Start-up Nation (8 page)

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.”

This is not to say that soldiers aren’t expected to obey orders. But, as Goren explained to us, “Israeli soldiers are not
defined by rank; they are defined by what they are good at.” Or, as Luttwak said, “Orders are given and obeyed in the spirit
of men who have a job to do and mean to do it, but the hierarchy of rank is of small importance, especially since it often
cuts across sharp differences in age and social status.”

When we asked Major General Farkash why Israel’s military is so antihierarchical and open to questioning, he told us it was
not just the military but Israel’s entire society and history. “Our religion is an open book,” he said, in a subtle European
accent that traces back to his early years in Transylvania. The “open book” he was referring to was the Talmud—a dense recording
of centuries of rabbinic debates over how to interpret the Bible and obey its laws—and the corresponding attitude of questioning
is built into Jewish religion, as well as into the national ethos of Israel.

As Israeli author Amos Oz has said, Judaism and Israel have always cultivated “a culture of doubt and argument, an open-ended
game of interpretations, counter-interpretations, reinterpretations, opposing interpretations. From the very beginning of
the existence of the Jewish civilization, it was recognized by its argumentativeness.”
¹¹

Indeed, the IDF’s lack of hierarchy pervades civilian life. It can even break down civilian hierarchies. “The professor acquires
respect for his student, the boss for his high-ranking clerk. . . . Every Israeli has his friends ‘from the reserves’ with
whom he might not otherwise have any kind of social contact,” says Luttwak. “Sleeping in bare huts or tents, eating dull army
food, often going without a shower for days, reservists of widely different social backgrounds meet on an equal footing; Israel
is still a society with fewer class differences than most, and the reserve system has contributed to keeping it that way.”

The dilution of hierarchy and rank, moreover, is not typical of other militaries. Historian and
IDF
reserve officer Michael Oren—now serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United States—described a typical scene at an Israeli
army base from when he was in a military liaison unit: “You would sit around with a bunch of Israeli generals, and we all
wanted coffee. Whoever was closest to the coffee pot would go make it. It didn’t matter who—it was common for generals to
be serving coffee to their soldiers or vice versa. There is no protocol about these things. But if you were with American
captains and a major walked in, everyone would stiffen. And then a colonel would walk in and the major would stiffen. It’s
extremely rigid and hierarchical in the U.S. Rank is very, very important. As they say in the American military, ‘You salute
the rank, not the person.’ ”
¹²

In the
IDF
, there are even extremely unconventional ways to challenge senior officers. “I was in Israeli army units where we threw out
the officers,” Oren told us, “where people just got together and voted them out. I witnessed this twice personally. I actually
liked the guy, but I was outvoted. They voted out a colonel.” When we asked Oren in disbelief how this worked, he explained,
“You go and you say, ‘We don’t want you. You’re not good.’ I mean, everyone’s on a first-name basis. . . . You go to the person
above him and say, ‘That guy’s got to go.’ . . . It’s much more performance-oriented than it is about rank.”

Retired
IDF
General Moshe “Bogey” Yaalon, who served as chief of staff of the army during the second intifada, told us a similar story
from the second Lebanon war. “There was an operation conducted by a reserve unit in the Lebanese village of Dabu. Nine of
our soldiers and officers were killed, and others were injured, including my nephew. And the surviving soldiers blamed the
battalion commander for his incompetent management of the operation. The soldiers at the company level went to the brigade
commander to complain about the battalion commander. Now, the brigade commander, of course, did his own investigation. But
the battalion commander was ultimately forced to step down because of a process that was initiated by his subordinates.”
¹³

Yaalon believes that this unique feature of Israel’s military is critical to its effectiveness: “The key for leadership is
the soldiers’ confidence in their commander. If you don’t trust him, if you’re not confident in him, you can’t follow him.
And in this case, the battalion commander failed. It might be a professional failure, like in this case. It might be a moral
failure in another case. Either way, the soldier has to know that it is acceptable—and encouraged—for him to come forward
and to talk about it.”

Former West Point professor Fred Kagan concedes that Americans can learn something from the Israelis. “I don’t think it’s
healthy for a commander to be constantly worrying if his subordinates will go over his head, like they do in the
IDF
,” he told us. “On the other hand, the U.S. military could benefit from some kind of 360-degree evaluation during the promotion
board process for officers. Right now in our system the incentives are all one-sided. To get promoted, an officer just has
to please more senior officers. The junior guys get no input.”

The conclusion Oren draws from displays of what most militaries—and Fred Kagan—would call insubordination is that the
IDF
is in fact “much more consensual than the American army.” This might seem strange, since the U.S. Army is called a “volunteer”
army (not unpaid, but in the sense of free choice), while the
IDF
is built on conscription.

Yet, Oren explains, “in this country there’s an unwritten social contract: we are going to serve in this army provided the
government and the army are responsible toward us. . . . The Israeli army is more similar, I would imagine, to the Continental
Army of 1776 than it is to the American army of 2008. . . . And by the way, George Washington knew that his ‘general’ rank
didn’t mean very much—that he had to be a great general, and that basically people were there out of volition.”

The Continental Army was an extreme example of what Oren was describing, since its soldiers would decide on an almost daily
basis whether to continue to volunteer. But it was a “people’s army,” and so is the
IDF
. As Oren describes it, like the Continental Army, the
IDF
has a scrappy, less formal, more consensual quality because its soldiers are fighting for the existence of their country,
and its ranks are composed of a broad cross section of the people they are fighting for.

It’s easy to imagine how soldiers unconcerned with rank have fewer qualms about telling their boss, “You’re wrong.” This
chutzpah
, molded through years of
IDF
service, gives insight into how Shvat Shaked could have lectured PayPal’s president about the difference between “good guys
and bad guys” on the Web, or how Intel Israel’s engineers decided to foment a revolution to overturn not only the fundamental
architecture of their company’s main product but the way the industry measured value. Assertiveness versus insolence; critical,
independent thinking versus insubordination; ambition and vision versus arrogance—the words you choose depend on your perspective,
but collectively they describe the typical Israeli entrepreneur.

Go far, stay long, see deep.

—O
UTSIDE
MAGAZINE

T
HE ELEVATION OF
L
A
P
AZ,
B
OLIVIA
, is 11,220 feet and El Lobo is one floor higher. El Lobo is a restaurant, hostel, social
club, and the only source of Israeli food in town. It is run by its founders, Dorit Moralli and her husband, Eli, both from
Israel.
¹

Almost every Israeli trekker in Bolivia is likely to come through El Lobo, but not just to get food that tastes like it’s
from home, to speak Hebrew, and to meet other Israelis. They know they will find something else there, something even more
valuable: the Book. Though spoken of in the singular, the Book is not one book but an amorphous and evolving collection of
journals, dispersed throughout some of the most remote locations in the world. Each journal is a handwritten “Bible” of advice
from one traveler to another. And while the Book is no longer exclusively Israeli, its authors and readers tend to be from
Israel.

El Lobo’s incarnation of the Book was created in 1986, Dorit recalls, just one month after her restaurant opened. Four Israeli
backpackers came in and asked, “Where’s the Book?” When she looked mystified, they explained that they meant a book where
people could leave recommendations and warnings for other travelers. They went out and bought a blank journal and donated
it to the restaurant, complete with the first entry, in Hebrew, about a remote jungle town they thought other Israelis might
like.

The Book predated the Internet—it actually started in Israel in the 1970s—but even in today’s world of blogs, chat rooms,
and instant messaging, this primitive, paper-and-pen-based institution is still going strong. El Lobo has become a regional
Book hub, with six volumes: a successor to the original Book started in 1989, along with separate Books for Brazil, Chile,
Argentina, Peru, and the northern part of South America. There are other Books stationed throughout Asia. While the original
was written only in Hebrew, today’s Books are written in a wide array of languages.

“The polyglot entries were random, frustrating, and beautiful, a carnival of ideas, pleas, boasts, and obsolete phone numbers,”
Outside
magazine reported on the venerable 1989 volume. “One page recommended the ‘beautikul girls’ [
sic
] in a certain disco; the next tipped a particular ice cave as ‘a must’ (at least until someone else scrawled a huge ‘NO!’
over that entry). This was followed by a half-page in Japanese and a dense passage in German, with bar charts of altitude
and diagrams of various plants. . . . After that there was a full-page scrawl devoted to buying a canoe in the rainforests
of Peru’s Manu National Park, with seven parentheticals and a postscript that wrapped around the margins sideways; a warning
against so-and-so’s couscous; and an ornate four-color drawing of a toucan named Felipe.”