He earned his PhD in 1990 from Stanford University, under the supervision of Alexander George. His dissertation, Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States: The US, Israel, and Britain was published by Penn State Press and won Choice's Outstanding Academic Books Award for 1996.
Bar-Joseph is best known for his studies of the intelligence failure of the Yom Kippur War. His book, The Watchman Fell Asleep (SUNY, 2005), is the first detailed academic study of the subject and is considered the most important study in the field. The Hebrew edition (2001) won the Israeli Political Science Association Best Book Award in 2002. The Israeli-made docudrama, "The Silence of the Sirens", which is based on Bar-Joseph's book, won the Israeli Academy Award for the best television feature film in 2004.
In 2016, Bar-Joseph published The Angel:The Egyptian spy who saved Israel (HarperCollins), which recounts the story of Ashraf Marwan (code-named by the Mossad "The Angel"), who was President Gamal Abdel Nasser's son-in-law, President Sadat's close advisor, and an Israeli spy. The book was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award (History) in 2016 and was selected by the American Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) as the Best Intelligence Book of 2017.
A Netflix movie, The Angel, based on Bar-Josef's book, was released in 2018. The publisher of the Egyptian edition of the book, Khaled Lotfy, was sentenced to five years in prison in April 2019 for “spreading rumors and revealing military secrets”. He was awarded the International Publishers’ Association (IPA) Prix Voltaire[1] and was released from jail in November 2022.
In August 2021, Bar-Joseph published the book A War of Its Own: The Israeli Air Force in the Yom Kippur War (Hebrew, Dvir, forthcoming in English by Post Hill Press in 2024). Drawing on new data, the book explains why the Israeli Air Force failed to adequately support ground troops during most of the fighting, despite its obvious airborne superiority and state-of-the-art equipment.
Bar-Joseph’s next book, Resilience, The IDF and the Yom Kippur War (Hebrew, Dvir, 2023), challenged the commonly accepted view, which locates the cause for Israel’s military failures in the deep, long-term processes that had changed Israeli society and the IDF since the Six-Day War. The root of the problem, the book claims, lies in the failures of specific individuals, most notably Chief of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira, Chief of the Southern Command Shmuel “Gorodish” Gonen, and Commander of the Israeli Air Force Benny Peled, whose underperformance and grave mistakes played key roles in the army’s overall unpreparedness. The book also describes the IDF’s remarkable military achievements, following its recovery after the first two days of fighting. It won the Chaikin Prize, Haifa University (2024).
Bar-Joseph's most recent book is "Beyond the Iron Wall: The Fatal Flaw in Israel's National Security" (Hebrew, Dvir, 2024). The trigger for writing the book was the October 7 Hamas attack and its main claim is that Israel continues to live under heavy threats not due to a lack of military power but because it has refused and still refuses to reach political agreements centered around returning the territories occupied in 1967. These agreements would aim to create a new status quo that reduces the motivation and ability of various regional actors to harm Israel’s security.
Bar-Joseph is a member of the New Israel Fund and a supporter of the anti-occupation NGO “Breaking the Silence.” He was an outspoken opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy on the Iranian nuclear program and, in 2005, signed his name to a petition supporting faculty and students’ right to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.
Published works
Two Minutes Over Baghdad, with Amos Perlmutter and Michael I. Handel, London: Corgi, 1982, London: Frank Cass, 2003
Intelligence intervention in the politics of democratic states: the United States, Israel, and Britain, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995
Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century (ed.), London: Frank Cass, 2001
The Watchman Fell Asleep: The Surprise of the Yom Kippur War and Its Sources, Albany: State of New York University Press, 2005
The Angel: The Egyptian Spy who Saved Israel, New York: HarperCollins, 2016
Intelligence Success and Failure: A comparative Study, with Rose McDermott, Oxford UP, 2016
(Hebrew) Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 2001, 532 pages ²
(a new and updated edition of the 2001 book was published in 2013).[dubious – discuss]
Essays and articles
The Hidden Debate: The Formation of Nuclear Doctrines in the Middle East, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1982, pp. 205–227
Methodological Magic, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1988, pp. 134–155
Uri Bar-Joseph, John Hannah, Intervention Threats in Short Arab-Israeli Wars: An Analysis of Soviet Crisis Behavior, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1988, pp. 46–76
Uri Bar-Joseph, John Ferris, Getting Marlowe to Hold His Tongue: The Conservative Party, the Intelligence Services and the Zinoviev Letter, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1993, pp. 100–137
Israel's Intelligence Failure of 1973: New Evidence, A New Interpretation, and Theoretical Implications, Security Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1995, pp. 584–609
Israel Caught Unaware: Egypt's Sinai Surprise of 1960, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1995, pp. 203–219
The Wealth of Information and the Poverty of Comprehension: Israel's Intelligence Failure of 1973 Revisited, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1995, pp. 229–240
Rotem: The Forgotten Crisis on the Road to the 1967 War, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 31, no. 3, 1996, pp. 547–566
Uri Bar-Joseph, Zachary Sheaffer, Barings and Yom Kippur: Surprise Despite Warning in Business Administration and Strategic Studies, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol.11, No.3, 1998, pp. 331–349
Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century: Introduction, The Journal of Strategic Studies (A Special issue on: Israel's National Security Towards the 21st Century), Vol.24, No.2, 2001, pp. 1–12
Intelligence Failure and the Need for Cognitive Closure: The Case of Yom Kippur, 'The Paradox of Intelligence: Essays in Memory of Michael I. Handel, Richard K. Betts and Thomas Mahnken (eds.), Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 166–89
Uri Bar-Joseph, Arie W. Kruglanski, Intelligence Failure and the Need for Cognitive Closure: On the Psychology of the Yom Kippur Surprise, Political Psychology, Vol. 24, No.1, 2003, pp. 75–99
Roundtable: The Settlements, Yale Israel Journal, No.7, 2005, pp. 23–33
A Chance not taken: Sadat's Peace Initiative of February 1973 and Its Rejection by Israel, The Journal of Contemporary History, 2006, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 545–556
Uri Bar-Joseph, Rose Mcdermott, Personal Functioning under Stress: Accountability and Social Support of Israeli Leaders in the Yom Kippur War, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 52, no. 1, 2008, pp. 144–170
Uri Bar-Joseph, Rose Mcdermott, Change the Analyst and Not the System: A Different Approach to Intelligence Reform, Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 4, no. 2, 2008, pp. 127–145
Uri Bar-Joseph, Rose Mcdermott, The Intelligence Analysis Crisis, The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence, Loch Johnson (ed.), New York: Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 359–374
The Intelligence Community During the Yom Kippur War (1973), Israel's Silent Defender: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence, Amos Gilboa and Ephraim Lapid (eds.), Jerusalem: Gefen, 2011, pp. 76–87
Deterrence Policy in a Changing Strategic Environment, ArmsControl and Missile Proliferation in the Middle East, Bernd W. Kubbig and Sven-Eric Fikenscher (eds.), Routledge, 2012, pp. 89–105
Israel's Intelligence Community, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.), Routledge, 2013, pp. 209–217
Uri Bar-Joseph Amr Yussef, The Hidden Factors that Turned the Tide: Strategic Decision-Making and Operational Intelligence in the 1973 War, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.37, 4 2014, pp. 584–608
Unconcluded Conclusions, Thirty Years Later: Challenges to Israel Since the Yom Kippur War, Anat Kurz (ed.), Tel Aviv: The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University, 2004, pp. 23–30 (Hebrew)
Intelligence and Politics, Leaders and Intelligence, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, The Broadcast University, 2004, pp. 55–67 (Hebrew)
The Sources of the Problematic Relationship Between Intelligence Producers and Consumers, 'Leaders and Intelligence, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, The Broadcast University, 2004, pp. 42–54 (Hebrew)
Leaders Under Stress: Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan in the Yom Kippur War, Leadership at Times of War, Yosi Goldstein and Adli Dular (Eds.), Rehovot: Weitzman Institute, 2007, pp. 139–46 (Hebrew)
Golda Meir, Anwar Sadat, and the Coming of the Yom Kippur War, Alpayim, Vol. (969) 31, 2007, (Hebrew)
Uri Bar-Joseph, Kobi Palkov, A Failure in June and Success in October: Soviet Intelligence and Operation Barbarossa, Maarachot, No. 438, 2011, pp. 46–55 (Hebrew)
American Failure and Israeli Success, Mabat Malam, No. 59, 2011, pp. 32–35 (Hebrew)
