The “Outing” of Lethality: Using “Lethality” to Legitimize Military Violence in Israel

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, military violence has been legitimized using consumer marketing practices, particularly microtargeting. This responsive strategy invites various audiences to interpret military violence and thereby become its legitimation agents. The lethality concept recently adopted by the IDF has been central to such a strategy. Communicated in a deliberately vague manner, lethality served as an effective mechanism for legitimizing violence by allowing competing and dynamic interpretations, aligned with the values and interests of different social groups. The present study examined this mechanism by analyzing readers’ comments on lethality-related news articles, and found it to be highly effective in achieving legitimacy by marking the concept’s ethical boundaries and the sectorial interests bound up with it. Following this dialogue with the public, the military chose to highlight the relation between lethality and the relative security calm and economic prosperity achieved in Israel, marketing the IDF as the “largest startup in the country.” This responsive strategy, however, compromises the democratic process by shifting the choice of strategic concepts from elected representatives onto a direct dialogue between the military and its favored legitimation agents. It also erodes the military’s apolitical status and has a heavy ethical, operational and moral price.

KEYWORDS:

• Lethality
• legitimation for military violence
• military ethics
• military professionalism
• responsive strategy
• microtargeting
• IDF

Introduction

In October 2017, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis presented the lethality concept as a key principle in his military development doctrine. By January next year, lethality became central to the US National Security Strategy,¹ as well as an indicator of realizing military professionalism.² However, despite its high public profile, the document failed to explain the concept or its purpose.³

Upon his appointment in January 2019, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi adopted lethality as a core concept. Several months later, it became a catchphrase, when publicized as the organizing concept of a strategic workshop provided by Kochavi to his senior commanders.⁴ There was considerable vagueness in the Israeli case as well. Nevertheless, both military buildup and operational systems began to realign accordingly,⁵ and news to that effect were repeatedly communicated.⁶

Literally, “lethality” is the ability to cause death. Ever since it came to describe a military capability, however, its definition expanded to include deliberate intent to realize a deadly potential against the enemy.⁷ Lethality becomes a strategic deterrence factor, however, only if the enemy, the nature of the threat, or the resilience required of citizens are made explicit.⁸ Otherwise, researchers find it difficult to interpret the intentions behind the term, particularly given that lethality is incompatible with the proportionality required in the new wars,⁹ and can even convey a military obsession with killing.¹⁰

Just as salt is salty, the military is lethal.¹¹ However, modern states’ use of lethal violence relies on balancing possible with the proper, and establishing a tight link between violence on the one hand, and professional military ethics and international and internal legitimacy on the other.¹² This link is related to the two contradictory aspects of the legitimation of military violence: the expectation of the military to protect the country, while meeting ethical standards that differentiate military violence from sheer barbarism.¹³ Furthermore, lethal military violence has never been presented in the West as an end in itself. Rather, killing has usually been camouflaged by self-righteous statements,¹⁴ that presented it as an unfortunate byproduct of having to exert violence,¹⁵ and the growing power of liberal Western societies has led to a tendency to rationalize and conceal it.¹⁶ The new wars, limited conflicts, and the focus on military operations other than war (MOOTW) have reshaped these relations, lending greater weight to military ethics, but also leading to a conceptual and ethical crisis regarding the very use of lethal violence.¹⁷

Three unique characteristics contributed to this change. First, the transition to irregular warfare in crowded urban centers meant that the militaries were increasingly required to operate less lethally, particularly with regard to uninvolved civilians.¹⁸ This transformed the very definition of military success, so that restraining and justifying lethality were integrated in the decision to wage war and its conduct.¹⁹

Second, the rise of (neo)liberalism created gaps between the patterns of using military violence and what was perceived as ethical and professional. Growing sensitivity to casualties, legal oversight (“lawfare”), and intensified media coverage, combined with the desire to prevent any market disruption, resulted in the erosion of the ethical image of military forces in (neo)liberal democracies. Consequently, a postmodern approach to warfare emerged, which required the military profession to meet a normative target inconsistent with lethality – not to kill, and mainly not be killed, even at the cost of not completing the mission.²⁰

The third characteristic – the huge expansion of unmanned technologies – offered a more complex relationship between ethics and professionalism and lethal violence. Seemingly aligned with the two previous ones, in fact it offered a complex version of the lethality-ethics linkage. Technology enabled huge lethal potential, with the cost borne mainly by the other side, enabling Western militaries to almost completely avoid casualties, or engage in “risk-free warfare,” and to argue that “collateral damage” was also minimized thanks to “smart” weapons.²¹

Whereas Western “restraint” was seen by some as unappreciated and unreciprocated by the enemy,²² and even as eroding military effectiveness in promoting strategic objectives, technological violence proved highly conducive to legitimacy. While restraining violence was seen as restricting the military’s options and representing the intrusion of progressive values into its professional ethics and fragmenting the national consensus central to its legitimacy,²³ technology enabled it to sidestep these obstacles and engage in often brutal violence without compunction.²⁴

These characteristics gave birth to the ethical trilemma between the logics of sufficiency, efficiency and moral liability.²⁵ Whereas certain writers demanded that violence be widely used, others prioritized humanitarian standards and doubted its contribution to the achievement of military objectives. The concealment of violence represented an attempt to dull the edge of the trilemma described.

The lethality concept’s revival and “outing” therefore raised many questions.²⁶ Scholars argued that its high profile served certain goals outweighing the value of concealment. Lopez, for example, referred to a “community of interest” in the US, reflecting the growing power of those with a stake in lethality.²⁷ Others believed that the American declaration rehabilitated the military after long years of asymmetrical conflicts,²⁸ and reflected the need to prepare for high-intensity as well as to justify increased budgets.²⁹ Still others argued that the term was designed to prioritize remote killing capabilities,³⁰ so that “it will be American ground troops who make it back to base in one piece, while enemy forces are left licking their wounds.”³¹

Importantly for our purposes, some viewed the “outing” of lethality as a branding move,³² designed to reclaim the heroism of war.³³ Since it involved giving up on the concealment of violence, the term was presented vaguely, enabling multiple narratives.³⁴ This interpretation was consistent with the argument that as a doctrine, lethality had little practical value. Its objective was to maintain a high level of militarism in the eyes of civilians, but also to weave a fabric of diverse social interests to legitimize military violence.³⁵

In the Israeli context, the expansion of IDF policing operations in the Occupied Territories widened the social rift regarding the role of military violence in regulating the conflict, affecting the IDF’s ability to legitimize it. This propelled the military to adopt a new legitimation strategy.³⁶ After the restraining of violence had failed to relieve the difficulties of acquiring legitimacy,³⁷ and was even perceived as detrimental to heroism,³⁸ from the late 1990s, the IDF began relying on vague doctrinarian concepts, catering to diverse audiences as part of a responsive strategy for acquiring legitimacy.³⁹ This deliberate vagueness allowed it to avoid confronting the trilemma head on, with each group in Israeli society able to select the meanings most aligned with its ideology. The resulting excess of euphemistic terms (“emerging conceptualization” in IDF parlance – a euphemism in its own right), was designed to solve the IDF’s legitimation crisis. These terms were not clearly defined as doctrinarian concepts should be, but entered into a process where the response of social legitimation agents determined their subsequent use, informing a reiterative process of conceptual regulation.⁴⁰

As opposed to the political field,⁴¹ however, military forces’ use of this strategy has hardly been studied. Given the sparse academic discussion of the blurring of military violence in Israel,⁴² identifying the inclusion of various target audiences in interpreting military concepts and legitimizing violence may compensate for this lacuna. In what follows, I argue that lethality has been identified as an attractive element in a responsive strategy of acquiring legitimacy for the IDF’s violence since the early 2000s, its vagueness inviting heterogeneous audiences to participate in its interpretation according to their worldviews. The ensuing public debate has normalized lethality while marking its strengths and weaknesses as a legitimation instrument for the IDF. The present study is the first to examine these interpretations and the way they have promoted military legitimation.⁴³

Responsive Legitimation by Microtargeting

An ambiguous term helps raise support among heterogeneous audiences.⁴⁴ Whereas explicit messages are suspected of being non-democratic propaganda,⁴⁵ vagueness can ensure subliminal impact, since the responsibility for interpretation is shifted to the receiver.⁴⁶ This approach is highly reminiscent of responsive design using microtargeting in consumer marketing and in political campaigns.⁴⁷ A famous example is Obama’s campaign slogan “Yes, we can,”⁴⁸ which encouraged emerging interpretations leading to sweeping support among highly diverse audiences.⁴⁹

Whereas in traditional propaganda, the desirable worldview is imposed on target audiences while minimizing interpretive space,⁵⁰ microtargeting encourages participation. The vague term is selected for its potential to recruit heterogeneous groups,⁵¹ unite each around a shared interpretation, and motivate it to support actions undertaken in its name.⁵² The literature identifies three reasons for replacing top-down propaganda with a responsive strategy. The first is the ineffectiveness of the traditional mechanisms in an era of decentralized information consumption.⁵³ The second reason is the growing fragmentation of Western societies in recent decades, limiting the effectiveness of clear and coherent concepts that appeal to some while alienating others.⁵⁴ Finally, responsive design mechanisms are in line with current consumers’ expectations of various “providers of meaning.”⁵⁵

The strategy relies on the internet, but its main strength derives from social psychology and the sociology of marketing.⁵⁶ The originators of the message appear to have no control over the emerging interpretation, but in fact, based on prior knowledge of target audiences, they trust that making the concept public would encourage these audiences to interpret it according to their known values and interests.⁵⁷ Consequently, legitimacy is acquired. This process is usually hidden from view, and therefore involves significant ethical issues.⁵⁸ The choice of the term relies on deep acquaintance with the target group’s values, without it being able to identify the manipulation.⁵⁹ Moreover, this manipulation violates the right to privacy,⁶⁰ and also deepens social rifts.⁶¹ Accordingly, it is referred to as deceptive or covert design.

Reader comments as a responsive strategy instrument

The adoption of lethality was communicated to the Israeli public through several news articles, attracting multiple comments or “talkbacks.” The two distinct qualities of the online comment – accessibility and interactivity – make it an important means of promoting discourses,⁶² and an essential targeting instrument in a responsive strategy. It allows heterogeneous audiences to participate in public debate,⁶³ and turns them from passive consumers of information into active participants in its design.⁶⁴ Moreover, the comment enables them to own the discourse in order to promote interests and values.⁶⁵

In addition, the comment usually represents a group identity. Although a single comment carries little weight, when a string of comments is formed, this produces a collective influence effort, which may be classified by responsive strategists according to social categories. Reader comments, moreover, constitute a networked space where a variety of social agents produce a public discourse.⁶⁶ They express preferences and values and debate them with others,⁶⁷ sharing the desire to take part in shaping public space.⁶⁸ Some comments contribute to strengthening the information provided in the original message, others confront it and offer an alternative interpretation, and still others offer an interpretation that reconstructs the information from a new perspective.⁶⁹

The close attention organizations devote to monitoring comments reveals the importance of targeting for acquiring legitimacy: comments mark the boundaries of the institutes’ potential space for action, while mapping public sentiments, able to reinforce that legitimacy.⁷⁰ Comments enable giving the information flexible meanings that match the positions of privileged groups.⁷¹ In the process, ideological and moral distinctions are highlighted,⁷² without the information source taking explicit responsibility for them.⁷³ By shifting the responsibility to the interpreters, the conventional boundaries of information are breached, calling for innovative and even subversive alternatives.⁷⁴ Thus, the huge scope of online comments, their interactivity, as well as their ability to provide spontaneous interpretation in real time,⁷⁵ open up a flexible space that organizations can use to acquire legitimacy.⁷⁶

Method

Qualitative discourse analysis is used to identify key messages and positions and related power struggles and classify them according to sociological categories.⁷⁷ Since it does not intervene in the phenomenon and participants are not even aware of it, online research minimizes bias and prevents attempts at concealment.⁷⁸ In the present study, this ensures that the conclusions are based directly on positions as expressed by the commenters.⁷⁹ Moreover, this approach is ideal for revealing how participants use interpretations to promote sociopolitical change,⁸⁰ as well as acquire sociocultural capital.⁸¹ Finally, the large scope of comments enhances diversity and representability, contributing to validity.⁸²

The study identified all twelve news articles that discussed lethality in the period from Chief of Staff Kochavi’s nomination speech in January 2019 and the publication of the main points of his January-May 2019 workshop.⁸³ The articles were published in media with varied political affiliations.⁸⁴ Content analysis of the 281 comments to them included two stages. First, all articles and comments were mapped according to the four key theses explaining the purpose of publicizing the lethality concept: restoration of decision, demand for increased budget, promotion of remote technological warfare, and branding. Other comments were classified into four emergent ones: sociopolitical ideology, the military as a market player, morality, and the conscription model. Next, we mapped intersections between the theses. Second, the theses were classified according to their correspondence with familiar sociopolitical categories, demonstrating how microtargeting invited certain groups to participate in interpreting lethality, thereby constructing their values and interests on the one hand, and legitimizing the concept on the other.

Results

Preliminary characterizations

Preliminary mapping indicated several characteristics of lethality as suitable for a responsive strategy. First, it led to diverse and even contradictory comments. Second, the platforms enabled commenters to participate in interpretation, without indicating which represented the military or the writer’s position. Third, the comment structure was usually constant: the commenters expressed their understanding of the concept and only then suggested their own position. Finally, the commenters intensely debated the appropriate interpretation, easily identifying them as belonging to familiar sociopolitical categories.

Interpretive theses and related comment patterns

Table 1 presents the theses proposed in the literature and the emergent ones proposed by commenters.

Table 1. Comment distribution according to theses⁸⁵.

	Theses in the Literature				Theses Proposed by Commenters
	Restoring decision	More budgets	Remote techno-logical warfare	Branding (heroics)	Ideology	The IDF as market player	The military model	Morality
No. of comments	151	12	33	37	181	5	15	135
Rate of comments	54%	4%	12%	13%	64%	1.7%	5.3%	48%

The three leading theses were (sociopolitical) ideology, restoring decision, and morality. About 64% of commenters believed that lethality was designed to express the military’s ideology and reinforce military sacrifice based on ethnonational and religious values, and compensate for the harm of liberal values that had supposedly taken hold in the military in the past decades. The concept was seen as promoting Jewish ethnic privilege, and rejecting values such as individualism, gender equality, human rights, sensitivity to casualties, legal oversight of the military, and the “addiction” to peace. The great majority supported lethality as guaranteeing Jewish national existence. Even those opposed to lethality associated it with this trend, as seen in the dispute between the following comment clusters:

Cluster A

Upon his entry into office, Chief of Staff Kochavi quickly acted to change the general attitude in the military. He introduced the term “lethal army” […] set targets of killing as many terrorists as possible […] and demoted the rank of the Yohalam [Gender Affair Advisor to the Chief of Staff] as a message that conveyed the restoring of proper proportions. Placing moral considerations related to human rights values […] not at the expense of the citizens of Israel.

Kochavi dusts off the military […] not an NGO for promoting gender rights

Cluster B

Lots of words about victory and lethality […] so as not to say plainly and clearly that the wet dream of the messianic Israeli right […] is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians […]

Lethality […] will make most secular Jews refuse to serve […]

This is the lethal army […] Arabs and leftists – their blood can be freely shed […]

The second thesis (54%) had to do with rehabilitating the military after long years of asymmetrical conflicts. As in the US, low-intensity conflict had driven the IDF away from large-scale violence. From this perspective, lethality restored combat capabilities and spirit – as opposed to the delayed, apologizing and forgiving military of the years since the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987. Unlike the US, however, the Israeli commenters considered lethality applicable to all conflict types: both a platform for deterring and preparing for war against enemies such as Iran, and an approach to defeating the Palestinians.

Some identified an additional meaning: abandoning the concept of limited conflict, and replacing the terms “uprising” or “Intifada” with “terrorism armies.” This reconceptualization could also revive the ground maneuver, the importance of occupying territories, and the striving for contact with the enemy. Even with regard to the restoration of decision, most commenters supported lethality and only few suggested it promoted militarization or immorality:

I want blood here, rivers of blood. […] All those softhearted chiefs of staff.

Victory is not measured by the number of enemies killed and wounded […].

Third, although the thesis linking lethality and morality was not the most popular, it was the most conflictual. In the grappling for the hegemonic interpretation, this arena exposed major sociopolitical rifts. Supporters of lethality viewed it as exposing a hypocritical, self-righteous and purist morality, which preferred the state’s democratic and pluralist aspects over its Jewish and particularist ones, whereas lethality offered commitment to “reasonable” Jewish moral standards (see Cluster A below). The detractors referred to lethality as a moral oxymoron, a worrisome recipe for relishing the brutality of the occupation, representing the end of the era when the IDF could be considered the “most moral military in the world” (Cluster B).

Cluster A

Kochavi’s words […] were carefully selected […] as if to say, no worries, I’m no leftie […].

Recent years have seen a scary transformation in the IDF, to the point that a general compared Israel to Nazi Germany […] if only we could save [IDF] casualties in the recent operations as well, without the legal oversight that has spread like a plague […]. Therefore […] we are very happy with Kokhavi’s appointment who realized that in the crumbling Middle East you need a bigger stick […].

Cluster B

Another idiot from the delusional right. […] A chief of staff specializing in killing citizens […].

The farce of the most moral army in the world is now officially ended?

A killing machine like the old Wehrmacht […]

A killing machine like the old Wehrmacht […]

The lethality-morality controversy also resonated in the discussion on the military conscription model (5.3%) and remote technological warfare (12%). Most of those adopting the first thesis believed that lethality tipped the balance in favor of a professional army, albeit for different reasons. Some believed that the use of lethality derived from an economic-organizational rationale, that made the mass army redundant and strengthened its professional elements. Others warned that the effect of lethality on strengthening ethnonational, religious and conservative trends within the military would make liberal and secular groups less willing to enlist, leading to pressures to change the military model on their part.

Conversely, some referred to lethality as a concept used by the military in social selection processes designed to redetermine the composition of its core units and reallocate material and human resources using sociopolitical markers. This process was bound to deepen the military’s dependency on powerful social groups, widen inequality in the military and society and weaken the values of the people’s army.

Similarly, those identifying lethality with remote technological warfare expressed concern with its effect on the military model and spirit. Although most identified remote lethality as designed to save human lives while exacting a heavier price from the enemy, as well as with reaping the maximal benefit from Israel’s technological sophistication, they were concerned with the inability to decide the campaign this way, with the elitist social standing of the technological warrior, and with an emasculation of the IDF: “A spineless girlie army […] representing a hedonist, lazy and pampered population […]. Luckily, our adversaries are stone-age Neanderthals […].”

This interpretation was consistent with the branding thesis (13%), arguing that lethality compensated for the military’s lackluster image due to the nature of warfare in recent decades: “I like the word lethal. It is reminiscent […] of pretty women and muscular men in classy hotels. Of secret negotiations and ice cubes in 25-year-old scotch glasses. […].”

Although the remaining theses were relatively marginal, their importance lay in both the unique arguments offered and in the way they were used to support the commenters’ views on the more popular theses. The weakest thesis associated lethality with the military’s striving to position itself as a free market organization (1.7%). Its proponents considered lethality expressive of the military’s wish to identify itself with progress and neoliberal values such as efficiency, innovation and agility.

Finally, the thesis associating lethality with the IDF’s demand for greater budgets was supportive, like the previous two, of the tendency to view it as a marketing move. Although only 4% expressed this interpretation, all were critical of the move. They considered making lethality public an inappropriate manipulation designed to increase an already huge budget. Ultimately, most commenters supportive of the last three theses treated the use of lethality for marketing purposes with cynicism and ridicule.

Intersecting theses

Many commenters promoted several theses simultaneously, sometimes with explicit reference to their interrelatedness. Two major intersecting structures emerged, as follows.

Political ideology-oriented interpretation

In this structure, “Jewish particularism” intersected with “a people’s army,” as opposed to the intersection of “peace-loving pluralism” with “humanitarian and moral-professional army.” Many commenters who supported lethality as restoring decision also viewed it as having an ethnonational counterbalancing effect against the liberalism that had supposedly been dominant in the 1980s and 90s, and also considered lethality representative of Jewish morality. Some, on the other hand, identified lethality with an extremist ethnonational and religious worldview, associating it with moral depravation that will hasten the process of turning the IDF from a people’s army into a professional army.

Military ideology-oriented interpretation

In some comments, linkage was found between “restoration of decision and heroics,” and criticism of “remote technological warfare.” Many who supported lethality as counterbalancing military restraint also considered it able to restore military heroism and prevent reliance on technological warfare. The concept of “toy war” was heavily criticized as connoted with military cowardice and lack of resilience on the home front.

Discussion

The present study sheds light on the adoption and dissemination of the concept of lethality by the IDF, and in particular, it examines the claim that the concept is part of a responsive strategy for acquiring legitimacy for the use of violence in the 21^st century. When lethality was adopted by the US and shortly afterward the Israeli military, eyebrows were raised. The publicity given to the concept and the fact that deliberate killing was usually not seen in the West as a cause for pride only added to the mystery.⁸⁶ Since the emergence of the new wars, the question of using military violence and its relation to military effectiveness, professional ethics, and the acquisition of legitimacy gained prominence. Most of the significant armed conflicts in recent decades involved complex tensions related to it. The result was erosion of the public consensus around the legitimacy of using military force in principle, as well as the effectiveness and morality of the use of violence.⁸⁷ Thus, the need for both internal and external legitimacy – which have become highly interdependent in the global age – affects the way militaries choose to publicly present and justify their use of violence.

Yawning rifts in Israeli society regarding to the conflict with the Palestinians have made it difficult to rally support for military violence. Certain sectors appear less willing to exact and pay the human cost, whereas others clamor for intensified violence.⁸⁸ The IDF has thus found itself with an eroding capability of acquiring legitimacy.⁸⁹ Consequently, in its combat operations over the past two decades, it has pursued an online media strategy,⁹⁰ relying on targeting processes. This has enabled the military to apply an independent media strategy following a pattern reminiscent of the heterarchical model it has adopted over the past few decades to communicate with various groups, with the aim of curbing the erosion of legitimacy for its current model.⁹¹

Since the early 2000s, military doctrine has also been mobilized to support this process, offering vague professional terms to appeal to diverse audiences.⁹² The present study deepens our understanding of this process by analyzing the concept of lethality as a responsive mechanism for legitimizing violence through the multiple readings it allows and the identities it constructs.⁹³ The analysis indicates that the Israeli public has indeed taken an active part in interpreting the concept; that various sectors have appropriated it in a process of ethnoclass and gender positioning; and that a struggle has ensued over its hegemonic interpretation.

These findings add to the literature on the use of microtargeting to acquire legitimacy.⁹⁴ On the one hand, the variety of competing interpretations provided the IDF with “reconnaissance” about the way the concept was received by the public. On the other, since some interpretations were supportive whereas others were contradictory, oppositional and even innovative, a highly broad maneuvering space was opened up for the military to apply violence in various combat contexts, to varying degrees and in service of varying legitimacy needs. Moreover, the boundaries of this space were drawn, enabling the military to assess which violent actions would bring which social groups closer and vice versa.

User comments enabled the military to determine where the lethality wind would blow. Although most commenters were supportive, the minority of detractors – the liberal elite – exposed its weaknesses, highlighting the deepening erosion of the “people’s army” model. Indeed, in a media event summarizing 2020 – the most peaceful year in history in terms of Israeli casualties – an effort was made by Chief of Staff Kochavi to associate that outcome with the realization of the lethality vision, as evident in “500 attacks on six fronts” and an “increase in offensive cyber operations.”⁹⁵ Highlighting this linkage and blurring its inherent tensions strengthened the concept’s ability to offer meanings acceptable to broad and otherwise divergent groups. According to this logic, lethality ensured economic prosperity and peace. Ignored were the questions who paid the price of that violence, and what its long-term strategic costs and benefits were.

Moreover, increased public use of the concept by the military brass has been accompanied by relinquishing some of its vagueness in favor of refining its role in reshaping the IDF as the “largest startup in Israel.”⁹⁶ This reflects the way responsive strategy operates: the coining of a vague term has led to its definition and refinement in online discourse. Next, it turns out that for some groups lethality glorifies military action, whereas it has to be refined in a certain way to reduce the opposition. Associating lethality with the advanced technological warfare conducted by the IDF serves this purpose. On the one hand, the lethal rhetoric promises decisive action by a military trapped in asymmetrical conflicts.⁹⁷ On the other, it supports technologically advanced, capital-intensive warfare relying on quality human resources, with minimal Israeli casualties. Absent a political solution to the conflict, many of those opposed to military violence have been forced to accept this rhetorical compromise, resulting in a relatively limited public debate, as the costs of lethality have been concealed by its sophisticated structure. Thus, highlighting the material achievements and desirable values embodied in military violence serves to conceal its damages and retain its legitimacy.⁹⁸

Moreover, our analysis has revealed additional interpretive theses to those suggested in the American case, emphasizing the ability of responsive strategy to capture local moods. It is no coincidence that the sociopolitical ideology thesis is the most popular in Israel, and that local interpretive structures are characterized by strong political-social-military interrelations. Against the background of the military model, which invites deep intrusion of sociopolitical controversies into IDF operations,⁹⁹ it is also no wonder that the legitimacy acquisition process enables responsiveness to rival sectors, or at least those sectors the promoters of lethality seek to map and contain.

However, this microtargeting strategy involves normative as well as professional and ethical difficulties. Normatively, it may be detrimental to democratic due process: in a democracy, military strategy should be determined by elected officials, rather than in interaction between the military and its favorite sources of legitimacy.¹⁰⁰ Moreover, a responsive strategy may undermine the very foundation of the military’s legitimacy in Israel – the apolitical character of the “people’s army.”¹⁰¹ The attempt to offer professional terms that meet controversial sociopolitical ambitions necessarily drags the military into the eye of the political storm.

In terms of professional ethics, some researchers are concerned with having professional considerations marginalized by concepts tailored to the interests of sources of legitimacy.¹⁰² Moreover, the operational cost of using vague concepts associated with contradictory aspirations of different sectors can be heavy, as patently demonstrated during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.¹⁰³

This article contributes to our understanding of the use of the concept of lethality in order to acquire legitimacy for the military in the age of the new wars by using a responsive strategy of microtargeting. The conclusions above are based on the findings of the analysis of readers’ comments, an approach that has developed considerably in the 21^st century and is considered to have a significant contribution to the understanding of social phenomena.¹⁰⁴ Our analysis is limited, however, in that while the comments analyzed represented the entire scope of talkbacks to the articles published on the topic of interest during the research period, a larger number of comments over a more extended period would have produced a more richly nuanced view of this complex phenomenon.

This article will be incomplete without suggesting a complementary move in future research: analyzing interrelations between responsive legitimacy acquisition and the violence exercised by the military in practice. Such an examination is essential for understanding how mechanisms designed to acquire public legitimacy for violence operate, but also for understanding their limitations in the real (in addition to the virtual) world.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Zachary J. Krapfl, “Defining and Assessing Lethality,” NCO Journal, February 9, 2019, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2019/February/assessing-lethality/#bio.

2. Jared Keller, “James Mattis’s Bizarre Cult of ‘Lethality’,” The New Republic, September 9, 2019, https://newrepublic.com/article/154970/james-mattis-lethality-buzzword-cult-military. According to Keller, whereas in the past, the concept was infrequently used in US military battle narratives, in 2019 it was used more than 30,000 times in the “Showcasing Lethality Series” of weekly Pentagon briefings.

3. Olivia Garard, “Lethality: An inquiry,” The Strategy Bridge, November 1, 2018. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/11/1/lethality-an-inquiry.

4. Lilach Shoval, “‘Lethal Army:’ The Victory Workshop Initiated by the Chief of Staff to Begin Today,” Israel Hayom, March 4, 2019 (Hebrew, hereafter (H)), https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/637829.

5. Ron Ben-Yishai, “The IDF and the Defense System on the Verge of a New Era,” Ynet, October 30, 2020, https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/S1HgRH0000w (H).

6. Omer Dostri, “In Praise of the ‘Lethal Army’,” Haaretz, July 4, 2019 (H), https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.7437178.

7. Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live (London: Routledge, 2009); Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

8. Garard, “Lethality.”

9. Saba Bazargan-Forward and Samuel C. Rickless. “Introduction,” in The Ethics of War: Essays, eds. Saba Bazargan-Forward and Samuel C. Rickless (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1-3.

10. Jeff Schogol, “How Mattis Made the Whole Military Obsessed with ‘Lethality’,” Military.com, November 9, 2018, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/11/09/how-mattis-made-whole-military-obsessed-lethality.html.

11. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

12. Rudolph C. Barnes, Jr., Military Legitimacy: Might and Right in the New Millennium (New York: Routledge, 2013.

13. George R. Lucas Jr., Ethics and Military Strategy in the 21^st Century: Moving Beyond Clausewitz (New York: Routledge, 2019).

14. Robin Wagner-Pacifici, “The Innocuousness of State Lethality in an Age of National Security,” South Atlantic Quarterly 107, no. 3 (2008): 459-83.

15. Keith Krause, Rubert Muggah, and Elisabeth Geilgen, eds., Global Burden of Armed Violence: Lethal Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Julien Pomarède, “Normalizing Violence through Front-Line Stories: The Case of American Sniper,” Critical Military Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 52-71.

This self-righteousness is demonstrated for example in the 2005 Declaration of Victory over Iraq, that presents the lethal violence exercised by the US after 9/11 as designed to protect democracy. Wagner-Pacifici, “The Innocuousness of State Lethality.”

16. Siniša Malešević, The Sociology of War and Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

17. James Pattison, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); George W. Casey Jr., “Advancing the Army: Professional Military Ethic,” Joint Force Quarterly, 3^rd Quarter, no. 54 (2009): 14-15.

18. Peter Olsthoorn, Military Ethics and Virtues: An Interdisciplinary Approach for the 21^st Century (New York: Routledge, 2011).

19. Don M. Snider, John A. Nagl, and Tony Pfaff, Army Professionalism, the Military Ethic, and Officership in the 21^st Century (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1999). https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/pub282.pdf.

20. Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War: Risk-Transfer War and Its Crisis in Iraq (Cambridge: Polity, 2005); Edward N. Luttwak, “‘Post-Heroic Warfare’ and its Implications,” in Proceeds of NIDS International Symposium on Security Affairs: War and Peace in the 21^st Century, eds. Jun’ichiro Shoji, Kiyoshi Aizawa, Tomoyuki Ishizu, Kyoichi Tachikawa, Hiroyuki Shindo, and Sugio Takahashi (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 1999). http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/event/symposium/pdf/1999/sympo_e1999_5.pdf.

21. Amos N. Guiora, “The Importance of Criteria-Based Reasoning in Targeted Killing Decisions,” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, ed. Claire Finkelstein, Jens D. Ohlin and Andrew Altman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 303-325; Matthew Evangelista, “Introduction: The American Way of Bombing,” in The American Way of Bombing: Changing Ethical and Legal Norms, from Flying Fortresses to Drones, eds. Matthew Evangelista and Henry Shue (New York: Cornell University Press), 1-27.

22. Christopher Cocker, Ethics and War in the 21^st Century (New York: Routledge, 2008).

23. Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

24. Jonathan P. Wilcox, “Legitimacy in the Conduct of Military Operations,” in Short of General War: Perspectives on the Use of Military Power in the 21^st Century, ed. Harry R. Yarger (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2010), 9-22. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2010/ssi_yarger.pdf.

25. Janina Dill, “The 21^st-Century Belligerent’s Trilemma,” European Journal of International Law 26, no. 1 (2015): 83-108.

26. Seantel Anaïs, Disarming Intervention: A Critical History of Non-Lethality (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015). Several writers show how the peacekeeping rhetoric has led to the urge to enforce peace using lethal measures. For example, “The liberal peacebuilding project has turned out to be a particularly lethal one,” Dillon and Reid, The Liberal Way of War, 32. On the one hand, liberalism has bred an ethno-racial and gender set of priorities in deciding where lethality should be focused, and on the other hand it has justified lethal violence to protect the liberal order; see Paolo Palladino, “Revisiting Franco’s Death,” in Foucault on Politics, Security and War, eds. Michael Dillon and Andrew W. Neal (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 115-31.

27. C. Todd Lopez, “Improving Combat Lethality, performance,” US Department of Defense, https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1748084/improving-combat-lethality-performance/.

28. Thomas G. Bradbeer, ed., Lethal and Non-Lethal Fires: Historical Case Studies of Converging Cross-Domain Fires in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Fort Leavenworth, KA: Army University Press, 2018), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/lethal-and-non-lethal-fires-lsco-volume-3.pdf.

29. Terri M. Cronk, “DoD Official: Lethality, Readiness Drive Acquisition and Sustainment Reform,” US Department of Defense, May 2, 2018, https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1510642/dod-official-lethality-readiness-drive-acquisition-and-sustainment-reform/; Scott Wong and Rebecca Kheel, “Mattis: ‘I Need to Make the Military More Lethal’,” The Hill, February 1, 2018, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/371786-mattis-i-need-to-make-the-military-more-lethal.

30. Clark Mindock, “Pentagon Quietly Changes ‘Deter War’ Mission Statement to One That Protects America’s Influence with ‘Lethal Force’,” Independent, June 30, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pentagon-mission-us-war-website-trump-american-influence-a8423891.html; Schogol, “How Mattis Made the Whole Military Obsessed.”

31. Lopez, “Improving Combat Lethality;” see also Jeremy Arnold, “Oedipal Sovereignty and the War in Iraq,” in States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die, eds. Austin Sarat and Jennifer L. Culbert (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 51-82.

32. Laura J. Shepherd, “Visualizing Violence: Legitimacy and Authority in the ‘War on Terror’,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 1, no. 2 (2008): 213-26.

33. Anaïs, Disarming Intervention; Wong and Kheel, “Mattis.” Some have associated the reclaiming of heroism with the masculine connotations of lethality and an exclusionary gender, racial and class discourse. Shepherd, “Visualizing Violence.”

34. Seantel Anaïs, “Objects of Security/Objects of Research: Analyzing Non-Lethal Weapons, in Research Methods in Critical Security Studies, eds. Marc B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu (London: Routledge, 2013), 213-216; Irène Eulriet, Death in the Military in Sociological and Comparative Perspectives (Paris: IRSEM, 2014). A vague military ethos not only camouflages violence, but provides the military with a desirable image, contributing indirectly to the legitimization of its violence. Sarah Ingham, The Military Covenant: Its Impact on Civil-Military Relations in Britain (London: Ashgate, 2014); Victoria M. Basham, “Raising an Army: The Geopolitics of Militarizing the Lives of Working-Class Boys in an Age of Austerity,” International Political Sociology 10, no. 3 (2016): 258-74.

35. According to this explanation, lethality cannot benefit militaries because of its inherent faults: high casualties and consequent loss of legitimacy, as well as dehumanization of soldiers. It can also turn military action from an instrumental measure to an ostentatious show of force. Finally, unchecked lethality can tighten the civilian supervision of the military and erode its autonomy. Matthew Ford, “The Epistemology of Lethality: Bullets, Knowledge Trajectories, Kinetic Effects,” European Journal of International Security 5, no. 1 (2020): 77-93.

36. Uri Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s New Wars: A Sociological-Historical Explanation (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2012) (H).

37. Ofra Ben-Ishai, “The Missing Policing: The Absent Concept of Policing and Its Substitutes in Israeli Military Doctrine,” Israel Studies Review 35, no. 2 (2020): 9-36.

38. Zaki Shalom and Yoaz Hendel, “The Unique Features of the Second Intifada.” Military and Strategic Affairs 3, no. 1 (2011): 17-27.

39. Ofra Ben-Ishai, “From ‘Decision’ to ‘Regulation:’ The Change in the Discourse and Language of the Defense Doctrine as a Means for Renewed Legitimacy for Military Action in Israel, 1939-2006” (PhD diss., Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2018). Responsive design is a term borrowed from website design: websites adjust to diverse users to create an optimal user experience. Matt Germonprez, Julie E. Kendall, Kenneth E. Kendall, Lars Mathiassen, Brett Young, and Brian Warner, “A Theory of Responsive Design: A Field Study of Corporate Engagement with Open-Source Communities,” Information Systems Research 28, no. 1 (2017): 64-83.

40. Ben-Ishai, “From ‘Decision’ to ‘Regulation’.”

41. Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, Judith Möller, Sanne Kruikemeier, Ronan Ó Fathaigh, Kristina Irion, Tom Dobber, Balazs Bodo, and Claes de Vreese, “Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy,” Utrecht Law Review 14, no. 1 (2018): 82-96.

42. Yagil Levy, “The Sociology of a Military without Violence,” Megamot 55, no. 2 (2020): 221-30 (H).

43. Christine Hine, “Internet Research as Emergent Practice,” in Handbook of Emergent Methods, eds. Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy (New York: Guilford, 2010), 525-43.

44. Lennart J. Krotzek, “Inside the Voter’s Mind: The Effect of Psychometric Microtargeting on Feelings toward and Propensity to Vote for a Candidate, International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 3609-29.

45. David R. Segal, Mady W. Segal, and Brian J. Reed, “Diversity and Citizenship in Modern Military Organization, Journal of Sociology 35, no. 2 (2015): 45-63.

46. Jeanette Hofmann, “Microtargeting as a New Form of Political Claim-Making” (paper presented at ECPR General Conference, Hamburg, August 22-25, 2018).

47. Colin J. Bennett, “Voter Surveillance, Micro-Targeting and Democratic Politics: Knowing How People Vote Before They Do.” SSRN, 2014. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/SSRN-id2605183.pdf.

48. Sasha Issenberg, The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns (New York: Broadway Books, 2012).

49. Dipayan Ghosh, “What Is Microtargeting and What Is It Doing in Our Politics?,” Internet Citizen, October 4, 2018, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dipayan/files/what_is_microtargeting_and_what_is_it_doing_in_our_politics_-_internet_citizen.pdf.

50. Jay Winter, “Propaganda and the Mobilization of Consent, in The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War, ed. Hew Strachan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 216-25.

51. Jens K. Madsen and Toby D. Pilditch, “A Method for Evaluating Cognitively Informed Micro-Targeted Campaign Strategies: An Agent-Based Model Proof of Principle,” PLOS ONE 13, no. 4 (2018). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193909.

52. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Messages, Micro-Targeting, and New Media Technologies,” The Forum 11, no. 3 (2013): 429-35; Michael J. Burton, William J. Miller, and Daniel M. Shea, D. M., “Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2015).

53. Hal Malchow, The New Political Targeting (Campaigns & Electrons, 2003).

54. Iva Nenadić, “Data-Driven Online Political Microtargeting: Hunting for Voters, Shooting Democracy?” Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, European University Institute. https://cmpf.eui.eu/data-driven-online-political-microtargeting-hunting-for-voters-shooting-democracy/.

55. Jeff Chester and Kathryn C. Montgomery, “The Role of Digital Marketing in Political Campaigns,” Internet Policy Review 6, no. 4 (2017): 1-20.

56. Quentin Jones and Sheizaf Rafaeli, “What Do Virtual ‘Tells’ Tell? Placing Cybersociety Research into a Hierarchy of Social Explanation,” in Proceedings of the 33^rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 7, 2000). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221181619_What_Do_Virtual_Tells’’_Tell_Placing_Cybersociety_Research_into_a_Hierarchy_of_Social_Explanation.

57. Sanne Kruikemeier, Minem Sezgin, and Sophie C. Boerman, “Political Microtargeting: Relationship between Personalized Advertising on Facebook and Voters’ Responses, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 19, no. 6 (2016): 367-72.

58. Daniel Gizzi, “The Ethics of Political Micro-Targeting.” Data Driven Investor, December 3, 2018, https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-ethics-of-political-micro-targeting-c3b0be245607.

59. Solon Barocas, “The Price of Precision: Voter Microtargeting and Its Potential Harms to the Democratic Process,” in Proceedings of the First Edition Workshop on Politics, Elections and Data (pp. 31-36), November 2, 2012. ACM. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2389661.2389671.

60. Simon Kruschinsky, and André Haller, “Restrictions on Data-Driven Political Micro-Targeting in Germany,” Internet Policy Review 6, no. 4 (2017); 1-23.

61. Eitan D. Hersh, Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters (New York: Cambridge University Press., 2015).

62. Yuval Dror, Online Journalism (Ra’anana: Open University, 2011) (H).

63. Boaz Ben-David and Adi Folkman, “Readers” Comments (Talk-Backs) on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Canadian News-Websites: A Lighting-Rod for Extreme Views vs. a Ban on Free Discussions.” Paper presented at the 26^th annual meeting of the Association for Israeli Studies, Toronto, May 10-12, 2010; Na’ama Nagar, “The Loud Public: The Case of User Comments in Online News Media” (PhD diss., State University of New York, 2011).

64. Sheizaf Rafaeli and Fay Sudweeks, “Networked Interactivity,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 2, no. 4 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00201.x.

65. J. Brian Houston, Glenn J. Hansen, and Gwendelyn S. Nisbett, “Influence of User Comments on Perceptions of Media Bias and Third-Person Effect in Online News,” Electronic News 5, no. 2 (2011): 79-92.

66. Oren Soffer, “Assessing the Climate of Public Opinion in the User Comments Era: A New Epistemology,” Journalism 20, no. 6 (2019): 772-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917714938.

67. Terry Flew, New Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014(.

68. Yair Galily, “The (Re)shaping of the Israeli Sport Media: The Case of Talk-Back,” International Journal of Sport Communication 1, no. 3 (2008): 273-85.

69. Uzi Benziman, “Enemy of the People,” The Seventh Eye, February 13, 2010 (H). https://www.the7eye.org.il/18705.

70. Soffer, “Assessing the Climate of Public Opinion in the User Comments Era.”

71. Niva Elkin-Koren, “The New Intermediaries in the Virtual ‘Market Square’,” Mishpat Umimshal 6, no. 2 (2002): 381-420 (H).

72. Samuel Lehman-Wilzig, “The End of the Traditional Printed Newspaper: Factors in the Online Press That Threaten the Traditional Printed Press,” in Press Dot-Com: Online Journalism in Israel, ed. Tehila Schwartz-Altschuler (Israel Democracy Institute and Ben-Gurion University at the Negev, 2007), 199-243 (H).

73. Tehila Schwartz-Altschuler, “Introduction,” in Press Dot-Com: Online Journalism in Israel (Israel Democracy Institute and Ben-Gurion University at the Negev, 2007), 19-31 (H).

74. Yaakov Hecht, “Online Discourse – A Social Mediator,” 2003 (H). http://jacobhecht.com/he/abstracts/2003-02.htm.

75. Fabienne Sikron, Orna Baron-Epel, and Shai Linn, “The Voice of Lay Experts: Content Analysis of Traffic Accident “Talk-Backs,” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior 11, no. 1 (January 2008): 24-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2007.06.001.

76. Ayelet Cohen and Motti Neiger, “To Talk and to Talkback: Analyzing the Rhetoric of Talkbacks in the Online Press,” in Press Dot-Com: Online Journalism in Israel, ed. Tehila Schwartz-Altschuler (Israel Democracy Institute and Ben-Gurion University at the Negev, 2007), 321-350 (H); Elkin-Koren, “The New Intermediaries.”

77. Adrian Blackledge, “Discourse and Power,” in The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, eds. James Paul Gee and Michael Handford (New York: Routledge, 2013), 642-53.

78. Hine, “Internet Research.”

79. Richard Rogers, “Internet Research: The Question of Method,” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 7, no. 2-3 (2010): 241-60.

80. Gerlinde Mautner, “Time to Get Wired: Using Web-Based Corpora in Critical Discourse Analysis,” Discourse & Society 16, no. 6 (2005): 809-28.

81. Hine, “Internet Research.”

82. Mautner, “Time to Get Wired.”

83. During that time, towns and villages in southern Israel were subjected to attacks by incendiary balloons and rockets launched from Gaza. Hudah Ari Gross, “Gaza Incendiary Balloons Spark Dozens of Fires in Southern Israel,” The Times of Israel, June 27, 2019. https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-incendiary-balloons-spark-dozens-of-fires-in-southern-israel/.

84. Tanya Reinhart, Written in the Paper: Language, Media and Ideology (Haifa: Pardes, 2010) (H).

85. As some commenters adopted several theses, the rates do not add up to 100%.

86. Ford, “The Epistemology of Lethality.”

87. Wilcox, “Legitimacy in the Conduct of Military Operations.”

88. Udi Lebel, “Postmodern or Conservative? Competing Security Communities over Military Doctrine – Israeli National-Religious Soldiers as Counter [Strategic] Culture Agents,” Political and Military Sociology: An Annual Review 40 (2013): 23-57.

89. Uri Ben-Eliezer, “Post-Modern Armies and the Question of Peace and War: The Israeli Defense Forces in the ‘New Times,’” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 1 (2004): 49-70.

90. Michal Shavit, Media Strategy and Military Operations in the 21^st Century: Mediatizing the Israel Defence Forces (London: Routledge, 2016).

91. Bob Jessop, “The Changing Governance of Welfare; Recent Trends in Its Primary Functions, Scale, and Modes of Coordination,” Social Policy & Administration 33, no. 4 (1999), 348-59; Yagil Levy, “The IDF between Solidarity and Conflict – ‘The People’s Army’ against Mandatory Conscription.” The Open University Institute for Policy Analysis, Memo 28 (H); Yagil Levy, “’The People’s Army’ against Mandatory Conscription,” Law and Military 21, no. 1 (2015), 309-40 (H).

92. Ben-Ishai, “From ‘Decision’ to ‘Regulation’.”

93. Shepherd, “Visualizing Violence.”

94. Ibid.; Crispin Thurlow and Katherine Bell, “Against Technologization: Young People’s New Media Discourse as Creative Cultural Practice, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14, no. 4 (2009): 1038-49.

95. Lilach Shoval, “The IDF Recaps the Year: Some 300 Attacks on Six Fronts Next to an Increase in Offensive Cyber Operations,” Israel Hayom, December 12, 2020 (H). https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/828599.

96. Amir Bohbot, “Kochavi, One Year in Office: The Chief of Staff Who Tries to Turn the IDF into the Largest Startup in Israel,” Walla!, January 18, 2020 (H). https://news.walla.co.il/item/3335503.

97. This is reminiscent of the American rhetoric calling for more violent action to help the military recuperate from the so-called Vietnam Syndrome. H. R. McMaster, “Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome,” Hoover Daily Report, February 17, 2003. https://www.hoover.org/research/kicking-vietnam-syndrome.

98. Basham, “Raising an Army.”

99. Ofer Shelah, The Silver Platter: Why Is a Revolution Necessary in the IDF? (Or Yehuda: Kinneret Zmora-Bitan, 2003) (H).

100. Stephen Coleman, “Review,” Parliamentary Affairs 60, no. 1 (2007): 180-86; Heather Savigny, “Focus Groups and Political Marketing: Science and Democracy as Axiomatic?” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9, no. 1 (2007): 122-3; Heather Savigny, The Problem of Political Marketing (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011).

101. Levy, “The IDF between Solidarity and Conflict.”

102. Baruch Kimmerling, “The Damages of the Talkback,” The Marker, June 21, 2005 (H), https://www.themarker.com/technation/2005-06-21/ty-article/0000017f-dc55-df9c-a17f-fe5ddfdb0000; Jennifer Lees-Marshment, “The Marriage of Politics and Marketing,” Political Studies 49, no. 4 (2001): 692-713; Jennifer Lees-Marshment and Darren Lilleker, “Political Marketing and Traditional Values: ‘Old Labour’ for ‘new times’?” Contemporary Politics 7, no. 3 (2001): 205-16; Jennifer Lees-Marshment, “Global Political Marketing,” in Global Political Marketing, eds. Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Chris Rudd, and Jesper Stromback (London: Routledge, 2009), 1-16.

103. Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Operations in Israel’s War Against Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting It Right in Gaza (Washington, DC: RAND Corporation). See esp. Ch. 5, “The Winograd Commission’s Findings,” 199-220.

104. Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik, and Christoph A. Hafner, “Discourse Analysis and Digital Practices,” in Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age (New York, Routledge, 2015), 1-17. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/9781317537007.pdf.