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Olive green: environment, militarism and the Israel defense forces
chapter
posted on 2014-09-24, 10:33 authored by Uri GordonMilitaristic societies are ones in which the armed forces enjoy a privileged
material and cultural status, and where military priorities and frames of thinking play
a key role in policymaking and political culture (Vagts 1981, Evans and Newnham
1988). Militarism is not limited to direct governance by uniformed personnel
(“praetorianism”), but may instead coexist with substantive democratic institutions
(Ben Eliezer 1997). Thus, contemporary societies described as militaristic are as
politically diverse as Switzerland and Burma, North and South Korea, Jordan and
Israel.
This chapter explores the interface between environmental and military issues
in Israel, placing it within the context of the changing fortunes of Israeli militarism. In
particular, it is argued that growing public willingness to challenge the military’s
environmentally destructive behavior in the last decades was linked to wider
transformations in Israeli society. The Oslo Accords and the rise of liberalindividualist
outlooks associated with globalization and consumer culture weakened
the country’s founding collectivist ideology in favor of material values associated
with quality of life. In this context, the military lost its previous immunity to public
criticism, and environmental concerns, formerly considered luxuries in comparison
with security matters, were able to gain ground in the public sphere alongside other
civil agendas. The chapter begins by stating the case for viewing Israel as a militaristic
society. It then surveys the military’s environmental activity and the environmental
destruction it has wrought, while also noting some early successes in the area of
nature conservation. Finally, it discusses how, since the 1990s, the environmental
movement and affected residents, as well as the Ministry of Environment and State
Comptroller, have pushed the military to clean up its act.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of IsraelPages
? - ? (400)Citation
GORDON, U., 2013. Olive green: environment, militarism and the Israel defense forces. IN: Orenstein, D., Tal, A. and Miller, C. (eds.) Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 242-261.Publisher
© University of Pittsburgh PressVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2013Notes
"Olive Green: Environment, Militarism, and the Israel Defense Forces" by Uri Gordon from Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel, edited by Daniel E. Orenstein, Alon Tal and Char Miller, is deposited here by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. ©2013. All rights reserved.ISBN
0822962225;9780822962229Publisher version
Language
- en