URI BEN-ELIEZER, The Making of Israeli Militarism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998). Pp. 290. $35 cloth.

Abstract

Israel's May 1999 elections featured three newly retired generals, including Ehud Barak, a former chief of staff who was elected prime minister. There was consensus among most political analysts that Barak was elected primarily because of his military background. Moreover, a wellorchestrated public-relations campaign presented Barak as the most likely candidate to revive the peace process that his military commander, Yitzhak Rabin, had started. Few questioned, however, that military credentials have become almost a prerequisite to holding political office in Israel or that someone who devoted most of his life to war-making is indeed the best person to lead a peacemaking process. It would be quite difficult to understand the centrality of the military in Israeli politics, as in almost any other sphere of life, without paying close attention to the processes and practices that have shaped Israeli militarism over time. By providing readers with both the historical context and the socio-political background, Uri Ben-Eliezer's The Making of Israeli Militarism enables us to come to terms with how the “military way,” as he refers to it, came to dominate Israeli politics in general and its relationships with its neighbors in particular.