July 14, 2008
Iran is working assiduously to develop atomic weaponry. However long it may take that country to accomplish its goal, the consensus among political and military entities in the Western world, including Israel, seems to be to prevent that from ever becoming a reality. Why?
The value systems of Iran and the rest of the Muslim world seem to be that human life has little to no value in comparison with the concept of martyrdom by death through terror and warfare against the West. The drive, supported by enormous oil wealth, to gain parity in military capability with the non-Muslim world by developing the awesome destructive power of atom bombs with potential martyrdom for millions of their own people and simple death for those who believe that the four-score plus years that infidels find attractive , seems to have been moving without let-up for several years. The melding of religion, patriotism, hubris, and enormous amounts of money, has placed Iran on its own mental pedestal at a height it deems equivalent to the height of more civilized nations that do not possess oil for sale. This is a parody turned serious. A play that has moved from the make-believe world of political theater to the real world of warfare. The machismo nature of the threats and blustering have alerted the pillars of Western Civilization to imminent danger from this uncontrollable rapidly growing monster. Iran wants to convince other nations of its power. It has succeeded.
Bunker-busters and other heavy bombing tactics may not destroy Iran's atomic facilities. For sure they will accomplish a slowing down of the processes and will expose the serious intent of the Western nations to inhibit what they consider irresponsible renegade behavior by Iran. In all likelihood, Israel will conduct the actual attacks after providing peremptory life-saving warnings to the Iranian workers in the areas of manufacture. Fueling and re-fueling of the aircraft will be performed as close to the targets as international cooperation can achieve. Anti-missile battalions will stand at the ready to intercept any retaliatory attempts by Iran to inflict harm on Israel. Also, Arab governments will receive warnings and admonitions from Israel's friends that an attack on Israel will be considered an attack on those powers, with dire consequences for the attacker.
The timing of the attacks, if they take place, appears obvious. They will occur after the United States elections and before the change in government that will take place in January. Such timing will protect the lame-duck government of George W. Bush and the incoming government under the newly-elected president from "pre-connivance" with the Israeli plans.
Tracking the growth of this very real menace has led cooperating nations to prepare plans for delaying, if not destroying, the nuclear capability of Iran. The warnings have been clear, even to laymen. Israel's earlier bombing of the Iraq's Ossiric atom plant, recent bombing of atomic material in Syria, the military exercises conducted in the Mediterranean by Israel's sea and air forces, the movements of American warships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, the recent agreement to set up a cruise-missile shield in Czechoslovakia, and the political machinations of the Group of Five and the powers in the United Nations in demanding Iran's acquiescence to forgo the use of their centrifuges to create weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, are all indications of the seriousness of the intent so necessary to the use of military force.
Iran will be prepared for such attacks miltarily and politically. To what extent that preparation will be valuable depends on realistic and meaningful assessments of the intentions of the attacking nations, their military investments, and whether Israel can be isolated from its supporting group of nations.
The Iranian military responses, from all the available information, will not be meaningful in this action's context. For anyone not familiar with Israel's military prowess or for those who believe the recent Lebanese fiasco was indicative of Israel's capabilities, limiting the appreciation of Israel's armed might would be an error. After the air attacks, Israel will be in an alert defensive posture. Despite the potential heavy loss of civilian lives from rocket and missile attacks from neighboring Arab states, that posture will give the Israeli army a large measure of superiority over attacking armies.
The most intelligent avenue that Iran can pursue both before and after an attack by Israel, is to allow United Nations inspectors in to their atomic facilities to assure the world that Iran will not become a military atomic power. However, Iran has not exhibited rational evaluation of their national interests in the past - note the history of the Iran Iraq war - and, until some weighty counter balance of secular, humanistic, and economic powers to oppose the ascendent religious patriotic forces presently in control of Iranian thinking enters their calculations, it does not appear likely that a rational outcome from even highly successful military action can be expected.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Happy birthday, Israel, and Shalom
Something good from the English Press at last. Well done, Daily Express!
THIS, DESPITE SO MANY OF THEIR GREATEST INTELLECTS DYING IN THE GASCHAMBERS
Happy birthday, Israel, and Shalom
By Andrew Roberts, The Daily Express, London
The State of Israel has packed more history into her sixty years on the Planet - which she celebrates this week - than many other nations have in six hundred. There are many surprising things about this tiny, feisty, brave nation the size of Wales, but the most astonishing is that she has lived to see this birthday at all. The very day after the new state was established, she was invaded by the armies of no fewer than five Arab countries, and she has been struggling for her right to life ever since.
From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 Million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only eight thousand square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and sixty times their population, yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived.
When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightlyAwarded the George Medal for bravery: today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.
Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected b y King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation-state legitimate - bloodshed, soil tilled, two millennia of continuous residence, international agreements - argues for Israel's right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status, and whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they have been stymied by those whose interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well-being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of sane accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.
The process of creating a Jewish homeland in an area where other peoples were already living - though far fewer of them than anti-Israel propagandists claim - was always going to be a complicated and delicate business, and one for which Britain as the Mandated power had a profound responsibility, and about which since the Balfour Declaration of 1917 she had made solemn promises. Yet instead of keeping a large number of troops on the ground throughout the birth pangs of the State of Israel, Britain hurriedly withdrew all her forces virtually overnight on 14 May 1948, thus facilitating the Arab invasions that very day, one of which was actually commanded by a former British Army officer, John Glubb (knownAs Glubb Pasha). Less than four years earlier, Britain had landed division after victorious division in Normandy, now 'Partition and Flee' was the Attlee government's ignominious policy, whose consequences are still plaguing the world half a century later in Kashmir and the Middle East.
'We owe to the Jews,' wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, 'a system of Ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.'
The Jewish contribution to finance, science, the arts, academia, commerce and industry, literature, philanthropy and politics has been astonishing relative to their tiny numbers. Although they make up less than half of one per-cent of the world's population, between 1901 and1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for Literature and Science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, 32% for Physics, 39% for Economics and 29% for Science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers. Civilization owes Judaism a debt it can never repay, and support for the right of a Jewish homeland to exist is the bare minimum we can provide. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, merely for defending herself, and threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years.
It is a disgrace that no senior member of the Royal Family has ever visited Israel, as though the country is still in quarantine after sixty years. After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognised that they had to have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Putting their trust in Western Civilisation was never again going to be enough. Since then, Israel has had to fight no fewer than five major wars for her very existence. She has been on the front line in the War against Terror and has been fighting the West's battles for it, decades before 9/11 or 7/7 ever happened.
Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another sixty years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.
Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would have done, placed in their position? The population of the United Kingdom of 63 million is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example at random, Hizbullah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed eight patrolmen and kidnapped two others, and that summer fired four thousand Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further forty-three civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what WE would do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire thirty-six thousand rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing seventy-two British servicemen in an ambush and capturing eighteen. There is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. Why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?
Last month I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, researching a book about the Second World War. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag, a blue star of David on white background. It was a profoundly moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide - which killed six million people in Auschwitz and camps like it - will never again befall the Jewish people.
Happy birthday, Israel and Shalom.
THIS, DESPITE SO MANY OF THEIR GREATEST INTELLECTS DYING IN THE GASCHAMBERS
Happy birthday, Israel, and Shalom
By Andrew Roberts, The Daily Express, London
The State of Israel has packed more history into her sixty years on the Planet - which she celebrates this week - than many other nations have in six hundred. There are many surprising things about this tiny, feisty, brave nation the size of Wales, but the most astonishing is that she has lived to see this birthday at all. The very day after the new state was established, she was invaded by the armies of no fewer than five Arab countries, and she has been struggling for her right to life ever since.
From Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to Aden, the 5.25 Million square miles of territory belonging to members of the Arab League is home to over 330 million people, whereas Israel covers only eight thousand square miles, and is home to seven million citizens, one-fifth of whom are Arabs. The Jews of the Holy Land are thus surrounded by hostile states 650 times their size in territory and sixty times their population, yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived.
When during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightlyAwarded the George Medal for bravery: today Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.
Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected b y King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation-state legitimate - bloodshed, soil tilled, two millennia of continuous residence, international agreements - argues for Israel's right to exist, yet that is still denied by the Arab League. For many of their governments, which are rich enough to have solved the Palestinian refugee problem decades ago, it is useful to have Israel as a scapegoat to divert attention from the tyranny, failure and corruption of their own regimes.The tragic truth is that it suits Arab states very well to have the Palestinians endure permanent refugee status, and whenever Israel puts forward workable solutions they have been stymied by those whose interests put the destruction of Israel before the genuine well-being of the Palestinians. Both King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were assassinated when they attempted to come to some kind of sane accommodation with a country that most sane people now accept is not going away.
The process of creating a Jewish homeland in an area where other peoples were already living - though far fewer of them than anti-Israel propagandists claim - was always going to be a complicated and delicate business, and one for which Britain as the Mandated power had a profound responsibility, and about which since the Balfour Declaration of 1917 she had made solemn promises. Yet instead of keeping a large number of troops on the ground throughout the birth pangs of the State of Israel, Britain hurriedly withdrew all her forces virtually overnight on 14 May 1948, thus facilitating the Arab invasions that very day, one of which was actually commanded by a former British Army officer, John Glubb (knownAs Glubb Pasha). Less than four years earlier, Britain had landed division after victorious division in Normandy, now 'Partition and Flee' was the Attlee government's ignominious policy, whose consequences are still plaguing the world half a century later in Kashmir and the Middle East.
'We owe to the Jews,' wrote Winston Churchill in 1920, 'a system of Ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all wisdom and learning put together.'
The Jewish contribution to finance, science, the arts, academia, commerce and industry, literature, philanthropy and politics has been astonishing relative to their tiny numbers. Although they make up less than half of one per-cent of the world's population, between 1901 and1950 Jews won 14% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded for Literature and Science, and between 1951 and 2000 Jews won 32% of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, 32% for Physics, 39% for Economics and 29% for Science. This, despite so many of their greatest intellects dying in the gas chambers. Civilization owes Judaism a debt it can never repay, and support for the right of a Jewish homeland to exist is the bare minimum we can provide. Yet we tend to treat Israel like a leper on the international scene, merely for defending herself, and threatening her with academic boycotts if she builds a separation wall that has so far reduced suicide bombings by 95% over three years.
It is a disgrace that no senior member of the Royal Family has ever visited Israel, as though the country is still in quarantine after sixty years. After the Holocaust, the Jewish people recognised that they had to have their own state, a homeland where they could forever be safe from a repetition of such horrors. Putting their trust in Western Civilisation was never again going to be enough. Since then, Israel has had to fight no fewer than five major wars for her very existence. She has been on the front line in the War against Terror and has been fighting the West's battles for it, decades before 9/11 or 7/7 ever happened.
Radical Islam is never going to accept the concept of an Israeli State, so the struggle is likely to continue for another sixty years, but the Jews know that that is less dangerous than entrusting their security to anyone else.
Very often in Britain, especially when faced with the overwhelmingly anti-Israeli bias that is endemic in our liberal media and the BBC, we fail to ask ourselves what we would have done, placed in their position? The population of the United Kingdom of 63 million is nine times that of Israel. In July 2006, to take one example at random, Hizbullah crossed the border of Lebanon into Israel and killed eight patrolmen and kidnapped two others, and that summer fired four thousand Katyusha rockets into Israel which killed a further forty-three civilians. Now, if we multiply those numbers by nine to get the British equivalent, just imagine what WE would do if a terrorist organization based as close as Calais were to fire thirty-six thousand rockets into Sussex and Kent, killing 387 British civilians, after killing seventy-two British servicemen in an ambush and capturing eighteen. There is absolutely no lengths to which our Government would not go to protect British subjects under those circumstances, and quite right too. Why should Israel be expected to behave any differently?
Last month I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, researching a book about the Second World War. Walking along a line of huts and the railway siding where their forebears had been worked and starved and beaten and gassed to death, were a group of Jewish schoolchildren, one of whom was carrying over his shoulder the Israeli flag, a blue star of David on white background. It was a profoundly moving sight, for it was the sovereign independence represented by that flag which guarantees that the obscenity of genocide - which killed six million people in Auschwitz and camps like it - will never again befall the Jewish people.
Happy birthday, Israel and Shalom.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The Mystery of Hate by Yair Lapid
An Israeli columnist and news anchor, Yair Lapid, wrote his perceptions some time ago of the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict. I believe his article may help Americans see the conflict through Israeli eyes.
Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in 1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived.
All this, and one cannot figure it out.
And its not only what happened but all that did not happen - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of where it all started: Why do they hate us so much?
I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives. Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means that are used to run it.
It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he has no reason to fight?
Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to remain a pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get the energy to hate?
This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true that it is partially a religious matter but even religious people make their choices. The Koran (along with the Shariah - the Muslim parallel to Jewish Halachah) consists of thousands of laws. Why is it that we occupy their preachers so much?
There are so many countries that gave them much better reasons to be angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British; they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We did not even try to cross surrounding countries’ borders. So how come we are the enemy?
And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers, then where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that were evacuated by Israel? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers. Why do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?
Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone wanted; we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little country where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others. We didn't ask for much space to build our country. Israel is spread on a smaller territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, without settling on another state's territory. Most of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we established them. The other katyushas landed on territories over which no one ever questioned our right to them. Jews lived in Haifa in the 3rd century B.C. Tiberias was the place where the last Sanhedrin (Religious Council) sat, so no one can claim we stole it.
However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active hatred, poisoned and unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act to make Israel disappear," as if we were bacteria. We are so used to it, we don't even ask why.
Israel does not hope and never did, for Iran to vanish. As long as they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a common border or a history of conflicts. And still, they are willing to confront the whole Western world, to risk a commercial boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush their economy solely to passionately hate us. I am trying to remember if we ever harmed Iran. When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Muslim world?" More than a billion people live in the Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance, and bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to Kurdistan and from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are their main problem? How exactly are we in the way of their happiness?
I refuse to accept the Israeli argument that claims "that is just the way they are". They said it about Jews so many times that we have learned to accept this expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow terror to rouse our quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has gone from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland exactly at the time they finally rested from twenty years of disasters. We have become accustomed to using worn expressions - "it's the Iranian influence" or "Syria is stirring the pot behind the scenes."
But that is just too easy an explanation. Because what about them?
What about their thoughts?
What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams?
What about their children?
When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to say that it was all worth while because they hate us so much?
Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in 1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived.
All this, and one cannot figure it out.
And its not only what happened but all that did not happen - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of where it all started: Why do they hate us so much?
I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives. Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means that are used to run it.
It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he has no reason to fight?
Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to remain a pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get the energy to hate?
This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true that it is partially a religious matter but even religious people make their choices. The Koran (along with the Shariah - the Muslim parallel to Jewish Halachah) consists of thousands of laws. Why is it that we occupy their preachers so much?
There are so many countries that gave them much better reasons to be angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British; they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We did not even try to cross surrounding countries’ borders. So how come we are the enemy?
And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers, then where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that were evacuated by Israel? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers. Why do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?
Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone wanted; we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little country where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others. We didn't ask for much space to build our country. Israel is spread on a smaller territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, without settling on another state's territory. Most of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we established them. The other katyushas landed on territories over which no one ever questioned our right to them. Jews lived in Haifa in the 3rd century B.C. Tiberias was the place where the last Sanhedrin (Religious Council) sat, so no one can claim we stole it.
However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active hatred, poisoned and unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act to make Israel disappear," as if we were bacteria. We are so used to it, we don't even ask why.
Israel does not hope and never did, for Iran to vanish. As long as they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a common border or a history of conflicts. And still, they are willing to confront the whole Western world, to risk a commercial boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush their economy solely to passionately hate us. I am trying to remember if we ever harmed Iran. When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Muslim world?" More than a billion people live in the Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance, and bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to Kurdistan and from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are their main problem? How exactly are we in the way of their happiness?
I refuse to accept the Israeli argument that claims "that is just the way they are". They said it about Jews so many times that we have learned to accept this expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow terror to rouse our quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has gone from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland exactly at the time they finally rested from twenty years of disasters. We have become accustomed to using worn expressions - "it's the Iranian influence" or "Syria is stirring the pot behind the scenes."
But that is just too easy an explanation. Because what about them?
What about their thoughts?
What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams?
What about their children?
When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to say that it was all worth while because they hate us so much?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
TELEPHONE MESSAGES - LIKE HISTORY
I can help you understand how history becomes history by playing a game called, Telephone."
Before the advent of recording devices, accuracy in reporting and memorializing events was a haphazard affair. Even today, with all the capacity for accuracy, glitches enter the game. Witnesses standing in different places see the events from the angle of their positions, figuratively and literally. And now I’ll explain the game of telephone. Try playing it with history students for their edification, and their education.
Kids (or adults) sit in a circle. A short message is written on a card and handed to the first child who whispers the message into the ear of the child who is sitting next to him. That child then whispers the message into the ear of the one next to him, and so forth. The last child in the circle then tells the group what message he heard – which is obviously going to be very, very, hilariously different from the message sent. Going back around the circle, each participant tells what he heard. Finally, the original message is read.
Often, the generally accepted versions of historical events are the messages told by the last participants in the circle (or the one who lived to tell the tale), believe it or not. And hopefully, there was no intentional revisionism in the transmissions. Ha! Ha!
Before the advent of recording devices, accuracy in reporting and memorializing events was a haphazard affair. Even today, with all the capacity for accuracy, glitches enter the game. Witnesses standing in different places see the events from the angle of their positions, figuratively and literally. And now I’ll explain the game of telephone. Try playing it with history students for their edification, and their education.
Kids (or adults) sit in a circle. A short message is written on a card and handed to the first child who whispers the message into the ear of the child who is sitting next to him. That child then whispers the message into the ear of the one next to him, and so forth. The last child in the circle then tells the group what message he heard – which is obviously going to be very, very, hilariously different from the message sent. Going back around the circle, each participant tells what he heard. Finally, the original message is read.
Often, the generally accepted versions of historical events are the messages told by the last participants in the circle (or the one who lived to tell the tale), believe it or not. And hopefully, there was no intentional revisionism in the transmissions. Ha! Ha!
Saturday, April 5, 2008
WHAT IS A HISTORIAN? IS HE TRUE TO THE FACTS?
My post below flows from the post of Luke-D., a historian in England who is concerned about the two questions above, and many more, about the role of a historian. First, his thoughts, slightly edited.
Following my thoughts yesterday about the actual act of studying history, I thought I would elaborate further on this point. I would therefore like to question just what the role of the historian is in today’s society.
The final qualification to that is important, I feel that to some degree the role of the historian has changed over time, and as a consequence today’s historians (of which I think I am part) are entirely different creatures to those who were involved in recording history 100, 200 or 1000 years ago. I see a clear difference between ‘recording history’ which, to my mind was the job of those employed by the victors, and actually being a historian.
This though opens up a whole new avenue of questions. The most obvious one to ask is what does the historian do if not record history? I feel the answer is simple. Historians (from a modern perspective) offer a comment on historical events. The historian in this case does not simply recite facts, but instead offers justifications for these ‘facts’. History therefore, simply put, is opinion. No historian can, by this logic, be wrong. They have their own interpretations of different events and they have considered the evidence to form a conclusion..
So, if historians can be wrong, there must be something which says that they are wrong. This limiter, as already intimated, is social values. There are topics which are taboo in all societies, and this necessarily means that they are not ‘open’ for discussion from anyone, except to conform to the already outlined social values.
To return then to the issue of what the historian does. If the historian does not simply record facts, then what do they do? There is the oft churned out line that historians are there to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated. However, this flies in the face of my other premise, that is, history is cyclical. If we just run with this for a moment, the logical implication that it makes is that the historian is somehow failing to do their job because the history keeps repeating itself under new guises. The trouble with the cyclical history idea is that it is broad, sweeping, and vague. When the details are explored further there seems little which unites the two comparative periods. Nonetheless, I maintain that history does indeed act in cycles, albeit very large cycles. If therefore the historian is failing, what is their role in a world which will keep playing out similar scenarios dressed up in different clothing for the rest of time?
I’m not sure what the historians role actually is, and whether this is different to what it should be. Should historians be there to open the eyes of the people to varying understandings of events? Should historians by very much like political parties, you declare yourself as agreeing with one about something, and stick to that? Such thinking presumes the role of the historian is a public one. What about the personal aspect of studying history? Surely some people are historians due to a thirst for knowledge about the subject in hand? Should historians only want to further enlighten themselves, or should their concerns lie with educating more people?
Hi Luke,
At the risk of sounding like a pedant, I here describe my habit for finding explanations and meanings. The first place I look for explanations (definitions) is the dictionary. The editors choose the definitions, by agreement, from contemporary writings of all kinds, and place them in dictionaries in order of frequency of appearance in those writings. There are exceptions, of course, and they are so marked. O.E. - Old English is one such common marking for non-contemporary meanings when words are still in use or adapted to contemporary usage.
So - out with my trusty Merriam Webster, “Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary” of 1980. (I do use other specialized dictionaries as needed.)
HIS-TO-RY\ Latin Historia. Greek, inquiry, history. French, knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know: 1: TALE, STORY 2 a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) usuqlly including an explanation of their causes. b: a treatise presenting sysematically related natural phenomena c: an account of a sick person’s medical background 3: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events (medieval~) 4: a: events that form the subject matter of history b: past events c: previous treatment, handling, or experience (as of a metal)syn: HISTORY, CHRONICLE, ANNALS - shared meaning element : a written record of events
A Historian is 1: a student or writer of history esp. one that produces a scholarly synthesis 2: a writer or complier of a chronicle
My response to your questions is that it really doesn’t matter what one calls oneself or how one wishes to be called or defined. Whether you write for the victor with strong social or political leanings or you write against the victor with opposing views of the same events based on your own social and political (and economic) leanings, you are, ipso facto, a historian. What does matter is what one thinks of oneself and what one does. We who write history are not engaged in a contest to choose the best snapshot, the brightest, the most truthful or most faithful to the facts as they occur rather than as the historian sees them through the lens of his brain. I compare the historian to a mechanic. Both use the tools of their trade to produce a useful product. Some are more accurate or produce a better product than others. Some want the product to be shiny while other prefer the raw metal to show its true self. I think each historian must be true to him/her self, and it shall follow, as the night the day, thou can'st then be false to no man. (Plagiarism will get you everywhere.)
Frankly, I am more concerned with the writer of “his-story” who HAS a prejudice that is obvious. (Writing for the victor, e.g.) Then we can deal with it. It is the subtle, careful, thoroughly researched product that leads to sure conclusions that one must take care to inspect well. There is no absolute historical truth other than for those who believe in the unprovable.
So Historian - leave your mark on the face of the world for others to follow. That’s your role. It will be a combination of what you saw, heard, thought, and most assuredly, what you think you saw, heard, and thought as events unfolded before your eyes or as you researched them or saw them in your breathing moments on this earth. Do not fear inaccuracies. Yours will be as good as the next man’s. Stand firm for what you believe you saw. And stand firm for what you believe the meaning of events to be!
AND NOW, TO THROW SOME FUEL ON THE FIRE, consider this:
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM: The Marxist theory of history that holds that ideas and social institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic base.
My understanding of this approach to history is that the winners write the history because it is the Power Elites, the winners - always, who control the material economic base and it is (and was) the Power Elites who bring about change, the building blocks of history.
Note: As an act of self-preservation by Power Elites, Marxian theory and eveything that flowed from it in attempts to change the world's operating system, have been tarred and feathered and run out of town because of the huge intellectual challenge to the existing material economic base of the social order and its exploitation of humanity's plebean masses for the benefit of the few. The concepts of socialism and communism remained in the "intellectual challenge" stage of existence for a few short years after their birth. They did not possess the material economic base or the means to survive the onslaught by the Power Elites masquerading, ala Stalin, under the cloaks of Communist and/or socialist leadership. And education of ignorance taught the masses to fight against communism rather than support it.
There have been exceptions to this plot. But the exceptions mimicked Power Elite functioning. The prime example is The People's Republic of China. Other regimes followed Chana's example rather than that of Western Power Elites. Yet equality of the masses with the Power Elite leaderships is nowhere to be found. The most corrupt of these regimes is in North Korea.
My questions, not as a historian, but rather as an ethical humanist, are, "Is communism as a social-economic system at all capable of overcoming existing Power Elites, and if it is, can it survive the drives for individual power that have exhibited themselves throughout mankind's history?"
My deeply thoughtful answer is, "No" to both questions.
Following my thoughts yesterday about the actual act of studying history, I thought I would elaborate further on this point. I would therefore like to question just what the role of the historian is in today’s society.
The final qualification to that is important, I feel that to some degree the role of the historian has changed over time, and as a consequence today’s historians (of which I think I am part) are entirely different creatures to those who were involved in recording history 100, 200 or 1000 years ago. I see a clear difference between ‘recording history’ which, to my mind was the job of those employed by the victors, and actually being a historian.
This though opens up a whole new avenue of questions. The most obvious one to ask is what does the historian do if not record history? I feel the answer is simple. Historians (from a modern perspective) offer a comment on historical events. The historian in this case does not simply recite facts, but instead offers justifications for these ‘facts’. History therefore, simply put, is opinion. No historian can, by this logic, be wrong. They have their own interpretations of different events and they have considered the evidence to form a conclusion..
So, if historians can be wrong, there must be something which says that they are wrong. This limiter, as already intimated, is social values. There are topics which are taboo in all societies, and this necessarily means that they are not ‘open’ for discussion from anyone, except to conform to the already outlined social values.
To return then to the issue of what the historian does. If the historian does not simply record facts, then what do they do? There is the oft churned out line that historians are there to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated. However, this flies in the face of my other premise, that is, history is cyclical. If we just run with this for a moment, the logical implication that it makes is that the historian is somehow failing to do their job because the history keeps repeating itself under new guises. The trouble with the cyclical history idea is that it is broad, sweeping, and vague. When the details are explored further there seems little which unites the two comparative periods. Nonetheless, I maintain that history does indeed act in cycles, albeit very large cycles. If therefore the historian is failing, what is their role in a world which will keep playing out similar scenarios dressed up in different clothing for the rest of time?
I’m not sure what the historians role actually is, and whether this is different to what it should be. Should historians be there to open the eyes of the people to varying understandings of events? Should historians by very much like political parties, you declare yourself as agreeing with one about something, and stick to that? Such thinking presumes the role of the historian is a public one. What about the personal aspect of studying history? Surely some people are historians due to a thirst for knowledge about the subject in hand? Should historians only want to further enlighten themselves, or should their concerns lie with educating more people?
Hi Luke,
At the risk of sounding like a pedant, I here describe my habit for finding explanations and meanings. The first place I look for explanations (definitions) is the dictionary. The editors choose the definitions, by agreement, from contemporary writings of all kinds, and place them in dictionaries in order of frequency of appearance in those writings. There are exceptions, of course, and they are so marked. O.E. - Old English is one such common marking for non-contemporary meanings when words are still in use or adapted to contemporary usage.
So - out with my trusty Merriam Webster, “Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary” of 1980. (I do use other specialized dictionaries as needed.)
HIS-TO-RY\ Latin Historia. Greek, inquiry, history. French, knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know: 1: TALE, STORY 2 a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) usuqlly including an explanation of their causes. b: a treatise presenting sysematically related natural phenomena c: an account of a sick person’s medical background 3: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events (medieval~) 4: a: events that form the subject matter of history b: past events c: previous treatment, handling, or experience (as of a metal)syn: HISTORY, CHRONICLE, ANNALS - shared meaning element : a written record of events
A Historian is 1: a student or writer of history esp. one that produces a scholarly synthesis 2: a writer or complier of a chronicle
My response to your questions is that it really doesn’t matter what one calls oneself or how one wishes to be called or defined. Whether you write for the victor with strong social or political leanings or you write against the victor with opposing views of the same events based on your own social and political (and economic) leanings, you are, ipso facto, a historian. What does matter is what one thinks of oneself and what one does. We who write history are not engaged in a contest to choose the best snapshot, the brightest, the most truthful or most faithful to the facts as they occur rather than as the historian sees them through the lens of his brain. I compare the historian to a mechanic. Both use the tools of their trade to produce a useful product. Some are more accurate or produce a better product than others. Some want the product to be shiny while other prefer the raw metal to show its true self. I think each historian must be true to him/her self, and it shall follow, as the night the day, thou can'st then be false to no man. (Plagiarism will get you everywhere.)
Frankly, I am more concerned with the writer of “his-story” who HAS a prejudice that is obvious. (Writing for the victor, e.g.) Then we can deal with it. It is the subtle, careful, thoroughly researched product that leads to sure conclusions that one must take care to inspect well. There is no absolute historical truth other than for those who believe in the unprovable.
So Historian - leave your mark on the face of the world for others to follow. That’s your role. It will be a combination of what you saw, heard, thought, and most assuredly, what you think you saw, heard, and thought as events unfolded before your eyes or as you researched them or saw them in your breathing moments on this earth. Do not fear inaccuracies. Yours will be as good as the next man’s. Stand firm for what you believe you saw. And stand firm for what you believe the meaning of events to be!
AND NOW, TO THROW SOME FUEL ON THE FIRE, consider this:
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM: The Marxist theory of history that holds that ideas and social institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic base.
My understanding of this approach to history is that the winners write the history because it is the Power Elites, the winners - always, who control the material economic base and it is (and was) the Power Elites who bring about change, the building blocks of history.
Note: As an act of self-preservation by Power Elites, Marxian theory and eveything that flowed from it in attempts to change the world's operating system, have been tarred and feathered and run out of town because of the huge intellectual challenge to the existing material economic base of the social order and its exploitation of humanity's plebean masses for the benefit of the few. The concepts of socialism and communism remained in the "intellectual challenge" stage of existence for a few short years after their birth. They did not possess the material economic base or the means to survive the onslaught by the Power Elites masquerading, ala Stalin, under the cloaks of Communist and/or socialist leadership. And education of ignorance taught the masses to fight against communism rather than support it.
There have been exceptions to this plot. But the exceptions mimicked Power Elite functioning. The prime example is The People's Republic of China. Other regimes followed Chana's example rather than that of Western Power Elites. Yet equality of the masses with the Power Elite leaderships is nowhere to be found. The most corrupt of these regimes is in North Korea.
My questions, not as a historian, but rather as an ethical humanist, are, "Is communism as a social-economic system at all capable of overcoming existing Power Elites, and if it is, can it survive the drives for individual power that have exhibited themselves throughout mankind's history?"
My deeply thoughtful answer is, "No" to both questions.
Friday, April 4, 2008
RESPONSE: ATHEISM IS NOT ANTI-RELIGION, BUT I AM
From: michael mey [mailto:poelyric@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 2:10 AMTo: NachumNormanSubject: Re: [HISTORY - THE STORY OF POWER] ATHEISM IS NOT ANTI-RELIGION, BUT I AM!
Most of the time it's easy to see the problem. Sometimes it's harder and some extra effort is required to suss it out. There is an endless list of problems in this world. Literally. Is it possible that all the problems we perceive are really just one problem that appears in many forms? Is it possible that all solutions are really only one solution that seems evasive and beyond our ken? I believe it is necessary to shift our index finger from pointing to the problem to focusing our mind entirely on the solution. It is very obvious one has been tried and the other has had only partial implementation. Obvious to the extreme. Do we not continuously repeat the same mistakes over and over again without respite? The solution is forgiveness. The problem matters not.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your response to my mini-dissertation on Atheism, religion, god, and me. Your suggestion that we focus on solutions, or rather one solution to all problems, seems to me to be a return to the god solution to mankind’s problems. Your statement that “I believe it is necessary to shift our index finger from pointing to the problem to focusing our mind entirely on the solution,” implies that all problems lie in the mind of humanity and then, “The solution is forgiveness. The problems matter not,” again brings me back to the higher power responding to humanity’s prayers for forgiveness. I presume, perhaps incorrectly, that when you say, “it is very obvious” a solution has been tried, do mean Jesus or some other higher power?
I’ll post your message on my blog and perhaps, someone will respond with a different interpretation of your words and their own view of my belief that religions have joined forces with Power Elites to the detriment of mankind.
Nachum
Most of the time it's easy to see the problem. Sometimes it's harder and some extra effort is required to suss it out. There is an endless list of problems in this world. Literally. Is it possible that all the problems we perceive are really just one problem that appears in many forms? Is it possible that all solutions are really only one solution that seems evasive and beyond our ken? I believe it is necessary to shift our index finger from pointing to the problem to focusing our mind entirely on the solution. It is very obvious one has been tried and the other has had only partial implementation. Obvious to the extreme. Do we not continuously repeat the same mistakes over and over again without respite? The solution is forgiveness. The problem matters not.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your response to my mini-dissertation on Atheism, religion, god, and me. Your suggestion that we focus on solutions, or rather one solution to all problems, seems to me to be a return to the god solution to mankind’s problems. Your statement that “I believe it is necessary to shift our index finger from pointing to the problem to focusing our mind entirely on the solution,” implies that all problems lie in the mind of humanity and then, “The solution is forgiveness. The problems matter not,” again brings me back to the higher power responding to humanity’s prayers for forgiveness. I presume, perhaps incorrectly, that when you say, “it is very obvious” a solution has been tried, do mean Jesus or some other higher power?
I’ll post your message on my blog and perhaps, someone will respond with a different interpretation of your words and their own view of my belief that religions have joined forces with Power Elites to the detriment of mankind.
Nachum
Thursday, April 3, 2008
HEADLINES - STERNLINES
The N.Y. Times - April 4, 2008, page A9, headline for an article written by stern-aperture Isabel Kershner, reads, Israel Slow to Admit Gaza Patients, U.N. Says. The mid-page headline reads, Delays cause 32 Palestinians to die, a report contends.
Well! What do you make of that! More Israeli perfidy!
Oh, Great New York Times, your brains, too, are in your stern aperture.
Buried in the article is the statement that of the thirty-two people who died, only one, ONE child applied for admission to Israel for medical care and that one child was held back at the Palestinians' request because his condition deteriorated and he died in Gaza! There were NO APPLICATIONS for admittance for any of the other 31 patients who died that day and they were unknown to the Israelis.
In 2006, more than 4,500 humanitarian cases were admitted to Israel according to W.H.O., the U.N. World Health Organization. In 2007, more than 7,000 Palestinian patients received permits to enter Israel from Gaza and to date, the number admitted is 2,300. That means that over 10,000 Palestinians will be admitted from Gaza to Israel for medical treatment this year.
And the rockets from Gaza keep falling on Israeli towns and cities. And the surrounding Arab countries and the brilliant Iranian president, Ahmadinajad and the Palestinians themselves, keep calling for Israel's destruction.
Is this a reflection on Arab or Islamic education and intelligence? "Kill the non-believers! They provide hospitals and doctors and surgery and health care for us and our children. KILL THEM!"
This is a clear indication that banging your head on the floor while praying is detrimental to brain cells.
Well! What do you make of that! More Israeli perfidy!
Oh, Great New York Times, your brains, too, are in your stern aperture.
Buried in the article is the statement that of the thirty-two people who died, only one, ONE child applied for admission to Israel for medical care and that one child was held back at the Palestinians' request because his condition deteriorated and he died in Gaza! There were NO APPLICATIONS for admittance for any of the other 31 patients who died that day and they were unknown to the Israelis.
In 2006, more than 4,500 humanitarian cases were admitted to Israel according to W.H.O., the U.N. World Health Organization. In 2007, more than 7,000 Palestinian patients received permits to enter Israel from Gaza and to date, the number admitted is 2,300. That means that over 10,000 Palestinians will be admitted from Gaza to Israel for medical treatment this year.
And the rockets from Gaza keep falling on Israeli towns and cities. And the surrounding Arab countries and the brilliant Iranian president, Ahmadinajad and the Palestinians themselves, keep calling for Israel's destruction.
Is this a reflection on Arab or Islamic education and intelligence? "Kill the non-believers! They provide hospitals and doctors and surgery and health care for us and our children. KILL THEM!"
This is a clear indication that banging your head on the floor while praying is detrimental to brain cells.
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