations, counter-interpretations, reinterpretations, opposing interpretations. From the very beginning of the existence of the Jewish civilization, it was recognized by its argumentativeness.”11
Indeed, the IDF’s lack of hierarchy pervades civilian life. It can even break down civilian hierarchies. “The professor acquires respect for his student, the boss for his high-ranking clerk. . . . Every Israeli has his friends ‘from the reserves’ with whom he might not otherwise have any kind of social contact,” says Luttwak. “Sleeping in bare huts or tents, eating dull army food, often going without a shower for days, reservists of widely different social backgrounds meet on an equal footing; Israel is still a society with fewer class differences than most, and the reserve system has contributed to keeping it that way.”
The dilution of hierarchy and rank, moreover, is not typical of other militaries. Historian and IDF reserve officer Michael Oren—now serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United States—described a typical scene at an Israeli army base from when he was in a military liaison unit: “You would sit around with a bunch of Israeli generals, and we all wanted coffee. Whoever was closest to the coffee pot would go make it. It didn’t matter who—it was common for generals to be serving coffee to their soldiers or vice versa. There is no protocol about these things. But if you were with American captains and a major walked in, everyone would stiffen. And then a colonel would walk in and the major would stiffen. It’s extremely rigid and hierarchical in the U.S. Rank is very, very important. As they say in the American military, ‘You salute the rank, not the person.’ ”12
In the IDF, there are even extremely unconventional ways to challenge senior officers. “I was in Israeli army units where we threw out the officers,” Oren told us, “where people just got together and voted them out. I witnessed this twice personally. I actually liked the guy, but I was outvoted. They voted out a colonel.” When we asked Oren in disbelief how this worked, he explained, “You go and you say, ‘We don’t want you. You’re not good.’ I mean, everyone’s on a first-name basis. . . . You go to the person above him and say, ‘That guy’s got to go.’ . . . It’s much more performance-oriented than it is about rank.”
Retired IDF General Moshe “Bogey” Yaalon, who served as chief of staff of the army during the second intifada, told us a similar story from the second Lebanon war. “There was an operation conducted by a reserve unit in the Lebanese village of Dabu. Nine of our soldiers and officers were killed, and others were injured, including my nephew. And the surviving soldiers blamed the battalion commander for his incompetent management of the operation. The soldiers at the company level went to the brigade commander to complain about the battalion commander. Now, the brigade commander, of course, did his own investigation. But the battalion commander was ultimately forced to step down because of a process that was initiated by his subordinates.”13