International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1991 A Comment on "The Emergence of Militaristic Nationalism in Israel" Uri Ben-Eliezer and Ronen Shamir In the last issue of the International Journal of Politic~, Culture, and Society, two Israeli scholars outlined some new ideas concerning the ascen- dancy of militaristic nationalism in Israel. Their thesis suggests that Israel's national policies are shaped by strong militaristic tendencies, which are reinforced by a series of military victories and an ongoing flow of arms supply and advanced military technology from the United States. Carmi and Rosenfeld's work is concerned with tracing the roots and origins of these militaristic nationalist tendencies. Their research question, however, is untypical; they do not directly look for the historical, economic and politi- cal circumstances which facilitated the emergence of militaristic nation- alism. Rather, they base their study on a counterfactual hypothesis. They argue that militarism and nationalism gained ascendency over the potential socialist society that could have emerged in Israel. Their argument, therefore, rests on the assumption that at a particular given moment in time, which can be isolated and identified, the dominant forces of the Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community in Palestine) had a rare opportunity to choose between one of two alternatives: Socialism, on the one hand, militaristic nationalism, on the other hand. The counterfactual element of their analysis becomes immediately evident in their opening ar- guments: "Since the Socialists dominated the political scene these struggles (Jews v. Arabs, Jews v. British, Arabs v. British), however, contained the potential for the emergence of a Jewish socialist society that might have produced a very different social and national perspective for Israel and Palestine" (ibid.:5). Assuming the existence of such a historical intersec- tion-in which policy-makers could have opted for peaceful socialism--im- plies both theoretical and empirical arguments that merit reconsideration. Another premise of Carmi and Rosenfeld is that pre-state Israel should be analyzed in class-conflict terms if we are to understand the issue 387 9 1991 Human Sciences Press, Inc.