Defensive Shield: An Israeli Special Forces Commander on the Front Line of Counterterrorism Hardcover – July 17, 2016 by Gal Hirsch (Gefen Books)

Israel Defense Force Brigadier General Gal Hirsch has taken part in all of Israels military confrontations since 1982, leaving a unique signature on a wide scope of strategic thinking owing to his deep understanding of operational art and military planning. In 2009, Hirschs autobiographical book in Hebrew, War Story, Love Story, was published and instantly appeared on the Israeli bestseller list where it stayed for many months. The description of his own personal journey offers deep, open-minded, and critical insights into the most significant milestones in Israels defense in the past 30 years, in which he played a key role. This new, revised, and reconceived English edition of the book offers international readers a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind, contextual description of Israeli national defense developments, serving as a valuable tool for understanding contemporary security challenges in the Middle East. The book has been praised as a lesson in leadership, bravery, and endurance. It is a remarkable testimony to the bond between the Jewish people and its Bible and land.

This is an exceptional story of leadership, illustrating the importance of professionalism, responsibility, accountability, values, culture, command climate, leading change, referential leadership, etc. Hirsch's accounts of the combat actions he led and wars he fought are vivid and relevant, putting into perspective all that should matter to the military leader, within the greater context of Israel's struggle against Terrorism. 

Hirsch  also ventures into the operational art, at first slightly over-emphasizing the importance of new words to generate new ideas. However, he quickly moves away from such study of the phenomena to a theory of action in his in-depth account of the 2006 Lebanon War. For example, he presents a compelling account of how Israel's counter-terrorism efforts flatten the levels of war, and thus necessitate systemic thinking and a "communal knowledge" in order to link tactical actions to strategic aims. 

Hirsch reinforces the need to create friction to expose an elusive enemy and then take the initiative while gaining a position of relative advantage. Ironically, these very failures of strategy and operational art within the higher echelons of the IDF then conspire against Hirsch as 91 Division Commander in the forefront the 2006 War. He is left ostracized by leaders who at times saw the limiting of friendly military casualties as both more important than civilian casualties and as the objective of the war itself. Senior leaders also fail to accept responsibility and accountability, making Hirsch a scapegoat in the Israeli media during the thick of the fight. In this context, perhaps the greatest mistake of Gen Hirsch is his naiveness that other senior leaders share his endless loyalty to troops and country. It also challenges as hypocritical the perspective that good officers should "stay in the shadow and be more than what they seem". "Deeds not words" clearly has its limits when a leader requires political support to accomplish the mission.