Yagil Levy’s primary thesis is that Israel’s secular middle class, the traditional backbone of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), manifested a high readiness for military sacrifice until the 1970s because the “right to protect” was considered meaningful and provided a route to socioeconomic and political advancement. Since then, however, its tolerance for sacrifice has decreased, limiting the government’s and the IDF’s decision-making autonomy and leading to the adoption of casualty-averse policies.

Levy maintains that the right to protect and the legitimacy of sacrifice have been socially devalued since the 1970s and, consequently, that the benefits provided have decreased and shifted to other groups. This change stemmed primarily from the decline of the external threat that Israel faces; the rise of a market society that promotes values of individualism, rather than military sacrifice, making it harder for reservists to compete in a competitive labor market; and the decoupling of the link between military contribution and socioeconomic and political benefits, as groups whose contribution was small, or nonexistent, attained rights nevertheless.

This devaluation, Levy maintains, created an imbalance between the “right to protect” and the “right to protection,” with three primary consequences: the drop in motivation among the secular middle class, which found means of avoiding military service or at least combat positions; a decline in the state’s commitment to provide security, and adoption both of more moderate policies, such as the Oslo Accords, and of casualty-averse approaches that reduce middle-class combat losses (e.g., increasing reliance on technology and the growing proportion of lower-class and peripheral social groups in combat units); and the rise of an inverted “death hierarchy,” which places greater emphasis on the lives of some soldiers, especially reservists and secular-middle-class conscripts, over many civilians.

Changing social attitudes also created a “bereavement hierarchy.” Lower-class groups, such as settlers, the religious, and immigrants, who also tend to be more hawkish, manifested greater tolerance for military deaths, whereas the secular middle class, with a higher sensitivity to losses, translated this tolerance into a “subversive bereavement discourse.” Parents increasingly criticized operations and demanded, as never before, that sacrifices be made only for justified causes. Reservists refused to carry out certain missions in Lebanon and the occupied territories, television broadcast soldiers’ funerals, and soldiers came to be viewed as children to be protected by their parents. Consequently, casualty prevention became more important than achieving the military mission.

Finally, Levy maintains that the more the IDF draws on lower-class and peripheral groups, the less likely it is to arouse opposition. Whereas reservists are more likely to engage in political protest, an increase in the relative participation of settlers, the religious, and immigrants helped restore part of the military’s autonomy by relaxing pressures for casualty-averse policies, as did reforms designed to reduce the burden on reservists, including limiting the maximum annual period of service.

One weakness of Israel’s Death Hierarchy is that it focuses solely on the reasons for declining motivation, but does not address the opposite question, why after nearly a century of conflict, the level of motivation in Israel remains as high as it is, including among the secular middle class. Levy mentions, but does not attribute sufficient weight to, the changing nature and magnitude of the threats Israel faces as a primary reason for the decrease in motivation. Israel no longer faces existential threats (unless Iran goes nuclear); many of the conflicts in recent decades have either been politically controversial or were simply stopgap measures designed to gain time and ameliorate threats, not resolve them. Many Israelis, especially the secular middle class, which tends to be more dovish, thus reached the conclusion that they had won their existence and could enjoy the luxury of a prosperous, secure state, and that short-term military gains, at times for politically controversial causes, did not justify the ultimate sacrifice. Rather than a new death hierarchy, Israel now faces a threat hierarchy, and the ongoing high level of motivation is also worthy of study.

The author correctly points out that the IDF is no longer the primary route to social mobility and that the rise of a dynamic market economy offers young Israelis new routes to success. While the willingness to sacrifice is certainly important in a nation that still faces major security challenges, these changes represent a historic Israeli success as a state.

Levy himself acknowledges that there is a scholarly debate about the influence of casualty sensitivity on popular support for military action. At times, for example during the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 and 2012 Gaza operations, the public has attached greater importance to victory than to casualties, thereby indicating both societal resilience and a public, as he notes, that is defeat-phobic, rather than casualty-phobic.

The author makes a number of debatable assertions, for example, that Israel used excessive force in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 in order to reduce Israeli casualties and, consequently, that enemy civilians are now at the bottom of the death hierarchy. All militaries seek to reduce their own casualties, and Israel has a proven record of going to great lengths to minimize enemy civilian casualties. Moreover, Israel had little choice but to adopt the measures it did, as a direct result of Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s intentional use of their civilian populations as human shields and the years of massive rocket fire against Israel’s civilian home front.

Moreover, Levy argues that the government made only limited efforts to prevent rocket fire on Sderot, the primary brunt of Hamas attacks, because it was poor and lacking in political influence. In fact, Israel went to great lengths to defend Sderot, and any failures were due to the absence of an effective military response, not differential treatment. He argues that Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent) converted their preeminence in the military into social dominance, but they were always the socioeconomic elite and later also became the military elite.

Finally, Levy’s assertion that the state was responsible for redistributing the burden of military service among new population groups is unclear. As he himself argues, the secular middle class undertook various means of avoiding military or at least combat service, whereas the settlers, religious, and Russian immigrants tend to be highly motivated and have gravitated to combat units of their own accord. Moreover, they are also no longer peripheral or disadvantaged groups, and the differences in levels of motivation may reflect differing political beliefs, rather than socioeconomic differences.

Israel’s Death Hierarchy is not a uniformly easy read, and Levy could have made his case better had his hypothesis been set out more clearly in the introduction. It is, however, a very important contribution that will be read with great interest both by specialists on Israel and to general political science, sociology, and security-studies readers, especially those interested in the challenges of maintaining national motivation and resolve in the face of a highly protracted conflict. As such, it is highly recommended.