A History of the Israeli Army: 1874 to the Present

by Ze'ev Schiff

Overview

"It is virtually impossible to understand Israel or the Middle East without understanding Israel's military history and its security needs. There are many books that attempt to provide such a history, but Ze'ev Schiff's concise History of the Israeli Army is unquestionably the most successful... he writes with great objectivity and probes issues that most Israeli military writers prefer to dodge... Mr. Schiff's ability to come to grips with the fact that both Israel and the Arab states bordering it used tactics the other side regards as terrorism, and continue to use them, is matched by his skill in summarizing the causes, course and outcome of the large-scale Arab-Israeli conflicts in 1956, 1967 and 1973 and the war of attrition in 1969-70. Mr. Schiff provides an excellent summary of the political and military forces that shaped Israel's behavior in each war. He neither justifies nor excuses Israel's behavior, and he does not justify or excuse Israel's motives and goals — he is content to explain them. He also explains the factors that shaped Arab behavior and gives the causes of Arab defeats without editorializing... Mr. Schiff avoids technical issues, tactics and the details of battles; he focuses on the main flow of events. He provides a short history of the major events shaping Israel's military forces and strategy before and during each war. His descriptions of military events flow naturally out of his accounts of political motives and strategy. His chapter on doctrine ties together the histories of the different conflicts, and it should be read by anyone who feels Israel somehow has caused most of its wars... His chapter on the 1982 war in Lebanon is the most incisive reporting yet done on that event, a model of how good defense reporting can be when it looks beyond the day-to-day flow of events and searches out the underlying pattern of military conflict and its causes. Mr. Schiff presents the war as one in which Mr. Sharon, then Israel's Minister of Defense, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory... Mr. Schiff's treatment of Mr. Sharon and the P.L.O.'s high command is devastating; it adds up to one of the best arguments against violence as a solution to the problems of the Middle East ever written... In short, Mr. Schiff has written a history that any historian or political or military analyst must envy." — The New York Times

"[A] story concisely and clearly told. Schiff's ability to deal with Israeli military matters accurately and analytically... is in evidence as usual... This is a good introduction to the subject and well written." — Middle East Journal

"[I]f one does not have a basic book on the Israeli Army, this is one of the best." — Military Affairs

Product Details

BN ID:	2940185789735
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	05/23/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Born in France, Ze’ev Schiff (1932-2007) moved to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1935. After serving in the Israel Defense Forces as an intelligence officer, he studied Middle Eastern affairs and military history at Tel Aviv University and joined the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in 1955, for which he would write for the next 50 years. His articles also appeared in the New York Times, Middle East Journal, Washington Post, National Interest, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and Lebanon’s Daily Star. Schiff gained the confidence and respect of Israel’s top military leaders for his incisive analyses and reporting and became a household name in Israel.

He reported on military affairs in Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Cyprus and Ethiopia, and on the 1967 Six-Day war and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Schiff won many awards, including the Amos Lev Prize for military reporting, the Sara Reichenstein Prize for interviews, the Sokolov Journalism Prize in 1974 for his book October Earthquake: Yom Kippur 1973 and the Chaim herzog Prize in 2003 for special contributions to the State of Israel. His other books include Israel’s Lebanon War and Intifada, both with Ehud Ya’ari, and A History of the Israeli Army: 1874 to the Present.

He became a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1984, and was a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a member of the board of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He was chairman of the Military Writers Association, trustee of Britain’s International Institute of Strategic Studies and Brochstein Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.