The 1948 war is regarded by Israel as its war of independence in which it managed to repel attacks by all the neighboring Arab States. The Arab population of Palestine regard the war as a catastrophe, al Nakba, that caused the exodus of some 750, 000 Arabs. As a result of the 1948 war, Israel occupied the Western Galilee and Beersheba, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza strip, all territories allocated to the proposed Arab State. Israel and Jordan divided Jerusalem between them. International law issues arising from the war include complaints from both sides of deliberate killing of civilians, clearly a violation of the laws of war. Expulsion of civilians, where it occurred, was justified by Israel as an act of legal military necessity, this is disputed by the Palestinians who viewed it as an illegal act. A smaller number of Jewish civilians were expelled from areas held by Arab forces.A legal issue in dispute is whether the objection of the Arabs of Palestine to partition allowed them to use force and whether the intervention of the neighbouring Arab States was a legitimate exercise of the right of collective self-defence.

The emergence of organizational culture in the Israeli Defence Forces can inform scholars and practitioners how military cultures are formed and evolve, and how they shape organizational habits and patterns of actions in newly established military organizations. This chapter examines the vision, plans, and means the IDF’s early leadership deployed in a conscious attempt to create a shared pool of values and practices in the armed forces of the young State of Israel. It offers three different examples illuminating the dynamics of the IDF’s self-fashioned culture, defiantly independent and idiosyncratic from its very inception: the early emergence of an offensive approach in conventional and sub-conventional conflicts; the desire to learn from other armies but emulate none; and the IDF’s relations with the Israeli government characterized by agency and self-promotion. Together, these shed light on the IDF’s early organizational culture, imprinted into the organization’s cultural DNA and persisting many decades to follow.

The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.