SNAPSHOT: THE IDF AS NEVER SEEN BEFORE
A Book Review by Dr. Harold Goldmeier
Gefen Publishing 2018
Authors Yoav Limor and Ziv Koren
Translated by Jessica Setbon
Buy Snapshot and you will read it
and refer to it time and again. Snapshot is a phenomenal visual and
thought-provoking book.
The Israel Defense Forces function
on a daily basis employing stealth and deception more than raw power. Yoav Limor and Ziv Koren created a tome using
the same techniques. The size is for a coffee table throw down. The
presentation is a work of art thanks to the wisest publisher and staff who in
the same oeuvre produced the picture book My Jerusalem by Ilan Greenfield. Snapshot
takes it to a new level captivating the reader.
The photography is efficient,
elegant and powerful. The photos express the pieties of reverence for Israel’s
soldiers, their selflessness, respect, loyalty and their devotion to saving a
nation. The photography is so engrossing the reader might too easily forget to
read the brilliant text of every tightly knit chapter. Snapshot is a must have
book to understand the modern Jewish State, how and why the IDF became the
central feature the inflection point of the Jewish people.
The Holocaust and centuries-long
persecutions of the Jewish People paved the way for the revolutionary thinking
among Jews called Zionism. A homeland by legal authority, defended by a Jewish
army, morphed into a political ideology, yet, there is room for those who also
believe in diplomacy, democracy, prayer, and pleadings.
Security and safety are the central
missions, but the IDF is also the vehicle to assimilate and acculturate
refugees, immigrants and native residents of other races and faiths. The IDF
accepts people from disparate cultures arriving from the far corners of the
world…white, black, brown, Caucasian and Oriental, religious and secular, Jew,
Bedouin, Arab, Christian or Druze, educated and illiterate, survivors and
sabras. They meet in IDF tents and training grounds and the photographs so
eloquently make the point. Their lives depend on one another.
It’s the IDF that is responsible
for the Jewish condition today that among the world’s 65M refugees there is not
one Jew for the first time in 2,000 years. “Either (the IDF) is fighting, or
else it is preparing for war.” In between battles, “the shadow war, the purpose
of this state is to carry out quiet activity to eliminate the enemy’s
capabilities and prevent an all-out war.” Special units travel the world and
inside the country to fulfill this mission, and Snapshot has the pictures to
prove it.
By the 2017 democracy index,
Israelis “trusted the IDF…vastly exceed(ing) the number of Israel’s citizens
who declared their trust in any other institution of the state—more than the
presidency or the Supreme Court.” Limor, the journalist, and Koren the
photojournalist share a “love and concern for it.” But they are not hesitant to
expose the structural cracks, the enormous stress from supporting a high-tech
volunteer military diminishing domestic needs and priorities, the costs to
moral, and shifting agendas from pressures by decorous political and public
relations vagaries.
The authors go into detail about
why some people serve in the IDF and others are exilic willing to risk
government benefits and jobs in Israel. It worries military commanders because
it increasingly seems “the ethic of service as contribution to society is
shattered, the more worthy may not enlist—and this will lead to a vastly
different army.” The authors relate a conversation between Brig. Gen. Eran
Shani and his daughter who when asked if there was no mandatory service will
she enlist? Her answer makes the point: “Maybe I would contribute to society in
another way—science, medicine, or academia.” Avidity among the vast majority of
youth for serving seems to be on the wane but they show up for the draft.
“Draft classes are expected to grow dramatically, with thousands of additional
soldiers per year.”
I disagree with the authors on
several points the most important of which is their opinion that the
existential threat is slim. “In terms of national security, these threats are
only tactical.” They admit the Israeli public does not agree either. “The
public conceives of each missile, each terrorist, and each bomb as an
existential threat.”
The public is right to do so
because the rule of engagement in the Middle East is for every action there is
an unintended consequence. Hamas building attack tunnels as the authors
describe stimulates new technologies to destroy tunnels. But tunnels were one
of the considerable factors contributing to the military collapse in Vietnam
because while tunneling terrorists are not an existential threat they have a
powerful demoralizing effect on the population. Moreover, Israelis live with a
siege mentality evidenced by politics shifting more rightwing over ensuing
decades. Who can say where that will lead society and Israel’s unremitting generational
enemies—nuclear Turkey and Iran today; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and the Gulf
States in the past.
Snapshot ranks among the most
important books about modern Israel with its clearheaded explanations about
security and safety, military technology and prowess, and the military’s impact
on social and political institutions. Limor
and Koren engross the reader. The book demonstrates how the IDF is, to paraphrase,
a lurching work in progress. While politics may be a poisoned chalice, the IDF
is what protects the state, thus the Jewish People, from becoming an endling.
Behind every weapon is one of Israel’s children, and nothing makes that point
more emphatically than the book’s cover picture.
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