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Sheol Welcomes Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir, a founding father and two-time Prime Minister of Israel (1983, 1986-1992), died on June 30.  He was given a state funeral and praised as an outstanding patriot by virtually every Israeli political leader of prominence, including Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he had fought politically.  Interestingly, in praising him his daughter took the opportunity to stick it to the current leadership: “(My father) belonged to a different generation of leaders, people with values and beliefs. I hope that we have more people like him in the future.”

There is no question that Shamir was a patriot and a brave man, who essentially dedicated his life to serving his county.  But of course the same could be said about Adolph Hitler, and while Shamir is certainly not in the same league as the man who murdered his family, life does reveal that Israeli patriotism can accommodate serious brutality.  As in the days of the First Temple, when the Lord of Hosts often expected His people to treat their neighbors with utter barbarity, so too in modern Israel does serving the country sometimes involve behavior generally condemned by democratic societies.

Shamir was born in 1915 in a Jewish village in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, became a Polish citizen after the Russian-Polish war of 1920 and moved to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1935.  There in 1940 he joined the Irgun, a paramilitary organization fighting the British, and when it split into two factions a short time later, he went with the more extreme Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang after its leader.  Financing themselves with bank robberies, the group was so anti-British that it actually had talks with the Nazis and proposed a Jewish state based on fascist principles.  After Stern was killed in 1942, Shamir became one of the leaders of Lehi, which gravitated towards the USSR, declaring in 1944 that it supported a national bolshevism (whatever that is).  While under Shamir’s leadership Lehi assassinated the British Resident Minister in Cairo in November of 1944 and subsequently engaged in terrorist acts both in Palestine and the UK, tactics which Shamir justified with references to the Old Testament.  He was arrested by the British in 1946 but escaped and found political asylum in France, where he was when the state of Israel was established in 1948.

Shamir immediately returned to Palestine and Lehi, which teamed up with the Irgun in March for an attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassein.  The Irgun was then led by Menachim Begin, another future Prime Minister (1977-1983), whose group had blown of the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 103 people, many of them Jews.  In the Deir Yassein operation over a hundred villagers were killed, many of them women and children, and according to the later testimony of an Irgun fighter 80 prisoners were executed.  The massacre was condemned by the two chief rabbis in the area, by the leadership of the Haganah and even by Ben-Gurion, but no one was punished.  Then, in September of 1948 Lehi assassinated the UN mediator, Folke Bernadotte, fearing his peace proposals would surrender coveted territory.  This was too much even for the Israeli provisional government, since during the war Bernadotte had rescued some 30,000 inmates from Nazi camps, about 10,000 of them Jews.  Lehi was declared a terrorist group and its members arrested, only to be pardoned the following year.  In 1980, seemingly as part of the sanitizing of the country’s origins, Israel created a military decoration, the Lehi ribbon, becoming the only democratic state to officially celebrate a terrorist organization.

After the war for independence Shamir served from 1955-1965 in the Mossad, where he could indulge his penchant for assassination.  He entered politics in 1977, and in 1983 the one-time terrorist became the Prime Minister of Israel.  And there he would wield his righteous sword against a new group of terrorists, this one seeking to end the Israeli Mandate in Palestine.

The irony is neverending.

 

And Breathed in the Face of the Foe As He Passed

Nations, certainly the more democratic ones, feel compelled to engage in often blatantly hypocritical action when dealing with “friends” considered vital to national interests.  Consequently, the United States, which has constantly trumpeted to the world its support of democracy and human rights, has seen no problem in supporting and cooperating with sundry dictatorial regimes with abominable human rights records.  During the cold war this generally took the form of supporting any military dictator who claimed to be fighting a communist insurgency, which policy could actually go as far as participating in the overthrow of a democratically elected government, as in the case of Chile and Iran.  Now one only need replace the word “communist” with “terrorist” or “Islamicist” to see the same policy continuing, as recently in Yemen with Ali Abdullah Salah.  And of course there is oil and convenient military bases.  How often have you heard Washington, full of praise for the Arab Spring and condemnation of rulers like Assad and Ahmadinejad, complaining about the bloody repression of protestors in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia?

Of course, nations do not typically have friends but rather interests, and maintaining those interests, which seem inevitably to fall under the wonderfully vague term “national security,” often conflicts with the stated values of a democratic nation.  Perhaps that is simply life in the big city.  Certainly, American voters are going to be far more concerned with the price of gas than the plight of peaceful and justified demonstrators getting their heads beaten in by our friends, even if those friends operate a political and social system that is more at home in the 11th century than the 21st.  Squishy sentimentality about human rights or idealistic notions of international law cannot obstruct the business of the nation.

This all makes sense if your priority is the welfare of your own nation regardless of how the inhabitants of some other country might suffer.  What is harder to understand, however, is violating the traditional norms of international behavior and injuring the reputation of the country pursuing actions that not only do not serve national interests but in fact injure them.   And taking such action in the face of massive popular opposition, which on the face of it might seem imprudent for a democratically elected government.  But in the case of bombing Iran, apparently not.

The stated aim of this prospective madness is protecting what actually must be a friend, Israel, since it is very difficult to see how this ally has ever served American interests.  Our intelligence agencies have stated that it will be at least three years before Iran can produce even a crude deliverable weapon, and any objective analysis of the Iranian government strongly suggests that for all their sometimes bizarre behavior they are not irrational and suicidal enough to launch a nuclear device at a country that possess several hundred easily delivered nuclear bombs.  The militaries of both Israel and the US do not want to attack Iran.  The majority of the populations of both these democracies do not want to attack Iran.  Some 70% of all Americans do not want to attack Iran and want to dissuade Israel from doing so, and even 69% of Republicans agree.

So why the hell are we on the verge of doing this?  For the simple reasons that the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, faces serious domestic problems and needs to satisfy the extreme hawks and – let us be honest – aspiring fascists in his coalition and that this is a Presidential election year in the United States.  Obama is not stupid, but he is political, and despite the evidence of widespread anti-war sentiment and the fact that American Jewry is rapidly losing its traditional unquestioning commitment to Israel he nevertheless cannot resist the half century old political imperative to NEVER criticize or obstruct our “most important ally.”  It must seem particularly important to him to pander to a foreign government (which he clearly despises) since the Republican candidates have almost come to blows in their claims to be the ultimate Zionist.  They have already savaged him for throwing Israel under the bus, seemingly for not being enthusiastic about the colonization of the West Bank, despite the absence of any bus anywhere on the horizon.

Allowing your foreign policy to be determined by domestic politics is never healthy for a country, even one as powerful and militarily invincible as the United States.  But to alter your foreign policy judgments and act counter to the clear will of the voters because of a largely imaginary political advantage is incomprehensible.  The historian is reminded of the Great War, during which the political leaders of Britain, France and Germany all fell over one another making promises (which they had no intention of keeping) to the Zionists because of the completely imaginary gentile notion of an incredibly powerful and united world Jewry.

Because, at least initially, of European and American guilt, the huge American Jewish community, the astute propagandizing of the young and very western Jewish state and the intransigence and foreignness of unattractive Arab dictatorships, America allowed herself to fall into exactly the kind of “passionate attachment” George Washington warned against.  The result has been the unqualified and for us counterproductive support of a country that routinely and blatantly violates the international law this country is in fact sworn to uphold, making us look like hypocritical fools when we legitimately protest the aggressive and inhumane actions of other nations.  How can we complain about Russian and Chinese vetoes of UN action against Bashir Assad when the US, alone except for American territories and apartheid South Africa, consistently vetoed even the mildest criticism of Israeli behavior?  And remember, the deliberate Israeli attack in June 1967 on the USS Liberty, resulting in 34 dead American sailors, is still officially considered, against all evidence, an “accident.”

And now we are on the edge of the precipice, on the verge of a disastrous (and immoral) war against Iran, which would certainly disrupt oil supplies and dramatically affect the global economy, possible turning the recession into an outright depression.  Which party, I wonder, will get the blame when gasoline prices in America soar?  All this because of the political needs of a small handful of individuals in Israel and the United States.

The image of the tiny democratic David holding off with our aid the evil Arab Goliath was never quite accurate and is now a sick joke.  The most powerful military and the only nuclear weapons between France and Pakistan belong to Israel, which has now settled a half million colonists on territory belonging to the Palestinians, with no end in sight except the ultimate creation of a greater apartheid Israel.  The current government in Tel Aviv, with the seeming connivance of the judiciary, has already limited free speech in Israel and is allied with the ultra-orthodox communities, which are completely at odds with the essentially secular society of the majority.

Shortly after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War Israeli philosopher Yeshaya Liebowitz wrote: In the first stage we shall see euphoria, upon our return to our ancient sites.  Next we shall see the emergence of a messianic, radical and dangerous nationalism.  In the third stage we shall see Israeli society becoming more brutal and the emergence of a police state.

It is coming true, as Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians and its own minorities engages in a more and more convincing impersonation of the Third Reich.  We are complicit.  Worse, we are becoming Israel.

Ironies from Israel #2: die Fahne hoch!

On June 6, 1982, responding to the assassination of their ambassador, 60,000 Israeli troops poured into Lebanon in an effort to end Palestinian raids into northern Israel. Israel had invaded before in 1978, driving up to the Litani River with the help of its client army, the Christian South Lebanon Army, but on this occasion the IDF marched all the way to Beirut, precipitating a general conflict between Christian and Muslim forces inLebanon.  Their major ally in this incursion was the Phalange, a virulently anti-communist and anti-Palestinian Maronite Christian militia that had played a major role in the country since the days of the French mandate.  Under pressure from Israel Bashir Jumayyil, son of the founder of the Phalange, was elected president of Lebanon, and after his assassination Israeli support went to his brother Amin, who replaced him.  During the IDF occupation of Beirut the Phalange, with the complicity of Israeli forces, massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Israel’s best friend in Lebanon, the Phalange was organized in 1936 by Pierre Jumayyil, who modeled it after another paramilitary organization that had seriously impressed him: the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA or Brownshirts).

Pssst! Wanna Know a Secret?

Secrecy has been a facet of
government and international affairs since government and international affairs
were invented.  Sumerian diplomats were
already negotiating secret treaties in the early third millennium B.C., hard on
the heels of the birth of civilization itself.
The classical Greeks sent coded messages, and the Roman Senate
occasionally met in closed session to keep sensitive information from the
public.  None of this is surprising.  Any state, from ancient Ur to modern America, can be expected to seize whatever advantage it
believes inherent in keeping secret from other states certain military and
diplomatic information.  In war and peace
the side that knows more, particularly more about the other guy, has a distinct
advantage.

And so it remained for almost five thousand years –
secrecy as a basic military and diplomatic weapon – and the uses and extent of
government secrecy at the end of the nineteenth century had not changed
appreciably since the days of the pharaohs.
The twentieth century, however, witnessed an emergence from this
stagnation, and the uses of secrecy – or classification, as it is now called –
have multiplied dramatically.  Not only
have the old hallowed grounds of classification been expanded, but upon the
traditional foundation of national security entire new edifices of secrecy have
been erected.  And in the vanguard of
these developments is the United States, ironically a country known for its freedom of
expression.

The age-old goal of keeping  military
codes,  operational plans  and
force  dispositions secret is  still
important,  though altered somewhat
by technological developments.   Codes
and plans can  be secured,  if a careful eye is kept out for  clever
teen-agers  with  personal
computers,  but the  advent  of
satellite reconnaissance
allows  a  state
to keep  the  location
of  its military  forces secret only from its own
citizens.  As a kind of compensation for
this loss,  though, the requirements of
military secrecy  have  expanded to cover the technology  and
even the basic research  behind
the tools of the military.  Business,
already concerned about keeping its own proprietary information secret, has
responded enthusiastically, and increasingly contracts with the government contain
“commercial-in-confidence” clauses, rendering the entire transaction
opaque to the public.  This preserves the
technological secrets from competitors and enemies, but of course it also
allows industry and government to hide any malfeasance or incompetence.  And such secrecy is hardly good for overall
progress, since the scientific community depends upon the free flow of information
to function properly.  One ironic result
of this passion for technological secrecy is the occasional reluctance to actually
use advanced weaponry out of fear of revealing secrets.  America, for example, refused to use its cruise missiles
against a Libyan chemical plant in 1986, fearing that one might fall unexploded
into enemy hands.  One is reminded of
British and German reluctance in WW I to send out their incredibly expensive
fleets because they might lose ships.

But all these developments are a logical extension of the
ancient desire to keep certain information out of foreign hands.  It is in the relatively modern arena of
keeping information out of the hands of ones own citizens that the United States in particular has demonstrated considerable
innovation.  What might be called
“political” secrecy is as old as kingship, but its use by the
American government and military has made it as much a part of the political
system as patronage and reelection.  To
elected officials and the bureaucracy classification is a sort of Holy Grail,
absolving all who use it of the political sin of responsibility.  Who can discover your mistakes and
malfeasance when what you do is classified secret?  Who can impugn your motives when your refusal
to discuss certain affairs is based on the pure patriotic grounds of national
security?  In 1983 12 year old Todd
Patterson discovered he was being watched by the FBI for writing to foreign
missions; learning that the activity was innocent, the agency agreed to close
the file.  They did not, and in 1987
Patterson finally obtained  a copy  of
his  FBI file, only to discover it
was censored to the point of illegibility.
The explanation given with a straight face by the FBI: national
security.

In the last several decades classification, which had
formerly been an essentially passive device, covering incompetence and outright
criminality (still a vital function in the defense industry), has evolved into
a generally accepted active political weapon.
National security based secrecy can now be used to further private
political agendas; not even the Congress knew the content of most of the National
Security Directives emanating from the Reagan White House.  Or consider a twist by the Bush
administration: reluctant to reveal the identities of the business leaders he
was making deals with, VP Cheney refused to release the visitors logs, claiming
that that these alleged advisors could not “speak freely” unless
anonymous, an argument commonly used to close meetings to the public.  Further, a careful program of classifying and
leaking can also be used to attack other branches of government and the media and
as a bonus, justify further secrecy.  These
tactics were clearly in play when the Bush White House outed CIA agent Valerie
Plame in order to embarrass her and her husband.  And remember back to Oliver North, who showed
us all how secrecy can be used to protect you even after you have been caught
blatantly violating the law. 

Those in power may well have the interests of the
American people at least partially in view, however.  At least I can see no purpose other than
public entertainment in the relatively recent emergence of what might be
labeled “comic” secrecy.  An
early example of this was evident in the Iran-Contra hearings, when the
participants insisted on referring to the states involved as Countries A, B, C,
etc., despite the fact that every human being watching knew their true
identities.  Or an early shuttle launch,
the utterly secret payload of which was being described in detail on television
before it was even in orbit.  And of
course there is the first Stealth aircraft, an especially good instance of
“comic” secrecy; while the government and  military were denying the very existence of
the plane, kids were building fairly accurate models of it.  The cost of the Stealth program was classified,  probably because if the Soviets knew how  much each plane cost, they would have realized
they had nothing to fear.  Even now the
military is withholding information on events and projects, some of them a half
century old, that are already known to the public and/or involve now obsolete
technology.  It’s like a sickness.

WikiLeaks has certainly underscored just how seriously
those in authority take their secrecy.  No
vital information was revealed, no lives were lost and America’s interests were not materially harmed, but Julian Assange
is viewed as the greatest threat to our security since the Japanese.  Actually, what was harmed was our diplomatic
face, when all the nasty and petty things said in private were revealed,
embarrassing important people everywhere, even though every diplomat knows such
remarks are constantly being made.  And
big business, ever an enthusiastic partner in creating greater opaqueness, is
doing its part, as Amazon, Bank of America, PayPal and others severed all ties
with WikiLeaks.

Well, we in Americahave certainly come a long way since the days of the Founding
Fathers, when almost all government business was rather foolishly conducted in
full public view, thus endangering our national security.  Would we have had to fight all  those invading British troops if the
Declaration of Independence had been properly classified?  Would Nathan Hale have had to regret that he
had only one life to give to his country if his country had provided him with plausible
deniability?  Could we have been spared two
hundred years of social turmoil and the weakening of our security if the Bill
of Rights had been available only on a “need to know” basis?

America has made great strides in the past decades, but the
road to national security is a long one.
If this great nation is to remain strong and free, we must be ever
vigilant, for inAmerica the price of freedom is secret.

 

 

 

 

Stuff from Way Back #3: Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Sardines in the tin

Many people have acquired much of their knowledge of history
from Hollywood, obviously a dubious
source.  This is especially true
regarding antiquity, an area of history generally poorly known and understood,
even by many historians, and apart from the Bible (another dubious source) the
movies have been the major font of information about the ancient world for
many.  Unfortunately, more often than not
that information is wrong.

Perhaps the
most pervasive historical myth promulgated by tinsel town is that of the galley
slave, Charlton Heston chained at his oar, rowing to the beat of a drum and the
crack of a whip in a Roman galley.  This
made for great cinema in
Ben Hur, but it is in fact complete nonsense.  Galley slaves were a feature of the Italian
and Turkish navies of the Renaissance era, but by then Mediterranean warship
architecture had changed greatly from antiquity and facilitated the use of
slaves.  The navies of Persia,
Greece, Rome and Carthage were rowed by free
men, who were paid for their efforts.

The primary
warship of the Greeks before the death of Alexander was the trireme, the
fastest significant human-powered vessel ever produced.  The trireme was tiny, more a racing scull
than a ship: 120 to 135 feet in length, 10 to 13 feet wide amidships (18 with
the outrigger) and a draught of only 3 to 4 feet.  Into this space were packed a crew of perhaps
a dozen sailors and 170 rowers, arranged in three banks in the hull.  With an underwater ram protruding from the
bows the trireme itself was the weapon, though those with less naval skill, like the Macedonians and the Romans, could use closing and boarding tactics instead of ramming. Cheap to build, the
vessel was fragile, unseaworthy, lacking in cargo space and expensive to
maintain. It was a precision instrument,
sacrificing everything for speed.

Such a
vessel can not be rowed by untrained slaves.
In the 1980s the Greeks and British built the first trireme since the Roman
Empire, the Olympias, and found that a crew of college
students (including some with sculling experience) needed to be trained for
weeks just to be able to row slowly in a straight line. With so many rowers in such a small space
coordination must be absolutely perfect or the oars, which come in three sizes
and enter the water at different angles, will be instantly fouled. To perform any maneuvers – turning sharply,
changing speeds, backing water – the crew must be very well trained, and that
training could clearly mean the difference between life and death in a
battle. And while being chained to the
ship is a great motivation to keep the ship afloat, the history of warfare has
constantly demonstrated that positive inducements are far better motivators
than fear.

Incidentally,
forget the guy pounding time with a drum.
That sort of low frequency sound is drowned out by the noise of the
oars, and the Olympias used whistles, which is what the sources
mention. In fact, forget everything
about the Ben Hur fleet. The
standard warship of the Roman Republic,
the quinquerime, was heavier, slightly broader and stood higher out of the
water, but this was still a far cry from the roomy vessel served by Judah
ben Hur. 300 rowers in three banks (some
oars had two men) filled the hull of the quinquereme, leaving room for a central
gangway but certainly none for some overseer to crack a whip. Further, during the Empire the standard vessels
were much smaller than a quinquereme, the major occupation of the imperial
fleet being pirate chasing.

Finally,
these are delicate vessels, certainly the smaller trireme. So light is the ship that a few men walking
about the deck could upset the trim enough that oars would miss the water or
strike too deeply, leading to immediate fouling. In fact, the Athenians manned the decks of
their triremes with javelineers who could throw from a seated position. The quinquereme provided a much more stable
platform for marines and even mounted ballistae (giant crossbows), but the
notion of a sea-borne catapult, as in Ben Hur, is still a stretch. Try hitting anything with a catapult mounted
on a lifeboat.