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Temple Sinai’s Israel Education Committee Zoom Presentation
A spirited fighting culture: the IDF’s early years

with Dr. Gil-li Vardi
Lecturer at Stanford University’s History Department and the Program in International Relations

With little history to guide them, the newly-instituted military leadership of the ‘born in battle’ Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) created, ex-nihilo, a set of beliefs and assumptions that shaped the IDF. These early-on values molded the IDF’s soldier's creed and warrior ethos. The emphasis on offense, political agency, and disobedience to civil authority characterized the IDF from its early inception. This was not an accidental, or gradual process; it was so designed and encouraged by Israel’s political and military leadership. Both assumed that the IDF would have to be “an army like no other” and worked diligently to forge it as such.

Why did the IDF display an unwillingness to obey governmental orders that set limits to its actions? How did the IDF leadership instill habits and ways of thinking into what was then a motley new force? What were the values and practices they aspired to instill, and how have those values influenced the culture? This talk will explore the early days of the IDF and how those early efforts have allowed the IDF to become the offense-oriented, aggressive force it is today.

Dr. Gil-Li Vardi is a lecturer at Stanford University’s History Department and the Program in International Relations. She completed her PhD. at the London School of Economics in 2008, and spent two years as a research fellow at the University of Oxford Leverhulme Program on the Changing Character of War, after which she joined Notre Dame University as a J. P. Moran Family Assistant Professor of Military History. Dr. Vardi received her undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Her research interests are the military history of modern Europe and the Middle East, military and strategic culture, and evolution of modern military thought. Her research examines the interplay between organizational culture, doctrine, and operational patterns in military organizations, and focuses on the incentives and dynamics of change in military thought and practice. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the sources of the IDF’s early strategic and operational perceptions and preferences.