Start-up Nation

The degree to which authority devolves to some of the most junior members of the military has at times surprised even Israeli leaders. In 1974, during the first premiership of Yitzhak Rabin, a young female soldier from the IDF’s Unit 8200—the same unit in which the founders of Fraud Sciences later served—was kidnapped by terrorists. Major General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash (known as Farkash), who headed the unit—Israel’s parallel to the U.S. National Security Agency—recalled Rabin’s disbelief: “The kidnapped girl was a sergeant. Rabin asked us to provide him an itemization of what she knew. He was worried about the depth of classified information that could be forced out of her. When he saw the briefing paper, Rabin told us we needed an immediate investigation; it’s impossible that a sergeant would know so many secrets that are critical to Israel’s security. How did this happen?”

Rabin’s reaction was especially surprising since he had been the IDF chief of staff during Israel’s Six-Day War. Farkash continued the story: “So I told him, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, this individual sergeant is not alone. It was not a mistake. All the soldiers in Unit 8200 must know these things because if we limited such information to officers, we simply would not have enough people to get the work done—we don’t have enough officers.’ And in fact, the system was not changed, because it’s impossible for us, given the manpower constraints, to build a different system.”⁷

Farkash, who today runs a company that provides innovative security systems for corporate and residential facilities, quipped that compared to the major powers, Israel is missing four “generals”: “general territory, general manpower, general time, and general budget.” But nothing can be done about the shortage of general manpower, Farkash says. “We cannot allocate as many officers as other countries do, so we have sergeants that are doing the work of lieutenant colonels, really.”

This scarcity of manpower is also responsible for what is perhaps the IDF’s most unusual characteristic: the role of its reserve forces. Unlike in other countries, reserve forces are the backbone of Israel’s military.

In most militaries, reserve forces are constructed as appendages to the standing army, which is the nation’s main line of defense. Israel, however, is so small and outnumbered by its adversaries that, as was clear from the beginning, no standing army could be large enough to defend against an all-out assault. Shortly after the War of Independence, Israel’s leaders decided on a unique reserves-dominated military structure, whereby reservists would not only man whole units but would be commanded by reserve officers as well. Reserve units of other militaries may or may not be commanded by officers from the standing army, but they are given weeks or even months of refresher training before being sent into battle. “No army had relied for the majority of its troops on men who were sent into combat one or two days after their recall,” says Luttwak.

No one really knew whether Israel’s unique reserve system would work, because it had never been tried. Even today, Israel is the only army in the world to have such a system. As U.S. military historian Fred Kagan explained, “It’s 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.”