Tunnel Operations in the Israel Defense Forces: Adapting the Warrior Ethos to Post-Heroic Conflict

• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Author: Corinne Berger,Dvir Peleg,Avishai Antonovsky,Niv Gold,Uzi Ben-Shalom,Nehemia Stern
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20924040
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X20924040

Armed Forces & Society

2022, Vol. 48(2) 343 –363

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20924040

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Article

Tunnel Operations in the

Israel Defense Forces:

Adapting the Warrior

Ethos to Post-Heroic

Conflict

Nehemia Stern

1

, Uzi Ben-Shalom

1

, Niv Gold

2

,

Corinne Berger

1

, Avishai Antonovsky

3

, and Dvir Peleg

1

Abstract

This study presents an empirically grounded account of tunnel combat operations in

the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) within the context of “post-heroic” warfare. Cur-

rent scholarship on “post-heroism” has viewed the technological and professional

standards of contemporary military conflicts as distancing the individual combatant

from the modern battlefield. Little attention has been given however to the ways in

which soldiers themselves experience and adapt to post-heroic conditions. Findings

based on in-depth semistructured interviews with 17 IDF tunnel combatants show

these soldiers actively reinterpreting the strategic importance placed on distancing

the warrior from the battlefield. This exploratory article suggests that an individual

“warrior ethos” still resonates amid the professional and technological contours of

post-heroic (underground) conflicts. By presenting a novel account of contemporary

tunnel warfare from the perspective of the combatants themselves, this research

sheds new light on the different personal dimensions that impact post-heroic military

operations.

1

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ariel University, Israel

2

Clinical Branch, Department of Mental Health, Medical Corps, Israel Defense Force, Israel

3

Mental Fitness Branch, Department of Mental Health, Medical Corps, Israel Defense Forces, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Nehemia Stern, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel.

Email: nastern26@gmail.com

344 Armed Forces & Society 48(2)

Keywords

tunnel warfare, IDF, post-heroic, warrior ethos, unit cohesion

In December 2018, the Israel Defense Forces undertook what it termed Operation

Northern Shield. The operation’s objective was to uncover, map, and neutralize a

network of offensive tunnels Hezbollah had constructed that ran from villages in

Southern Lebanon into Northern Israel (Gross, 2018). During the Operation, the

Galilee Division Commander Brigadier General Rafi Milo, along with a select group

of adjutants, entered the largest such tunnel and crossed over into the Lebanese side

of the border.

This entrance into a tunnel complex was neither authorized nor sanctioned by

command authorities within the IDF. In entering the tunnel the general risked him-

self, the officers with him, as well as Israel’s broader strategic position should they

have been killed, or worse, kidnapped. In response, military sources stated, “this was

an irresponsible action, without prior coordination, and which violated safety

procedures.” On the other hand, the general’s actions also epitomized a classic style

of individual initiative that some feel is being lost within Israel’s contemporary

Ground Forces (Tzickerman, 2014). In his own defense, Milo is reported to have

said, “I am a combat [warrior] commander. It’s not possible that I won’t enter into

the tunnel to its very end” (Yehoshua, 2019).

Brigadier General Milo was given a formal reprimand and his promotion to the

rank of full General was delayed by a year. These sanctions—which essentially

amounted to a slap on the wrist—point to a central tension within the IDF itself

concerning the nature of the “warrior ethos” in contemporary warfare. At stake in

Milo’s actions that day rests a fundamental question regarding the role of the more

human-centered elements of combat, such as individual curiosity and the desire to

close with the enemy, at a time when such combat is becoming increasingly deper-

sonalized through the use of technology and professionalized through doctrinal

standards and procedures (Libel, 2013).

This article explores what sociologists of the military have termed the “warrior

ethos” in the post-heroic age (Coker, 2007; Henriksen, 2007; Renic, 2018; Vinci,

2008). It seeks to analyze how the “agency of the warrior” (Coker, 2007, pp. 11–12)

may adapt to the larger strategic, political, and professionalized contexts of contem-

porary post-heroic warfare. That is, what are the cultural modes through which the

more human-centered factors of a modern warrior ethos—the choices, feelings, and

everyday experiences of combatants—relate to the technological and professional

characteristics of contemporary post-heroic warfare?

Israel’s decades-long engagement in tunnel operations along the southern borders

of the Gaza Strip, and more recently along its northern Lebanese border, offers a

unique opportunity to directly engag e with these issues. Israel’s tunneli ng units

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