Tag Archives: Israel

Let’s Keep It That Way

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These days when much of the world is closely watching events in Israel, I want to say that, numerous and serious as the problems are, I remain proud of my country. Here is a short list of the reasons why; for a longer one see my 2010 book, The Land of Blood and Honey.

Back in 1914 there were only about 50,000 Jews living in the small, backward, badly neglected and badly governed, country that was then part of the Ottoman Empire. As late as the 1950s, so thinly populated were the environments of Tel Aviv that, visiting my grandparents, I could hear the jackals howl at night. The jackals have long disappeared, a fact that I, recalling the well-publicized cases of rabies among children in particular, can only call a blessing. The Jewish population has grown to about seven million (Arabs and other nationalities included, the total number of Israeli citizens living in-country is about nine million). Few if any other countries have done as well.

Back in 1914 Palestine’s Jews only formed a tiny fraction of the world’s Jewish population, which probably stood at about 13,500,000. Now, if the figures are correct, they form slightly over half of the total. Meaning that Zionism is well on its way to realize its great dream. Namely, in the words of Israel’s national anthem, to make Jews a free people in their own land: the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

In developed countries where contraceptives are easily available and women have a choice, one very good index of people’s confidence in the future is their willingness to have and raise children. Today the average Israeli Jewish female will have 3.05 children during her lifetime, as against the OECD average of 1.65.

Back in 1914 the Zionist Movement’s leading economic expert, Arthur Rupin, estimated that per capita product here in Palestine stood at only about 4 percent of the American figure. 99 years later, the figure is 75 percent. Almost 40 percent of Israel’s GDP are exported—a figure very much like that of a heavily industrialized modern country such as Germany.

As well as having a strong economy, which for a number of years before COVID threw everything out of gear was widely held up as the most successful in the world, Israel built up a powerful military. One armed with the most up to-date weapons and weapon systems and capable, as it has repeatedly shown, of defending the country against larger powers and even combinations of such powers. Considering that the first Jewish self-defense organization in Palestine peaked at just 40 members who rode horses and were armed with nothing but rifles and shabarias (a type of Arab curved knife, much beloved by Bedouin in particular), this has been an amazing achievement.

The Quran calls Jews “the People of the Book.” To practice their religion Jewish males, and to a lesser extent Jewish women, need to be literate so they can read from the Pentateuch as well as the prayer book. As a result, Jews have always tended to be much more literate than their gentile neighbors. Zionism, an urban movement par excellence, embraced this tradition. With the result that, starting from the movement’s early days, Jews in Palestine/Israel were much more literate than non-European peoples in practically any other part of the world. Today Israel is the fifth most-educated country in the world. From kindergarten to universities and research institutes, its education system can compete with practically any of its opposite numbers elsewhere.

At my home, in a mountainous area west of Jerusalem, I have in my possession some photographs taken by the German air force during World War I. As they show, at that time there was not a tree in sight; nothing but rocks and more rocks. As German Emperor Wilhelm II noted when he visited in 1898, “a terrible country, without water and without shade.” Since then Israel has become the only country in the world that, in spite of repeated setbacks (some of them occasioned by Arabs, Israeli or Palestinian, who deliberately set fire to forests) has more trees in 2023 than it did a century earlier.

A British-written guidebook to Palestine, issued by the War Office in 1941-42 for the use of British soldiers on leave from fighting the Germans in the Western Desert, said that “the first thing you’ll notice is how arid the country is.” Today, thanks in part to the use of large-scale desalination, this basically arid country has enough of the previous liquid not only to meet its own needs but those of other countries as well. Some of the water in question is exported, notably to Jordan. The rest is distilled on the spot with the aid of Israeli technology.

Like practically every other country, Israel is no stranger to corruption. Sources put it at the 31st place out of 180. Nothing to be very proud of, but better than five out of six countries in total.

Of well over a hundred countries that got their independence since 1948, Israel is one of the very few that has always been democratic in the sense that regular elections were held. Except in 1973, when the Arab-Israeli War of that time led to a short postponement, all the elections were held on time. All were held following lively electoral campaigns in which almost every point of view was represented and could be freely uttered. That even includes the notorious ones of November 2022. Not once were elections marked by serious disorder, let alone violence. Not once was there any question of the large-scale stuffing of ballots and the like. For me personally casting my vote has become something of a ritual—a slightly festive occasion to meet friend and neighbors whose existence one might otherwise have forgotten.

True, Israel does not have a constitution. But neither does Britain, “the mother of democracies.” True, Netanyahu & Co. want judges to be appointed by politicians. But that is exactly the way American supreme justices ones are. True, he wants to pass legislation that will prevent prime ministers from being prosecuted as long as they remain in office; but that is just how things are done in France. This list could be extended almost indefinitely.

Meanwhile –

Week after week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been taking to the streets in an effort to preserve what they (and I) see as their liberal-democratic way of life. So far, the presence in the cabinet of some true firebrands notwithstanding, without any serious violence.

In terms of happiness, Israel occupies place No. 12 out of 180.

Let’s keep it that way.

Guess What That Is

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As at least some of my readers surely know, Israel has long been all but unique in that, starting in 1948, it has conscripted women. Not all women, mind you, but only those who, simply by not declaring themselves to be religious, agreed be taken. Once they had been taken they were assigned to all kinds of auxiliary jobs like administration, logistics, and the like. Young and healthy, ere the feminist-mandated Love Police swung into action many had some fun with their male fellow conscripts as well as their commanders who, during Israel’s “heroic” period, were considered good catches. Their period of service—amounting, at one time, to 22 months instead of 36 for males—over, they got  out, married—those already married were exempt—had 2-3 children, and went on to live happily ever after. Happily, also in the sense that they did little if any reserve duty and were hardly ever killed or wounded in action.

Next came the 1979 peace agreement with Egypt, Israel’s largest and most powerful enemy. As the danger of large-scale warfare receded, the overall number of casualties went down. Partly for that reason, partly under the influence of the American model, a mighty wave of penis-envy swept over Israeli women. In- and outside the military they decided that, unless they filled every kind of male slot and did every kind of male job, ground combat included, they would never be as fully human as they claimed to be.

One of the most interesting examples, which first started making waves in 2017 and is still drawing attention, was a case of some IDF women made to serve as guards in one of the prisons where male Palestinian terrorists are being held. Not just women, but blooming lasses 19-20 years old. Inevitably there was some frater- sorora—nizing. Frater- sorora—nizing being prohibited, when caught the women blamed the prisoners who had allegedly harassed them by using coarse language, exposing their genitals, and the like. One or two even claimed to have been assaulted; making people wonder what kind of prison it is that, assuming the allegations are true, made such things possible.

Other female guards accused their superiors, claiming that they had been “pimped off” by the latter in the hope of gaining information for the prison authorities to use. Given that the prisoners were not just males but such as had been suffering from sexual deprivation for a long, long time, there is nothing surprising in any of this. Investigations were launched, commanders fired, prisoners moved to other facilities, and the like.

The latest idea? Straight from the mouth of the horse (former minister of defense and chief of staff General Ret. Beni Gantz). Replace all prison personnel, both male and female, by older professionals. As critics were quick to point out, though, doing so would mean three things. First, since professionals are much more expensive than conscripts, a considerable rise in cost. Second, an increase in the already large number of female conscripts the military does not know what to do with. Third, and to some most important, the loss of an opportunity for women to realize their full potential by imitating men.

And so the merry-go-round keeps turning. One just cannot satisfy those feminist ideologues. Not given what they want, or claim they want, they complain. Given what they want, or claim they want, they also complain. Why? Because, as Freud once said, what they really lack is one thing and one thing only.

Guess what that is.

There Once Was a Lady of Riga

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There is an Israeli named Benjamin Netanyahu. Born in 1949, American-educated (MIT) and an excellent showman, he attracted the attention of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, served 1983–1984 and 1986–1992) who appointed him head of the Israeli mission to the United Nations in New York. Joining Likud, the right-wing, rather hawkish, movement that, at that time, was contesting election after election with the more left wing, slightly less hawkish, Labor Party, subsequently he held all kinds of portfolios the most important of which was that of minister of finance. In 1996 he became prime minister for the first time. Since then he has been in that office on and off, clocking a total of fifteen years. More than any of his predecessors in Israel, and more than the vast majority of his peers in other democratic countries.

The latest elections were held on 1 November 2022. They gave him and his potential partners a clear majority in parliament and enabled him to set up a government, the sixth if I am not mistaken. But only in combination with a number of much smaller parties, some religious-orthodox, others right-wing extremist. The religious parties demanded, and to a considerable extent obtained, their long-standing demands. Including legal changes that will make it much harder for some classes of diaspora Jews to gain recognition as such, come to Israel, and become citizens. Other changes recognize the Torah Pentateuch) as a fundamental pillar of Israeli life; provide heavy subsidies for yeshive students, some 175,000 of whom are now receiving stipends that enable them to live (well, more or less) without working; put an end to any further improvements in the status of gay, lesbian and trans people;; and enacting all kinds of restrictive laws concerning kosher food, public transport on the Sabbath, education, and more. The most extreme measure—one which, thankfully, has not been implemented yet—is a law that will enable parliament to overrule any court decision by a simple majority of 61. Not good for democracy and the rule of law, many people say.

But why, the reader who is not an Israeli might ask, should he/she/they/whatever concern themselves with these things? After all, Israel is a sovereign state. Like all other states it has the right to institute its own set of laws, however quirky they may be. If those Jews want to exempt certain classes of their citizens from military service, or pay them for not working, or make all males cover their heads at all times, or prevent non-kosher food from being sold throughout the country, or welcome convicted criminals into the cabinet, then who are the gentiles to complain?

The trouble is that things do not end there. One change that has been agreed upon, more or less, is to take responsibility for securing the land bordering on Jerusalem towards the north, east and south away from the army and entrust it to the police instead. The police itself will be under the control of a ministry headed by Mr. Itamar Ben Gvir, an extreme right-winger. His appointment as “minister of national security” will certainly do nothing to improve relationships between Jews and Palestinians. Worse still, it may one day have terrifying implications for the rule of law as applied to Israel’s own population, both Arab and Jewish.

Other measures include putting the (very few), settlements that, following a decision by Israel’s Supreme Court, had to be evacuated in the past back on the map. Rebuilding them, re-populating them, and using any opportunity for expanding them. As well as unfreezing the ban on building new settlements in the northern part of the West Bank, one originally put in place by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (2006-9) in the hope of perhaps facilitating peace with the Palestinians. Each of these measures separately is fairly minor and will make little difference to “reality on the ground” as Israelis like to say. Together, though, they mean putting more obstacles in front of any hope, however vague and however remote, of one day reconciling Israelis and Palestinians or at least preventing hostilities between them from escalating.

Perhaps more than at any other time in the past, Netanyahu himself seems to be aware of these problems and worried lest they alienate not just some of Israel’s supporters abroad but some of Likud’s voters as well. Presumably that is why starting almost immediately after the elections, he has been working furiously to postpone their implementation as much as he can; and anyone who knows Netanyahu knows that, with him as with any other number of politicians in any number of countries, postponement is often equivalent to rejection.

Both abroad and at home, many people dislike Netanyahu. If not for his policies then for his arrogance, his penchant for living it up at the expense of others, his tendency to make promises without any intention of keeping them, and his meddlesome wife who, at time, gives the impression of being half demented. Still at the moment he seems to be the only one who can hold Israel’s extremists at bay, more or less. Should he fail—and he is not getting any younger—then the following verses may very well apply:

There once was a lady of Riga

Who went for a ride on a tiger.

They came back from the ride

With the lady inside

And a smile on the face of the tiger.

Next to the Bear

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The other day a Ukrainian TV station contacted me and asked me whether we could do an interview about what spending one’s life in the shadow of a large and aggressive neighbor is like. As, for example, the citizens of the German Federal German Republic (until 1989), South Korea, Taiwan, and of course my very own Israel all have done. As so often happens, I found the question intriguing. So having spent some time mulling over it—I do not claim to have done much research—I jotted down some answers.

Ere we start, though, it is important to note that much will depend on who you are. Including: age, gender, marital status, education, profession, whether or not you have children to look after, how close to (or far from) the security apparatus you are, any advance training you may have received, etc. Visiting the FGR for the first time back in 1976, I was impressed by the fact that every single bridge and tunnel was marked with data, complete with pictures of tanks, about the weight and dimensions of the vehicles that could pass through. On another, more recent, visit I witnessed some firemen and their families having their picnic suddenly interrupted as sirens called on them to present themselves for duty. It was merely an exercise and everyone was sure of it. Still I was impressed by the calm, orderly way in which the men went about their business (the women, burdened as they were with children, stayed behind).

That said, based on my experience in three out of the four abovementioned countries as well as some of the literature, here are some of the ways people react to such a situation.

First, the ostrich syndrome. People ignore the problem as much as they can; and rightly so, or else they could not exist.  This, my hosts during a short visit to Seoul (which is only some 50 kilometers south of the border with North Korea) is how the inhabitants of that city react. Having got used to it for seven decades, they simply refuse to take the announcements of their own security apparatus seriously but continue with their lives as usual. It has worked countless times in the past; so why not this one? Seoul at 1500 o’clock when young female office workers start flooding the streets—what a treat for the eyes!

Second, they share their worries with others in the hope of gaining relief. This is the Israeli method par excellence. For many years one of the most important words in the language was hamatsav (the situation). Humor, including black humor, helps. For example, German women during the last months of World War II used to tell each other that a Russian lying on one’s belly was better than an American flying high over one’s head. There were plenty of similar jokes floating about; by one story Hitler himself guffawed at them.

Third, they do, or at any rate pretend to do, something about it. As by laying down plans; cleaning up their air-raid shelters (those of them who have them); acquiring all kinds of emergency supplies such as water, canned food, batteries, first aid equipment, tools, and perhaps weapons; joining a civil defense organization; participating in all kinds of exercises; moving to a district or settlement less likely to be affected; and so on. In fact almost any kind of activity, by releasing dopamine or serotonin or devil knows what, can relieve the mind, redirect it and refresh it.

Fourth, they pray. That even goes for self-proclaimed atheists. I do not know how many times, I’ve heard Israelis say: I’ve just got a new baby. Pray that, eighteen years from now, he (much less often, she) will not have to join the military. Having three children and eight grandchildren, I should know.

Finally –

People, societies and circumstances vary enormously. However much thought governments, armed forces, social services and ordinary people invest in the matter, and however thorough the preparations they make, surprises are inevitable. Very often there is no knowing how the situation will unfold and how people will react when confronted with der Ernstfall, the real thing, as the Germans say. One moment the country is at peace. The next one the sirens come to life, bombs and missiles hit (or miss!) their targets, one finds oneself fighting for survival, and the chief of staff, having undergone a mental breakdown, resigns (this actually happened to the Norwegians when the Germans invaded them in 1940). Heroes become cowards and cowards, heroes. This may be carried to the point where heaven and earth literally change places.

The Last Round?

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Back in the summer of 2006 Israel, then under the leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, engaged on what later became known as the Second Lebanese War. Launched in response to border incidents in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed, six injured, and two more kidnapped, it lasted from 12 July to 14 August. About three times as long as the recent hostilities with Hamas in Gaza did. The total number of rockets launched at Israel was 3,970, comparable to that fired by Hamas in 2021. However, partly because the anti-missile defense system known as Iron Dome did not yet exist and partly because the Israeli Army invaded southern Lebanon and held some small parts of it for a time, the number of Israeli casualties, especially dead as opposed to injured, was much greater. About two thirds were military, the rest civilian. The number of Lebanese casualties, both Hezbollah and others, is not known. However, sources put it at between 1,000 and 1,500.

As so often in Israel, no sooner had the war ended than the daggers were drawn and many of the players started stabbing each other in the back. The prime minister, a civilian with hardly any military experience, was accused of not knowing how to run the operation. Along with his chief advisers, it was claimed, he was never able to make up his mind as to whether to use his ground forces and, if so, how and what for. The minister of defense, also a civilian with hardly any military experience, had failed. The chief of staff, an air force pilot who knew little about ground warfare, had also failed. The commander in chief, northern front, had failed. One division commander and several brigade- and battalion commanders had failed.

And that was just the beginning. Intelligence about Hezbollah, especially the bunkers where it hid its short-range rockets, had been defective. The troops were insufficiently trained and, in some cases, ill-equipped with out-of-date weapons. Mobilization had been slow and clumsy. Partly because there was no consensus at the top, the invasion of Lebanon had also been slow and clumsy. Cooperation between the ground forces and the air force had been defective. True, during the first few days the air force had performed magnificently. It knocked out practically all long-range Hezbollah missiles (as distinct from its short-range rockets which, being smaller and easier to conceal, remained largely intact); however, once that had been done it hit hardly any significant targets at all. All these problems, and more, were highlighted by the Winograd Commission of Investigation established for the purpose. Judging by its report Olmert had been one of the worst warlords ever, an idea that did little to help him when he was removed from office in March 2009.

Much of the criticism was justified. Since then much has happened in the Middle East. One thing, though, did not happen: However much it may have blustered about its “victory,” Hezbollah did not seriously attack Israel again. Not in 2008-9 when the latter pounded Hamas in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead. Not in 2014, when it did so again under code name Protective Edge. And not, of course, in May 2021. Each time, the pressure to stay in the game by “doing something” to hit Israel while expressing solidarity with the poor but brave people of Gaza must have been immense. Each time, it was resisted and things remained quiet on Israel’s northern border.
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War is not a game of tennis. Whatever the bean counters and the legal experts may say, what matters is not the number of points, games, sets matches, and so on won or lost by each side. Instead it is one thing, and one thing only: to wit, the political will that, embodied by the government, moves the troops, motivates the public, and drives the fighting. Looking back, it seems that, in 2006, the will of Hezbollah, and that of its leader Hassan Nasrallah (who, since then, has been fleeing from one secret bunker to the next), to engage Israeli military power was broken. Not completely, perhaps, and perhaps not forever. But for a decade and a half now, which by Middle Eastern standards is a very long time indeed.

As Olmert himself, speaking to the Knesset in the spring of 2007, acknowledged, I seem to have been among the very first to publicly declare that the war had been a victory for Israel. How did I reach that conclusion? By drawing a comparison with other armed conflicts of the same kind—the kind I, in The Transformation of War, called Nontrinitarian. Taking 1914 as a starting point, the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries have witnessed hundreds of such conflicts. As the wars in Vietnam and the former Yugoslavia illustrate so well, what a very great number of them had in common was the extraordinary difficulty of bringing them to an end. Partly because chains of command were insufficiently strong. And partly because combatants and noncombatants were often indistinguishable. However that may be, each time the leaders on both sides agreed on a ceasefire, much less a signed a peace treaty, something or someone caused hostilities to flare up again. Often they did so not once but numerous times for years on end.

So far, each round of fighting in Gaza only led to the next round. What the most recent one may bring in its wake is hard to say. Too many players—not just Israel and Hamas but the PLO, Iran, and several other countries. Too many calculations, too much bitterness and hatred. I would, however, like to sound a cautiously optimistic note. Given how much stronger it is compared with its enemies, both in Lebanon before 2006 and later in Gaza, in carrying out this kind of operation probably the Israeli Army’s greatest problem has always been its inability to avoid “excessive” civilian casualties on the other side, which in turn would lead to difficulties with the UN as well as world public opinion. This time, by contrast, its intelligence and its weapons were sufficiently excellent do exactly that. They were able to hit—neutralize, is the polite term for this—quite a number of medium- to high ranking Hamas leaders both in their underground shelters and outside them without killing or wounding “too many” civilians. That, as well as Israel’s declared intention to change its policy and answer each provocation, however small, with overwhelming force, may well be why, so far, the cease fire has held.

It may take a long time, but all wars must end. Could it be that, over a decade and a half after Israel evacuated Gaza and Hamas launched its first rockets, what we’ve seen is the last of the fighting there?

Under Fire (2)

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Note: This article was first posted in July 2014. Almost word for word.

 

My wife and I live on our own in a townhouse a few miles west of Jerusalem, within range of the rockets from Gaza. Several times over the last few days the alarm was sounded. We react by leaving the living room, which has glass doors facing the garden. Should a rocket explode nearby, then flying shards will cut us to ribbons. So we move into the stairwell which, made of reinforced concrete, offers good protection. We are lucky to have it, for my wife has had her knee operated on and could not run if her life depended on it. I suppose something similar would apply to hundreds of thousands of others both in Israel and in Gaza. We wait until the sirens stop wailing—a hateful sound—and we have heard a few booms. Then we check, on the news, whether the booms originated in rockets being intercepted by Iron Dome or in such as have not been intercepted hitting the earth. A few telephone calls to or from our children, and everything returns to normal until the next time.

And so it goes. One gets up each morning, sees that the surroundings look much as usual, heaves a sigh of relief, and prepares for the coming day. Yet for several days now, much of Israel has been under fire. That is especially true of the southern part of the country. Over there ranges are short and incoming rockets smaller, harder to intercept, and much more numerous. There are several dozen wounded—most of them hurt not by incoming rockets but while in a hurry to find shelter. As of the evening of Tuesday, 19 July [2014], following eight days of fighting, just one Israeli, a civilian, has been killed by Hamas fire.

Several factors explain the low number of casualties. First, the rockets coming from Gaza are enormously inaccurate. They hit targets, if they do, almost at random. Second, the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system works better than anyone had expected.  The system has the inestimable advantage in that it can calculate the places where the rockets will land. Consequently it only goes into action against those—approximately one in five or six—that are clearly about to hit an inhabited area. The outcome is vast savings; in some cases, realizing that the incoming rockets are not going to hit anybody or anything, the authorities do not even bother to sound the alarm. Third, civil defense seems to be working well; people obey instructions and are, in any case, getting used to this kind of thing. Fourth, as always in war, one needs luck.

In short, generic medicines should meet the same standards generico viagra on line of quality, safety and efficacy as the original, this is often not the case. What are the side-effects? Its Side effects are generally mild and manageable. viagra samples Available in tablets, kamagra is one among the main reproductive disorders affecting satisfactory marital life. viagra 100mg You can buy them online or also visiting best price levitra the stores. In turn, the small number of Arab casualties and the limited amount of damage inflicted has enabled the government of Israel to keep the lid on its own actions in the face of extremist demands. It suggests a degree of control and precision never before attained or maintained in any war in history. But while the Israelis have been extremely effective in avoiding collateral deaths, the impact of their strikes against Hamas’ short-range rockets in particular is limited.

Israel’s lucky run will not last forever.  Sooner or later, a Hamas rocket that for one reason or another has not been intercepted is bound to hit a real target in Israel and cause real damage. Imagine a school or kindergarten being hit, resulting in numerous deaths. In that case public pressure on the government and the Israel Defense Forces “to do something” will mount until it becomes intolerable.

What can the IDF do? Not much, it would seem. It can give up some restraints and kill more—far more—people in Gaza in the hope of terrorizing Hamas into surrender. However, such a solution, if that is the proper term, will not necessarily yield results while certainly drawing the ire of much of the world. It can send in ground troops to tackle the kind of targets, such as tunnels, that cannot be reached from the air. However, doing so will almost certainly lead to just the kind of friendly casualties that the IDF, by striking from the air, has sought to avoid.

Whether a ground operation can kill or capture sufficient Hamas members to break the backbone of the organization is also doubtful. Even supposing it can do so, the outcome may well be the kind of political vacuum in which other, perhaps more extreme, organizations such as the Islamic Jihad will flourish. Either way, how long will such an operation last? And how are the forces ever going to withdraw, given the likelihood that, by doing so, they will only be preparing for the next round?

And so the most likely outcome is a struggle of attrition. It may last for weeks, perhaps more. Humanitarian efforts to help the population of Gaza, however well meant, may just prolong the agony. In such a struggle the stakes would hardly be symmetrical. On one hand there are the inhabitants of Gaza. Increasingly they have their lives turned upside down by the constant alarms, strikes, and people who are wounded or killed. On the other are those of Israel who, though their lives have also been affected, have so far remained remarkably calm and resilient under fire. Though some areas are badly affected, the Israeli economy has also been holding up well.

Perhaps because the number of Gazans killed and wounded is fairly small, international reaction, which is always hostile to Israel, has been relatively muted. One reason for this appears to be that no outsiders have what it takes to push either side towards a ceasefire. In a struggle of attrition it is the last ounce of willpower on both sides that will decide the issue. So far, it does not seem that the willpower in question has been exhausted on either side.

His name was Szymon Perskiy

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His name was Szymon Perskiy, and he was born on 2 August 1923 in Wiszniew, Poland (today, Vishnyeva, Belarus) to a well to do Jewish family. When he was nine his farther left for what was then Mandatory Palestine; the rest of the family followed two years later. Young Simon Peres, as he came to be known, started his political career in 1941 when he was elected to various youth movement and kibbutz posts associated with the largest Jewish Party, Mapai (Labor) Party. Always more of an administrator and politician than a soldier, he attracted the attention of Israel’s leader, David Ben Gurion. Sufficiently so for the latter to appoint him Secretary of the Navy in 1948. Never mind that the entire navy consisted of a handful of rickety boats bought second hand in order to smuggle in Holocaust refugee and later perhaps equipped with a gun or two. Never mind that, at the time, the nascent State of Israel was engaged in its life-and death struggle for independence. And never mind that Peres himself was just twenty-five years old.

This is hardly the place to describe his subsequent career in any detail. From 1952 to 1965 he ran the ministry of defense, first as its director-general and then as deputy minister of defense. In this capacity he was deeply involved both in the 1956 Suez Campaign and in the construction if Israel’s nuclear reactor. In 1974 he became minister of defense under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a post he held until 1977. From 1984 to 1986 he was prime minister. Later he served as foreign minister, deputy prime minister, and minister of finance. Later still he went on to become prime minister again (1995-96) as well as President of Israel (2007-14); but that is not part of the story I want to tell you today.

What I do want to do is focus on the year 1993 when he was serving as foreign minister. In September he and Rabin, who in 1991 had been elected prime minister for the second time, signed the Oslo Agreements with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. They promised, or seemed to promise, peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Whatever may have happened later, rarely did any treaty give rise to such high hopes all over the world. His reward, which he shared with Rabin and President Clinton, was a Nobel Peace prize

generic levitra online Kamagra is made of Sildenafil citrate. Traditional Chinese medicine could relieve the pain http://www.icks.org/data/ijks/1482457576_add_file_5.pdf cialis prescriptions of prostate by comprehensive nursing and symptomatic treatment. Kamagra Oral Jelly is responsible for sexual viagra prescription uk stimulation. Just make sure that you scramble your address uk cialis before you allow it to be published online. In the same year he published The New Middle East. In it he set forth his vision of the future of the region. The way he saw it, the Oslo Agreements were a natural continuation of Israel’s peace with Egypt which had been signed back in 1978. Step by step, they would be followed, first by a relaxation of tension and then by the normalization of Israel’s relations with its remaining Arab enemies. Peace, always the ultimate objective, was, if not exactly at hand, at any rate no longer impossible. All it required were goodwill and hard work. As well as, here and there, a nudge by the international community, specifically the US as the world’s sole Superpower with a strong interest in the peace of the region. It was, after all, the place from which the world got its oil, the commodity of which everyone wanted to get as much as possible at the lowest possible price. Enough said.

Peace, Peres went on to argue, would be followed by prosperity. An entire region would move from underdevelopment towards freedom, health, education and plenty. Throughout his career, Peres had come under attack for being visionary. Time after time he had advocated and undertaken grandiose projects that seemed way beyond tiny Israel’s capabilities. Time after time he left his critics confounded.

He died in 2016 after more than seventy years spent mainly in politics. By that time he had almost every honor a human being can receive bestowed on him. True, not everyone liked him. Especially within Israel, where too many people saw him as dove always ready to make one concession after another. Not every part of his vision came true; in particular, the Oslo Agreements have not yet fulfilled the promise he and many others saw in them. But now, with one Arab country after another either signing a peace agreement with Israel or preparing to do so, it is time to remember him.

May his visionary ideas, including some kind of just peace with the Palestinians, prevail.

The Defeat

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Why the President Trump’s plan for Palestine represents a resounding defeat for the Palestinians hardly requires an explanation. If—and a great if it is—the plan is ever implemented, they will not obtain the right to a fully sovereign, contiguous, territorial state. They will not obtain East Jerusalem as part of their territory, let alone as their capital; instead, the idea is to take a miserable township not far away and rename it, Al Quds.

And this is just the beginning of the list. The Palestinians will not gain control over the Holy Places, including, above all, the Temple Mount. They will not be allowed to build armed forces of their own. They will not rid themselves of the dozens of settlements Israel has scattered throughout their territory over the last half century. They will not gain free access to their Arab brethren in the Middle East but will remain dependent on Israel for border control. They will not obtain sovereign rights over the water under their land. They will not obtain sovereignty over the air- and electronic space above their land. They will not be able to exercise the “right of return.” They will not and they will not and they will not. The entire thing looks suspiciously like the Bantustans, meaning semi-autonomous black enclaves, which the late unlamented Apartheid government of South Africa was trying to establish back in the 1970s. No wonder the Palestinians, with Abu Mazen at their head, refuse even to talk about the so-called plan. If I, a Zionist and a patriotic Israeli who has lived in his country from the age of four (I am now almost seventy-four years old) were in their place, I would do exactly the same. As, no doubt, would the vast majority of Israelis.

However, the plan represents a defeat for Israel too. Forget about the details—the impossibly complicated complex of convoluted roads, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, crossing points, what have you, needed to make it work. Forget, too, about a number of other points that will probably meet with more domestic opposition than can be managed, such as handing over some sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians. The real reason why it is a defeat is because it puts an end to the dream of setting up single, unified, contiguous, Jewish state with the vast majority of its inhabitants consisting of Jews. In other words, to the Zionist dream.

These are serious problems. Still arguably the greatest defeat of all is neither that of the Palestinians nor that of Israel. It is, rather, that of international law. I am referring to the 1945 UN Chapter which rules that there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. Since then it has been confirmed several times by several U.N resolutions.
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Like every other kind of law since the world was first created, international law is full of holes. Probably more than every other kind of law since the world was first created, absent a firm suzerain hand to make it work it has often been violated. Nevertheless the principle has worked well on the whole. If not in the sense that invasions and annexations came to an end, at any rate in that obtaining international legal recognition for them has become almost impossible. For example, just two countries—Britain and Pakistan—have ever recognized Jordan’s 1948 annexation of the West Bank. No country has ever recognized Morocco’s annexation of the Spanish Sahara. Out of some 190 U.N members only fourteen have recognized Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. So effective has been the non-annexation regime that most invaders did not even try to obtain international consent for their conquests. For some the solution was to open negotiations aimed at restoring the status quo ante, as happened e.g between India and Pakistan back in 1966 and 1971. Others pretended that their continued presence was a temporary matter to be settled by eventual negotiations; whereas others still set up “independent” republics as the Russians did following their conflicts with Georgia and the Ukraine.

Now this regime, imperfect as it may be, is in danger. Not because some half-assed dictatorship has violated it; but because the most powerful country on earth seems determined to put it aside. Two early signs of this were President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights back in 2017 and 2019. Now he is going further still, announcing his intention to recognize its sovereignty over large parts of the West Bank as well. Whatever this means for Israel and the Palestinians—and I strongly suspect that, “on the ground,” as Israelis say, a long, long time will have to pass ere it comes to mean anything—from the point of view of international law it is a defeat.

A defeat of everything legal. Of everything decent. Of everything good. And also, I am afraid, of much that is Israeli as well.

See the Conquering Hero!

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This was not 1746, the year in which Handel’s oratorio was first performed. Instead it was 1950, the year when I, aged four and accompanied by my parents and my two younger brothers moved from the Netherlands to the State of Israel. That State itself had been established a mere two years earlier at the cost of 6,000 dead (out of a population of 650,000). No wonder references to heroism were everywhere. Including a Hebrew version of this song, which we children were made to sing first in kindergarten and later at school.

The origins of the heroism in question went back 2,281 (or rather 2,280, since there never was a year zero) years, down to 330 BCE when Alexander the Great occupied Palestine. After Alexander’s death, which took place in 323 BCE, the country came first under Egyptian Ptolemaic rule and then, from 201 BCE on, under that of the Seleucid dynasty in Syria. However, in 190 BCE the reigning Seleucid, King Antiochus III (“the Great”) was badly defeated by the Romans at the battle of Magnesia in Asia Minor. From that point on the decline of the Seleucids got under way.

Antiochus’ successor but one was his son, Antiochus IV, nicknamed Epiphanes (“The Shining”). Ascending the throne in 175 BCE, well aware that his multi-ethnic, multi-language, kingdom was on the point of falling apart, he tried to cement it by instituting what, two millennia later, came to be known as a “personality cult” focused on himself. Epiphanes’ other subjects being pagan, they seldom had any difficulty in adding another deity to their already extensive pantheons. Not so the monotheistic Jews to whom doing so was sacrilege, especially because practicing the Jewish religion was also prohibited.

*

The year was 167 BCE, marking the beginning of a revolt led by Mattathias the Hasmonean of Modi’in, a small provincial town some forty kilometers west-northwest of Jerusalem. Right from the beginning, it was simultaneously a civil war between Mattathias’ rural followers on one hand and the so-called Hellenizers, an upper class movement centering on Jerusalem, whose members were more inclined to accept the king’s demands, on the other. As is shown, among other things, by the fact that the opening blow was delivered by Mattathias when he killed a Jew who was about to make sacrifice to an idol.

From Jerusalem, Mattathias escaped to the Judean desert where he died a year later. Leadership of the revolt devolved on his oldest son, Judah Maccabeus (“the Hammer,”). At first he and his followers resorted to terrorism, specifically including the kind directed against fellow-Jews who refused to join the uprising. Next, switching to guerrilla warfare in what, today, is the West Bank, they were able to ambush and defeat a Seleucid expeditionary force that was coming from the north with the objective of relieving Jerusalem, still in the “Hellenizers’” hands. The victory not only raised the rebels’ morale but caused weapons and equipment to fall into Judah’s hands, further assisting the rebellion and enabling it to expand as more Jews threw in their lot with him. In the same year, 166 BCE, two other Seleucid forces also tried their luck by marching to Jerusalem from the west. Both were badly defeated, the first at Beth Choron and the second at Emmaus.

Epiphanes himself died in 164 BCE. His demise led to a whole series of civil wars in Syria, preventing any of his would-be successors from husbanding all of the kingdom’s military resources and crushing the revolt; a fact that in turn translated into Maccabeus’ liberation of Jerusalem, which took place in the same year. By now the rebels felt sufficiently strong to abandon guerrilla in favor of pitched battles which, at peak, featured armies numbering 20-50,000 men on each side. Doing so, they were able to defeat various Seleucid expeditionary forces at locations such as Beth Tzur (163 BCE) and Beth Zecharia (162 BCE). Over two millennia after, all these locations are still easily identifiable in the terrain and known under the same names.

What most of these battles had in common was the fact that the Seleucid army had been designed primarily to fight others of its own kind. Consisting of heavy infantry (the famous phalanx, complete with sarissae, or long pikes), cavalry and elephants—the tanks of the ancient world, imported from India at enormous expense—it was ill suited for fighting in the rugged, often extremely difficult, terrain of Samaria and Judea.

The last battle known in any detail was fought at Elassa, near today’s Palestinian city of Ramallah, in 160 BCE. If our sources, 1. Maccabean and the second-century CE Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, may be believed, this time the Seleucids, outnumbered the Jews by about ten to one. However, there was a catch. Like Verdun in 1915 and Moscow in 1941, Jerusalem was the kind of objective that had to be defended at any cost. Unwilling to leave it to its fate Judah, rather than dispersing his forces and reverting to guerrilla warfare, gave battle. A desperate attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of impending defeat by going straight for the Seleucid commander, Bacchides, was repulsed with loss and Maccabeus himself was killed. Later he was succeeded by his younger brothers, first Jonathan and then Simeon (another brother, Eleazar, had already fallen four years earlier when an elephant which he was stabbing from beneath collapsed and crushed him). Yet the struggle, reverting back to guerrilla warfare, went on. In the end it was decided as much by the prevalent disorder in the Seleucid capital Antioch, as well as Roman pressure brought to bear on successive members of the Seleucids, as by any other factor.

The Jewish-Hasmonean kingdom that resulted lasted just one century before it finally went down in 63 BCE. Its history, as narrated above all by the abovementioned Josephus, consisted very largely of a highly unedifying struggle for power between various scions of the royal family. No method, not even biting off one’s rival‘s ear (to disqualify him from serving as high priest), slaughtering his entire family, or crucifying him was considered too cruel to use. The end came in 63 BCE when two Jewish princes, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, appealed to the Roman commander Pompey, who was then in Damascus, to settle their differences. Following a great many political and military maneuvers, including a three-month siege of Jerusalem that cost the lives of 12,000 Jews (and very few Romans, Josephus says), Pompey finally decided in favor of Aristobulus. But not before stripping him of his royal title, greatly reducing the extent of the land under his control, and effectively ending the country’s career as an independent kingdom for two millennia to come.

*

The Jewish victory over their enemies gave rise to an endless number of stories, most of them known to us from the Talmud whose authors wrote them down some 300-400 years after the events to which they refer. One of the most popular, which every Israeli child of school-going age was made to learn, concerned a woman named Chanah (Ann) who had seven sons. Put on trial in front of the wicked king Antiochus, and encouraged by their mother, they refused to worship him as if he were a god. One by one they were executed right in front of her eyes. Another story told of an episode that supposedly took place after the Jews had recaptured Jerusalem and sought to re-light the Menorah (candelabrum). Like most retreating armies at all times and places, those of Antiochus had tried to disguise their weakness by committing acts of vandalism on whatever they left behind. This time the “victim” was the oil in question, which had been deliberately polluted so it could not serve the purpose for which it was kept. Entering the temple the victorious Jews found just one small jar, recognizable by the high priest’s seal, of unpolluted oil, hardly enough to last for one day. It was at this point that a miracle took place; the oil, instead of running out, lasted for eight days, which later became the time appointed by the Jews’ “wise men” to celebrate the recent victory.

More blood is circulated to the female genital area dry, kills libido and creates problem for arousal. order levitra you could check here Grownup-oriented stores with genital jewelry departments often have fitting rooms exactly where it is possible to uncover physical problems galore that can lead to issues when it comes to lovemaking purchase cheap viagra session. Gupta, who is having qualifications M.B.B.S., M.D., P.G.D.S. is a sex specialis online online deeprootsmag.orgt in Delhi that have an active substance called tadalafil. Medications like cheap cialis overnight continue reading over here, cialis has shown great results when it comes in expanding sexual yearning in ladies? cialis prescription? deeprootsmag.org lives up to expectations by hindering a protein that goes about as an inhibitor of blood stream. With its roots going back no further than the last century and a half BCE, Chanukah—meaning “dedication” and referring to the re-dedication of the temple by the victorious Hasmoneans–is the youngest Jewish festival. It is also the only one that does not go back to the Bible. Unlike the rest it was instituted by man, not God, and was therefore considered less important than any of the rest.

Originally Chanukah was a celebration of the people’s firm faith in, and adherence to, God, which were ultimately rewarded by divine deliverance. So it remained throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages, specifically the thirteenth century, were also the time when the most important Chanukah song, Maoz Tzur Yeshuati (My Refuge, My Salvation) was written and given a place in the standard Jewish prayer book. The song itself, consisting of six couplets, has little to say about war or human heroism in general. What it does is to provide a short history of the Jewish people and the miraculous way, each time it came under threat, God personally intervened in order to save it from its enemies.

It was during the centuries of the diaspora, too, that most of the remaining beliefs and customs associated with Chanukah were developed. One was the tradition by which it became Chag Haurim, the Feast of Lights (much like Christmas Chanuka is celebrated in midwinter, the season when any excuse to lighten up is welcome). It took the cozy form of a family reunion when parents and children lit the chanukiot, a sort of miniature Menorahs. It also involved giving children their pennies, playing with a sevivon, or dreidl, and consuming sufganiot, a kind of soft, sweet donuts.

There also exist some other, more esoteric and relatively obscure, customs that I shall spare you, my readers. To repeat, almost all of this is linked to worshipping and thanking God for the miracles He has wrought at various points in His people’s turbulent history. And not to anything like war, victory, militarism, or heroism.

*

Enter, around the turn of the twentieth century, Zionism and the Zionist Movement. In France as in the rest of Europe, this was the time when modern nationalism was nearing its peak; leading to the outbreak, first of the World War I and then of World War II. Whether for practical reasons—the need for self-defense against anti-Semitic attacks—or ideological ones, could anyone imagine a proper nationalist movement without its very own gallery of martial heroes?

Not surprisingly, the outcome was a more or less frenzied search for just such heroes. One took the form of so called “muscular Judaism.” Modeled after the “muscular Christianity” popular in England and the U.S at the time, it represented an attempt by Herzl’s close friend, Max Nordau, to convince Jews that they too needed to engage in body-building as so many goyim did. Another was the establishment of sport clubs with names such as Hakoach (the Force) and, you guessed it, Maccabee. Other Jewish heroes whom the Zionists dug up from history and set up as examples for youth to follow were King David, the fighters who died at Masada, and Bar Kochba (leader of an abortive revolt against Rome, 132-35 CE). However, many rabbis had no use for Bar Kochba who, as a result, only had a minor festival named after him. Given that suicide is prohibited by Jewish law, the same applied to Masada. David, while half-heartedly acknowledged as a hero (some rabbis claimed he was not a soldier at all, just a rabbi) was known primarily for his supposed authorship of Psalms. Absent any real competition, the importance of Chanuka and the traditions on which it rested increased.

As the Jewish community in Palestine came under Arab-Palestinian attack during the 1920s, the cult of heroism, the military and war gained in force. Celebrated by processions of torch-carrying youths—from my own youth during the 1950s and early 1960s, I can recall at least one song in praise of them, which we studied at school and had to learn by heart—here and there it took on a semi-pagan character. To this day in Israel, countless streets are named after the heroic Hasmonean and/or Maccabean commanders.

*

As one would expect, this kind of thing peaked during the years immediately following the 1967 Six Days’ War. In the eyes of Israelis as well as many foreigners, every Israeli became his own invincible hero. But only for a short time: come the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and this entire complex of attitudes and ideas was blown sky high. Later, as the years went on and outright military victory became almost as rare commodity in Israel as it did in other western countries, the glamor of war continued to wane. With it went the emphasis on Chanuka as a martial festival; instead of battle hymns, all that remained were compositions such as “a great miracle happened here” and “go round, and round, dreidel.”

Today it is mainly the national-religious Right, comprising about one in eight of Israel’s Jewish population, which still persists in seeing Chanuka as a celebration of heroism. For the rest it is principally an occasion to join the children in lighting candles—on each of the eight days the festival lasts, another one is added—as well as eating sufganiot. Much beloved by those with a sweet tooth, but detested and constantly warned against by those worried about gaining weight and diabetes.

Sic transit gloria martialis.

For Anyone Interested… It Is a Must

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Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century, Kindle edition, 2019.

Great books, like great teachers, are those which make you reexamine your assumptions. By that standard, there can be little doubt that Yuri Slezkine’s The Jewish Century is a very great book. To help you understand why, let me start with a brief description of the way we in Israel have been taught Jewish history for so long.

Once upon a time—no one knows just when—there was a man called Abraham. Born in Ur, modern Mesopotamia, he was 75 years old when God revealed Himself to him and told him to move to Canaan, aka the Land of Israel, aka (much later) Palestine. Which country, He solemnly promised, would forever belong to him and his offspring. A relative handful of converts apart, it was from Abraham’s loins that all subsequent Jews were and are descended. Their history is like that of no other people; after many twists and turns, they were finally driven (almost all of them) from Canaan by the wicked Romans. Scattered in all directions, but held together by their unique religion, for close to two thousand years they lived without a homeland of their own. Now tolerated and exploited, now subject to pogroms and/or driven away from one country into another, always at the mercy of their non-Jewish neighbors, they somehow succeeded in retaining their identity like no other people on earth. Something not even Adolf Hitler, who set out to exterminate them and killed one third of their number, was able to change.

In comes Yuri Slezkine, a Russian born (1956- ) Jew who currently lives in the United States. The Jews, he explains in the first chapter of the book, are not unique at all. Instead they are one among a great many nations whom he groups together under the rubric, “Mercurian.” Including, to mention but a few, the Gypsies of Europe, the Persians and the Jain of India, the Copts of Egypt, the Fuga of southern Ethiopia, the Ibo of modern Nigeria, the Eta of traditional Japan, the Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, the Nestorians in the Middle East, the Mormons in the U.S—an example Slezkine does not mention–and, above all, the overseas Chinese.

“Mercurian” peoples were and are distinguished from the rest—Apollonians, is what Slezkine calls them—in two principal ways. First, they regard themselves as a people chosen by God. Not just any God, but specifically their own tribal one. To retain that status they develop and maintain a different religion, a different language, a different culture, different mores—as, for example, in wearing turbans (the Sikh community of India) and eating only kosher food—as well as an often strictly enforced endogamy. Second, whether out of their own will or because of the restrictions under which they live, they tend to avoid production—first agriculture, later industry—in favor of other, specifically urban, professions. Including money changers, bankers, peddlers, traders, physicians, pharmacists (both in my family and that of my wife there were several of those), scribes, writers, musicians, actors, fortune tellers, matchmakers, agents, lawyers, and middlemen of every kind. The sort of people who, compared with their mostly rural neighbors, tended to be well ahead in terms of literacy and modernity in general.

Thus, contrary to what I and countless Israelis have been taught, we Jews are not unique. True, Jews have tended to be more successful, were often persecuted more intensively, and survived longer than practically any other “Mercurians.” But that does not mean they are, in principle, different; let alone that their continued existence and the elevated socio-economic status they have achieved in many countries cannot be explained by history but is due to some special kind of divine favor.

That essential point having been made, Slezkine goes on to trace the history of his own “Mercurian” ancestors in Russia. Under the Czars Jews were discriminated against in any number of ways, though arguably not much more so than a great many other non-Russian peoples such as Poles, Greeks, Tatars, Armenians, and Turks. Their response was to leave, which was what between 1883 and 1924 well over a million of them did. Starting with Marx, who though not a Russian was the son of a converted Jew, others joined the forces that were even then preparing to launch the Revolution. Jews were attracted to socialism/communism because it promised them something the existing Russian state did not; namely, a life based on equality and brotherhood in which Jews could find their place without any regard to their ethnicity or religion.

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Yet Jewish vulnerability, due to their minority status over centuries on end, did not automatically vanish just because the change in regime. That is probably one reason why first Lenin—whose own paternal grandfather was Jewish—and then Stalin recruited many of their henchmen from among them. I use the term “henchmen” advisedly; in both the GPU and the NKVD between 1917 and 1945 it was often assimilated Jewish officers, completed with black cars, leather coats, and handguns, who arrested, interrogated, tortured, prosecuted, and executed the state’s prisoners by shooting them in the back of the neck. Jewish commissars also took a prominent part in some of the greatest atrocities of all, such as the destruction of the kulaks and causing millions of Ukrainians to die by starvation.

As the establishment of the “autonomous” Jewish province (oblast) in Birobidzhan shows, starting at the time he was serving as “Commissar for Nationalities” Stalin himself took an interest in the problem. The common fight against the invading Germans further reinforced the Russian Jews’ willingness, even eagerness, to assimilate, by which they meant abandoning circumcision and yarmulkes in favor of Pushkin on one hand and communism on the other.

When the time came for the state of Israel to be established it found looked for, and found, support in the Kremlin. Almost to a man, Israel’s founders were immigrants from Russia whose views on society and the economy were not too different from Stalin’s own—one Mandatory British police officer who interrogated Yitzhak Ben Tzvi, later Israel’s second president, called him “a perfect Bolshevik.” For that reason, but also because the dictator saw Israel as a lever with which to force the British to evacuate the Middle East, he supported it. By way of Czechoslovakia he even supplied it with arms; but for which the nascent Jewish State, laboring as it did under a U.N embargo, might not have survived.

What finally terminated Soviet support for Israel was the outbreak of the Korean War. As Slezkine does not say, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion worried least it might lead to a world war and thus to the severance of the country’s lifeline in the Mediterranean. This caused him to put his support, for whatever it was worth, firmly on the American/Western side. Much worse from Stalin’s point of view, Israel provided the Jews of the Soviet Union with an alternative homeland such as they had never had before. When Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, subsequent Prime Minister Golda Meir, took up her post she was absolutely mobbed by hysterically happy local Jews. No wonder the dictator changed course.

After Stalin died in 1953 his successors did not repeat anything as extreme as the notorious “doctors’ plot.” They did, however, put pressure on the Jews, subjecting them to various forms of discrimination in education and appointments to leading positions. The Jews on their part started resisting. Assisted by their co-religionists in the US, especially from 1967 on they demanded the right to leave. Once their demands were granted the newly-arrived Jews in the U.S quickly became as successful as their parents in Russia had been during the interwar years in particular. Such were their achievements in education, business, the law, the sciences, and the arts that they were even able to enter politics and make their mark there. It would be too much to say that “let my people go” (the Biblical slogan under which the fight for free emigration was waged) played the cardinal role in the success of that fight, let alone in causing the Soviet Union’s collapse; but a certain role it definitely did.

America’s gain was Russia’s loss; today fewer than a million Jews still live in the latter, as opposed to three million at the turn of the twentieth century. The other country which, following the collapse in question, became the goal of Russian-Jewish emigrants was Israel itself. In pointing out that many if not most of those Jews did not really want to go there and only started doing so in any numbers after no other option was left to them Slezkine is perfectly correct. He errs, however, in underestimating both the contribution that newly arriving Russian Jews made to Israel and the exceptional dynamism of Israel itself. Not knowing the country nearly as well as he knows Russia and the U.S, he has missed its amazing development into a military and high-tech powerhouse. Not to mention its proud ownership of the shekel, currently the strongest currency on earth. The root of the problem is found in the fact that the book was written in the early 2000s. Or else surely Slezkine would have provided a better explanation as to why so many Russian Jews did reach Israel after all than he actually does.

The period in which the book was written also explains why, in describing the U.S (and the West in general) as the new Jewish paradise, Slezkine has totally missed the new Moslem-led, (often right- but sometimes left wing), kind of anti-Semitism that seems to be gaining force on both sides of the Atlantic. Still I must confess that, to me with my Israeli education, his insistence that the Jewish nation was not nearly as unique as I had been made to believe came as a revelation. Only a little less impressive were his endless lists of successful Russian Jews, the kind that would never have been possible if Stalin had been as consistently anti-Semitic as he is often supposed to have been. Those lists in turn form but one part of an enormous body of research that has gone into this formidable, but on the whole quite readable and occasionally witty, volume. For anyone with the slightest interest in the Jewish nation, its recent past, its present and its future, it is a must.