An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Abstract

Israeli society has changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war, a change that is reflected in the bereavement discourse. Attitudes have shifted from the unquestioned justification of military losses prior to the First Lebanon War (1982) to the emergence of an antiwar bereavement discourse after the war and during the South Lebanon war of attrition that followed it. More recently, following the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a discourse that accepts losses has emerged. While the retreat from the hegemonic discourse prior to the First Lebanon War is explained by the changing attitudes to military sacrifice among the social elites, the latter shift took place in parallel with the alteration of the social composition of the Israeli Defence Force. It is argued that the social composition of the military affects the level of sensitivity to losses. While secular uppermiddle class groups tend to show a high level of sensitivity to war losses, which they then translate into a subversive bereavement discourse, religious and peripheral groups with a hawkish agenda are more tolerant of military losses, or, alternatively, may seek to avoid excessive casualties by improving the military's performance or the quality of the political directives.

The impact of practical support on parental bereavement: Reflections from a study involving parents bereaved through military death

“…Secondly, public attitudes to military death have had an impact on the experience of the bereaved. Since the Second World War, public attitudes to military intervention -and, by default, to military deaths -have become much more complex and conflicted both in the UK and elsewhere (Levy, 2009). For example, Provost (1989) argues that the Vietnam War created a conflicted social environment that contributed to prolonged early grief phases and to struggles to resolve the loss about which families felt ambivalent.…”

Airpower and Quagmire: Historical Analogies and the Second Lebanon War

“…The trauma of Lebanon was built not only on the high level of casualties Israel sustained during the war and the subsequent occupation of Southern Lebanon (approximately 1,200 Israeli soldiers were killed, half of them during the war between 1982 and 1985); it also entailed the shock of the political deception of then‐minister of defense Ariel Sharon, who sold the government a swift ground operation up to 40 km into Lebanon to clear strongholds of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which used southern Lebanon as a base to attack Israel's northern settlements. When the swift operation turned into a bloody stalemate, public opinion turned decisively against the government and the continued presence in Lebanon, resulting in several IDF withdrawals: first from Beirut in 1983 and then again in 1985 from central Lebanon, then finally to a total withdrawal from the country in 2000 (Levy :72). Politically, public outrage over the operation led to the resignation of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the premature departure of Chief of the General Staff Rafael Eytan, and the removal from office of Defence Minister Sharon.…”

“…Accordingly these societies may “be more willing to support wars in which [both] casualties [are] low in numbers [and are being fought] for limited aims” (Luttwak :112). In this context, it is evident that as a consequence of the First Lebanon War, Israeli society can be regarded as “post‐heroic.” According to Levy, by 2006 “Israeli society [had] changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war,” while Steinitz noted that Israel's failures in the Second Lebanon War were the result of a “culture of war we adopted since the first war in Lebanon in 1982,” referring to it being the first “war of choice” in Israel's history (Steinitz ; Levy ).…”

How Casualty Sensitivity Affects Civilian Control: The Israeli Experience

“…The second event was the bereaved families’ protests in the wake of the Second Lebanon War against what they perceived as sacrifice that did not have a real impact on national security owing to military and political incompetence. This was not the typical risk aversion discourse voiced by secular middle‐class groups, but was enough to raise the political threshold for sacrificing life in the future (Levy 2009a). [Future] “success matters” (in the terms of Gelpi et al.…”