Checkmate

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Dvora and I have a grandson. Only child of Efrat and Jonathan, he is called Avishai, a Biblical name meaning “my father’s [or God’s] gift.” Like all grandchildren he is the cutest little boy in the world. With unruly blond curlers and mischievous eyes that are almost always laughing. He loves playgrounds, running about, and ice cream. And chocolate balls too! He is a chatterbox who even as he adds new words to his already quite extensive vocabulary sometimes finds his thoughts outrunning his ability to express them, causing a slight but touching stammer. In a few weeks he will be four years old.

For those of you who are not familiar with the geography of this country, the answer to your question—is his life in any great danger owing to the war—is no. The distance from Gaza to Rehovot where Avishai and his parents live is about 54 kilometers. Their flat is located on the 12th floor of a high rise building. Not only is there no way they can reach the ground floor on time, but there is no point in trying to do so; the building does not have an underground shelter. Instead the flat is provided with a reinforced room that will hopefully protect its inhabitants against anything but a close hit.

But that does not mean that, both in Rehovot and elsewhere, the ongoing hostilities do not make their impact felt. Our oldest grandson, Orr (“Light”) is a junior IDF officer. Though not of the kind where his life is in any greater danger than that of most people here. But three of his cousins, two boys and a girl, are rapidly approaching the age where they will have to reflect about what they are going to do when the call comes as, it surely will. Rehovot itself, located as it is near a major air base, has been attacked many times, luckily resulting in very limited casualties and damage. There and elsewhere other reminders of the war include the rather frequent roar of IsraeIi fighter bombers flying overhead; the somewhat muted atmosphere in what is normally quite a boisterous country; and the growing number of wounded men—hardly any women, fortunately—one comes across in the streets.

When the guns fire, the kids cry. On both sides of the front, mind you. That is why I am posting the following poem, originally written in Hebrew by the late Israeli poet, publicist and playwright Hanoch Levin. But dedicated, on this occasion, to the children of both Israel and Gaza.

 

Checkmate

O where has my boy gone

My good boy where has he gone?

A black pawn has killed a white one.

My daddy won’t return. My daddy won’t be back

A white pawn has killed a black one.

There’s weeping in the homes, there’s silence on the green

The king is playing with the queen.

My boy won’t rise again. He sleeps, he won’t grow

A black pawn has killed a white one.

My daddy is in darkness, no more will he see light

A white pawn has killed a black one.

There’s weeping in the homes, there’s silence on the green

The king is playing with the queen.

My boy once at my breast is now a cloud of snow

A black pawn has killed a white one.

My father’s kindly heart is now a frozen sack

A white pawn has killed a black one.

There’s weeping in the homes, there’s silence on the green

The king is playing with the queen.

O where has my boy gone

My good boy where has he gone?

All soldiers black all soldiers white fall low.

My daddy won’t return. My daddy won’t be back

A white pawn has killed a black one.

There are no white pawns left nor any black ones

There’s weeping in the homes, there’s silence on the green

The king is playing with the queen.

There’s weeping in the homes, there’s silence on the green

And still the king keeps playing with the queen.

 

You can find the song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70p5EpwKC0. I have listened to it many times, and each time it makes me want to tear out the few hairs I have left on my head. What have we humans done, what are we doing, to each other! Skip the accords and start at 1.47 minutes.

The above translation is based on the one at the website with some changes of my own.

I Stand Amazed

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C. R. Hallpike, How We Got Here: from bows and arrows to the space age (2008).

Until about 10,000 years ago our ancestors lived in small exogamous groups consisting of 25-50 persons each: men, women and children. Inside each group all members were tied to each other by blood or marriage. All were in daily contact with each other, and all were almost indistinguishable in terms of wealth of which, in case, case, there was only as much as peo0le could carry or preserve. Having long mastered fire and learnt to cook food, and armed with stone tools as well as wooden spears and bows and arrows, they roamed over what, to them, must have looked like almost limitless space. As a result, except under exceptional circumstances such as droughts and the like, most of the time they had enough, not seldom even more than enough, to eat. The same factor, i.e the abundance of available space, prevented warfare from doing serious, long-time harm to those who engaged in it. The more so because the normal objective was prestige and revenge, not extermination or permanent subjugation. The last of which, given the way these societies were structured, was impossible to establish in any case.

Fast forward to the early years of the twenty-first century. Our numbers, which 7,000 years ago are said to have reached perhaps 5 million people, have increased to the point where the earth’s population is around 8 billion and growing still. Practically all of them live in millions-strong states where only a very small percentage are related by bloodlines and/or have personal knowledge of each other except, perhaps, in the form of sounds and images emitted by some piece of electronic wizardry. Far from our wealth being equally—let alone, equitably—distributed, we range from penniless beggars always on the verge of starvation to the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. In terms of the technology at our disposal we have reached the point where we are now actively drawing up plans for colonizing not just the moon but Mars as well. All this within what in evolutionary terms, let alone geological ones, amounts to a mere blink of an eye.

How could it, how did it, happen? This is the question that Christopher Hallpike, a long retired Canadian professor anthropology who at one point moved to Oxford, took it upon himself to answer. Not that he is the first to do so. One is reminded of the Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man (TV series, 1973), Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), and Yuval Harari’s Sapiens (2011), among many others. Equating cultural development with biological evolution, almost all of them drew on Darwin as their source of inspiration. With him in mind, almost all started with two basic ideas. First, that cultural change—mutation, to use the language of evolutionists—is more or less accidental, taking place spontaneously now here, now there. Second, that whether or not any innovation persists and spreads depends on how useful it is—the extent to which it makes those who are in charge of it, more comfortable, more powerful and, last not least, wealthier.

By contrast, Professor Hallpike takes it as his starting point that human development, aka culture is not blind. True, some minor changes may have come about more or less by accident. However, he says, for them to persist and to spread there is a need for a conscious effort on the part of both originators and beneficiaries. First, it requires the kind of mind needed to contemplate a new and different reality—precisely the one that, as far as we can see, animals ranging from mosquitos to chimpanzees do not possess. Second, it requires an open society in which different people, coming from different directions and possessing different skills, can meet, exchange ideas, cooperate and, where necessary criticize each other. Third, it requires an investment. If not of money, which only appeared around 600-700 BCE, long after some of the most important discoveries and inventions were made, then at any rate of time and effort. Very often, and this is a point that Hallpike does not emphasize as much as he could and perhaps should have, it also involves taking a risk. The story of the monk Berthold Schwarz inventing gunpowder and being blown up for his pains may not be rooted in fact. Nevertheless, it does present people with a “lesson learnt.”

Another basic point with which Hallpike takes issue is the common belief, famously caricatured by Charles Dickens and his infamous creation Mr. Gradgrind, that it is only material “facts” that either cause change or are affected by it. Standing in front of the blackboard—after all, Gradgrind is a teacher—swish, and away goes religion. Swish, and away goes our senses of beauty, of order, of awe in face of the mysterious and the unknown. Swish, and away go curiosity and inspiration. Swish… Never, so Hallpike, has there been a human society which did not have all those things. Judging by the expression on the face of my cat when he first discovered a new opening we had made in a kitchen wall, even many animals experience some of them.

Finally, judging by his books, including some of his (very funny) fiction I have read, I trust that Hallpike would not have been the man he evidently is, i.e one who loves to play devil’s advocate, if he had overlooked the greatest provocation of all: namely the idea of distinguishing “primitive” from “modern” man. Had he not been long retired, no doubt that alone would have brought on his head severe sanctions on the part of the politically correct thought-control mob. In fact, though, his use of the term is perfectly reasonable. Lacking as they did modern, observation-experimental-mathematically based science, our pre-literate ancestors perforce had no choice but to base much of their understanding of the world on folk wisdom much of which in turn rested on symbolism, religion, magic and intuition as well as every kind of contrast or affinity, real or imagined. It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that Hallpike calls people and the societies they formed “primitive.” But not once in some 650 pages does he suggest that they were mentally retarded.

I cannot end this essay without noting two other points. First, as an anthropologist who has spent some years living with some of the “primitive” societies he mentions—first in East Africa, then in Papua-New Guinea—Hallpike, discussing such societies, has the immense advantage of knowing exactly what he is talking about. This alone is a good reason for taking what he has to say about them seriously. Second, I find his knowledge of societies, material objects and processes truly incredible; starting with metallurgy—and ending with the history of the alphabet, mathematical notation, alchemy, government, warfare, philosophy, monotheism, astrology and the scientific method there is hardly any field about which he does not have something interesting to say.

The book’s title notwithstanding, its journey through history ends about 1914. As a result, subsequent developments such as relativity, quantum mechanics and chaos theory are mentioned barely if at all. That is a pity; could anyone come up with better examples of sheer curiosity, rather than material gain, driving history into new and unexpected directions? Still I stand amazed. And also, I confess, a little jealous in front of so much knowledge so engagingly presented.

They Are Defended and Supported by Men

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Day by day we are told how men, society, nature, and in some cases even women themselves conspire to keep women down and out. To convince yourself of this fact, all you have to do is open Google. Just plain old Google; no AI needed. Next, type in some combination of men, women, and any bad thing you can think of. Here are just a few examples picked more or less at random from the Net in the course of a couple of hours’ work.

*

“Women remain grossly underrepresented in decision making forums related to conflict prevention and peace-building” (UNFPA, 13-15.11.2001).

“Women Suffer More than Men” (Live Science, 6.7.2005).

“Natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men.” (“The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters,” Journal of the Association of American Geographers, 97, 2007, 3).

“Globally, women are more vulnerable to… economic shocks” (UNAIDS, 2012).

“Why is depression more prevalent in women?” (Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, July 2015).

“Genders experience pain differently, and women have it more” (The Conversation, 9.12.2015).

“Recent evidence suggests that biological factors, such as the variation in ovarian hormone levels and particularly decreases in estrogen, may contribute to the increased prevalence of depression and anxiety in women” (ibid).

“Women are twice as likely to suffer from severe stress and anxiety as men” (New York Times, 11.14.2018).

“Women suffer needless pain because almost everything is designed for men” (Vox, 22.9.2019).

“Almost 90% of Men/Women Globally Are Biased Against Women” (UNDP, 5.3.2020).

“Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)… occurs 1.5 to 2 times as often in women as in men. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 20.5.2020).

“How Patriarchy and Capitalism Combine to Aggravate the Oppression of Women” (CADTM, 28.5.2020).

“College Classrooms Are Still Chilly for Women” (Dartmouth News, 27.1.2021).

“Why Nearly 80 Percent of Autoimmune Sufferers Are Female” (Scientific American, 21.9.2021).

“Inflation affects women more than men” (World Economic Forum, 2022).

“Societal prejudices against those with mental illness may more significantly impact female patients with schizophrenia” (General Psychiatry, 2022; 35(4).

 “Across the globe, women and girls are particularly vulnerable in times of war” (Georgetown Law, April 2023).

“Not a single country in the world has achieved gender equality” (Global Citizen, 24.11.2023).

 “Women are more likely to want a job but not to have one” (ILOSTAT, 14.3.2024).

“Women in the developing world face dire job prospects” (ibid).

“When a woman does not know how to sell herself, her place will be taken by a man” (Ynet, Israel, 6.4.2024).

“ How the climate crisis fuels gender inequality” (CNN World, 9.4.2024).

Needless to say, it would never occur to me to doubt any of these and a zillion similar statements. Without exception, all are based on exhaustive research honestly presented sine studio et ira. Still I’d like to add a question of my own. Granted that men, society, nature and, on occasion, even women themselves conspire against poor, helpless, witless women unable to stand up for themselves. In that case, how come that, in practically all contemporary societies from Afghanistan up (or down), they enjoy a longer life expectancy than men do?

The answer—pssst, don’t tell anyone!—is: They are defended and supported by those bad, bad creatures who hate them so much. Men.

Something for the Mullahs to Think About

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Against the background of the continuing Iranian-Israeli tensions, it may be useful to take another look at what is at stake. Iran is a large country comprising some 1,600,000 square kilometers, Israel a very small one with just about 28,000, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip included. In terms of population the difference is as 88,000,000 to 9,500,000. Short of dropping some nuclear bombs on a few key Iranian cities, how can David expect to fight Goliath and win?

For one possible answer, consider the following. Iran is a country of many mountains, quite a number of rivers—none very long, incidentally—and dams. Out of a total of 183 currently operational dams, 52 are related to the Caspian Sea catchment area. 12 are based in the Urmia basin further to the southwest, 68 are located in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman watersheds, 34 are in the Central Plateau, 11 are in Sarakhs catchment basin, and other dams are located across the eastern boundary basin (Hamoun). Most are serving one or more of the following four purposes. 1. Flood control. 2. Providing drinking water. 3. Agricultural irrigation. 4. Electricity-generation.

The biggest dam is the Karkheh Dam (capacity 5,900,000,000 cubic meters). Next come the Bakhtiari Dam (4,845,000,000 cubic meters), the Dez Dam (3,340,000,000), the Seimarem Dam (3,200,000,000), the Chamshir Dam (2,300,000,000), the Karun 4 Dam (2,000,000,000), the Marun Dam (1,200,000,000), the Lar Dam (960,000,000), the Sardasht Dam (545,000,000), the, the Daryan Dam (316,000,000), the Ashavan Dam (260,000,000), the Mamloo Dam (250,000,000), and the Al Kabir Dam (202,000,000). The maximum capacity of all dams combined is believed to be around 55,000,000,000 cubic meters.

Simply gathering the vast amounts of data needed to asses what a coordinated attack on these and other dams could do to the country would require entire regiments of experts. The more so because many of the details are unavailable to the public. It is, however, worth-while to bring up the following story. In May 1941 the officers at the Africa Corps headquarters were a worried lot. This is surprising, given that the corps, brilliantly led by General Erwin Rommel, had just completed a spectacular 1,100-kilometer advance that took it from the gates of Tripoli all the way to Sallum, a small village just east of the border between Italian Libya and British-ruled Egypt. Measured in terms of driving distance the figure was even larger. Should the German advance continue it would soon reach the Nile. And that was just what the Germans were worried about. Suppose the British, ere they abandoned Egypt and retreated into the Sinai and from there into Palestine, blew up the Aswan Dam; what would happen then?

A coded message—chefsache, nur durch Offizaier—went out to the General Staff. From there it was passed on to the experts of the newly founded Wehrtechnische Fakultaet, the newly-founded Military-Technological Faculty of the University of Berlin. It took a few days before a reply was received. When it did, it pointed out that the capacity of the Dam—meaning, the old British-built one that had been completed in 1902 and was by far the largest in the world until that time—was 5,300,000,000 cubic meters (5.3 cubic kilometers) of water. Just what so much water could do to the vulnerable land to the north depended on many variables. However, provided the demolition job was carried out in the right way (starting from the middle and working its way in both directions, rather than the other way around) and during the right season of the year (starting in July and lasting until November) it would occasion a monstrous wave, thirty to forty meters high, drowning everything in its path to the Mediterranean. Including, some 690 kilometers away, the capital of Cairo which at that time was a city of a million and a half out of a total of about 18,000,000.

In terms of capacity, several of the Iranian reservoirs are comparable with the one created by the Old Aswan Dam. Surely there must be something for the Mullahs to think about here?

They Are Defended and Supported by Men

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Day by day, we are told how men, society, nature, and in some cases even women themselves conspire to keep women down and out. To convince yourself of this fact, all you have to do is open Google; just plain old Google, no AI needed. Next, type in some combination of men, women, and any bad thing you can think of. Here are just a few examples picked more or less at random from the Net in the course of a couple of hours’ work.

*

“Women remain grossly underrepresented in decision making forums related to conflict prevention and peace-building” (UNFPA, 13-15.11.2001).

“Women Suffer More than Men” (Live Science, 6.7.2005).

“Natural disasters lower the life expectancy of women more than that of men. In other words, natural disasters (and their subsequent impact) on average kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men.” (“The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters,” Journal of the Association of American Geographers, 97, 2007, 3).

“Globally, women are more vulnerable to… economic shocks” (UNAIDS, 2012).

“Why is depression more prevalent in women?” (Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, July 2015).

“Genders experience pain differently, and women have it more” (The Conversation, 9.12.2015).

“Recent evidence suggests that biological factors, such as the variation in ovarian hormone levels and particularly decreases in estrogen, may contribute to the increased prevalence of depression and anxiety in women” (ibid).

“Women are twice as likely to suffer from severe stress and anxiety as men” (New York Times, 11.14.2018).

“Women suffer needless pain because almost everything is designed for men” (Vox, 22.9.2019).

“Almost 90% of Men/Women Globally Are Biased Against Women” (UNDP, 5.3.2020).

“Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)… occurs 1.5 to 2 times as often in women as in men. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 20.5.2020).

“How Patriarchy and Capitalism Combine to Aggravate the Oppression of Women” (CADTM, 28.5.2020).

“College Classrooms Are Still Chilly for Women” (Dartmouth News, 27.1.2021).

“Why Nearly 80 Percent of Autoimmune Sufferers Are Female” (Scientific American, 21.9.2021).

“Inflation affects women more than men” (World Economic Forum, 2022).

“Societal prejudices against those with mental illness may more significantly impact female patients with schizophrenia” (General Psychiatry, 2022; 35(4).

 “Across the globe, women and girls are particularly vulnerable in times of war” (Georgetown Law, April 2023).

 “Women are more likely to want a job but not to have one” (ILOSTAT, 14.3.2024).

“Women in the developing world face dire job prospects” (ibid).

“When a woman does not know how to sell herself, her place will be taken by a man” (Ynet, Israel, 6.4.2024).

“ How the climate crisis fuels gender inequality” (CNN World, 9.4.2024).

*

It would never occur to me to doubt any of these and a zillion similar statements. Without exception, they are based on exhaustive research honestly presented sine studio et ira. Still I’d like to add a question of my own. Granted that men, society, nature and, on occasion, even women themselves conspire against poor helpless women. In that case, how come that, in practically all contemporary societies from Afghanistan up (or down), they enjoy a longer life expectancy than men do?

The answer—don’t tell anyone!—is: They are defended and supported by men.

Islam Revealed

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As I am getting older, I find myself less and less interested in the kind of books—mainly academic, mainly about history—I’ve spent a lifetime reading. Instead, like some other authors around my age, I tend to wander off into fiction. Partly this is because good fiction can tell you as much or more about the manifold, endlessly varied and endlessly fascinating, aspects of human life as nonfiction can. And partly because authors of fiction tend to be better, often much better, writers than academics are. To adduce just one example, the Iliad as the ancient Greeks used to know it and as we know it today is almost entirely fiction. Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector and the rest never existed. Nor, presumably, did the beautiful Helene. Yet a book that can teach one more about fighting, war and life in general is very difficult, probably impossible, to find.

That said, I want to draw your attention to an extract from a two-decade old work of fiction that I happened to read just recently and that has resonated with me. For more information about the author and his work, go to the tags of the present post. The speaker is an Egyptian in his fifties. Described as an “intelligent and often funny man” he has long lived in England where he is “brilliantly successful” at his work, genetic engineering. But he still retains a soft spot for his native land.

“‘Islam,’ [he says to his French interlocutor] ‘was born deep in the desert amid scorpions, camels and wild beasts of every order. Do you know what I call Muslims? The losers of the Sahara. That’s what they deserve to be called. Do you think Islam could have been born in such a magnificent place?’ (with genuine feeling, he motioned again to the Nile valley). No, monsieur. Islam could only have been born in a stupid desert, among filthy Bedouins who had nothing better to do – pardon me – than bugger their camels. The closer a religion comes to monotheism – consider this carefully, cher monsieur – the more cruel and inhuman it becomes; and of all religions, Islam imposes the most radical monotheism. From its beginnings, it has been characterized by an uninterrupted series of wars of invasion and massacres; never, for as long as it exists, will peace reign in the world. Neither, in Muslim countries, will intellect and talent find a home; if there were Arab mathematicians, poets and scientists, it is simply because they lost the faith. Simply reading the Koran, one cannot help but be struck by the regrettable mood of tautology which typifies the work: There is no other God but God alone, etc. You won’t get very far with nonsense like that, you have to admit. Far from being an attempt at abstraction, as it is sometimes portrayed, the move towards monotheism is nothing more than a shift towards mindlessness… Note that Catholicism, a subtle religion, and one which I respect, which well knew what suited human nature, quickly moved away from the monotheism imposed by its initial doctrine. Through the dogma of the Trinity and the cult of the Virgin and the One God! What an absurdity! What an inhuman, murderous absurdity! … A god of stone, cher monsieur, a jealous, bloody god who should never have crossed over from Sinai. How much more profound, when you think about it, was our Egyptian religion, how much wiser and more humane … and our women! How beautiful our women were! Remember Cleopatra, who bewitched great Caesar. See what remains of them today …’ (randomly he indicated two veiled women walking with difficulty carrying bundles of merchandise). ‘Lumps. Big shapeless lumps of fat who hide themselves beneath rags. As soon as they’re married, they think of nothing but eating. They eat and eat and eat! …’ (his face became bloated as he pulled a face like de Funès). ‘No, believe me, cher monsieur, the desert has produced nothing but lunatics and morons… Nothing great or noble, nothing generous or wholesome; nothing which has contributed to the progress of humanity or raised it above itself.’”

This was published in 2005. But can anyone really maintain that things were different before—or that they have become different since?

A Tale of Three Crises

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Back in 1938-39, Britain—heartland of the largest empire that ever was—found itself coming under attack in no fewer than three main theaters at once. One, the closest home, was Western Europe and the North Sea where Adolf Hitler was busily at work building up the Third Reich to the point it would be ready to challenge the empire. One consisted of the empire’s communications in the Mediterranean where Benito Mussolini was threatening to take over the Suez Canal, Malta and Gibraltar, “the bars in Italy’s prison,” as he called them. And one in the Far East where a succession of militaristic Japanese governments were preparing to attack Britain’s colonies such as Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Things came to a head in September 1939 when Germany, invading Poland, ignited a world war. By the time that war ended six years later Britain was lucky in that it could count itself among the victors. However, its relative power, military industrial and economic, had been shattered and would never recover.

The same year, 1945, also marked the peak of American power. Alone among the main belligerents in World War II—Germany, Britain, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Japan, and China—the US neither had any part of its territory occupied nor was subject to bombing. Its losses, especially in terms of manpower killed or badly wounded, were also much lighter. Calculated in terms of value, fifty percent of everything was being produced in the U.S. Throughout my own youth in the 1950s and early 1960s, the best most people could say about anything was that it was American. This was as true in Israel, where I lived, as it was in the Netherlands which I occasionally visited; of movies (and movie stars) as of automobiles. As if to crown it all, alone of all the world’s countries the U.S not only possessed nuclear weapons but also, which was almost equally important, a demonstrated willingness to use them as its leaders saw fit.

However, what goes up must go down. In 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first nuke. This proved to be the starting point of a profound, if unexpectedly slow, process of proliferation, each of whose stages marked a downsizing of America’s relative advantage over other countries. Accidentally or not, 1949 also marked the opening of a long period, still ongoing, during which America’s balance of payments has almost never been positive. The decision, made by President Nixon in 1971, to take the US dollar off gold, simply highlighted the change and made the situation worse. Currently the American Government’s debt both to foreign countries and to its own citizens is easily the largest in the whole of history. The trouble with debts is that they must be repaid; putting a heavy burden on every economic decision made in the country, large or small.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to create what, at the time, was known as a unipolar world. Some went further still, announcing not just the end of power politics but of history itself. But the respite did not last. By 2010 Russia was beginning to come back, ready to resume the expansionist policies that, starting with Ivan IV (“the Terrible” or “the Dread,” as he was sometimes known) and ending with Stalin had been such a resounding success.  By the second decade of the twenty-first century American economic supremacy, which starting in the wake of World War I had been undisputed, was also being challenged by China in a way, and on a scale, never before experienced.

Nor is the state of that other pillar of American power, its armed forces, much better. Alone of all the great empires in history, starting already in the second decade of the nineteenth century the US has been in in the enviable position of not having a peer competitor—as the current phrase goes—in its own hemisphere. This enabled it to make do with what, most of the time and sometimes for decades on end, were almost ridiculously small armed forces. Specifically land forces or, again as the current phrase goes, boots on the ground. It was only immediately before and during wartime that the situation changed and full scale mobilization was instituted. Culminating in 1941-45 when the US waged what later came to be known as 21/2 wars: meaning one in northwestern Europe, one in the far east, and one—the ½—in the Mediterranean.

Enter, once again, the Nixon administration. The “21/2” disappeared from the literature. Its place was taken by 11/2, meaning, one full scale war against the Soviet Union on “the Central Front” (Western Europe) plus a smaller half -war in some other place: either the Far East, presumably Korea, or in the Middle East on which much of the world relied for its oil. Needless to say, the figures were never accurate or even meant to be accurate. Their only use was as a very rough guide for comparison on one hand and planning on the other. Still they did provide an index concerning the direction in which things were moving.

Hand in hand with America’s declining military ambitions and expectations went very deep cuts in the size of the armed forces. The process got under way when Nixon—Nixon again—ordered an end to conscription and a switch to armed forces composed entirely of volunteers. The outcome was a 34-percent cut in the number of military personnel between 1969 and 1973. As a combination of technological progress and inflation drove costs into the stratosphere, the cuts in the number of major weapon systems—missiles, aircraft, ships, tanks, artillery barrels, briefly everything the Ukrainians are currently begging for—were, if anything, greater still. Come 1991, these forces proved adequate to fight and win a conventional war against a third-rate power, Iraq. That apart, though, almost every time they tried their hand at fighting a 1/2 war anywhere in the world they failed. So in Vietnam; so in Laos and Cambodia, so in Somalia, and so in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like Britain in the late 1930s, currently the US sees itself challenged on three fronts. The first is Eastern Europe where Russia’s Putin is trying to reoccupy a vital part of the former Soviet Empire and, should be succeed, get himself into a position to threaten any number of NATO countries, old or new. The second is the Middle East where Iran, using its vassals in Yemen and Syria, has been waging war by proxy on Israel while at the same time threatening Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and parts of the Indian Ocean. The third is the Far East—where America’s main allies, meaning Taiwan on one hand and South Korea on the other, may come under attack by China and North Korea respectively almost at a moment’s notice.

Even for the greatest power on earth running, or preparing to run, three ½ wars at once is an extremely expensive proposition. Especially in terms of ammunition of which, in sharp contrast to 19141-45, there simply is not enough. So far the center, though experiencing growing domestic difficulties, has not yet caved in. With the wings tottering, though, how long before it does?

Guest Article: Why Hamas Will Lose

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By

Colonel (res.) Dr. Moshe Ben David*

Professor Yuval Harari, who teaches modern history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has turned himself into one of the leading intellectuals of the Western world. His books, particularly Homo Deus, deal with important turning points in human history as well as our ability to survive into the future. In no small part thanks in part to President Obama’s endorsement, they reached the stop of the best-sellers list. As requests for articles and interviews came pouring in, they also made the author famous. True, many of his best known prophecies have neither materialized nor look as if they are going to be materialized. Instead of making progress towards a better, more peaceful and better off, world what we see is Covid-17, starvation in the Sudan, and war both in Europe and the Middle East; not to mention terrorism over much of the world. None of this has caused Harari to lose confidence in himself and his ability to look into the future. In particular, in an article just published on Israel’s most important news website as well as a CNN-interview with Christiane Amanpour, he discussed the future of Israel’s war against Hamas. Israel, so Harari, has no chance of winning the war. Why? Because, to do so, the government in Jerusalem would have to lay down clear objectives, something which, so far, it has been unable to do. Israel, he went on to say, needs a new government. One that would drop its “preposterous Biblical fantasies” concerning a complete victory and prepare for some kind of compromise. He ends by saying that Israel and Hamas have reached an impasse. Even in case the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) succeed in defeating Hamas and disarming it, the real outcome will be a defeat for Israel. The only way to prevent such a situation is compromise, negotiation and peace.

I’d like to use, as my opening shot, the work of the widely respected American political scientist Bernard Brodie (1910-78). To be viable, so Brodie, a military-political plan must take into account objectives and means; including, among the latter, the balance of armed force and society’s willingness to sacrifice some of its young men in the process of attaining them. Seen in this light, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement, on the first day of the war, that Israel’s objective is “the complete destruction of Hamas”—the organization which, on 7 October 2023, subjected Israel to a surprise attack and inflicted some 1,000 casualties in a single day—appears both reasonable and attainable. Reasonable, because it reminds one of the Allies’ highly successful “unconditional surrender” during World War II, a formula that proved highly successful. Attainable, because of the military balance in Gaza. Clearly, in case Israel fails to achieve Netanyahu’s stated objective it will have to change its policy. That is what the cabinet is for.

Here it is worth adding that there exists a fundamental difference between the attacker and the attacked. The former, in this case Hamas, can adopt any objectives he wants. The latter, in this case Israel, faces a simple choice: either fight or surrender. Supposing he decides to fight, his only objective can be to defeat the enemy. Everything else comes later and must necessarily depend on events on the battlefield—meaning that the relationship between objectives and means must remain flexible and cannot be nearly as rigid as Harari imagines. Indeed the whole idea of laying down the political objectives ahead of events on the battlefield, which is what he seems to say, is, to use a term I have used before in this article, preposterous.

Second, his claim that, to win the war or at any rate not to lose it, Israel must have a new government. One that will rid itself of all kind of all kinds of illusions concerning total victory and prepared for some kind of compromise. In this context it seems that Harari is unaware of the fact that, right from the beginning of the war, the IDF has been following the government’s guidance step by step. Not a single encounter with the IDF that did not end with Hamas being defeated, either by having its troops killed, wounded or captured or when those troops evacuated their positions, leaving its enemy in control or the battlefield. One does not change a winning horse in the midst of a race; doing so can only strengthen Hamas in its decision to fight on. Besides, what does Harari think a change of government could achieve? Suppose the Israel decides to change its objective as laid down by Netanyahu and aim at replacing Hamas’s rule in Gaza by one run by the (Palestinian Authority) in Ramallah; does anyone really believe that Hamas will tamely sit down and agree? Halil Shkaki, the Palestinian’s Authority’s number one expert on polls and polling, says that 73 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank support Hamas and are in favor of the atrocities it has committed. Furthermore, the Authority spends 1.3 billion shekel, or 7 percent of its annual budget, assisting the relatives of Palestinian casualties who died while fighting Israel. This on top of symbolic gestures such as naming streets and squares after them, praising them in the schoolbooks it makes children study, and the like. Ending the war with a compromise, such as Harari suggests, will only enable Hamas to take over the West Bank in addition to Gaza, putting Israel’s heartland within easy reach of some of the heavy weapons it already has.

Harari’s third claim, namely that Israel and Hamas have reached an impasses that can only end in an Israeli defeat, is also wrong. Soon after the successful massacre they committed on 7 October Hamas’ leaders announced they were expecting to follow up with additional measures of the same kind. Unfortunately for them but fortunately for Israel, so far it does not appear as if they are able to realize that threat. Here is another, and much more likely scenario: following its successes so far, and after a due period of rest and reconstruction, the IDF will enter the city of Raffia in the southern part of the Strip and do away with the residuals of Hamas’ organized units on land, in the air, at sea, and underground. The oft-heard comparisons with the IDF in Lebanon as well as the American adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are, in reality, irrelevant. Why? Because the Gaza Strip only comprises 1.42 square miles, equal to 0.00083 percent of Iraqi territory, 0.00055 percent of Afghan territory, 0.0011 percent of Vietnamese territory, and 0.034 percent of Lebanese territory. Once Raffia is dealt with, all Israel will need to defeat what remains of Hamas and completely dominate the country is three brigades.

Dominating the Strip on all sides will also isolate it from the external world and make it much harder to smuggle in the kind of arms, money, and logistic support terrorists and guerrillas require. In this context it is important to keep in mind the fact that Gaza’s population is not homogeneous. About one third, consisting of natives (as opposed to those who left Israel at one point or another), supports the PA and would like few things better than settling accounts with Hamas which has been maltreating them ever since the Israelis withdrew almost two decades ago.

To sum up, it stands to reason that, even after it completes its occupation of the Strip, the IDF will have to carry out sporadic anti-terrorist operations. In doing so it will be able to draw on half a century’s experience not only in the Strip but in the West Bank as well. Ending terrorism will not be easy and will take time. However, given the various types of specialist forces the IDF deploys as well the various innovative techniques it has devised, many of which are the envy of foreign farmed forces and are widely imitated, there is no reason why the struggle will not lead to a successful end. Finally a word about the “preposterous Biblical fantasies” that, says Harari, are dreamt up by all kinds of Israeli extremists, including not a few in the government itself.  Nietzsche in his Untimely Meditations says that those who condemn the past endanger both themselves and others. This is because we are all products of the past, complete with all its problems, passions, errors and even crimes. That again is why, for both individual and nations, to deny their past is tantamount to shooting oneself. This is true of Harari himself; but it is even more true of countless others the world over who think as he does.

Col. (res) Dr. Moshe Ben David, is a retired IDF infantry officer with much experience in counterinsurgency. He is also a former vice president of Amadox Inc.

A Madcap World

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Stanley, The Promethean, Kindle, 2017.

A madcap world filled with madcap characters. A godforsaken English village called Tussock’s Bottom where the favorite drink is a kind of beer affectionately known as Old Stinker. A Christminster (i.e Oxford) Don named Habbakuk McWrath who is an expert on Extreme Celtic Studies and likes nothing better than a good old fashioned brawl of the kind his wild ancestors used to engage in. A British prime minister named Terry Carter, leader of the Conservative Democrats (ConDems, for short). Modelled on a real former prime minister whose name I shall not spell out, he is “a consummate liar and cheap publicity seeker, cravenly addicted to the latest media opinion polls and the number of his ‘likes’ on Facebook and Twitter, perpetually grinning, and with no sincere beliefs about anything except his own importance.” A highly polished French intellectual named Marcel Choux (cabbage) who has declared war on truth—yes, truth—as an instrument of racism, repression, discrimination and a whole series of similar bad things. And who, instead of being sent to the loony bin, is worshipped by the students and faculty of the London School of Politics (aka of Economics and Political Science) who have invited him to receive a prize and give a lecture.

Into this world steps Harry Hockenheimer, a young American billionaire who made his fortune by helping women satisfy their vanity when looking into a mirror. Now 39 years old, happily married to Lulu-Belle who does not make too many demands on him, he has reached the point where he is simply bored with life. Casting around for something significant to do, he hits on the idea of building a robot sufficiently human-like in terms of appearance, behavior and mental abilities to act as a factotum to anyone with the money to buy or rent it. To keep things secret, the decision is made to design and produce the prototype robot not in Hockenheimer’s native California but in Tussock’s Bottom. There he has his assistant set up a high-tech household where everything, from shopping through cleaning to regulating the temperature, is done by computers. At one point Hockenheimer returns to his home away from home only to find that mice, by gnawing on the cables and defecating on them, have turned it in a complete, dirty and smelly, mess. That, however, is a minor glitch soon corrected by a very willing elderly lady armed with a whirlwind of dusters, mops, polishers, sprays, buckets, and  similar kinds of mundane, but highly effective, equipment

Approaching completion the robot is christened Frank Meadows, as inoffensive a name as they come. He also goes through a number of tests that highlight his phenomenal memory as well as his ability to remember, articulate and do anything a human can, only much better and much faster. Meadows starts his career by visiting the local pub where he plays darts with his fellow visitors and wins the game hands down. Next he deals with an obnoxious policeman who, having attacked him, ends up in a muddy ditch and is subsequently fired from the force. He takes part in a TV show called A Laugh a Minute whose host, Jason Blunt, “a flabby stupid, greedy, and arrogant exhibitionist with a chip on both shoulders” ends up by physically attacking Frank and, for his pains, is dumped back into his seat like a sack of potatoes. He spends many hours listening to Hockenheimer who does his best to explain to him the way the world works. He… but I will not spoil the story by telling you how it ends. Nor will I let you have the author’s real name and identity; that is something you will have to find out for yourself.

Amidst all this political correctness, inclusionism, identitarianism, and any number of similar modern ideas are mercilessly exposed not just for the nonsense they are but for the way their exponents bully anyone who does not join them. All to the accompaniment of jokes, puns, wordplay and double entendres such as only Brits seem able to come up with. To be sure, Stanley is no Jane Austin and does not even pretend to trace the development of character the way great novelists do. However, almost any page of this book you may pick up will either make you helpless with laughter or, at the very least, bring an ironic smile to your face. Get it and spend a couple of hours—it is not very long—reading it from cover to cover. I promise you you will not be disappointed.

On Escalation

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To most people, whether or not a ruler or country “uses” nuclear weapons is a simple choice between either dropping them on the enemy or not doing so. For “experts,” though, things are much more complicated (after all making them so, or making them appear to be so, is the way they earn their daily bread). So today, given Putin’s recent threat to resort to nuclear weapons in case NATO sends its troop into Ukraine, I am going to assume the mantle of an expert and explain some of the things “using” such weapons might mean.

  1. Making verbal threats. Almost eight decades have passed since the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima (without any kind of warning, nota bene). Since then there have been plenty of occasions when countries, statesmen and politicians threatened to use the nukes in their arsenal. Eisenhower did so in 1953 in connection with the Korean War; Khrushchev in 1956 in connection with the Suez Crisis; Kennedy in 1962 in connection with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nixon in 1973 in connection with the Arab-Israeli War of that year; India and Pakistan in 1998 in connection with the Kargil War; and so on right down to Putin today. Some of the threats have been overt and rather brutal, others more or less secret and veiled. Some were delivered directly, others with the help of a third party.
  2. To put some muscle behind the threat, weapons may be moved out of storage and put on display. Normally everything pertaining to nukes is kept highly secret. Here and there, though, countries have allowed their nuclear warheads, or replicas of them, to be shown, photographed, and celebrated for what they might do to opponents. In particular Russia, China and North Korea like to parade their intercontinental ballistic missiles. True monsters they are, any one of which can demolish almost any city on earth within, say, less than an hour of the order being given. Some such displays are accompanied by verbal threats, others not. At times the sequence is reversed in the sense that display precedes threats rather than the other way around.
  3. Raising the state of alert. Again contrary to what most people think, putting nuclear weapons to use, in other words commanding and controlling them, is by no means simply a matter of pushing the proverbial button. First, those in charge of the weapons must make sure they are always ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Second, they must make sure the weapons are not launched by accident, or by unauthorized personnel, or by an authorized officer somewhere in the launching chain either deliberately disobeying orders or going out of his or her mind. The two requirements, speed (lest the weapons are targeted and destroyed before they can be launched) and reliability contradict each other; making the problem of nuclear command and control as difficult as any we humans have to face. Raising the state of alarm will cut through some parts of the problem—though just how, and to what extent, is rightly kept one of the most guarded secrets of all.
  4. Going a step further, weapons and delivery vehicles may be tested. Pace any number of computer models and exercises, ultimately the only way to make sure one’s nuclear weapons will work is to test them. Such tests, of course, may also be used in an attempt to influence the enemy’s behavior—as was notoriously the case when India and Pakistan both tested a number of weapons back in 1998. Some tests may be conducted in or over some outlying part of one’s own country as American, Soviet, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and North Korea ones all were. Others may take place over some part of the vast no-man’s world that constitutes the earth’s oceans; for example, the Israeli-South African bomb said to have been detonated over the Indian Ocean back in 1979. It is also possible to send some of one’s missiles hurtling over enemy country, as North Korea has often done in respect to Japan.Each of the above mentioned methods represents a different way of (hopefully) “using” one’s nuclear weapons in order to influence the enemy’s behavior without bringing about Armageddon. Historically all have been implemented quite often, some even as a matter of routine. The problem is that, since no country or leader has ever admitted giving way to a nuclear threat, it is hard to say how effective such threats were. There are, however, additional ways states might put their nuclear weapons to use.
  5. Launching a limited nuclear strike at some less important enemy target such as outlying, more or less unpopulated, spaces or else a ship at sea. All in the hope of scaring the opponents to the point where he’ll give way to one’s demands, but without, if at all possible, risking a nuclear response.
  6. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s nuclear or, in case he does not have them, conventional forces. Targets might consist of early warning installations, anti-aircraft and missile defenses, troop-concentrations, communication centers, depots, etc.
  7. Launching a limited nuclear strike at the enemy’s industrial infrastructure.
  8. Launching a nuclear strike at all of the targets mentioned in bullets 5 to 7.
  9. Launching a full scale nuclear strike at the enemy’s main demographic centers.

One well known nuclear strategist, Herman Kahn, in his 1962 book distinguished among no fewer than forty different stages on the “escalation ladder.” In practice, there are two reasons why the ladder is largely theoretical. First, the various stages are likely to be hard to keep apart. Second, even if the side using the weapons does keep them apart in his own mind, the other is highly unlikely to share his views. In particular, a strike that one side sees as relatively harmless may very well be perceived by the other as a mere prelude. Thus bringing about the very retaliation he seeks to avoid.

As far as publicly available sources allow us to judge, up to the present Putin has limited himself to the first of these nine stages. That is less–considerably less–than some others have done before him. So the question is, will he stop there?