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Fundamental Surprise – Israeli Lessons

Introduction

Since its foundation, Israel has been a sort of laboratory for strategic surprises. It went, and still goes, through frequent security crises and every decade a war or serious military accident breaks out. The question of intelligence and military surprises and their consequences is an acute prime topic of utmost importance to Israeli national security.

In this article I intend to present an updated portrayal of the Fundamental Surprise theory, which I developed in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War (1973) and published in my book ‘Fundamental Surprise' – The National Intelligence Crisis (Lanir, 1983)[1]. I will present its evolution in light of the experience of the First Lebanon War (1982), the Second Intifada (2000-2004), and the Second Lebanon War (2006).

My first encounter with Fundamental Surprise – the Yom Kippur War

On the eve of the Yom Kippur War the IDF's intelligence regarding Egypt seemed to be almost flawless. The success of the gathering units in information retrieval was very impressive. The Israeli intelligence held the various editions of the Egyptian war plans, training plans, the correspondences between the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian leaders, and between Egyptian and the USSR leaders – the strategic patron and prime weapons provider of Egypt at the time. One may say that it was a state of "almost complete information" ("complete information" is unattainable due to the fact that that in  dynamic situations there will always be a certain delay between "reality" and the knowledge about that "reality"). The Israeli intelligence knew all it assessed to be needed in order to prevent a surprise. Intelligence analysts felt and demonstrated great confidence in their evaluations regarding what was happening and what was about to happen. And then the surprise occurred. As it turned out, the intelligence indeed knew almost everything but understood very little. 

We were astonished and embarrassed. How was it possible that we knew almost everything but understood nothing? I say we because I include myself in this. During the build up towards the war and the war itself I served as the officer responsible for coordination between the intelligence analysts and the intelligence collection units, a position that allowed me to examine what items of information analysts deemed vital, and how they were interpreted in their estimations. 

For me, what collapsed before my eyes was not only the intelligence assessment that turned out to be incorrect, but also my professional comprehension as an intelligence officer. Everything that I was taught, and which I passed on to generations of young intelligence officers, collapsed as well. The assumption that comprehension of reality lays within the information we possess regarding this reality, proved to be false. This was my first experiential encounter with the nature of ‘Fundamental Surprise'. 

This first encounter with ‘Fundamental Surprise' caused me to abandon my intelligence career, leave the IDF, and venture out on a personal intellectual journey resulting in the theory of 'Fundamental Surprise'. 

The basic notion of the theory is that we may be prone to two types of surprises – situational versus fundamental:
‘Situational Surprises' – are caused by failure in gathering, analyzing or distributing information.
‘Fundamental Surprises' – reveal a mind set that ceased to be relevant to reality long before the surprising event occurred.  

I felt that deepening into the understanding of the differences between these two types of surprise, and mainly into the nature of the ‘Fundamental Surprises' might be a first step in prevention of ‘Fundamental Surprises' or at least designing more effective ways of coping with ‘Fundamental Surprises' once they have not been prevented. 

The following anecdote might serve to clarify the distinction between these two different types of surprise and make for a better understanding of the nature of ‘Fundamental Surprises'. 

The Webster Anecdote

There is a story about Noah Webster, the author of the famous Webster Dictionaries who got married to a young and beautiful student. Immediately after the wedding Webster returned to his work on the dictionary. The writing of the dictionary demanded a persistent routine and so every day Mr. Webster would set out from his home early morning and return only in the late hours of the evening. He did not set time to fulfill his young wife's wishes and needs, but she managed pretty well without him. One clear day Webster suffered from a sudden terrible head ache. He returned home earlier than usual only to find his wife in bed with the butler. "You surprised me" said his wife; "you astonished me" replied her husband. 

Why did Webster, which was so sensitive to the meaning of words, choose to use a different word from his wife's to describe the event from his perspective? He probably felt the need to differentiate between his surprise and his wife's surprise. While his wife's surprise was a situational one, his surprise was fundamental.

Let's clarify the difference between the two.

If we were to try and depict the conceptual problem that Webster's young "virtuous" wife had, we could say that she failed in gathering and/or analyzing the information that could have prevented the "surprise". Thus, if she would have only locked the door and left the key in its hole before getting into bed with the butler she could have prevented the surprise. Her surprise was a result of insufficient information. The lesson to be learned from her point of view could have been summed up as "next time, more caution" 

Noah Webster had to deal with a completely different phenomenon. The surprising event brought forth profound questions going beyond the miserable event per-se. It undermined his entire understanding of himself regarding his wife and his marriage. His entire conceptual interpretation turned out to be irrelevant and collapsed at once.

The type of lesson Noah Webster had to learn was qualitatively different from the one his wife did. Mrs. Webster needed to acquire situational learning, the learning we practice in order to do what we do in a faster, more precise, and in more sophisticated manner, but without the need to change our mind set. On the other hand, Noah Webster was required for fundamental learning, reframing the conceptual system through which we interpret ourselves in respect of our world. 

This is a very long, complex and painful process. No wonder that Mr. Webster was trying to deny it. He turned to his wife and said "surely it was the butler who seduced you against your will?" but she replied "no, it was me who initiated it". Mr. Webster, now wishing to assume that this was a one-time slip, asks his wife "and were there more slips like this?" and instead of a straight answer his wife says "your blindness is astounding. The distancing between us has been growing a long time, only you didn't notice it…. you and your dictionary".

Now Mr. Webster cannot ignore what we describe as a need for fundamental learning, but albeit his extensive education he has never learned how to do so. He has specialized in situational learning, but there is no gradual passage from situational learning to fundamental learning.

The following table sums up the differences between the two types of surprises:

 

Situational surprise

Fundamental surprise

Who caused the surprise?

The "other"

The "self" – the surprising party is one being surprised

The Diagnostic Value of the information

High

Low

The essence of the surprise

Failure in information collection, analysis or distribution

Mind set malfunction

The span of the surprise

An event

Marks just the beginning of a process raising questions beyond the scope of the event

The type of learning

Situational learning

Fundamental learning

Nevertheless, the Webster anecdote does not end up here, it has an epilog. Years after divorcing his recalcitrant wife, Mr. Webster met another young student, fell in love with her and married her. Now you can imagine the end of the story for yourselves. One way to end the story is the dramatic way of "One clear day Webster suffered from a sudden terrible head ache. He returned home earlier than usual only to find his wife…" and the rest is probably quite familiar. This epilog is meant to demonstrate that even after being fundamentally surprised, we are usually reluctant to accomplish the needed fundamental learning. Most of us fail doing so, even the most educated.

The Relevance Gap

Each Fundamental Surprise has a long period of incubation before its occurrence, in which a growing relevance gap is widened between the victim's mind-set and reality. This relevance gap goes on long after the occurrence of a fundamental surprise as well – a period in which the victim is exposed to the occurrence of additional Fundamental Surprises.

The chronicle of a 'Relevance Gap' may be modeled into four stages shown in the following diagram:

Diagram 1 – the chronicles of relevance gaps and fundamental surprise

 

Stage 1 – Relevance
The preliminary stage, describes a situation where the mind-set is relevant to the interpretation of reality. Even in this stage one can expect optimization gaps (represented in the diagram by the parallel lines), which derives from fault in gathering analysis and distribution of information. These optimization gaps may cause situational surprises.

Stage 2 – Incubation
Each event of fundamental surprise is preceded by a long process of incubation during which a relevance gap is formed. This process begins with a disruptive change[2] in reality, which demands a change in mind-set. Thus, the gap is caused by the growing rate between the pace of change in reality and the lagging pace of change of our mind set. We tend to treat fundamental changes in our surroundings as if they were only situational (represented by the dotted line). To a great extent the situational learning that we carry out causes us to not notice the ever widening relevance gap.

Stage 3 – Denial
Even after the Fundamental Surprise occurred, we tend to deny its nature as fundamental, and try to recover by making situational improvements.

Stage 4 – Fundamental Learning
It takes quite some time until we are ready to acknowledge the need for a fundamental learning process, during which we may undergo more events of Fundamental Surprise.

The challenge of coping with the Fundamental Surprise phenomenon does not end in the detection of relevance gaps and providing the fundamental early warning, which is supposed to be carried out mainly by intelligence analysts. It also demands reframing the military operational concepts, which requires the design and activation of a new organizational category.

The ability to perform more effectively than the enemy, in coping with the phenomenon of Fundamental Surprise becomes a factor that can ascertain the results of wars at least, and even more than, technology or combat performance.

Fundamental surprises in Israeli Wars

In the Independence War (1947-8), the Sinai War (1956) and the Six Day War (1967) Israel brought about its enemies fundamental surprises, but in most of its recent wars – the Yom Kippur war (1973), the First Lebanon War (1982) and the Second Lebanon War (2006) – it found itself trapped in fundamental surprises. What have we learned and mainly failed to learn from these experiences? 

What didn't we learn from the Yom Kippur War?
In the Yum Kippur war the IDF suffered a situational as well as fundamental surprise. The intelligence received information from a highly regarded source that the war was going to start in the evening of October 6th, while in practice the Egyptians launched their attack at noon. This surprise was indeed situational but the main surprise was fundamental. The main surprise was in comprehension.

The logic of the IDF's operational plans collapsed. Its organizing logic felling  to pieces. The forces in the battlefield found them selves dispersed, fighting without any comprehensive logic. The Sinai regular armored division that was expected to hold back the Egyptian attack till the reserve division would join them for the counter attack failed to launce its planned divisional operation. The division broke up into brigades, the brigades into battalions, the battalions into companies, the companies into teams and even singular tanks, each fighting isolated tactical battles while losing their general orientation. Out of 268 tanks in the Sinai division on noon of October 6th, only 110 were left the day after. More than 150 tanks were annihilated in dozens of small uncoordinated combats[3]. 

The Israeli Air Force found itself in a similar situation. The Air Force, that in the Six Day war inflicted decisive defeat to the Egyptian air force in the first hours of the war, and thus actually determining the outcome of the entire war, lost so many planes and pilots in the first few days of the Yum Kippur War that it seemed that if they were to continue at the same rate Israel would be left without any real air power in a few days. All that, without being effective in providing air support and coverage for the ground units. 

In the absence of air support the Bar-Lev Line, which was meant to be a "holding line", turned completely useless within a few hours. At the same time the armored forces that proved so successful in tank-against-tank battles found themselves shedding their blood in unsuccessful attempts to join the Bar-Lev Line and retrieve the remaining soldiers. 

Despite its sophisticated technological collection and retrieval means, IDF's intelligence was helpless and unable to provide information in real time to its fighting forces regarding the masses of dispersed Egyptian infantry trenched in the sands, setting antitank ambushes while the Israeli tanks were blind to their location. 

Even more astonishing was that despite its intelligence having the Egyptian's war plans, the Israeli political and military leadership failed grossly in understanding the objectives behind the Egyptian's moves. The strategic-conceptual fog was far more devastating than the battlefield fog. 

The IDF paid a very steep price for its fundamental surprise failure of October 5th -7th. Its attempts to change the situation with a counterstrike by the reserve division on October 8th failed miserably as well. Only after many more days of combat laden with heavy losses would the war wheel turn and the IDF succeed in moving into another offensive that drove out the Egyptian army from Sinai. 

Nevertheless, albeit the success in the final stage of the war – the siege of the depleted Egyptian third army in the eastern side of the canal, and the arrival of Israeli front forces to the "101st kilometer" from the capital Cairo – Israeli still lost the war because it failed to understand its meaning. Israel assumed the victory was obtained by "territorial conquest" and "enemy annihilation". But the Egyptians were waging a different type of war, one with a political goal – to undermine the status quo and to obtain treaties that would return Sinai to them. In order to achieve the goal for which they went out to war the Egyptians didn't need a decisive outcome under the meaning of "territorial conquest" and "enemy annihilation". Although the IDF had substantial achievements in these two military aspects, the Egyptians were those who reached their goal in the war. 

The Israeli military "triumph" failed to deny the Egyptians of their goal in the war. In a seemingly absurd way it even strengthened it. The entangled situation on the ground at the end of the war helped the American secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, to bring the two sides to sign a separation of forces treaty that led eventually to a peace agreement including an entire pretreatment of Israeli forces and reestablishment of Egyptian sovereignty over the entire Sinai Peninsula. 

An analysis of the Yom Kippur war demonstrates not only the incubation phase. The Yom Kippur can serve us as a demonstration of how long the road to fundamental learning after a fundamental surprise can be. After the war there was an ongoing denial of the need for fundamental learning. Instead, much situational learning took place which didn't change the irrelevant conception. On the contrary, it strengthened the belief in its validity. 

Immediately after the war teams were appointed to learn the reasons for the operational and logistic malfunctions during the war and to suggest how each of them should be corrected. The malfunctions of the first days of the war were attributed to the shortage in combat equipment, and the unfavorable balance of power. The fact that the defects the IDF suffered in the first days of the war did not derive from inferiority in equipment or weapons, but from conceptual mind set malfunctions, was not learned. Nor were the proper conclusions drawn regarding the new nature of war the IDF experienced in the Yum Kippur, a war that was so different from the previous ones and that marked the new character of future wars. 

The ‘situational learning' after the war, dragged Israel into an extensive military enlargement and reinforcement process. In the years 1973-1982 the number of IDF tanks grew from 1900 to 3600, and Armored Personnel Carriers from 2500 to 8000. The air force went through a similar process and received the F-15 and F-16 planes, a new monitoring, command and control system. Enormous sums of money were invested in new technological means for better intelligence, surveillance and warning. 

This 'situational learning' led to a wild growth in the Israeli security budget. In 1975 the security budget took up 30% of Israel's GNP. If in 1973 the national budget deficit stood on 782 million dollars, in 1975 it soared to 4 billion. This sharp growth in the deficit brought Israel by 1984 to a debt of 719 billion dollars and an annual inflation rate of 375%. After the Yom Kippur War, Israel turned from one of the fastest growers in the west to one of the slowest[4]. The army got stronger but the state and society got weaker, the national economy suffered a great blow, and the social rifts grew as society became more polarized.

The military might kept growing even after the Camp David treaty in 1977 and The Peace treaty in September 1978. It went on even after the collapse of the "eastern front" threat in 1980 with the war between Iraq and Iran. Not even the constant reclines in Syria's financial, political and military status, which came to a climax with the fall of the USSR, changed this trend. The balance of power did grow significantly in the IDF's favor, but the relevance of its conceptual military and national defense mind-set to the new realities was shrinking. 

The First Lebanon War Fundamental Surprise

On June 1982 the IDF launched "Operation Peace for Galilee" (titled later off the "First Lebanon War") with huge forces and crushing technological supremacy, especially in aerial force. Although its favorability over the Syrian army, and more so over Lebanon and the PLO, the IDF failed to achieve the goals of its war regarding both of them. With Syria the goal was expulsion of the Syrian army from Lebanon. None of the divisions succeeded in achieving the target that was meant to fulfill this goal – the separation of the Syrian army in Lebanon by IDF presence on the Damascus-Beirut route. Local resistance of small Syrian forces and encumbrance of a large military force moving in a line through narrow winding mountainous roads foiled the achievement of this goal. The impressive achievements of the Israeli air force in the war, which shot down around 100 Syrian planes and demonstrated once again its might as a deterring force, did not change the fact that the goal of the war against Syria was not attained. 

IDF failed to achieve its goals vis-à-vis Lebanon and the PLO as well – peace at the northern border. This, despite the conquest of Beirut and the expulsion of Yaser Arafat and the PLO leadership to Tunisia[5]. 

The War, which was meant to be only a short operation, became entangled after the IDF got mixed up in inner-Lebanese political turmoil. It ended only after 3 years, in June 1985, following American pressure due to worldwide public disapproval of the Sabra and Shatila massacres. IDF forces retreated from most of Lebanon's territory and set itself in a thin security strip alongside the border. It stayed there for 18 more years until in May 2000 the Israeli government decided to withdraw its forces to the international border-line. 

The expulsion of PLO from southern Lebanon and the weakening of relatively moderate Shiite movement Amal, allowed the establishment and reinforcement of the extreme Shiite organization Hezbollah which quickly turned into a far greater threat to Israel. Coping with this new threat turned far more complicated because of its backing by Iran and Syria, and the long stay in southern Lebanon exposed the IDF's weak side to Hezbollah's actions. They became more daring as they professionalized while IDF failed to find a proper response despite its many casualties. The First Lebanon War also marked the beginning of the fracturing in the Israeli public consensus and faith regarding the goals and motives of their politicians and military commanders[6]. Israel's international stature, which was on the rise after the 1979 Peace Treaty with Egypt, was hardly damaged and the peace momentum with Egypt was hurt and turned into a "cold peace". 

During all those years the Israelis failed to design a new operational category relevant to the new situation which was forming at its northern front. The same goes for after the withdrawal from Lebanon. Therefore even after the withdrawal, the question "when would the IDF be forced to go out on a new military operation that would deteriorate into war?" was only a matter of time. 

The Second Lebanon War Fundamental Surprise

The Second Lebanon War was primarily meant to be an operation launched as a reaction to the abduction of two IDF soldiers by Hezbollah. Again it failed to achieve its declared goals, as they were presented by Prime Minister Olmert at the Knesset on July 17th - to release the two soldiers, and "complete removal of the missile and rocket threat over Israel's citizens". The agreements reached following the war brought the entrance of international and Lebanese military unites into southern Lebanon, the prevention of presence of Hezbollah in the area and temporary silence to the northern border, but the missile and rocket threat wasn't diminished[7]. It was even fortified after Iran and Syria quickly reequipped Hezbollah with a larger more advanced missile and rockets cache. The undeclared goal was to break the myth that Hezbollah caused the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, but the war failed to change the myth of what a determined terror organization can achieve even in face of IDF's might. Even the IDF bombardment deep into Lebanon that was meant to cause the Lebanese government to condemn Hezbollah and act against it failed to reach its goal. In fact Hezbollah's status in Lebanon's political fabric was strengthened after the war and the ability of the central government to act against it, weakened. 

In contrast to the Yom Kippur War, the reason for the Second Lebanon War fundamental surprise was not due to intelligence failure to provide the strategic early warning. The intelligence analysts provided quite accurate information and analysis on Hezbollah's strength and the way they are going to conduct their operation in war. The Israeli military and political leaders knew that Hezbollah was arming itself to its teeth with all kinds of rockets. They also knew their ranges and their capacity to reach Tel-Aviv, and still no awareness to the consequences of this knowledge was formed. The Israeli leaders were acquainted with the complex political fabric in Lebanon and warned that the government will not be able to stand against Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran. But they failed to provide operational relevant solutions to the knowledge they were provided. 

Towards the upcoming war Hezbollah succeeded to integrate a kind of sub regular army, alongside operation logic of a guerilla organization, utilizing the advantages provided by the combination of these forms.[8] 

This was not unknown to the IDF. Only a few months before the war, the IDF finished writing its new Operational Concept, which was meant, among other issues, to cope with this new category. But the later wasn't tested in the war. Actually, the IDF went to the war with two uncombined doctrines. The air force went to the war with a kind of Israeli version of the American "Shock and Awe" concept. Its assumption was that this could save the need for costly ground operation. On the other hand the ground forces went to war with a doctrine developed and consolidated through the ongoing conflicts with the Palestinian insurgencies, without noticing the irrelevance of the two doctrines to the new realm as well as the rift between the two of them.
Thus, a wide conceptual gap between the General staff and its commander and between the Northern Command and its commander had appeared. The first was thinking "air-forcy" and the second "ground-forcy". In the absence of a joint thinking process between the two, many discrepancies were evident between the two. 

The Israeli political and military leaders went to the war also without having a relevant consolidated concept on how the home front would hold.  The home front issue was not considered as an integral part of the IDF war plans. When the war broke out, the Northern Command shook off its responsibility over its civilian population in the reasoning that it need now to concentrate in conducting war activities, while the Home Front Command wasn't set to take over that responsibility. 

The realization that "Effect Based Operations" (EBO), the Air Force's approach to the war, was no longer relevant to the war reality, had to be reached long before the war. EBO is based on the assumption that one can simultaneously identify and attack the enemy's national strategic focal points and thus save the need to pay the costly price of ground offensives. 

But as the experience with the Palestinian terror organizations should have shown, these types of organizations, including Hezbollah, had no such strategic focal points that could be identified as strategic targets. Hezbollah had a decentralized structure. Their manpower, weapons and supplies were spread and hidden in bunkers inside villages, and therefore very hard to detect. 

The assumption that the Air Force would determine the war quickly and elegantly was not the only irrelevant one. The ground forces, which were deployed to search and destroy Hezbollah's strongholds and missile launchers after the Air Force failed to achieve its strategic effect, also failed. 

And so already in the first days of the war it became evident that the assumptions, by which the Israeli General Stuff Commanders thought they will achieve their goals in the war, were wrong. Nevertheless, they were reluctant to acknowledge that they are fundamentally surprised, reframe their mind set and come up with new, more relevant military war plans. Fundamental learning did not occur in the war that lasted 34 days, till its very end. Thus, even though the Intelligence Branch provided the fundamental early warning, it did not prevent the fundamental surprise. 

Coping with fundamental surprises – a new perspective

After the Second Lebanon War, a commission headed by judge Winograd was appointed to investigate the reasons for the political and military failure that were exposed in the war, and to provide recommendations on how to avoid them in the future. 

In contrast to the Agranat Commission, which investigated the Yom Kippur War and attributed a large part of its deliberations to the failure of the Intelligence branch in producing an early warning, this time the intelligence was not in the focus of the Winograd Commission's critique. It even praised the quality and precision of its early estimations regarding what lay ahead in the coming war[9]. 

Nonetheless, the commission stated that it sees the responsibilities of the intelligences as not only including the provision of the early warning, but also for its assimilation. Assimilation will be achieved by deep and comprehensive horizontal discourse with all branches of the General Staff as well as upwards discourses towards the military and political leaders in a way that fits their scope and downwards towards the operational levels in ways that fits their needs. 

The commission emphasized that "the assimilation must exist in every stage because it is a central part of operational planning, equipping, practice, and training procedures" as an ongoing institutionalized procedure[10]. 

It should not be handled in a linear manner where the intelligence endows its knowledge on to its clients, but rather a circular discourse. The commission actually stated that they all have to participate in a joint circular process. Even "decisions regarding gathering activities and their prioritization should be reached through such dialogue"[11].

Thus, in a perspective of half a century the Israeli experience in military surprise can be summed up as representing shifts between three phases of understanding the nature of the phenomenon. 

In the first one the premise was that there is a known norm of actions that can prevent any kind of surprise. This notion was based on the presumption that "the truth" lies in the information and therefore in absence of failures of information retrieval, analysis, and distribution, no surprise would occur. When a surprise occurred, deviations from this norm were searched as explanatory causes of the surprise. The distinction between types of surprises was not understood as between ‘situational' and ‘fundamental', but by their magnitudes – ‘tactical', ‘operational' or ‘strategic'. 

The Agranat Commission that investigated the Yum Kippur case (1973) represents this line of thought, in which if the entire chain of collection, analysis and distribution properly functions, surprises will be prevented. Therefore, their recommendations were to replace the intelligence officers who were blamed responsible and to improve the process of "connecting the dots". Actually, by doing so the Agranat Commission followed the line of recommendations given by the American Investigation Commission on the Pearl Harbor Surprise (1941). This line was also still evident in the recommendations given by the American Commission that investigated the September 11th 2001case.  

The second phase of explanations was mainly raised by academic critique on those committees. They emphasized the need to shift the focus from the information handling to human basic thinking errors.  This was already presented as the main argument in Roberta Wohlstetter's pioneering book "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision" from 1962.[12] Her argument was that the Pearl Harbor Surprise happened not as a result of "lack of information". Surprises occur when instead of being interpreted as "signals", the information is interpreted as "noise". Therefore, the analyst's mind-set should be the focus of the surprise phenomena research. 

This line of research is still the dominant one. More than anyone, it was Richard Heuer that gave this research line its popularity with his book "Psychology of Intelligence Analysis"[13] (2005). Throughout the entire book Heuer criticizes the popular notions of solving intelligence problems with "more and better information". Instead, he turns the attention to the field of human "judgment errors" that had been uncovered and well documented in psychological cognitive research. 

The third phase of understanding the nature of the Fundamental Surprise phenomenon derives from the question: why are armies subject to fundamental surprise even in cases where the intelligence provides the fundamental warning, and why are they reluctant to perform the reframing processes long after they were fundamentally surprised?. It suggests that the focus the study of Fundamental Surprise should be expanded from the realm of the intelligence to encompass the organizational mind set and how it changes. 

The quest does not stop at the question how to 'connect the dots' of the retrieval, analysis, and distribution chain, nor at the question of how to improve the intelligence analysts awareness to their "judgment errors".
It goes on to the question what can be done to improve the circular processes of sensoring, reframing and transferring within armies and organizations in general.

 

[1] Lanir, Z., (1983), ‘Fundamental Surprise' – The National Intelligence Crisis',  Tel-Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad (Hebrew)

[2] Gilbert, C.; Bower, J., L.; (2002), "Disruptive Change: When Trying Harder Is Part of the Problem" (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

[3] Asher, D., (2003), Breaking the Concept, Tel-Aviv: Ma'arachot (Hebrew)

[4] Bar-Joseph, U., "Unconcluded Conclusions" in: Anat Kurz (ed.) Thirty Years Later: Challenges to Israel Since the Yom Kippur War. (2004). Tel Aviv: The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, pp. 23-30 (Hebrew).

[5] Timerman, J., (1982), The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, New York : Vintage Books

[6] Linn, R., (1986), 'Conscientious Objection in Israel During the War in Lebanon', Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 489-511

[7] Inbar, E., (2007), ‘How Israel Bungled the Second Lebanon War', Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2007, pp. 57-65

[8] See Rom, G., (2+006), ‘A Short History of the Second Lebanon War', Fisher Institute of Strategic Aerospace Analysis, Publication No. 22, December 2006.

[9] Winograd Commission – Final Report, January 2008, pp. 256-7

[10] Ibid. p. 258

[11] Ibid. p. 258

[12] Wohlstetter, R., (1962) Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[13] Heuer, R., (1999) Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Dr. Zvi Lanir
founder and president
'Praxis Reframing Strategies' - www.praxis.co.il
Lanir@praxis.co.il

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