This open access book opens with a short introduction that provides historical contextualization, positions the volume within the broader field, outlines its aims, and introduces its chapters. The book is divided into two parts, each representing a principal domain in which new conceptualizations are proposed (see below on the logic of which).

The first part addresses what was challenged in this war: the principles of the citizen army. Historically, the rise of the citizen army is associated with the emergence of mass conscription in revolutionary eighteenth-century France, and this legacy became the organizing foundation of the Israeli military. It is therefore relevant to open the book with an examination of the challenge to this model. The central principle constituting the citizen army is that citizens serve in it “as citizens,” not merely that citizens serve in the army. This principle strengthened the identification between soldiering and citizenship, such that military service came to define the boundaries of substantive citizenship. By linking the duty to serve with rights, it established the institution of the “citizen-soldier.” On this basis, informal contractual relations developed between the social group from which the soldier came, and the state, grounded in a republican ethos. This ethos regards military contribution, rather than individual achievement, as the decisive criterion for social, personal, and collective rewards. The principles of the citizen army were challenged in multiple ways during this war.

The second part addresses militarization and new patterns of violence. Since the Second Intifada (2000), Israeli militarization has assumed a new form that combines seemingly contradictory cultural patterns. At its core stands a secular militarist discourse that continues traditional patterns centered on the army and its networks. Often expressed in “soft” forms, this discourse facilitates its absorption while making resistance more difficult for the secular middle class. Alongside it developed a religiousnationalist discourse that seeks to strip violence of its camouflage and even to celebrate its unrestrained application. 

The concluding chapter by Joseph Soeters, professor emeritus at the Netherlands Defence Academy and Tilburgh University, will draw generalized insights from the Israeli case and situate it within a broader theoretical context of military sociology, and possibly also within a wider geopolitical framework related to the evolving global order. A reflection on the Israeli field by a foreign scholar promises fruitful and unexpected analytical avenues, enhancing both the comparative and theoretical contributions of the volume.

Yagil Levy is a professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel and the head of The Open University Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations. His field of research focuses on the theoretical and empirical aspects of civil-military relations. Levy has published ten books, four of them in English, in addition to a coauthored book, and eight edited volumes. During the years 2013-2015, Levy served as the President of ERGOMAS - the European Research Group on Military and Society. In 2021, he was awarded the Morris Janowitz Career Achievement Award by the Inter- University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (USA).

Nir Gazit is a political sociologist and anthropologist who currently serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Ruppin Academic Center. His research interests include civil–military relations, political violence, and vigilantism. Gazit investigates how security imperatives, violence and militarism reconfigure contemporary identities and social landscapes. He co-edited three volumes and four special issues on civil-military relations, and his recent publications have appeared in International Political Sociology, International Sociology, Current Sociology, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and Armed Forces and Society .

Dr. Ofra Ben Ishai is a Colonel (Reserve) and a former Chief Instructor at the Israeli National Security College (INSC) and former Head of the IDF Behavioral Sciences Department. Currently she is a member of the teaching faculty at the Open University of Israel and serves on the board of the Open University’s Institute for the Study of Society and the Military. Her areas of expertise include civil–military relations in Israel and the societal implications of Israel’s security doctrine. Her most recent publication is Ben Ishai, O., Yagil, L., & Rinat, M. (2024). Momentum and Weakness: Social Readings of Israeli Military Doctrine. Pardes [Hebrew].

Erella Grassiani is an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. She has studied the Israeli military and the Israeli security industry for decades. She is the author of: Soldiering under Occupation processes of Numbing among Israeli soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2013 Berghahn Books). She is the co-editor of Security Blurs: The Politics of Plural Security Provision (2019 Routledge) and The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World (2023 Routledge). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Conflict and Society: Advances in Research.