Monthly Archives: November 2023

Not for the IDF Alone

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Ever since the first day of the current Israeli-Palestinian war on 7 October 2023, Israel’s media have been bristling with stories about heroic Israeli (not Palestinian, needless to say) women. How they received their mobilization orders just as men did. How they took their leave of home and hearth (including, in some cases, their children) just as men did. How they donned uniform, took up their weapons, and went out to fight just as men did. How some of them were killed just as men were. Here I want to say, loud and clear: almost all of it is nonsense. Nonsense in tomato juice, as we Israelis like to say. Nonsense of the kind that, in the long run, will do the IDF incalculable harm.

First, the nonsense. As of the time I am writing this at the end of November 2023, Israel’s mobilized armed forces number about 550,000 uniformed personnel, up from 180,000 in “ordinary” times. Of the latter figure between 25 and 30 percent are women. How many women have been called up and are currently on active service the IDF does not say. However, its official casualty list (in Hebrew) is available here. It shows that, as of 21 November, 392 IDF soldiers had lost their lives. Of those 40, or one in eight, were female.

At first sight one in eight does not appear totally unreasonable, given that most of the troops on active service are reservists and that far fewer female reservists than male ones were called up. However, pay attention to the following. The male casualties on the list are distributed over a period of 35 days. Not so the female ones, all but one of whom lost their lives during the first day of the war. Poor girls; serving as outlooks, insufficiently trained in the use of the infantry weapons with which they had been issued, unsupported either on the ground or from the air, they were in no position either to escape or to fight off Hamas’ surprise attack. Expiring as Odysseus’ maids did (Odyssey XXII 468-73):

[Like birds], with nooses around their necks

that they might die most piteously.

And they writhed a little while with their feet

but not for long.

Shame on you, IDF, for allowing such things to happen. And shame on you, penis-envy driven feminist fiends, for misleading your credulous women followers and pushing them in that direction! The much lower number killed since then suggests that, whatever female soldiers may have been doing from 8 October on, they hardly took part in any serious fighting. Case closed.

Second, the long term harm. It is a truism, observable throughout history and in practically every human field, institution or organization, that wherever women make their entry men leave. So in the case of cashiers, so in that of pharmacists, and so in that of psychologists among many others. In part they do so by default: no two persons can occupy a chair designed for one. But there is more to it than that. To quote Frederick the Great, a commander who knew a thing or two about fighting spirit, the one thing that can make men march into the muzzles of the cannons trained at them is honor. Specifically, I add, male honor, the kind more or less reserved for men that makes them attractive for women. Conversely, for a man to do a woman’s work is not an honor. It is humiliation. Think of Heracles who, at one point in his career, was punished by being made to dress as a woman and acting as a handmaid to the mythical Queen Omphale. Omphale, incidentally, reads like the female form of “navel,” but I’ll let that pass.

A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and loses, loses. A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and wins also loses; killing a woman may be profitable, but it is rarely considered honorable. Finding themselves in a lose/lose situation, no wonder many men prefer to withdraw. Supposing only the process goes on long enough, the military will end up by being left with hardly any men worthy of the name at all.

Nor does this warning refer to the IDF alone.

Lest the Pattern be Repeated

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To anyone who has been following the conflict in Gaza so far, the gap between the opposing forces is astonishing. So much so, indeed, that almost the only way to describe it is by using superlatives. On one hand we see what can only be described as a juggernaut. One armed with the most modern, most powerful weapons and weapon systems in the world today; including artillery barrels, armored personnel carriers, and tanks (the latest Israeli tank, known as Merkava IV, is literally the heaviest, best-protected, in the world today); and covered from the air by what is widely believed to be the best air force in the world today. All defended from above by the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world today; all preceded by huge bulldozers fully capable of reducing anything in front of them to rubble; and all linked by inconceivably complicated, if largely hidden, networks of computers and communications produced by one of the digitally most advanced societies in the world today.

Now look at the other side. Men (not women, incidentally), many of them dressed not in uniform but in ordinary civilian clothes. Some wear steel helmets, but most do not. Some drive vehicles such as the famed Toyota Highlanders, but most must go on foot; given the extent of Israel’s technological and numerical superiority, as well as its command of the air, catching a ride in Gaza is bad for one’s health and can easily become deadly. Small crews of missile-launchers apart, very few Hamasniks—that is what Israelis call them—possess heavy weapons of any kind. The weapons they do possess consist mainly of assault rifles, hand grenades, anti-tank rockets and missiles, mines, and booby traps.

Nor is it a question of technological superiority alone. On one hand there stands a regular, well organized and well trained army counting almost 600,000 mobilized men and women; on the other, a semi-clandestine organization numbering, as far as anyone can make out, a few tens of thousands fighters. On one hand a state which, though small in size, surrounds its enemy on three sides. On the other, a heavily populated piece of land just 41 kilometers long and nowhere more than 12 kilometers wide—a distance that, given a little determination and a little drive, can easily be covered in half an hour.

To repeat, the gap between the opposing forces, the result of years of work during which each side prepared as best he could, can only be called astonishing. Such being the case, how to explain the fact that, after more than a month of ferocious fighting, the side with all the advantages had still not managed to decisively defeat the other?

Follows a very short review of some of the factors involved:

Surprise. Surprise, by confusing the opponent and degrading his ability to react, has always played a prominent part in war. Never more so than in this case when even Israel’s vaunted air force taken unawares, needed hours and hours before it finally got its aircraft to the point where they started fighting back. Indeed it could be argued that, by sounding the alarm and alerting all sides to the dangers that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse poses to world peace, Hamas’ offensive had achieved its main objective almost as soon as it got under way.

War on several fronts. Throughout the month-long war, in- and out of Israel, both participants and observers have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Gaza Strip. That is understandable, but it does not change the fact that Israel was fighting on several fronts. Including its border with Lebanon, and including some Houthi missiles coming from as far as Yemen a thousand or so miles to the south. Other IDF forces had to be kept in readiness lest the Palestinians in the West Bank—to the extent that they were able—as well as Syria, Jordan, and Iran join in the battle. Now Israel, owing to its small size, has always been lacking in strategic depth; like Germany (West) during the Cold War, but to a much greater degree, it simply does not have territory it can afford to give up. Willy nilly a cardinal principle of war, namely the concentration of forces, had to be violated.

Urban warfare. The Gaza strip is home to an estimated 2,300,000 people—in truth, no one knows. It is one of the most heavily urbanized regions on earth, second only to places such as Hong Kong and Singapore. As the recent months-long battle for Bakhmut, in Ukraine, has shown once again, urban terrain presents the defender with many advantages. Including the ability to fight not in two dimensions but in three—witness the 300-mile long network of underground corridors Hamas has constructed. And including also the practically unlimited opportunity to find cover. Conversely, the maze of streets and alleys limits the attacker’s ability to maneuver as well as bring up supplies and reinforcements on one hand and evacuate his wounded on the other. Fought at extremely close range among every kind of obstacle, such warfare can also rob an attacker of at least some of any technological advantages he may possess.

The war’s asymmetric character. Here is a story told of American Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara early in the Vietnam War. Asked why the US Air Force did not knock out North Vietnam’s electricity network, he explained that the entire network in question was smaller than that of Alexandria, VA, a suburb of Washington, DC. As such it had been knocked out several times already, to no visible effect either on urban terrorism or on guerrilla operations in the countryside. Ere the current war got under way Gaza’s per capita GDP only amounted to just 7 percent of that of Israel.  Calculated in terms of per capita consumption of electricity, the difference is larger still. In other words, the reason why the Palestinians, like so many others before them since at least 1945, are able to hold out and even emerge victorious is because they have nothing to lose.

The need to minimize casualties. Taking 1948 as the starting point Israel’s Jewish population has grown tenfold, far more than that of any other developed country. Still it is a small and intimate society; as anyone who visits these days will soon notice, people are extremely reluctant to suffering casualties.

Finally, international pressure. Strangely enough, Israel is the world’s only country that is not permitted to win its wars. Time upon time—in 1948 (the war of independence), in 1956 (the Suez campaign), in 1967 (when the US prohibited it from crossing the Jordan River to the east) and in 1973 (when it had to ab abandon its hold on the encircled Egyptian Third Army as well as some of the land it had conquered) international pressure forced it to relinquish some of the fruits of its victories. With the exception of the 1973 War, which later led to peace with Egypt, in each case the outcome was to enable Israel’s enemies to rearm and steer their way to another war.

In seeking a way to finally put an end to the conflict, let the world take care lest the pattern be repeated.

He Knew What He Was Talking About

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From the media:

“The European continent is in danger if Israel fails in its war against Iran and its proxies, including Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday, as he attempted to place the Gaza war within the global context of the battle for Western civilization. “What we see is a broader battle between civilization and barbarism,” Netanyahu told a group of 80 foreign envoys as he continued his stiff diplomatic battle for international backing for the IDF’s military campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas. Netanyahu has been under international pressure to allow for some form of a humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for increased aid to reach Gaza through the Egyptian crossing at Rafah.”

Whether or not he was aware of the fact, Netanyahu, in taking this line, has at least one predecessor who was much more illustrious than he. Guess who wrote the following lines, when, and against what background: 

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

As recent events seem to show, science may no longer be enough. To save the West, more may be required. At the time he wrote the above in 1899 the author, a British subaltern, was 25 years old. He also worked as a journalist in the hope of making a name for himself. Assisted by his socialite mother who was said to have used her charms to help him along, he hopped from one colonial campaign to the next, greatly enjoying himself all the while. Twice he fought against Islam. First in the border area between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, then in the Sudan where he witnessed the tribesmen’s fanatical courage in front of the newly introduced Maxim guns. Each time the outcome was a book as well as a series of lectures illustrated by magic lantern and delivered throughout Britain.

His name was Winston Churchill, and he knew what he was talking about.

You Are Right, He Said

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As a fairly well known Israeli historian, I’ve visited some thirty-five different countries around the world and spent a not inconsiderable part of my life abroad. It may have been luck, it may have been naiveté; it may have been the fact that my last visit (to Germany) took place as long as three months ago. But never in all those years did I encounter antisemitism. At any rate not of the overt kind that is deliberately and unapologetically thrown into your face. Wherever we went my wife and I made gentile friends. Good friends.

More than once in Western Europe in particular we got into a conversation with people of Arabic nationality. Without exception, they asked my wife and me where we were from. Without exception, they were polite and welcoming. One, a kiosk owner in Metz, eastern France, told us how wonderful it was to meet Israelis in his nice, but remote and oh-so boring, town. Another, a young man from East Jerusalem who was studying medical technology in Berlin and working for Ikea to earn some money, went out of his way to get us a free meal ticket at the shop restaurant. The least pleasant encounter was one I had with a Palestinian taxi driver in Copenhagen. He gave me to understand, repeatedly, that he and his people would never-ever give up “their” right to “their” country. Yet even so we found common ground in denouncing those holier-than-thou Danes.

Still I want to tell you a story. Just one trivial story with no consequences and presumably long forgotten by everyone except myself. Yet one that, in view of recent events here in Israel, seems more relevant than ever. It took place back in the summer of 1981 when I was on sabbatical and living near Freiburg in southwestern Germany. One day my daughter, nine years old, needed her ear to be operated on. I fell into a conversation with the surgeon, Dr. Kuhn of the local university clinic.

These were the days immediately following the attack in which the Israeli Air Force demolished Iraq’s nuclear reactor, then under construction. The good doctor asked me why I was staying in Israel. So much trouble, he said; so many wars. Strange question, that, coming from a German! But that was not what I said. Instead I told him the story of the Jewish swine. Suppose, I said, I had the same operation done in Israel and then refused to pay my bill. In that case people would have called me a swine. However, had I done the same anywhere else, they would have called me a Jewish swine.

“You are right” he said.

Pilar Rahola Speaks: Jews with Six Arms

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by Pilar Rahola

Why do so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots?

This speech was given December 16, 2009 at the Conference in the Global forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem. Pilar Rahola is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament, and member of the far left.

A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.

They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.

Cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. So cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

Bottom of Form

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn’t exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world, only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

For example, the Medieval Jew accused of killing Christian children to drink their blood connects directly with the Israeli Jew who kills Palestinian children to steal their land. Always they are innocent children and dark Jews. Similarly, the Jewish bankers who wanted to dominate the world through the European banks, according to the myth of the Protocols, connect directly with the idea that the Wall Street Jews want to dominate the World through the White House. Control of the Press, control of Finances, the Universal Conspiracy, all that which has created the historical hatred against the Jews, is found today in hatred of the Israelis. In the subconscious, then, beats the DNA of the Western anti-Semite, which produces an efficient cultural medium.

But what beats in the conscious? Why does a renewed intolerance surge with such virulence, centered now, not against the Jewish people, but against the Jewish state? From my point of view, this has historical and geopolitical motives, among others, the decades long bloody Soviet role, the European Anti-Americanism, the West’s energy dependency and the growing Islamist phenomenon.

But it also emerges from a set of defeats which we suffer as free societies, leading to a strong ethical relativism.

The moral defeat of the left. For decades, the left raised the flag of freedom wherever there was injustice. It was the depositary of the utopian hopes of society. It was the great builder of the future. Despite the murderous evil of Stalinism’s sinking these utopias, the left has preserved intact its aura of struggle, and still pretends to point out good and evil in the world. Even those who would never vote for leftist options, grant great prestige to leftist intellectuals, and allow them to be the ones who monopolize the concept of solidarity. As they have always done. Thus, those who struggled against Pinochet were freedom-fighters, but Castro’s victims, are expelled from the heroes’ paradise, and converted into undercover fascists.

This historic treason to freedom is reproduced nowadays, with mathematical precision. For example, the leaders of Hezbollah are considered resistance heroes, while pacifists like the Israeli singer Noa, are insulted in the streets of Barcelona. Today too, as yesterday, the left is hawking totalitarian ideologies, falls in love with dictators and, in its offensive against Israel, ignores the destruction of fundamental rights. It hates rabbis, but falls in love with imams; shouts against the Israeli Defense Forces, but applauds Hamas’s terrorists; weeps for the Palestinian victims, but scorns the Jewish victims, and when it is touched by Palestinian children, it does it only if it can blame the Israelis.

It will never denounce the culture of hatred, or its preparation for murder. A year ago, at the AIPAC conference in Washington I asked the following questions:

Why don’t we see demonstrations in Europe against the Islamic dictatorships?

Why are there no demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of Muslim women?

Why are there no declarations against the use of bomb-carrying children in the conflicts in which Islam is involved?

Why is the left only obsessed with fighting against two of the most solid democracies of the planet, those which have suffered the bloodiest terrorist attacks, the United States and Israel?

Because the left no longer has any ideas, only slogans. It no longer defends rights, but prejudices. And the greatest prejudice of all is the one aimed against Israel. I accuse, then, in a formal manner that the main responsibility for the new anti-Semitic hatred disguised as anti-Zionism, comes from those who should have been there to defend freedom, solidarity and progress. Far from it, they defend despots, forget their victims and remain silent before medieval ideologies which aim at the destruction of free societies. The treason of the left is an authentic treason against modernity.

Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place.

Defeat of Journalism. We have more information in the world than ever before, but we do not have a better informed world. Quite the contrary, the information superhighway connects us anywhere in the planet, but it does not connect us with the truth. Today’s journalists do not need maps, since they have Google Earth, they do not need to know History, since they have Wikipedia. The historical journalists, who knew the roots of a conflict, still exist, but they are an endangered species, devoured by that “fast food” journalism which offers hamburger news, to readers who want fast-food information. Israel is the world’s most watched place, but despite that, it is the world’s least understood place. Of course one must keep in mind the pressure of the great petrodollar lobbies, whose influence upon journalism is subtle but deep. Mass media knows that if it speaks against Israel, it will have no problems. But what would happen if it criticized an Islamic country? Without doubt, it would complicate its existence. Certainly part of the press that writes against Israel, would see themselves mirrored in Mark Twain’s ironical sentence: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

Defeat of critical thinking. To all this one must add the ethical relativism which defines the present times: it is based not on denying the values of civilization, but rather in their most extreme banality. What is modernity?

I explain it with this little tale: If I were lost in an uncharted island, and would want to found a democratic society, I would only need three written documents: The Ten Commandments (which established the first code of modernity. “Thou shalt not murder” founded modern civilization.); The Roman Penal Code; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And with these three texts we would start again. These principles are relativized daily, even by those who claim to be defending them.

“Thou shalt not murder” … depending on who is the target, must think those who, like the demonstrators in Europe, shouted in support of Hamas.

“Hurray for Freedom of Speech!”…, or not. For example, several Spanish left-wing organizations tried to take me to court, accusing me of being a negationist, like the Nazis, because I deny the “Palestinian Holocaust”. They were attempting to prohibit me from writing articles and to send me to prison. And so on… The social critical mass has lost weight and, at the same time ideological dogmatism has gained weight. In this double turn of events, the strong values of modernity have been substituted by a “weak thinking,” vulnerable to manipulation and Manichaeism.

Defeat of the United Nations. And with it, a sound defeat of the international organizations which should protect Human Rights. Instead they have become broken puppets in the hands of despots. The United Nations is only useful to Islamofascists like Ahmadinejad, or dangerous demagogues like Hugo Chavez which offers them a planetary loudspeaker where they can spit their hatred. And, of course, to systematically attack Israel. The UN, too exists to fight Israel.

Finally, defeat of Islam. Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

Thank you.