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
