An Interview with Shimon Naveh
‘Dr. Naveh, or, how I learned to stop worrying and walk through walls’, Yotam Feldman, Haaretz, 1 November 2007.
Questions that irk him get a furious response, and mention of the names of most of the top IDF brass generates something resembling an attack of Tourette’s syndrome and a torrent of rage, verbal abuse and death sentences for some of them. “They should be executed,” he asserts. The interviewer’s look of astonishment does not faze him. “As you see, I shit on most of them, and I don’t give a damn,” he says. Earlier, when his dog greeted him as he entered the house he said exultantly, “See him? He is smarter than most of the people on the General Staff.”
Read the rest of this revealing interview with the architect of Israel’s Systemic Operational Design here.
This looks interesting:
Shimon Naveh, “Questions of Operational art”, (PowerPoint presentation given at the School of advanced Military Studies, Fort leavenworth, KS, 17 January 2006)
Is there a link for that?
Yeah, I’d love to see his PowerPoint. I’ve also read lots of Army monographs/papers about SOD but nothing of Naveh’s original sources. His book on history of operational art also doesn’t really cover SOD theory. Any good links?
No link for the powerpoint. I assume it’s lurking on a hard drive somewhere in Kansas.
“When I went to war in 1982 I went because I enjoy killing, but already in 1980-81 I said that a Palestinian state has to be established.”
Naveh is usefully brilliant nutcase. I can sketchily see the paradox he’s trying to reconcile for strategic success but his horizontal thinking/synthesis-based explanation is not one a lot of ppl are going to find easy to follow. Nor can I imagine him being an easy person to deal with in a bureaucratic-military environment. Compared to Naveh, Nassim Taleb is laid back humility.
Naveh needs an interpreter/disciple, an Allan Bloom to his Leo Strauss, to get his ideas disseminated more widely with accuracy
Hi guys, apologies for the delay.
Maybe we should try and get some kind of reading list together? I’m willing to collate if people have any contributions.
I’ve been sent the .ppt and have posted it here:
http://ubiwar.com/2009/02/17/shimon-naveh-powerpoint/