“Over the past three years [vanaf 2016], Israeli scholars of literature, culture, and art, together with politologists [sic.] and social scientists, have published in Hebrew more than a half-dozen books on these topics. They all share a common denominator: they view war as the primary force that has shaped Israel’s character. Moreover, these authors do not see war as a force imposed on Israel from the outside that has persisted only as a result of the intransigence of Israel’s enemies. Rather, they believe that, to a great extent, war is the result of a deep yearning for physical heroism and the use of force.

In reading these volumes, it becomes difficult to avoid a troubling comparison. While the traumatic experiences of World War II led the Japanese and German societies to stem their deeply rooted militaristic traditions, Israelis seem to have done the opposite. Israelis have turned their backs on Jewish tradition, which has traditionally maintained a spiritual view of heroism, and have adopted a physical view in its stead. Even the former psychologist of the IDF division serving in the West Bank refers to the Israeli ‘belligerent identity’.

We are no longer forbidden to utter the word ‘militarism’.”

Bron: Peri, Yoram. “Finally, Militarism Is a Legitimate Term.” Israel Studies Review, vol. 35, no. 2, 2020, pp. 122–29. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48736578. Accessed 22 Mar. 2024

Ofwel:

Peri, Y. (2020). Finally, Militarism Is a Legitimate Term [Review of From the Heroism of the Spirit to the Sanctification of Power: Power and Heroism in Religious Zionism between 1948 and 1968; The Security Style and the Hebrew Culture of War; Dying to Watch: War, Memory, and Television in Israel 1967–1991; Tel Aviv Was Also Once an Arab Village: The Normalization of the Territories in Israeli Discourse; The Life of War: On the Military, Revenge, Loss, and War Consciousness in Israeli Prose; Songs Through the Barrel of the Gun: Israeli Soldiers’ Folk Songs, by D. Greenblum, U. S. Cohen, D. Arev, D. Gavriely-Nuri, N. Ben-Dov, & H. Milo]. Israel Studies Review, 35(2), 122–129. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48736578

Over Yoram peri:

“Prof Emeritus (since 2020) Yoram Peri was the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies, and Director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, the University of Maryland at College Park. A former political advisor to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, founder and former head of Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society and professor of Political Sociology and Communication at Tel Aviv University, and former Editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily, Davar. Born in Jerusalem, he earned his B.A. and M.A. in Political Science and Sociology at the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. ” (https://jewishstudies.umd.edu/directory/yoram-peri)