Dear Friends

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Dear Friends:

Ten years after I started this blog, circumstances are making it impossible for me to continue with it. So I am going to suspend it, at least temporarily, in the hope of resuming it one day not too far away.

For me it has been a glorious ten years. A period during which I felt free to write whatever I wanted, in any form I wanted, and at any time I wanted. Without having some kind of editor look over my shoulder. Freedom, freedom–if there is anything I treasure, this it is. 

It was also a period filled with intense intellectual excitement and, here and there, new friendships. These I cherish and hope we can keep up in the form of correspondence.

Thank you. All of you, so much. And be well.

Martin

 

 

Hear, o Israel

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As readers have probably noticed, throughout the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas I’ve devoted relatively little attention to that topic. Not because there is nothing to say—there is—but because I did not want to gladden the Philistines daughters’ hearts. Now, however, the point has come where I can no longer avoid telling my countrymen- and women the truth about the danger facing us. My vehicle for doing so will be a long quote from the famous historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny. Kindle Edition. 2024.

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”Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible. It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groups can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician—or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader. Armed groups first degrade a political order, and then transform it. Violent right-wing groups, such as the Iron Guard in interwar Romania or the Arrow Cross in interwar Hungary, intimidated their rivals. Nazi storm troopers began as a security detail clearing the halls of Hitler’s opponents during his rallies. As paramilitaries known as the SA and the SS, they created a climate of fear that helped the Nazi Party in the parliamentary elections of 1932 and 1933. In Austria in 1938 it was the local SA that quickly took advantage of the absence of the usual local authority to loot, beat, and humiliate Jews, thereby changing the rules of politics and preparing the way for the Nazi takeover of the country. It was the SS that ran the German concentration camps—lawless zones where ordinary rules did not apply. During the Second World War, the SS extended the lawlessness it had pioneered in the camps to whole European countries under German occupation. The SS began as an organization outside the law, became an organization that transcended the law, and ended up as an organization that undid the law.”

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Let me make myself clear; I am not trying to equate Israel with Germany during the last days of the Weimar Republic. Not yet, at any rate. But the potential in the form of political extremism and armed militias, rampaging mainly but not solely in the West Bank, is definitely there. So are threats on the justice system and its desperate attempts to keep some kind of order. And it is growing every day. First anarchy then, by way of a “corrective,” Fascism.

This country is at war, the most terrible and, in some ways, most important activity man can engage in. God grant our leaders (and those on the other side) the wisdom to know what to do and, above all, what not to do. Or else, I am afraid, we will all meet in hell.

PE (again)

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This week I once again got involved in a debate concerning penis envy. My interlocutor was an Israeli of my own age, a retired mathematician and computer expert with wide interests in psychology also. I found our debate extremely enlightening, so much so as to make me want to repeat some key parts of it. So here are a number of propositions we discussed, each one with a short commentary.

There is no such thing as penis envy. Wrong. I would argue that, to the contrary, so ubiquitous is penis envy, so numerous its manifestations in every nook and cranny of human life, as to make looking for “proof” of its existence not just impossible but well-nigh preposterous. In the words of Isaiah 6.3, “the whole earth is filled with [its] glory.” Starting with another Biblical phrase, “unto your man your passion, and he will rule you.” And ending with today’s women who, putting on full combat gear, will not rest until they too fight in tanks just as men do. Denying PE is a bit like trying to understand the way the world works without taking gravity into account. Do so and nothing, literally nothing, in the physical world makes sense.

Here it is worth adding that no one, not even the great Newton, has ever actually seen gravity. All we can do is postulate its existence by observing its effects. The same applies to penis envy. In other words, the fact that we do not know of a “penis envy gland” means nothing.

Penis envy may be understood in two different ways. Correct. First, in a literal sense, as the emotion that a person who does not possess something feels for another who does. The following silly little story illustrates the point. A boy and a girl are arguing. “I’ve got an ass,” says the girl. “I too have an ass,” says the boy. “But I have an ass in front too,” says the girl. “Yes, but I have an ass with a handle to it.”

Second, the penis as a symbol, the symbol, of all the advantages men enjoy over women in society; in other words, as a social construct. Freud himself never made up his mind as to which of the two approaches he preferred. His female students were divided on the issue. On one hand stood Helene Deutsch, who saw penis envy as fundamental to the development of womanhood. On the other, Karen Horney who considered it secondary, an effect of women’s inferior position rather than a cause. Freud’s own daughter, Ann, ignored the issue.

The natural sciences’ contribution to our understanding of the human soul is close to zero. Correct. All brain scientists and psychiatrists know is how to detect, register and sometimes modify electric pulses on one hand and administer medicines (many of them useless, and some of them harmful) to their patients. Well aware of that fact, they follow Hobbes and Descartes in claiming that the soul does not exist.

In spite of the Niagara of nonsense that has been poured on Freud and psychoanalysis from about 1970 on, their contribution to understanding the human psyche remains immense beyond measure. Correct. Stripped off endless fluff, essentially it consists of three propositions. First, the idea that the unconsciousness plays an important, often decisive, role in human thought, emotion and behavior. Second, the critical role played by childhood experiences in shaping those thoughts, emotions and behavior. Third, idea that the best, often almost the only, way of reaching the unconsciousness and influencing it is by means of what is usually known as the talking cure, which Freud, along with Joseph Breuer, invented. Far from being obsolete; even today rare is the psychologist who does not resort to it to one extent or another,

Today not only much of the general public but the majority of mental health experts no longer believe in Freud and psychoanalysis. Correct. However, as either Hegel or Goethe is supposed have said, no one is a hero to his servant. Rather, such is the mind of servants that they often fail to recognize a hero even when he (or she) is standing right in front of one. A good story in case comes from the New Testament. Appearing at court before Pontius Pilatus, Jesus says: “I am truth.” “What is truth?” retorts Pilate, the Roman intellectual. What an idiot!  Almost alone in the whole of history, he has been presented with the truth; only to blow it.

 

Finally, here is what Nietzsche in his late, unpublished writings has to say about heroes and hero worship:

”My brothers,” said the oldest dwarf, “we are in danger. I understand his posture, this great Giant, this Number One. He means to do the little one, number one, and drizzle on us. When a Number One does number one, there is a Flood. If he drizzles on us, then we are lost. Not to mention the disgusting element in which we will drown.” “Problem,” said the second dwarf: “How are we to keep a Big One, this Number One, from doing number one?” “Problem,” said the third dwarf: “How are we to keep a Number One, this Big One, from doing the big one, a great thing and number two, doing it with greatness and in a big way?” “I thank you,” replied the oldest dwarf with dignity. “Now the problem has taken a more philosophical turn, its interest has been doubled, and the approach has been cleared to its solution.” “We need to scare him,” said the fourth dwarf. “We need to tickle him,” said the fifth dwarf. “We need to bite him on the toes,” said the sixth dwarf. “Let us do all these things and do them at the same time” decided the oldest dwarf.” I see that we can measure up and rise to this challenge.”

 

 

Do We Have a Deal?

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The famed author of Parkinson’s Law once wrote that there are two kinds of books: those with naked women on the cover, and those without. As a rule, he added, the former sell better. Over the years my blog has carried quite some pictures of women. However, not one of them shows a pair of naked breasts. Much as I love women, specifically including their bodies, it is a policy I intend to follow in the future, too.

Seriously, the blog is now ten years old. During the first four years it was clicked-on more than a quarter of a million times; at that point I lost touch. Not nearly enough to compete with, say, Stormy Daniels and her alleged presidential lover. But perhaps sufficient to merit pausing for a bit of reflection. Before I get started, though, I’d like to thank my stepson Jonathan Lewy, who has been running it on my behalf; Mr. Larry Kummer, editor of the Fabius Maximus website, who more than anyone else has taken an interest in my work and encouraged me to continue posting; my friend Bill Lind whose blog, Traditional Right, is always an inspiration; the painter Bob Barancik; various people who, either after being contacted by me or spontaneously, agreed to write their own essays; and a somewhat larger number who took the trouble to contact me and correspond with me.

Just why I started blogging and kept doing so I am no longer sure. Originally I wanted a forum on which I could write what I wanted at any time and in any form I wanted. Without, what is more, being subject to the whims of editors many of whom have their own agenda and quite a few of whom have always remained more or less unknown to me. That remains true to the present day. Another motive, which was added later, was a growing sense of obligation towards my readers. It is like being married; how could I let them down? Not that I have any illusions that they could not exist without me. However, it is as people say. The one thing worse than a Dutch Calvinist is a Jewish Dutch Calvinist.

Normally I spend about two hours on each post. Often these are times when, for one reason or another, I do not feel like doing more “serious” work. I draw my ideas from various sources. Including, above all, the daily news; any book or books I happened to be reading or working on; and friends’ suggestions. Topics I found particularly interesting included Israeli affairs—I am, after all, a citizen and a resident of that country and have long shared both its triumphs and its failures. Also military affairs in general; women’s affairs (both in- and out of the military); the shape the future might take; political correctness, which is my personal bête noire; why American kids so often take up guns and kill everyone in sight; and others.

Some of these topics have proved much more popular than others. I have, however, never succeeded in guessing in advance which ones would draw many readers and which ones would turn into flops. Truth to say, I have not even seriously tried. Perhaps it is better so; writing to please should only be allowed to go so far and no farther. Some posts, especially those that touch upon the position of women in society as well as the relationship between them and men, have drawn considerable critical fire. Good! May they continue to do so in the future, too.

One part of the work I particularly like is searching Google.com for images. Given enough patience, you will almost certainly find what you are looking for. I know there are a lot of criticisms of Google and I suppose some of them are justified. Any organization as large and successful as they are is bound to make enemies. As, in the past, Western Union, Standard Oil, General Motors, ATT, and Microsoft all did. To me, however, the company has provided a certain kind of freedom people before 2000 or so could not even imagine. Thank you, Google, for your help. It is appreciated.

Finally, I am not getting any younger or healthier. Driving up and down the hills around Jerusalem, which as a young man with twenty kilograms less around the waist I used to run over as if my life depended on it, I often wonder how long before some illness strikes and brings me to a halt. Que sera, sera. This, however I promise my readers:

Never, ever, will I use the kind of swearwords and other forms of expression that, after they have been uttered, require mouthwash.

Never, ever, will I knowingly allow my judgments to be affected by inducements—and there have been a few attempts to offer them—or threats. The kind of threats, incidentally, that are even now being issued by some elements in Israeli academia against any faculty member who dares address any kind of political issue in class.

Never, ever, will I allow anyone or anything to interfere with my right to think, say and write as I saw fit.

Always, always, will I try to keep an open ear to my readers’ suggestions and criticism.

In return, I ask my readers to go on telling me what they think. Preferably by email at mvc.dvc@gmail.com

Do we have a deal?

Ninnies

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Every time I follow the media, I am astonished at the number of women who claim to have been misled and cheated and bamboozled and exploited by those devilishly clever creatures, men. Now it is a question of a man using a fake name and fake photographs to develop any number of more or less illicit relationships with any number of women. Sequentially or simultaneously, it does not matter. Now a man claims to own a modelling agency or work as a fashion photographer in order to achieve the same objective. Now he pretends to be a war hero, which gains him prestige in women’s eyes. Now a psychotherapist or physician, which provides him with opportunities to be alone with them, talk to them the way they like to be talked to, feel them up, and perhaps have sex with them. And now he makes false promises of all kinds of remunerative jobs in foreign countries, only to enslave his victims when they arrive.

Years ago there was published a volume called, Women Who Love too Much. As experiments on Tinder have shown, quite some women keep up the relationship even after the man in question has been exposed as, or confessed to be, a jailbird, or pedophile, or pimp, or whatever. So foolish are many women that, having slept with a man, it sometimes takes them ten or twenty or thirty years as well as psychological counseling to understand that, in “reality,” they were raped or abused or whatever. Just as I was writing this piece, opening Israel’s main newspaper, I learnt of a man who had allegedly “abused women’s mental plight in order to get close to them and obtain millions [of shekels] from them.”

Judging by the media, whereas women never stop raising complaints about men for the opposite to happen is relatively rare. Is that because men are smarter than women and less likely to be tricked? Frankly, I doubt it. Sex hormones are among the most powerful persuaders around. In people of both sexes they often take priority over brains, especially if the people in question also suffer from loneliness or are in any kind of trouble. Ask Sisera, ask Holophernes, both of whom lost their lives at the hands of treacherous women. Not to mention the scene in Basic Instinct (1992) where a woman uses an icepick to kill a man during the sexual act itself. I am more inclined to think that men are far less likely to complain about incidents of this kind. And with good reason, for in case they do complain they are much more likely either to be turned into laughing stock or having the tables turned on them and be accused of harassment or worse.

A woman who feels she has been tricked or exploited by a man can normally open the faucets and let the tears flow. If necessary she can even expose herself, as many have done throughout history and many will doubtless continue to do. Doing so, she can count on obtaining help both from men—what man does not dream of playing the role of the rescuer who later receives his appropriate reward?—and from her feminist sisters. Not so men. As one seventeenth-century English judge, Thomas Egerton, put it: “He sat not there to relieve Fools or Buzzards, who could not keep their Money from their wives.”

By their own accounts, women are easily influenced. They are also hopelessly weak, hopelessly foolish, and hopelessly unable to resist the predations of those wicked creatures, men, who keep outsmarting them. Recognizing this situation, lawyers have devised a strategy, known as the Svengali defense (after the lead male character in Maurier’s 1895 novel, Trilby, intended to get accused females off the hook by shifting the blame to the men around them.) How such miserable creatures can demand “equality” is beyond me.

 

To prevent more problems from emerging, here are a number of proposals that can be put into effect immediately.

 

  1. Women should be confined to the home. In case they go out, then only with male permission and under male escort.

 

  1. All of women’s contacts with strange men should be either supervised or suspended.

 

  1. Women should be banished from the social media as well as all other forms of electronic communications. Their mail should be censored.

 

  1. To prevent them from being preyed on by men, women should be prohibited from having bank accounts.

 

Do you think it can’t be done? It can. Just look at history. And at Afghanistan, of course.

How Can I Help Palestine?

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“How Can I help Palestine” is the title of a short essay I stumbled across on Quora, one of those websites on which you can ask (almost) anything and get answers from (almost) anyone. I thought it was amusing, so I am copying it here.

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How can I help Palestine? I have been boycotting Israeli products. What more can I do?

Throw away its computer. Many of its components were invented or perfected in Israel.

Don’t use texting or instant messaging. Invented or perfected in Israel.

Don’t buy generic drugs. The world’s largest supplier is Teva, an Israeli company. Be sure to pay full price.

Be careful what apps you use on your cell phone. Many of the popular ones were developed in Israel.

Basically, think about how your parents lived in the 1950s and 1960s and use that as the basis of your spending decisions. If it wasn’t in your mother’s kitchen back in the day, chances are Israel has a hand in its current incarnation.

On the other hand buy as much olive oil, dates and figs as you can. They are the mainstays of the Palestinian economy.

Please, God

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Israel, I always say, is like a Chi Wawa. A very small dog that, thanks to its mighty bark, always draws more than its share of attention. The reason why it barks so loudly is because it is surrounded by so many hostile Arabs who keep firing at it. And the other way around, of course. Normally that is all one hears. But there is another side to the matter, and that is what it pleases me to write about today.

I live in Mevasseret Zion, about four or five miles west of Jerusalem. Another mile or so to the west is an Arab village, Abu Ghosh. Some identify it with the Biblical Kiryat Yearim, the place where David took the Ark of the Covenant after it has been recovered from the Philistines. It is also where Mary was resurrected, an event commemorated by a large Benedictine Monastery where concerts are held. During the last decades of Ottoman rule it was a den of highwaymen who preyed on travelers between Jaffa and Jerusalem. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence its inhabitants sided with Israel, which is why they did not suffer expulsion but were able to stay on their ancestral land. Today it is an Arab, mostly Moslem, village with a population of about 7,600. Economically it is doing extremely well; the reason being that, come Saturday and almost all Jerusalem restaurants are closed, Jews flood the village in their tens of thousands.

Some years ago I had an Arab student who lived with her family in Abu Ghosh. Since our two places are so close to each other, I offered her a ride and after class. She gladly accepted but said she wanted to sit in the rear seat. Feeling slightly offended, I asked her if she really distrusted me. No, she said, I do not. However, she added, it is our custom. Try it and you’ll see I am right. We did try it, many times, and it turned out that she was right. A worry less for her, a worry less for me.

On the way we used to talk. I asked her how she came to be called Osnat, which is a name Jewish, but not Arab, Israeli families sometimes give their daughters (the original Osnat, mentioned in Genesis, was an Egyptian lady whom Pharaoh gave Joseph in recognition of his services to the crown). It turned out that her father was a heavy earth-moving machinery operator. At one point in his life he had worked for a kibbutz woman who treated him very well. By way of saying thanks, he named his daughter after her.

Osnat herself was in her mid-twenties. All her cousins had married at about seventeen and were already the mothers of several children. That, she decided, was not the life she wanted. Instead she went to study and was reading for an M.A in the humanities. More typical of Jewish women than of Arab ones. Her reward was to work as a teacher in east Jerusalem; being an Israeli citizen, she made ten times as much as her Palestinian colleagues. Later she and I lost touch, so I do not know where she is or whether she is still single. Possibly she did not stay in her village but found an Israeli-Arab husband living abroad—educated Israeli Arab women often do.

Nor is this the only way in which Jewish and Arab-Israeli approaches to life often change places and merge. Some years ago CNN did a series on wedding customs around the world. One of the episodes described an Arab wedding. But which Arabs were they? Israeli ones, of course. To distinguish it from a Jewish Israeli wedding one had to be a real expert.

Or visit an Ikea shop, where you will see Jews and Arabs quietly queueing together or else sharing a table while taking a meal. Or Dabach, a supermarket and general purpose store not far from the town of Carmiel in the north that has been doing sufficiently well to spread into central Israel. Same story.

Or visit Karim, a native of Abu Gosh who owns the grocery shop where my wife regularly does her shopping. Over the years we learnt that he is actually a university graduate with a degree in agriculture. Unable to find work in his field, though, he opened a shop and did well enough to take over the one next door as well. Right opposite his place is an Israeli-Jewish plant-nursery several of whose employees are Arabs. This is where the whole of Mevasseret Zion goes to obtain its grass, shrubbery, potted plants, gardening equipment, and so on. Arab or no Arab, I love going there. So much so, in fact, that I sometimes do so with no intention to buy anything, simply for a breath of fresh air.

The recent construction of a new children’s amusement park will no doubt bring in additional hordes of visiting Jerusalemites. Nor is Abu Ghosh the only place where many of us Israeli Jews go in order to get Arab (or “Oriental”) food. My late mother, who was born and raised in the Netherlands before, aged 30, moving to Israel with her husband and three small children used to refer to Arab music as “Arab caterwauling.” Not so many younger Israelis who like to listen to it, as I myself also do; somehow it fits into the landscape in a way Western classical music never can.

Briefly, the impression of eternally squabbling ethnic groups is often misleading. It gets even better than that. Many Western countries have a problem with Muslim women’s clothes. Seeing them as religious symbols, they try to ban them from schools, the civil services, the streets, and even the beaches. Here in Israel we never had any of these problems. True, few Arab Israeli women wear the niqab or face-cover. Go to any beach, and you can see it for yourself. But a great many wear headcover without drawing attention. In any case some Jewish women have also taken to wearing a niqab.

So far, and in spite of events in Gaza, northern Israel and southern Lebanon, the peace in Abu Gosh has held. Whatever may be going on in people’s minds, Never in the four decades my wife and I have been going there did we hear one bad word said about Arab this or Jewish that. Please God, may it stay that way.

Incompetence

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Then (based on Wikipedia):

 

The abortive Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942 taught the Western Allies, Britain and the US, that a successful invasion of Europe could only be carried out if sufficient logistic support was made available to sustain not just the initial landing but subsequent operations as well. Next the naval commander for the Raid, British Vice-Admiral John Hughes-Hallett, declared that, if a port could not be captured, then an artificial one should be built and taken across the Channel. In this he was supported by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who, during his tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915-16, had come up with the idea as part of his plans to capture some German islands in the North Sea.

Later that year the Chief of Combined Operations Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, outlined the requirement for piers at least one mile (1.6 km) long at which a continuous stream of supplies could be handled. Including a pier head capable of handling 2,000-ton ships. A headquarters was set up, an organization was created, and trials were held at various locations considered suitable both because conditions were similar to those prevailing in Normandy and for security reasons.

By September 1943—just one month after Dieppe—preliminary plans for building not one but two floating harbor—one for the British, one for the Americans—were in place. So were the processes leading to the procurement and manufacturing of the most important components. Including, first, sixty-one dozen old ships designated to be sunk so they could serve as outer breakwaters; second, huge floating caissons, made of concrete and designed to be anchored to the sea bed so as to form the main protection against the waves; and, third, a roadway whose parts could be linked with each other as well as the caissons by which they were going to be supported.

Excluding the blockships, the total weight of components built to be towed across the Channel has been estimated at approximately 1.5 million tons. As was only to be expected from such a large and complex project, problems there were aplenty. However, by the afternoon of D-Day (6 June 1944) all the component parts, both towed and those designed to cross the Channel on their own power, were waiting and ready. Such being the case, construction proceeded much as had been planned—the more so because German resistance was much weaker than expected.

Known as “mulberries,” both harbors were almost fully functional when on 19 June a large north-east storm blew into Normandy and devastated the one supporting the Americans at Omaha Beach. Later it turned out that this was the worst storm to hit the coast in 40 years. So bad was the destruction at Omaha in particular that the entire harbor was deemed irreparable. Most of the constituent parts were completely destroyed, or cast adrift, and the roadways and piers smashed.

The British Mulberry harbor at Arromanches was more protected and, though damaged by the storm, remained usable. Originally designed to last only three month, for eight months it was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies, providing much needed reinforcements in France. In response to this longer-than-planned use, the breakwater was reinforced by the addition of specially strengthened caissons. The Royal Engineers had built a complete Mulberry Harbor out of 600,000 tons of concrete between 33 jetties, and had 10 mi (16 km) of floating roadways to land men and vehicles on the beach. Known to the troops at Port Winston, and in spite of being built in a hurry, to this day it remains one of the best examples of military engineering in history.

 

That was then. And now?

 

Al Arabiya English, published: 3 May 2024: 07:05 PM GSTUpdated: 03 May ,2024

“The US military temporarily has paused construction of a floating pier off the coast of Gaza due to weather that caused unsafe conditions for soldiers [my emphasis], the United States Central Command said on Friday. Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for Soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier. The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction were moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue and will be completed before it is placed in an unannounced location.

Once done, the badly needed humanitarian aid will be delivered by ships and then by trucks to shore. Vehicles from third parties will drive off the ship and the temporary pier to a marshaling yard ashore, CENTCOM [US Central Command] said. The aid will then be offloaded in the shore facility before being transferred to partner organizations that will distribute it inside Gaza.”

 

A month and a half has passed and the pier, while spectacularly expensive, is still not operational. Instead, parts of it, carried by the currents, have been found as far north as the beaches of Tel Aviv.

Egypt

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As the wars between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah, Israeland Syria, Israel and Iran, and Israel and the Houthi of Yemen keep going, the belligerents apart no country has assumed a more important role in the conflict than Egypt did and does. In this post I will try to shed light on some of the more important issues at stake as well as take a guess at what the future may bring.

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At the time Israel proclaimed its independence on 15 May 1948 Egypt was still under British occupation, as indeed it had been from 1882 on. However, this fact did not prevent the government of Egyptian King Farouq from sending their army into Palestine with the objective, first, to appease his own public opinion—which was very anti-Israeli—and second, offset any gains the remaining Arab states might make by invading Palestine and annexing part of it. As it turned out, the calculus did not work. By early 1949 the Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi excursions into Palestine had all been halted, though not quite turned back (the Jordanians in particular remained in possession of East Jerusalem and the West Bank). Meanwhile, further to the south the Egyptian expeditionary force had come close to being annihilated; in the event, they were only saved by the threat of British intervention.

The official end of Israel’s war of independence in July 1949 did not lead to peace either with Egypt or with any other Arab country. Instead, both on Israel’s border with Egypt—now moved northward so as to leave the government in Cairo in control of the Gaza Strip—there took place any number of incidents. Most were very small; a theft here, a murder there. A few, however led full scale between Israel and its neighbors, threatening not only the Middle East but, thanks to Superpower meddling, world peace. This period lasted until late 1973 when the last Israeli-Egyptian war came to an end. Resulting in stalemate it opened the long road towards peace, albeit that this was by no means always apparent at the time.

The next stage got under way in 1977 when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt visited Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Thanks in large part to US mediation, by 1981 a peaceful relationship between the two countries, along with a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, the peninsula’s demilitarization, and the establishment of diplomatic, economic and some tourist ties was in place and working fairly well. To be sure, things did not always proceed as smoothly as the Israelis in particular would have liked. In particular, Israel’s attempts to tackle terrorism from Lebanon by invading that country (1982 and 2007) as well as its persistent failure to move toward an end to its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza often led to grumbling in Cairo. Deliberately or not, the latter also failed to properly seal the tunnels linking the Sinai and Gaza, thus enabling Hamas to receive large supplies of money, arms and supplies. So much so, in fact, that when Israeli troops in early 2024 invaded the underground tunnels they described them as a “superhighway.” Still on the whole the peace agreement held, greatly benefitting both countries.

The outbreak of the next major round of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities on 7 October 2023 appears to have taken Egypt by surprise, causing it to try and follow a number of different courses simultaneously. Formally the peace between the two countries, including diplomatic relations, trade, and limited military cooperation against the independence-seeking Bedouins of the Sinai, remained in place. Faced with problems in the west (anarchy in Libya), the south (anarchy in the Sudan, Ethiopia’s attempt to divert the Nile), the southeast (the Red Sea where the Houthis’ have been mounting attacks on maritime traffic, causing a decline in Egypt’s income from the Suez Canal), and the east (where Iran has been doing whatever it can to stir up trouble) Cairo knew better than to add another country to its list of enemies. Yet it did not mind the Israelis learning some bitter lessons concerning the limits of their military power and the need to enter into some kind of relationship with Hamas; if teaching those lessons meant at least partially closing an eye to the vast inflow of money, supplies and arms from the Sinai to Gaza, so be it.

Above all, official Cairo has its own public opinion to consider. Especially but by no means exclusively that prevailing among the better educated and professional classes in the cities. Starting at least as early as 1982, it has been these classes which were most vehemently critical of Israel. If not to the point of actually abrogating the peace treaty and preparing for war, certainly by limiting contacts with it and putting them on hold.

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Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. Faced with the ongoing war, essentially there appear to be three courses of action Egypt might take. They are as follows:

  1. Stick to its present course of working with the US and Qatar to lean on both Hamas and Israel to end the shooting war in one way or another. This would probably be the preferred policy, except that it does not appear to stand much of a chance of achieving its objective anytime soon. One thing, though, appears certain: the longer the war, the harder it will be for Egypt to keep doing what it has been doing or trying to do up to the present.
  2. Take a much stronger pro-Israeli line in all that regards to a. the Israeli prisoners in Hamas’ hands; b. an eventual cease fire; and c. the weakening of Hamas control over Gaza. Given how unpopular Israel is in Egypt right now, and also how obdurate both Israel and Hamas have been and still are, such a change seems rather unlikely.
  3. In everything pertaining to the war, turn against Israel (and the US). In case the present regime continues in force, any such change will probably proceed slowly and gradually. However, in a dictatorship such as Egypt a sudden upheaval, most likely in the form of a military coup, can never be ruled out. Right now, sitting in my study I can see the balcony on which, years ago, I received two Canadian intelligence officers who had previously gained long experience serving in Egypt. To my question whether a coup aimed at unseating then President Hosni Mubarak was possible, both of them hastened to reassure me it was not.

As has been said, no one believes there is a plot to kill the emperor until he is killed.

 

Cutting the Hype

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These days it is all but impossible to open the Net without stumbling over zillions of references to artificial intelligence (AI). What it is; the things it can and will do; the good things it will bring about; the fortunes it will make for those willing and able to make the fullest use of it; and, above all, the disasters which, thanks to God the Computer and His human acolytes, are just around the corner and, unless countered in time, may yet bring about the destruction of mankind.

In what follows, I want to cut the hype a little by providing a very brief list of some of those things. And, on the way, explain why, in my view, either their impact has been vastly exaggerated or they will not happen at all.

Claim: AI can and will make countless workers superfluous. The outcome will be massive unemployment with all its concomitant problems. Such as a impoverishment, a growing cleavage between rich and poor, class struggles, political upheavals, uprisings, revolutions, civil warfare, and what not.

Rebuttal: Much the same was said and written about the first computers around 1970, the first industrial robots during the 1950s, and so on backward in time all the way to the first steam engines during the first few decades of the 19th century in particular. Fear of technologically-generated unemployment may indeed be tracked back to the Roman Emperor Vespasian (reigned, 69-79 CE) who had the inventor of a labor-saving device executed for precisely that reason. World-wide, during the almost 2,000 years since then, employment has often gone up and down. However, taking 1900 as our starting line, not one of the greatest upheavals—not National Socialism, not the Chinese Revolution not decolonization, not feminism, to list just three—has been due mainly, let alone exclusively, to technological change. As my teacher, Jacob Talmon, used to say: I know all that stuff about history, anonymous political, economic, social, cultural, and, yes, technological forces. But, absent Lenin, do you really think the Russian Revolution would have taken place?

Claim: AI and the ability to manipulate and spread information of every kind (spoken, written, in the form of images) will make it much harder, perhaps impossible, to distinguish truth from falsehood, honesty from fraud.

Rebuttal: True. But so did the invention, first of speech, then of writing (see on this Yuval Harari Sapiens, which helped inspire this post), then of print, then of newspapers, then of photography, then of film, then of the telegraph, then of electronic media such as radio and TV. Every one of them was open to abuse by means of adding material, subtracting material, and plain faking. And every one of them often has been and still is being so abused day by day. Long before the invention of “intellectual property” thieves and counterfeiters were forging ahead. Photoshop and Deepfake themselves are computer-generated. But what one computer can generate another can counter; at least in principle.

Claim: In the military field, AI will help make war much more deadly and much more destructive.

Rebuttal: The same was said and written about previous inventions such as the machine gun, the aircraft, and the submarine. Not to mention dynamite which its inventor, Alred Nobel (yes, he of the Prize) hoped would be so deadly as to cause war to be abolished). In fact, though, it is not technology alone but politics, economics and various social factors—above all, the willingness of individuals and groups to fight and, if necessary, die—that will govern the deadliness and destructiveness of future war, just as they have done in the past. Caesar’s conquest of Gaul is said to have caused the death of a million people. Tamerlane in the fourteenth century wiped out perhaps 17 million. And even that is easily overshadowed by the number Genghis Khan, using nothing more sophisticated than captured mechanical siege engines, killed a century and a half earlier. Here I want to repeat a statement I have often made before: namely that the one invention that has really changed war, and will continue to make its impact felt in all future wars to come, is nukes.

Claim: AI will put an end to art and artists.

Rebuttal: A little more than a century ago, the same was said and written about film bringing about the end of the theater. Starting almost two centuries ago, the same was said and written about photography sounding the death-knell of painting. Need I add that photography and film, far from causing art to disappear, have themselves turned into a very important art forms?

Claim: “AI-powered image and video analysis tools are used for a wide range of social impact applications. They can detect anomalies in medical scans, assess crop health for farmers, and even identify endangered species from camera trap images, aiding conservation efforts.”

Rebuttal: as if all the things, and any number of others like them, were not done long before anyone heard of AI.

Claim: AI has changed/will change “everything.”

Rebuttal: Back in the 1990s, exactly the same things were said of .com. Yet looking back, it would seem that the things that did not change (the impact of poverty, disease, natural disasters, war, old age and death e.g, as well as that of love, friendship, solidarity, patriotism, etc.) are just as important as those that did.

If not more so.