Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

But What Is It Doing at Oxford?

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Theodore Zeldin is a retired Oxford professor. During his academic career his interests have reached from the reign of Napoleon III to freedom, gastronomy, and the future of work among other things. He is also a public intellectual who has been called one of the world’s most influential hundred scholars. The list of organizations that have sponsored his work, or invited him to speak, or presented him with some kind of award, is well-nigh endless. One of his books, An Intimate History of Humanity (1994), was even used by Australia’s National Museum as the basis of an exhibition of the emotions of that continent’s inhabitants. It was brought to my attention by a friend and former student who sought to help me with a project I am working on. That is why I want to write about it here.

In this particular volume, Zeldin’s objective is to show that some of people’s most intimate experiences—hope, solitude, love, sex, food, to mention but a few—are not the same at all times and in all civilizations. Instead he argues that, like anything else, they are historically-governed, meaning that they keep changing along with culture and society as a whole. As always with him, the volume focuses on France which Zeldin, the son of a Jewish-Russian couple who moved from Palestine to England, uses as a kind of gold standard for all other countries and societies to measure themselves by. Each chapter—even most of the few that supposedly deal with men—opens with an interview with one woman meant to illustrate some aspects in the emotional life of all others. Each interview is mixed with Zeldin’s ruminations on who she is, how she fits into society, how other societies have tried to deal with similar problems, and so on.

Why Zeldin only interviews women—who, after all, only form half of humanity—is never explained. But never mind. A typical interview, focusing on sex, is with a woman named Alicia R. Ivars. Spanish by origin, educated in France, she speaks four languages though none perfectly (who cares?). She is a professor (where? Of what?) and a self-appointed geisha—in the sense that she sees her destiny in pleasing others and avoids difficult question like who she is, what she is doing in this world, and so on. She always wears “amazing” attention-drawing clothes, runs a restaurant called “Garden of Delights,” and is “a world authority on olive oil.” What follows is a short extract of Zeldin’s text to give you an idea of what it is like.

“Sex is a separate matter, a distinct activity, ‘not to be ruined by an excess of intimate feelings or confidences, because then you become a slave to it.’ That does not mean Alicia wishes to avoid intimate feelings. ‘I have never been afraid of my intimate feelings. I have always enjoyed psychotropic experiences without panicking at the idea of losing contact with my inner self or with my body. I know which melody, which rhythm, which smell or caress or stroke will provide me with my desired intimate feeling.’ Engaging in sex is thus comparable with cooking; both create pleasure, ‘intimate feelings,’ both enable one to create such feelings in another. She distinguishes first of all ‘pure sex.’ In her youth she had this with a ‘Tantric man,’ with whom she carried on an ‘ultra-erotic correspondence, with a profusion of illustrations’ and whom she visited two or three times a year for the ‘actualization of all our fantasies.’”
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“… There is no reason, she thinks, why there should be any limits to sexual activity. I have not yet found limits to my predisposition… She remembers the visit of a foreigner to whom she was ‘very attracted: I could have played and enjoyed with her, she so wonderful to me, so much in need of affection, just recently a widow, we probably had telepathic sex.’” “At a young age, [Alicia] taught herself to cut her own hair, and has never been to a hairdresser since. That is the sign of her independence. Her hairstyles are always exotic like nobody else’s.”

“In Canada,” says another woman named Florence, selected to exemplify the nature of desire, “she met a marvelous man. For four days they talked. He was not afraid to say what he felt; he seemed authentic. “He satisfied my desire for harmony and gentleness.’ But she does not know what will become of this friendship, which appeals only to one side of her. ‘He does not put me in danger. I need not to have complete emotional security.’ Time will tell.” And so on, and so on, the kind of “luv” talk mixed with psychobabble one may expect to find in any women’s magazine with a minimum of “intellectual” pretense.

This is the kind of verbal diarrhea one expects to find in women’s weeklies. But what is it doing at Oxford?

I Ask You

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Life sometimes does strange things and brings together strange people. Some weeks ago I had a strange experience I want to tell you about.

It all started a few months ago when I got an invitation to speak at Salzburg, Austria. The request came from a person by the name of Killian Harbauer, who introduced himself as an “accredited parliamentary assistant” to Herr Franz Obermayr, a member of the European Parliament. I understood that the audience was to consist of the members of a right-wing student organization. The topic was to be my book, Pussycats, in which I tried to explain why, over the last few decades, whenever a military encounter took place, the Rest has been regularly beating the West. The book, whose German title is Weicheier (soft-boiled eggs), has been published by an Austrian firm.

I had addressed this topic in Austria before, and I was going to do so again in Germany soon. Which is why I did not take very long to say yes. On 25 May I arrived in Salzburg and was taken very decent care of. Here it might be worth adding that Salzburg itself is a beautiful city with quite some attractions to gladden a tourist’s heart. Well worth visiting.

Preparing for the meeting, I found myself in something of a fix. The audience, I believed, would consist of students. Students everywhere tend to be young and, being impecunious, dress somewhat informally. I therefore wondered whether or not I should put on a tie; in the end, I decided to follow my normal principle of dressing up. Imagine my surprise when, upon arrival, I saw—not a bunch of young students, but a whole lot of elderly men between about sixty and seventy. There must have been almost a hundred of them, all impeccably dressed in dark suits. A few younger lads were also present, but they can hardly have formed more than ten percent of the total.

The meeting was held in what the Germans call a lokal. Inside it was fairly dark, which at first made it a bit hard for me to see what was going on. Having adjusted, I saw that many of the men were wearing all kinds of chains, colored ribbons and feathers, etc. over their suits. One even wore a Napoleon-style hat! Painted on the walls or fixed to them were various emblems that had to do with the past glories of German/Austrian history. Taking up the place of honor along one wall, was a table. It was covered with a white cloth and on it were arranged three shining, sharp-looking, swords.

At this point I could no longer restrain my curiosity and asked Killian what it was all about. It turned out that this was the Burschenschaft Frankonia. Burschenschaften, perhaps best explained as associations of young, somewhat roguish, young men, started making their appearance at German universities soon after 1815. Originally their central concerns were freedom—these were the years when Metternich and the Reaction did their best to prevent the up-and-coming middle classes from upsetting the prevailing socio-political order—and German unification. Others were holding meetings at which prodigious quantities of beer were drunk, occasional fights broke out, and some chairs, windows and heads might be broken.

Most famous of all, the Burschenschaften practiced the custom of Mensur. To join a Burschenschaft one had to participate in a duel; hence the role of, and the reverence accorded to, the abovementioned swords. Going back to the second half of the eighteenth century, early on duels tended to be somewhat wild affairs in which serious wounds were sometimes inflicted and even an occasional death took place. Later the authorities intervened, threatening the Burschenschaften with closure unless they cleaned up their act. It worked, more or less.

InLife could be the missing link to your financial freedom, though you need to apprehend that 95% of network marketers fail to make any money even when you order the product from anywhere in buy levitra line the world. Even if you smoke more than viagra online one pack of cigarettes per day were at a 60% higher risk of impotence, compared to men that have the procedure, only one shall go on to conceive with a partner while the remainder of the obligations on your own. Look viagra free sample for a gentle, organic liquid probiotic that is dairy, wheat, and soy-free. The most common side effects for erectile dysfunction such as sildenafil (canadian viagra sales ) & tadalafil (viagra). With the rise of racism during the second half of the nineteenth century many if not most Burschenschaften abandoned liberalism. Instead they identified themselves with the most reactionary trends prevalent in contemporary society. They also became virulently anti-Semitic, refusing to accept Jewish students and occasionally beating them up. Jews who were already members were expelled; others set up their own separate organizations which imitated the gentile ones as best they could. One caricature showed a corps member asking another about their program. “A program?” Came the response. “We do not need a program. Only a pogrom.”

The heyday of the Burschenschaften was in the years just before World War I. During the 1920s they declined; whereas the Nazis, finding them too independent for their taste, suppressed them and replaced them with their own, the Nazis’, kind of organization. During the Cold War the Burschenschaften, while strictly prohibited in the East, made a modest revival in the West. Today there are some 160 of them, most of them scattered between Germany and Austria. They may, however, also be found in Poland, Scandinavia, and even as far away as Chile.

I asked around. The way it was explained to me, they were not racist. The objective of this particular Burschenschaft was to preserve the traditions of the organization in question, notably “freedom,” “liberalism,” “comradeship,” and mutual trust. I asked whether women could join; they could not, I was told, though they might attend meetings as guests (there were none at the one I participated in). I asked whether Muslims were welcome; an Iranian, I was told, would be, though the question as to whether the same applied to an Arab student was left without an answer. And I was told that the custom of Mensur was still practiced. Albeit, as far as I could see, so carefully that the risk was practically zero and the resulting scar, almost invisible.

I was there as a guest speaker, not as a member of Metternich’s secret police. So I gave my pre-prepared speech, and the audience liked it very much. After it was over I received a lot of applause, what with those present thumping the tables as is the German custom. The meeting included the participants singing about fifteen old students’ songs carefully selected from a corpus of some four hundred written, most of them, during the nineteenth century.

Many of the songs described the joys of student life. Others, though, bristled with expressions like deutsches Vaterland (German Fatherland), deutsche maennlichkeit (German manhood), deutsche Ehre (German honor), and deutsche Treue (German faith). At this point I, a Jew some of whose family members lost their lives during the Holocaust, was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

So I asked my guide, Killian. Here a surprise was waiting for me. He himself, he explained, was the son of a Jewish physician. Years ago the father had tried to make Aliya, i.e move to Israel, but was disgusted by the prevailing disorder in that country. Whereupon he went back to Europe, but not before taking with him a kibbutz member who was to become his wife. All this Killian explained to me in pretty good, if somewhat halting, Hebrew of which he was justifiably proud.

I ask you.

Crisis? What Crisis?

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Weeks have passed since The Donald, by announcing the U.S withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the Iran nuclear deal, aka the Iran deal), started a “crisis” in the Middle East. Such being the case, it is time to draw at least a temporary balance as to what happened, what did not happen, and what is likely to happen in what is known, euphemistically, as “the foreseeable future.”

So here goes.

Iran was and remains the largest and most powerful, state in the region around the Persian Gulf. That this Iran has its ideology, its interests, its objectives, its phobias, its friends, and its enemies just as any other country does hardly requires saying, To be sure, Iranian policy has its peculiarities. But no more so than that of any others.

As far as anyone knows, the Mullahs have now been working on their nuclear program, which they inherited from the Shah, for some thirty years. As far as anyone knows, Trump’s new sanctions have not caused them to greatly accelerate that program or sharply change its course towards bomb-making. The step they, responding to Trump, have taken, i.e. increasing the enrichment of low level uranium, is mostly symbolic, though this might change later if and when they feel they are in real danger of coming under attack.

As was to be expected, the U.S-led sanctions on Iran, while making life difficult for many ordinary Iranians, have not worked. Nor are they very likely to work in the future. To be sure, many Iranians have no special love for the Mullahs’ regime, which they see as fanatical, oppressive, corrupt, and unnecessarily bellicose. They would certainly like to get rid of it; however, they seem to dislike foreigners meddling in what they see as their own affairs even more. This aspect of the matter, whose importance is paramount, would surely remain in place even if the Mullahs were to disappear tomorrow.

The Houthi rebels of Yemen, presumably armed and instigated by Iran, have mounted some attacks on Saudi and other Gulf country targets. Going from strength to strength, they have shown that the Saudis are as incapable of giving a good fight as they were back in 1991. More attacks, apparently meant to deter the Americans without provoking them too much, are likely to follow. Nevertheless, contrary to the fears of many there has been no dramatic increase in terrorism in the Middle East.

However, your body viagra generika appalachianmagazine.com can only sustain so much toxicity before it starts breaking down, including but not limited to: Reducing the amount of good bacteria in your gut by 50% Cancer Auto-immune diseases (your own immune system attacks your body tissues), including Parkinson’s, celiac, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, etc. viagra soft tablets Many patients remain undiagnosed until their first fracture. In half an hour to 45 minutes, cialis cost low cialis prices article the pill begins to show results. Drinking water and urinating timely is advantageous to relieve the urine stimulation of the prostate, because levitra on line appalachianmagazine.com water dilute urine and take out bacteria. Contrary to the fears of many, too, there has been no dramatic increase in the price of oil. To the extent that the price has gone up, the greatest beneficiary has been America’s competitor, i.e. Russia. For your attention, Donald.

For Tehran, opposing and threatening Israel is the red flag with to attract sympathy and allies in much of the Arab world. For Netanyahu, Iran is the rod with which to attract followers inside Israel. He continues doing his very best to get the U.S to launch a war against Iran, and will surely go on doing so as long as he remains in the prime minister’s office and out of prison.

The “crisis” has caused some Arab countries, notably those of the Gulf, to further tighten their already quite close relations with Israel. To that extent, Israel has also benefited from it.

Trump’s bluff has been called. For all his bluster, he has not brought the Mullahs to their knees. Nor did he start a war, nor reinforced his forces in the Gulf nearly to the point that would be needed in order to do so. The telephone number he gave the Swiss has remained unused, leaving him in a weaker position than previously.

Meanwhile, some of the heavyweights in Beijing may not be at all averse to witnessing this latest show of American weakness. That weakness is certain to have consequences later on, though when they will emerge and what form they will take is hard to say. As in the song: “Don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again.”

Finally: The Europeans do not count, since all the important decisions are made over their heads. As usual.

How Innovation Works

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As experts from every conceivable field never stop repeating, as of the early years of the twenty-first century humankind is facing unprecedented challenges. The pace of innovation is said to be accelerating. Cutting our links with history and, in the minds of many, rapidly turning it into a bunch of irrelevant tales fit, if for anyone at all, a bunch of elderly antiquarians. Each day seems to bring an avalanche of new, previously unconceivable, discoveries such as open the way to tremendous developments in every field. But also, as they cause everything stable to crumble and fall apart, creating a real danger that, overwhelmed by those very changes, we shall lose our way amidst our own inventions.

That, at any rate, is the conventional wisdom. Not that all of it has not been said, and well said, many times by those who lived long before us. Putting together The Communist Manifesto back in 1848 Marx and Engels referred to what, today, is known as “creative destruction as a necessary condition for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism. “Blind we walk, till the unseen flame has trapped our footsteps,” sang the chorus in Sophocles’ Antigone twenty-five centuries ago.

From horseless carriages and wireless and flying machines and space travel and champion level Go-playing computer programs and genetic engineering down, so many things that used to be considered impossible have come true! To the point, indeed, that the young in particular take them for granted and can no longer imagine life without them. As my grandson asked me some years ago, how on earth did you keep busy before computers? Nevertheless, considerable room for doubt remains. The fact that so many expectations have been and are being fulfilled and will go on being fulfilled does not mean that everything is possible. Let alone that there are no underlying realities that hardly change at all.

The reason why they do not change is that innovations, even the most important ones, always seem to go through the following five stages. First come the Doubting Thomases who insist that the new gadget, or device, or method, or even social movement, will either fail to work properly or, if it does work, never amount to much. A happened to both Robert Fulton and Alexander Graham Bell when they tried to sell their wares to Napoleon and Western Union respectively. And to the brothers Wright when, having failed to sell their flyer to the U.S Army, they moved to Europe instead.

Second, when it becomes clear that the new technology does in fact work and has some potential uses, attempts are made to deny its novelty by fitting it into some existing framework. As, for example, happened when early steamships began to be used on inland waterways and inside ports but kept well away from the open sea. And as happened when the pre-1914 military, having finally deigned to buy a few aircraft, incorporated them into the artillery arm or the cavalry (which was responsible for reconnaissance), or the signals corps, or whatever.
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Third, there is what is sometimes known as the Aha moment. When the blinkers fall away and everything seems to have changed or changing or about to change. And when the sky, opening up, appears to be the limit. The point, to use the lingo of economists, at which the logistic curve suddenly takes off, gaining momentum and dragging along many others that are linked to it. Normally this is when careers and fortunes are made; think of Thomas Edison, think of Henry Ford, think of Bill Gates.

Fourth, it becomes clear that the new invention will not work, or will not work very well, unless it is integrated with the “everything” in question. Including, to return to the example of military aviation, an organizational framework, the availability of appropriate raw materials—where would aviation have been without the timely discovery of cheap methods of producing aluminum? And without engineering, manufacturing, airfields, fuel depots, weapons and ammunition, maintenance- and repair shops, pilot selection and training, navigation aids, communications, a ground control system, a meteorological service, and what not.

However, invariably the point will come when it becomes clear that there are some things the new technology cannot do. Moreover, the one certain thing about any logistic curve is that, on pain of filling the universe with itself and draining it of everything else, it must and will come to an end. Once it flattens out people, looking back, invariably realize that some of the most essential things have changed little if at all. Including, to mention but a few, the way we enter this world when we are born and leave it when we die. And including, between those two landmarks, many if not most of the principal ways we, considered both as individuals and as part of the societies in which we live, feel and think and behave and act.

So it has been. So it is. And so, in spite of talk about approaching singularities that are always around the corner but never seem to arrive, it will remain.

Bassa Sababa, or Absolute Popycock

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For those of you who wonder, bassa sababa is an Israeli slang expression meaning, roughly, “a cool bummer.” They are also the title of a new song by Neta Barzilai, the winner of last year’s Eurovision about whom I have written before (see my post of 17 May 2018). Put on Youtube, in just twenty-four hours it it got over a million views. Now that the 2019 Eurovision, at which Ms. Barzilai made a guest appearance, the number has topped 17 million. The English version of the song’s lyrics, if that is the correct term, runs as follows:

Verse 1:

Stop, call your mama

Run, tell her I’ma Rhino

My killer girls are coming

If you won’t hide your gun

I’m gonna eat you

 

Pre-Ref:

(I’m-I’m-I’m-I’m-I’m) Gonna beat you like a drum

(I’m-I’m-I’m) Gonna chew you like some gum

(I’m-I’m-I’m) Go and tell her who I am

Baby, call your mom

(Bam, bam, bam, ba, ba)

 

Verse 2:

Stop, hold the trigger

Watch, my horn is bigger

I win, I love my thicker figure

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I’m gonna eat you

 

Pre-Ref:

(I’m-I’m-I’m-I’m-I’m) Gonna beat you like a drum

(I’m-I’m-I’m) Gonna chew you like some gum

(I’m-I’m-I’m) Go and tell her who I am

Baby, call your mom

(Bam, bam, bam, ba, ba)

 

In last year’s clip, Ms. Barzilai, pretending to be a chicken, told young men that she was not their toy and that they should leave her alone. This year she has outdone herself by identifying with a giant pink rhinoceros—the owner of the horn in question—chasing a disheveled, somewhat weak-looking man. As he runs for his life, at one point she even makes the gesture of cutting his throat! The clip ends with the man in question drowning in a pool of pink goo.

 

Whether the “bigger” horn Ms. Barzilai would like to have is a phallic symbol—or, to put it in plain words, yet another example of the penis envy that makes so much of the world go round—is a question I shall leave for my readers to answer. Ditto as to whether this song, like its predecessor, is, in reality, a cry for help coming from a young woman who, in an age less politically correct than our own, would have been called plain at best. Let me add, in parentheses, that personally I am glad such terms are used a little less often than they used to be. No one should be blamed for what he or she cannot help; having been born with Cain’s mark on my face, i.e a cleft palate, I know what I am talking about here.

 

Back to the clip. It made me wonder, since its contents can only be summed up as Feminazi. Ms. Barzilai’s throat-cutting gesture is definitely threatening. All over the Western world, any number of men have been demonized, fired, put on trial, convicted, fined, and even sent to jail for less. So how come women like Barzilai and her countless sisters are not only getting away with it but making fame and money out of it?

 

One answer would be that, in this way as in so many others, women are the privileged sex. In fact there exists an entire literature, much of it written by women, showing that women who commit the same offenses as men are routinely given much lighter sentences. If, indeed, they are brought to justice at all. Still I believe that the real reason is a different one. The Western—and by no means only the Western—cultural tradition is replete with female warriors. Starting with the “men hating” Amazons who, incidentally, ended up defeated by Theseus. Passing through Pamela Anderson in Barbed Wire, and reaching all the way to another countrywoman of mine, Gal Gadot, in Wonderwoman. Had they been real, then so large would the number of their male victims have been as to almost suggest genocide.

 

The point, however, is precisely that these and the vast majority of other female warriors are not real. Their peculiar combination of cleavage, weapons and sadism only exist in mythology and, today, all kinds of fantasies dreamt up for the benefit of teenagers who watch movies about them or play computer games with them. Practically without exception, they are absolute poppycock. And everyone knows it.

Saber Rattling in the Middle East

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One of the few things I like about Trump is that, two and a half years into his presidency, he has not (yet) begun any new wars. In this he is very much unlike some of his predecessors. Including Bill Clinton who, for reasons only he and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright understood, waged war on Serbia. Including George Bush Jr. who waged two wars—one on Afghanistan and one on Iraq, of which the first was stupid and the second both stupid and gratuitous. And including Barack Obama who helped turn Libya into a bloody mess from which it has yet to recover.

As the New Yorker put it, the U.S has a long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or even manufactured threats to which it was allegedly subjected by other countries. Just look at what happened in 1846, when President James Polk justified the Mexican-American War by claiming that Mexico had invaded U.S. territory; at that time, in fact, the border had not yet been drawn and no one knew where it was running.

When their turn came Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt all used similar methods. As, indeed, Lyndon Johnson may have done when he came up with the Bay of Tonkin incidents and used them to initiate his campaign against North Vietnam. Now Trump, for reasons known only to himself, is rattling his saber against Iran. Including both renewed economic sanctions and an arms buildup in the Middle East.

As the mysterious incidents in the Emirati port of al-Fujairah show, in all this there is plenty of potential for escalation, deliberate or not. How it will end no one knows. What seems clear, though, are two basic facts. One is that first Pakistan and then North Korea were able to avoid the sanctions imposed on them from various quarters and acquired the bomb nevertheless. This, as well as the nuclear history of some other members of the nuclear club, suggests that, had Iran really made building up its arsenal a top priority as the U.S and Israel claim, it would have succeeded long ago.
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The other is that the existence of nuclear weapons in the hands of those countries, both of which have quite bellicose traditions, has put an end to large-scale warfare between them and their neighbors. Such being the case, there is every reason to think that the same weapons, by reassuring the Mullahs that some American president will not make them share Colonel Gadhafi’s fate, will do the same in the Middle East.

And where do America’s European allies come in? Here I can only agree with The Donald. No point in worrying what Europe can and cannot, may or may not, do. Too stingy and too disunited to build up any real military strength, basically all it can do is watch from the sidelines while the vital decisions are made by others.

As it has done so often in the past.

The Outlook? More of the Same

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The formula is familiar. On one hand, there is some of the world’s greatest armed forces. Raised, maintained and paid for by the state, which means that they can operate in the open without any need to conceal what they are doing. Commanded by men—yes, nowadays, a few women too—with dozens of years’ experience during which they attended every kind of military and civilian academy, course, staff college, war college, super-war college, one can think of. Armed to the teeth with the most modern available weapons including, in many cases, warships, submarines, bombers, fighter bombers, ballistic missiles, anti-ballistic missile missiles, cruise missiles, and drones of every size and kind. And including, in many cases, nuclear arsenals which, had they been put to use, are fully capable of wiping out entire countries almost within the twinkling of an eye.

On the other side, groups made up of rebels, terrorists, guerrillas, insurgents, or whatever they may be called. Without exception, they started from nothing at all. Just a few men and women getting together in some room and swearing not to cease struggling until they achieve their aim. Operating underground against the state, either their own or a foreign one, they have great difficulty in obtaining bases, weapons and equipment, training, refuge, medical care, briefly everything an armed force needs. Initially they are very poor—to the point that, starting operations in Rhodesia during the mid-1960s, some of the groups involved were unable to pay their telephone bills. One even contacted the Israeli embassy in London, asking for help! No wonder some of them, including the Jewish ones that fought the British in Palestine before 1948, resorted to robbing banks.

Yet somehow the terrorists very often manage to win. In fact, taking the post-1945 period as a whole, it would be hard to find even a single case when a modern, especially but not exclusively Western, armed force did not end up by losing the struggle. Excuses there have been galore, but this does not change the situation on the ground. Or the fact that some of the greatest and most powerful empires in the world have been humiliated, defeated, beaten.

The latest episode of this kind, so typical of the contemporary world, unfolded last week in an around the Gaza Strip. On one hand, there is the Israeli Defense Force. One of the most powerful in the world, fully at the disposal of a democratically-elected government, able to make use of conscription, tightly organized, and armed to the teeth with a variety of modern weapons, many of them so advanced that they have turned into export hits. Plus, it is a force which, unlike so many others before it—just think of the Americans in Vietnam Afghanistan, and Iraq—is not obliged to operate far from home at the end of a long and impossibly expensive logistic lifeline. A force which, thanks to the vast array of intelligence-gathering people and instruments at its disposal, knows the terrain almost as well as its enemy, operating on home territory, does.

The enemy, Hamas, was established in 1987 by just two men, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al Rantissi. Both are long dead, sent to the delights of paradise by the kind of precision strikes that are the specialty of the IDF and the IAF in particular. It is a multifaceted organization; including a religious core, a political arm, a military arm, and various sub-groups that engage in charity. It also has a financial wing which is responsible for obtaining funds from Palestinians as well as several Arab and pro-Arab governments around the world.

Some males could not gain or maintain erections during a session of physical intimacy. canada viagra generic http://raindogscine.com/?order=7732 uk generic viagra This is because the sudden break from the medication can cause priapism, a painful erection lasting for more than 4 to 6 hours. This is not shameful because if there sildenafil india is a problem faced by millions of men. It order generic cialis raindogscine.com is better to speak to your doctor about all those concern regarding your intimate function or speak to your partner and their issues. Right from the beginning, Hamas has emphasized its opposition to any kind of deal with Israel that would involve recognizing the latter. Its objective, openly proclaimed, is to wipe the Jewish State off the map and establish a Palestinian one in its place. In this it differed from the Palestinian Authority which seemed prepared to take a road towards compromise, culminating in the 1994 Oslo Agreements. In so far as both Israel and the Authority fear Hamas and operate against it, the agreement between them has lasted to this day, more or less.

Meanwhile, starting in 2001, Hamas activists have been launching rockets from Gaza into Israel. In 2007, following the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, they chased out the representatives of the Palestinian Authority and set up they own government there. Since then Hamas has greatly increased its attacks on the neighboring Israeli settlements, engaging in endless rounds of fighting, most small, others quite large. Starting with potshots across the border with Israel, passing through the “attack tunnels” dug into Israeli territory, changing to incendiary-carrying “terror” balloons, kites and drones, and culminating, for the time being, with thousands of rockets capable of reaching most Israeli targets south of Haifa.

If Hamas’ history is ever written, no doubt it will bring to light an epic struggle. One during which the organization faced formidable obstacles, went through periods of intense Israeli offensives, suffered any number of setbacks as well as countless casualties, yet allowed nothing to divert it from its chosen path and always gathered strength. The kind of epic, in other words, that commands respect, perhaps even admiration.

And Israel? Like so many others who have tried their hands at this game, it has used practically every trick in the book. Doing so, like so many others it stands accused of clumsiness, heavy-handedness, and using greatly excessive force. All, be it be noted, to no avail. Like so many others who tried their hands at this game, Israel has been unable to overcome its enemy by breaking his will. But unlike so many others who tried their hands at the game, it has nowhere to retreat to.

The outlook? Since both sides have claimed victory, each in his own camp, more of the same.

How My Family Survived the Holocaust

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Please note: this is a somewhat altered and corrected version of my post of 17 December 2015. I decided to put it on again because of Holocaust Day, which we in Israel “celebrate” today, 2 May.

How did your family survive the Holocaust? Is a question I have heard many, many times. So this week, instead of addressing the usual topics, let me say a few words about that.

My maternal grandfather, Louis Wijler (1890-1977), was a self-made man He was also a very rich one, having worked his way up from practically zero to become the largest grain-dealer in the Netherlands. When the Germans came in 1940 they took his business, Granaria NV, away from him and appointed a Verwalter, administrator, in his place. However, the Verwalter only showed himself occasionally. My grandfather had always been a generous employer and the other directors, most of whom were gentiles, remained loyal to him.

Towards the end of 1942, when the deportations were already forging ahead, he succeeded in having himself and most of his family put on a list of a thousand “prominent” Jews. Including businessmen, former politicians and officials, prominent academics, musicians, etc. In January 1943—it was a cold winter—these people were interned in De Schaffelaar, a large country house in the Eastern Netherlands. Later it was restored, but at that time it was in a fairly dilapidated state without running water. Men and women were assigned separate quarters, conditions were cramped, and food was fairly scarce. But at any rate their survived.

The understanding, obtained by God known what methods, was that they would be allowed to remain there until after the war. But this promise the Germans broke. In November they and their Dutch collaborators came to evacuate the camp and transfer its inhabitants to Westerbork. Westerbork had been erected by the Dutch government before 1939 as a camp for Jewish refugees from Germany. During the war it was the place from where trains went to “the east.” Meaning, Auschwitz. But that was a name no one at De Schaffelaar seems to have heard. Decades later my father, who was 25 at the time, said that they had suspected life in “the east” would not be a picnic. However, the idea of gas chambers and mass murder had been “beyond our imagination.”

Most of the interned Jews went docilely enough. No one like the Dutch in bowing to “de overheid” (the authorities) and following orders! Not so my family. My grandfather, fully expecting that the Germans would break their promise, prepared accordingly. When the day came, he, his wife, their children four daughters, one in-law, two future in-laws, and two nephews) all managed to escape. My father, who had golden hands, used to work as a handyman in camp. He simply put on his overalls, picked up his tools—my son Eldad still has his electric tester, which still works—and walked out. What nerve! But to this day he feels a little guilty about having left his fiancé, my mother to be, behind.

In the event, my mother and a cousin of hers hid under the floor of a wooden barrack used by the internees to wash and perform their ablutions. Listening to the Germans and the Dutch police looting, drinking and partying, they waited until nightfall. Then they crept out and left. Later this same man, along with his brother, succeeded in reaching the Swiss border, only to be turned away by the Swiss police. Both of them died at Auschwitz.

Others, including an aunt of mine who had just given birth, made their way out by similar methods. But that was only the first step. Next, two things were needed. First, a place to stay; second, money. Both were provided by my grandfather by way of the business. As an importer of cattle feed, he had many clients in the eastern, less developed, agricultural part of the country. Some he had known for decades. He was thus able to compile a list of “addresses,” as the saying went; meaning, people of whom he knew that they were reliable and would be willing to take him and members of his family in. Money, too, came from Granaria NV. In his memoirs, which he wrote in 1974, he laconically said that they used “all kinds of methods” to get the money out of the business without drawing the Verwalter’s attention.
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Not having IDs—their own, stamped with a large “J” for “Jood,” they had hidden or thrown away—they could not show themselves on the streets. Not before they got false papers. First, fake ones, some of them produced by another relative who was a chemist and knew how to do these things; later, “real” ones. Real in the sense that the personal details and photograph were entered on official blanks the Underground had stolen from the Dutch ministry of the interior.

Even so it was a risky business. For example, at one point my grandparents were betrayed by a company employee who had a gun put to this head. They were having their afternoon tea when the house in which they were staying was surrounded; they were barely able to hide in a pre-prepared hole between the first and second floors when the door was broken in. “Wo sind die Wijlers,” “waar zijn de Wijlers” (where are the Wijlers, in German and Dutch.) “Just left”, came the answer. Whereupon the man of the house was beaten up and taken to a concentration camp. Fortunately he survived.

My aunt, who had just given birth, and her husband stayed with friends from his university days. As he later wrote, the hardest part was not being able to return a favor to your hosts, who had hidden you at great risk to themselves. At one point, they too learnt that they had been betrayed and that the Germans were looking for a young couple with a baby. Whereupon they hid the girl—she was about a year old, and fast asleep—in a box, shoved her under a bed, and walked out, hand in hand. Fortunately she did not wake up and survived. But that was not the end of the story. At one point, to hide her, they gave her to a non-Jewish couple for safekeeping. When the war ended the couple, having become strongly attached to the girl, refused to give her back. In the end, give her back they did—but what a tragedy for both sides.

And so it went. Each family member had his or her own narrow escapes. Here is one story my father told me. He was living with counterfeit documents under the name of Jan (his real name was Leon) Pap. One day in 1944 a German soldier knocked on the door. He had been sent, he explained, by the Ortskommandant (local commander) who wanted to see my father. The German was elderly, perhaps fifty years old, carried an old carbine, and did not look terribly dangerous. This gave my father courage. Courage, or was it chuztpah, impudence, was what you needed most. He answered that he would not allow himself to be coerced. Whereupon the German burst out and said that he too had been coerced. His wife was a Sudeten German, and that was how the Wehrmacht had got him in his native Czechoslovakia! My father gave his word that he would visit the Kommandant next day. He knew better than to keep his promise and disappeared.

He had several similar escapes. On two occasions he was stopped by Dutch SS men. On the first one they wanted to requisition his bicycle (with tires made out of old automobile tires). On the second they were looking for young males to send to Germany as forced labor. Both times he was able to outwit the men by claiming that he was not just an accountant, which he was, but an accountant working for het Rijk (the Reich, i.e. the government, in Dutch).

The others used similar methods. Always keeping their eyes open and their mouths, shut. Always changing “addresses,” bluffing their way through when they were stopped and questioned. Almost all of them were able to hold out until the end of the war; so, incidentally, did most other Jewish residents of de Schaffelaar who were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto and remained there until 1945 when they were liberated by the Russians. Almost of them are gone now, including my father who died in 2018 just a few months short of his 100th birthday. I used to visit him once a week and push him around a park in his wheelchair; that is how I came to hear most of his stories.

The moral he drew from his experience? That he could have made a good actor.

Better Buy a Dildo

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One of the most important, yet seldom noted, aspects of modern feminism is that, in their efforts to prove themselves, women have almost never originated anything new to call their own. Instead of doing so they regularly followed in men’s footsteps, imitating them in whatever they did.

Consider the following examples.

General. Following his defeat at the battle of Salamis, Persian Emperor Xerxes remarked that, on that day, his men had fought like women and his women—meaning, his ally Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus—like men. From then to Margaret Thatcher, the best thing one could say about a successful woman was that she was like a man; the worst thing one could say about a man, that he was like a woman. So it was, so it is, and so, presumably, it will remain.

Dress. Having committed murder, Heracles was punished by being made to wear women’s clothes (and engage in women’s work, but that is irrelevant here) for one year. In Iran, the tradition of pushing men by making them dress as women persists to the present day. Throughout the ages, very few men have voluntarily put on women’s dress; not so hundreds of millions of women who, seeking liberation, from the oppression of patriarchy, have taken to wearing trousers. A paradox, that, if ever one there has been.

Sports. Organized sports originated in ancient Greece. Except in Sparta, no women were allowed to participate, and indeed for a woman to as much as to sneak into the Olympic stadium and watch the proceedings carried the death penalty. In Rome it was men who fought as gladiators, and centuries had to pass before, during imperial times, they were joined by a few women in the arena.

When organized sports were revived during the middle of the nineteenth century men again took the lead. When the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896 no women took part. This changed in 1900, when they competed in tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian events, and golf. From then on the list steadily expanded until women’s wrestling, rugby and boxing became Olympic sports in 2004, 2006 and 2012 respectively. By now we even have female racing drivers. Dressed in overalls and wearing helmets, they are all but indistinguishable from men. Hallelujah!

Smoking. Tobacco smoking was invented in the Americas. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was taken up by the European conquerors. Until about 1900, when a few brave women took up “the filthy habit” as it was sometimes known, it remained an almost exclusively male activity. Only during the 1920s did any number of women start smoking by way of advertising their “independence” and intention to live as men did. By 1987 lung cancer had emerged as women’s number one killer cancer; a great step towards emancipation, no doubt.

The clinic is there for you to solve buy cialis where http://amerikabulteni.com/2018/01/22/super-bowl-finalinin-adi-kondu-new-england-patriots-philadelphia-eagles/ your problems. Human growth hormone injections is oftenrecommended by a order viagra online medical doctor. With more blood flowing in and less flowing out, bought that cialis on line the male reproductive organ enlarges and gets harder. Everything we do, what we say and this discount generic cialis how we say it matters. Cycling. Like almost everything else, bicycles were invented and ridden by men. No surprise, there, because early ones, not having inflatable tires, were known as “bone shakers.” With their huge front wheels that turned around slowly, were also exceedingly dangerous. Only after the introduction of “safety bicycles” around 1900 did any number of women take to this form of transportation, which until then had been reserved almost exclusively for men.

Driving. Men invented automobiles as they did bicycles. Not surprisingly they were also the first to drive them. “Male chauvinism” apart, there was a good reason for this. Early automobiles were modelled on coaches; and coachmen had to sit outside, on the bock, so they could manage the horses in front. Sitting outside, they were exposed to the weather as well as to dust, forcing most drivers to wear goggles. Drivers also had the pleasure of watching the droppings. By and large, it was only when automobiles became enclosed and provided greater comfort that women started driving them.

Flying. Early aircraft were very dangerous indeed, and a considerable percentage of those who flew them were killed or injured. Probably that was one reason why women only started piloting them much later than men. Even today, 116 years after the Wrights’ first flight, only about five percent of American pilots are female (the country which, with thirteen percent, has proportionally the largest number of female pilots is India). Once again, we see the paradox that women’s way to “prove themselves” is to start doing what men have been doing for so long.

Computing. Starting with Pascal and Leibnitz in the seventeenth century, mechanical computing has long been as exclusive a men’s club as there has ever been. Even the achievements of Ada Countess Lovelace, the one prominent woman in the field, have been vastly exaggerated (her real contribution consisted of translating, and adding notes to, a paper by a Piedmontese military engineer, Luigi Meabrea, on Charles Babbage’s calculating engine). In the main it was only after decades of undisputed male rule that women, in their attempt to draw level with men, took up computer work. Even today women are underrepresented in high-tech; in the U.S as the world’s number one high-tech country, their percentage in the field has actually been declining for years past

War. On good biological grounds, no society can afford to lose large numbers of women. Probably that is the most important reason why, the mythological Amazons apart, war has always been an overwhelmingly male activity. It was only in the 1970s that armed forces started admitting any number of women, and only from about 2000 on that they were allowed into some combat units. Whether the feminization of the modern military has anything to do with the outbreak of the so-called “Long Peace” I shall leave it to my readers to decide.

Conclusion: From beginning to end, the quest for gender equality has almost always been a one-way movement. Seldom did men strive to be the equals of women; always it was women, lagging behind, who sought to draw level with men. Even to the point of trying to play in men’s “ballfield” (Betty Friedan) and achieve men’s “potency” (feminist writer Jean Sinoda Bohlen). Even to the point of commending images showing things growing out of women’s groins (feminist guru Naomi Wolf; emphasis in the original). Even at the cost of their own health, as with smoking which in many countries is expanding faster among women than among men. Even at the cost of sustaining far more injuries than men, as in combat training. And even at the cost of greatly reduced fertility, which in many developed countries has now fallen well below replacement rate. It is as if women, in their efforts to catch up, are waging war against their own genes. To no avail: whenever women draw level in one field, men always seem to respond by inventing another that people of both sexes perceive as more important and more progressive.

Better, perhaps, to simply buy a dildo.

A Tale of Two Methods

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Throughout history groups, rulers and states that wanted to change borders and annex territories, including the populations that lived on them and the resources they contained, had the choice between two methods.

One was waging war, meaning the forcible conquest and annexation of land; no further explanation needed. The other was dynastic, principally marriage but sometimes adoption as well. Seen from a dynastic point of view, for a ruler to have no marriageable daughters could be almost as great a disaster as having no sons. How else to gain allies? The Byzantine emperors in particular were adept at this game, always offering their daughters to the chiefs of neighboring tribes. So did their Chinese colleagues. However, the unrivalled champions were the Habsburgs. Of them, it used to be said that alii bellum gerant, tu felix Austria nube (others wage war, you, happy Austria marry). Both methods were used on all continents and are probably as old as history itself. As, is shown, for example, by a series of diplomatic letters exchanged between the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Babylon around 1350 BCE.

Reflecting the rise of mass nationalism and of democracy, the first of these method to go out of fashion was marriage. The last European ruler who still re-distributed territories and created principalities specifically in order to provide his brothers, sisters and in-laws with crowns and land was Napoleon. True, throughout the nineteenth century royalty continued to marry each other as often as they could. If Napoleon III broke the pattern in favor of the Spanish Countess Eugenie Montijo, then mainly because no important European ruler was willing to entrust his daughter to a parvenu; as he himself said, “I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to a woman unknown to me, with whom an alliance would have had advantages mixed with sacrifices.” Later in the century the fact that Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria married Princess Elizabeth (“Sissi”) of Bavaria, Emperor-to-be Frederick III of Germany Princess Victoria (Queen Victoria’s daughter), and King-to-be Edward VII of England Princess Alexandra of Denmark did not make any difference to the distribution of territory among any of the realms involved.

While dynastic politics went into decline, the use of war for conquest and annexation continued much as it had always done. Examples are the 1848 war between the U.S and Mexico, the Franco-Austrian-War of 1859, the Austrian-Prussian-Danish War of 1864, the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Nor was this the end of the story. In 1878 the Congress of Berlin, convened in the wake of the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, recognized Britain’s occupation of Cyprus and Austria’s that of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The 1895 war between Japan and China ended with the former gaining Taiwan and Korea. World War I brought about rather drastic changes in the borders of France, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia among others. The 1939-40 “Winter War” resulted in the loss of territory by Finland in favor of Russia; whereas World War II led to an entire series of territorial changes both in Eastern Europe and in the Far East.

The impotency is a major problem that has become hurdle in male sexual life is commonly recognized cialis buy cheap as erectile dysfunction. Men usually do not react much but when they do it through the power of intention. generic levitra india Research shows that gentle prostate massage viagra cipla india can benefit people with gastroparesis or delayed digestion. Here are the different stages: Stage A This is the reason, why women india online viagra have stopped preferring it anymore. Given this long, long history, one is rather surprised to find it said, in article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945, that “all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity… of any state.” Since then, not only has the number of members tripled but the principle has been reaffirmed several times by various international organizations. Including, in 1970, the United Nations General Assembly. More surprising still, on the whole it has been remarkably well observed. When what was then the kingdom Trans-Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank in 1948, in the entire world only two countries, Britain and Pakistan, recognized the change. Morocco’s attempt to have its attempt to annex the Spanish Sahara has also met with very limited success. Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 not only failed to bring him recognition but provided his enemies with a cause around which they were able to rally much of the world. To be sure, nothing is perfect. India has been able to gain recognition for its annexation of Goa and Indonesia, that of Western Papua. On the whole, though, the introduction of the principle and the widespread recognition it enjoys has probably been beneficial. Both helping prevent some armed conflicts and, as happened e.g in 1965 when the Treaty of Tashkent between India and Pakistan was signed, making it easier to resolve them.

Even Russia, one of the world’ most powerful countries, has failed to have its 2014 annexation of the Crimea recognized by any other United Nations member. Perhaps the most interesting case of all is the Israeli one. Following its establishment in 1948 Israel, its occupation of land not assigned to it by the U.N notwithstanding, was able to win recognition of its borders by many of the world’s states. It has, however, had great difficulty in doing the same in respect to its capital, Jerusalem, as well as the additional territories its forces occupied during the 1967 war. Along comes President Donald Trump. First he moved his embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby going a long way to recognize the latter as Israel’s capital. Next he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights—a step which he took without asking for, let alone obtaining, the approval of Congress first.

The true impact of Trump’s latest measure remains to be seen. Starting on the regional level, certainly it will do nothing to help the cause of an eventual peace between Israel and Syria; instead, it should be understood as an admission that such a peace remains forever impossible and, on Israel’s part, undesirable as well. Proceeding to the global one, it could be seen as an important step towards the breaking of the 1945 consensus; not by some marginal member of the international community, but by the most powerful one of all.

Does this mean that dynastic diplomacy may also enjoy a comeback one day? Let’s wait and see.