Israel Defense Forces

The Israel Defense Forces is present in the novel chiefly through the military history and memories of Alexander Gideon, rather than through a description of its structure or operations. Gideon recalls serving as an Israeli officer in the Yom Kippur War and refers more broadly to Arab deaths in Israel’s wars. These passages make the force part of the novel’s inquiry into how military service, political conviction, and personal responsibility are judged.

Military experience in Gideon’s account

Gideon’s recollections place him in several military episodes. He remembers being injured during a raid north of the Sea of Galilee and staying for a fortnight with Manfred Zakheim’s family. The episode links military experience to the long personal friendship between the two men, which is also described through acts of practical support before and after the raid.

In his account of the Yom Kippur War, Gideon recalls taking part in an assault during bitter fighting along the seam between the two Egyptian armies. He presents his appearance that day—shaved and wearing a freshly starched shirt—as an instance of his persistent need for order. The detail connects his military identity with a broader habit of arranging and controlling his surroundings, rather than offering a general picture of military life.

A separate memory places Gideon in the Sinai Peninsula during a military operation. A camel entered the firing zone, and Gideon joined other soldiers in firing at it; after the animal was killed, he ordered the firing to stop when a Bedouin appeared. The episode remains a personal recollection, not an account of an identified campaign or an explanation of military policy.

War, politics, and military action

The Israel Defense Forces also forms part of the political background to the novel’s debates over war and territory. On the eve of the Six-Day War, Michel Sommo campaigned against the Eshkol government’s wait-and-see policy and advocated taking the military initiative against Egypt and other Arab countries. After the war, he became active in the Greater Israel Movement. These details establish the political arguments surrounding military action without making Sommo a representative of the force itself.

Gideon’s correspondence with Sommo later addresses proposals to acquire territory and move Arab residents elsewhere through financial inducements. Gideon questions the practical cost of such a plan and the idea of selling the state to buy the territories. The exchange places military and territorial questions alongside competing arguments about land, population, and political purpose; it does not present those arguments as official positions of the Israel Defense Forces.

Responsibility and the limits of the portrait

In a letter to Sommo, Gideon disputes the moral labels attached to them. He argues that his opponent’s reputation for humanitarianism sits uneasily with the Arab deaths associated with the wars, while he describes himself as having refrained from harming people. The passage is a partisan argument within a personal conflict, not a neutral assessment of military conduct. Its force comes from the contrast between public reputations and each man’s account of responsibility.

The novel thus represents the Israel Defense Forces indirectly, through Gideon’s memories of combat and through the political language of war surrounding him. It supplies specific glimpses—a raid, an assault, a firing zone—while withholding an institutional overview. That narrow perspective makes military experience a test of personal order, memory, and moral judgment rather than a detached history of the force.