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| Mild-Mannered Avenger: “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.” - Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, 1942. |
HAD IT NOT BEEN for the intervention of the Queen Mother, Arthur “Bomber” Harris would never have got his statue. While all the other great British commanders of the Second World War were showered with honours and had their likenesses cast in bronze, Air Marshall Harris became someone the British Establishment found it expedient to overlook. Why? Because Harris was responsible – at least in terms of his strategic decision-making – for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Harris’s “Bomber Command” rained down explosives in such quantities that, in the cities of Hamburg and Dresden, they created firestorms. A firestorm takes hold when the combustion site exhausts its supply of oxygen and begins drawing in the surrounding air to keep the inferno alive. The inrushing air soon acquires the speed of a gale-force wind. This not only fuels the flames, it fans them, increasing the size and heat of the conflagration to truly horrific levels. Without oxygen, those huddling in bomb shelters are asphyxiated. Those attempting to flee find their feet sinking into superheated asphalt as, all around them, the streets melt. So hot did it become in Dresden, that school-girls seeking protection from the intense heat in a water tank were boiled alive.
Harris was not in the least bit fazed. In a notorious address, delivered to the British people in 1942, at the start of his no-holds-barred bombing campaign, Harris chillingly declared:
Harris was not in the least bit fazed. In a notorious address, delivered to the British people in 1942, at the start of his no-holds-barred bombing campaign, Harris chillingly declared:
Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris.
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.
It isn’t difficult to understand why Harris had to wait so long for his statue. But, those who turned their backs on him were the worst kind of hypocrites. In the context of an increasingly brutal global conflict, Harris distinguished himself by refusing to cloak the brutality of war in fine phraseology, or weasel words. The strategy of “carpet bombing” German cities was approved by Britain’s war cabinet because it worked. Home Office researchers had discovered that people coped better with losing their loved ones than they did with losing their homes.
People who say that bombing civilians doesn’t work are, quite simply, wrong.
Nor is it the case that New Zealanders can stand aloof from Harris’s cold-blooded destruction of human life. Six thousand Kiwis flew in those bombers, ofttimes navigating by the terrible red glow in the skies ahead of their aircraft. Nearly 2,000 of them never returned to base.
I rehearse these facts as the Israeli Air Force rains death and destruction upon the defenceless cities of Gaza. The world stands aghast at the horrific scenes filling the screens of its devices. “These are civilians!”, it cries, “Innocent women and children!” From the streets of the Middle East rises the grim accusation: “Israel is guilty of war crimes!”
But if the Israelis are guilty of war crimes, then so were my father’s generation – and my grandfather’s. It was “our side” that blockaded Germany for the duration of World War I. Like the other British Dominions, New Zealand was quite willing to have the Royal Navy starve Germany to death. It was war. You do what it takes to win.
“Bomber” Harris spoke the brutal language of military necessity. Faced with the impossibility of defeating Germany without killing Germans, he point-blank refused to indulge in moral humbug.
Sorting out the guilty from the innocent in the crimson fog of war is beyond the competence of mortal men.
Sir Arthur Harris (he was knighted in 1953) died in 1984, and his statue was unveiled by the Queen Mum in 1992. She was taken aback to hear the jeers and boos of the crowd.
This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 October 2023.
38 comments:
One of the main purposes of the Nuremberg trials was to conveniently ignore and brush under the carpet the fact that the Allies had perpetrated as many, if not more, war crimes than the Germans ever did. The Allies even went as far as to create a sui generis category they called "crimes against humanity" such was the guilt and culpability they had to cover-up. Dresden is the most pronounced instance of Allied savagery, coming a matter of months before Germany's defeat, there being no significant military or industrial targets in the city (all of these had already been bombed since 1942), and the deliberate use of a combination of high explosives and incendiary ordnances to ensure maximum carnage.
Despite what we like to tell ourselves in order to justify our self-attributed status as the Good Guys in WW2 and our status as the morally superior side, the three years of deliberate carpeting bombing of German civilians, which only increased in intensity and ferocity (and one could say, needlessness) as 1945 approached, tells a very different story. The main distinguishing factor is that "we" won and "they" lost, and therefore the winner got to write the histories and apportion guilt.
You may also be interested by this article, which goes directly to the topic, The Nazi case for Hamas.
It turns out that at least one Nazi, Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D, attempted to argue that the Allies had committed war crimes no different to his:
I am not in a position to isolate this occurrence from the occurrences of 1943, 1944, and 1945 where with my own hands I took children and women out of the burnng asphalt myself, and with my own hands I took big blocks of stone from the stomachs of pregnant women; and with my own eyes I saw 60,000 people die within 24 hours.
The judges addressed that point directly in their summary as they convicted him to be executed.
See also this more recent take on what "proportional response" actually means.
It's very frightening what could happen, more so because there is no obvious answer as to how to end this conflict.
Historian Nial Ferguson and Jay Mens: https://www.thefp.com/p/israel-and-america-have-no-choice-but-to-act
But don't lose faith in humanity or the future: Jordan Peterson and Bjorn Lomborg https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/27/we-live-in-dark-times-but-now-is-no-time-to-despair/
"War is endlessly and eternally horrific. It is understandable and even necessary that the media spotlights today’s conflicts. But this can make us believe that we’re living through unprecedented violence. Russia’s war indeed meant that battle deaths in 2022 reached a high for this century, but they are still very low historically. Last year, 3.5 in 100,000 people died as a consequence of war, below even the 1980s and far below the 20th century average of 30 per 100,000. The world has in fact become much more peaceful. This is of course little consolation to those living amidst the world’s conflicts."
"We need to foster an environment that challenges fearmongering and promotes optimistic yet critical thinking and constructive discussion with regard to the future. We hope that our new Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) which will host its first international conference in London next week will be of aid in this regard, bringing people of good will and good sense together from around the world, to formulate and communicate a positive vision of the future.
To drive progress for the world’s poorest, we should similarly focus on efficient and well-documented policies with enormous benefits. Working with more than a hundred of the world’s top economists, one of us has helped identify the best solutions to many of the world’s most insidious problems: basic tuberculosis treatment that will save a million people a year, land tenure reform that lets poorer people reap the benefits, education technology that can deliver three-times better learning outcomes, and more.
These policies don’t make for catchy headlines, but they can do immense good: for a cost of $35 billion annually they would save an astounding 4.2 million lives and make the poorer half of the world $1.1 trillion richer every year.
If we look to the data and the bigger picture, we can see that the world is better than it was, and is likely to get better still. We have a responsibility to adopt the very best policies to move ahead."
An interesting comparison Chris. As Netanyahu said - “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel” - and he is probably correct. It is pointless trying to build peace agreements with people who don't actually want peace. Hamas wants to drive the Jews out of Israel - nothing less will suffice. And so the innocent Palestinians will continue to suffer...
"As night fell over the Mesopotamian desert one evening in the summer of 1923, one can imagine Britain's maverick Royal Air Force pilot Arthur "Bomber" Harris fending off the disorientating effects of the distant horizon that melded with the sea and sand below...In the desolate frontier beneath him, a village soon emerged with shadowy figures scurrying across it frantically in search of temporary shelter. These so-called recalcitrant men, women and children, not to mention their homes and livestock, were Bomber's targets...Perhaps they were innocent of any subterfuge, and the intelligence guiding Harris's plane, like many that flew before and after him, was wrong. Faulty guesswork, however, deterred neither the pilot nor the military men any politicians that called the shots. In their minds, the moral effect of immediate mass destruction was the same...As the plane disappeared, the pilot, deafened by engine noise, scarcely heard the secondary explosions from the delayed action bombs or the screams of pain and loss that accompanied them." - Elkins, Caroline. Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire [2022]
Arthur Harris honed his skills of carpet bombing of civilians in Iraq and then as Air Commander in Palestine between the Wars. There is is impossible to moot a deference of "military necessity". To look at his career and weigh the extent of his crimes, you need to look at his career in Rhodesia and the Middle East. You cannot and should not only evaluate him to white victims in racist Nazi Germany, but his views on those to be repressed within the British Empire in which the lives of the colonized people were given no value.
" Dresden is the most pronounced instance of Allied savagery, coming a matter of months before Germany's defeat, there being no significant military or industrial targets in the city (all of these had already been bombed since 1942)"
There seems to be a minor industry among members of the extreme right at the moment which tries to equate the bombing of Germany with things like the Holocaust. The pseudo-historian David Irving is one such.
The Allied bombing of Germany firstly was not against the laws of war at the time. It was certainly horrific, but it was a legitimate (for the time) way of trying to attack the German economy and shorten the war. Unfortunately we didn't have the precision weapons we have today which could have done the job without the excess destruction.
The Holocaust on the other hand was a deliberate effort to wipe out several groups of people. It had no effect on the victory or defeat for Germany, apart from perhaps the use of trains and personnel to accomplish the killing which would have been better put towards actually fighting the war. There is absolutely no moral equivalency here.
" Dresden is the most pronounced instance of Allied savagery" – never in a million years.
Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people were lost in the bombing of Dresden in the were some legitimate reasons for bombing it. The casualties were far higher in the firebombing of Japan's cities, and by the standards of the time there were also legitimate reasons for that. Japanese industry for instance was not concentrated, intended to be spread out in many small almost artisanal production facilities.
And the dropping of the 2 atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing I think over over 200,000 deaths, were pretty much unnecessary. In fact, the Allies had to search quite hard for cities to drop these bombs on given that almost all the Japanese cities – apart from Kyoto – within range of Allied bombers had been between 60 and 90% destroyed.
But again, they dropped the bombs with the hope of shortening the war and to avoid an invasion. The fact that they had little effect on the Japanese government is neither here nor there. Neither European nor the Japanese strategic bombing campaign approaches the deliberate murder of millions of people in what were essentially death factories. They are certainly not morally equivalent.
Worth reading on what is necessary to win a war is Phillips Payson O’Brien’s book “How The war Was Won” regarding WW2.
GS is right, that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan to end WW2 was indeed a"pretty much unnecessary". But the US didn't just spare Kyoto from bombing to preserve the old capital. They also spared Hiroshima from conventional bombing, in order to leave a target city intact, in order to better judge the effects of an atomic bomb alone. If devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been a military necessity, it could have been done weeks or months earlier by firebombing.
And why two atom bombs? At least partially, to test two different types of bomb. Hiroshima got the "gun" design of a uranium bomb, Nagasaki the "implosion" design of a plutonium bomb. The later "worked" better, and the US built only plutonium bombs after that.
In many ways, the atomic bombs were not the last shots of WW2, they were the first shots of the Cold War. They were a warning to the Soviet Union their enemies now had a powerful new weapon that they did not. By a combination of rapid development by the Soviet Union of it's own atomic bombs (helped by an efficient spy network), deterrence after that, and some great good luck, the world got through the Cold War without a nuclear war breaking out.
However, I would suggest there is now a similar dilemma for Israel as there was for the Allies fighting the Nazis. In ideology, Hamas adds Nazi elements of Jew-hatred to ISIS fundamentalism. How do you fight an enemy like that? In the case of Nazi Germany, by using every method available, including bombing cities and dams, demanding nothing less
than unconditional surrender, destroying the Nazi regime, and holding the Nuremburg trials. In the case of Hamas, such complete defeat is, unfortunately, probably impossible. But Israel now has the same dilemma as "Bomber" Harris and his backers. The methods needed are not pretty, and they create deserved sympathy for the innocent victims. But destroying the Nazis needed to be done, as does inflicting the absolute maximum damage possible on Hamas.
From one anonymous to another..
GS is never right. and you say Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unwarranted. You need further insight, I suggest a read of...
The Night of The New Moon by Laurens Van Der Post
From the position of a POW in Java during the Japanese occupation.
Angry people ripping posters of kidnap victims
Hayden Donnell hates old white NIMBY's because he wants people to be housed; he hates the rise of Naziism around the world (Brexit and Trump were response to the salience of immigration at the national level)
Brenard Hickey is scathing at CCC for opposing zoning from central govt: "there is going to need to be 5 stories all over Christchurch to cope with population growth [immigration]"
Giovanni Tiso "rich countries like NZ should open their doors to the poor (open borders)
Stu Donnovan: "My God. That's your bests work. Is how I've been thinking" [both YIMBY's]
Acts of kindness bear witness to our shared suffering. But when kindness becomes pathological, it is cruel and divisive — as with these examples. And it is on the rise. In the West today, there are people whose suffering is deemed to be non-existent or of little value, and so judgement takes the place of understanding, punishment that of mercy. The result is a purity spiral whereby extreme kindness towards an in-group gives unlimited licence to act with cruelty towards an out-group. It’s this licence that gives progressive activists permission to clothe antisemitism as anti-colonialism.
https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-tyranny-of-pathological-kindness/
There is no justification for bombing civilians. But what if those civilians are complicit to the reason for the bombing. In Dresden not only were the munitions a target but also those who manned the factories. Civilians. In Gaza Hamas has used its civilians as human shields. Many of those Civilians also support Hamas one way or another. Those who don’t want Hamas in Gaza will be too frightened to speak out. They are innocent but complicit by their silence. Those who hide and support Hamas are complicit. As in Dresden not all civilians are innocent. The shocking death of many people can’t be accepted, but it is, and you can see why.
" How do you fight an enemy like that?"
It literally doesn't matter. Hamas has won. Even if you kill them all – as one British intelligence wossname said – you can't kill terrorists without creating more terrorists.
They have achieved their aims. They wanted to stop any peace process between Israel and other Muslim countries, they wanted to stir up public opinion in Muslim countries, they wanted chaos. And to lure the Israeli army into an urban area. That last they may be haven't quite done yet but it's on the way.
It's ironic given that Hamas was pretty much created by Israel as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority and now it's come back to bite them in the arse. What you have to do with them is try to marginalise them by creating a just peace. Pretty sure that most ordinary Palestinians simply want peace and some form of independence. That of course isn't going to happen with the present Israeli government and to some extent they have future proofed this by stealing more and more Palestinian land.
https://www.liberationnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/palestine-land-map.jpg
Look at this and tell me where a Palestinian state is going to go.
I will make one quick point on the bombing of cities in WWII. It was still a reasonably new military tactic. While used partly in WWI, most famously Guernica and by the Japanese in China, the military analysis of terror bombing of civilians had not been done. Regardless of the morality and within the developing concept of war crimes, such bombing has been shown to be a failed military strategy. Rather than break the moral for fighting, as with the 'spirit of the blitz', it has shown to have a unifying effect and harden the resolve of the politicians, soldiers and public support.
The stated aim of Israel to illuminate Hamas through bombing and invasion is unsustainable. The number of hostages condemned to death, the number of conscripts killed, and the number of civilian Palestinians that will die must be calculated into the formula of what will be achieved. This will have a significant effect on public opinion both within and outside Israel. Further, the increase in recruitment by Hamas and proxy war funding by Iran will perpetuate the conflict generationally. The inevitable military campaign into Gaza has to have realist and achievable goals and a get out end game. Ultimately, the conditions in Gaza that allows Hamas to reign has to be addressed. The defeat of Hamas must be the people of Gaza rejecting both the political and military wings of Hamas.
When facing the terror of October 7th, retribution may be an understandable reaction, but it is not an understandable or sustainable solution.
"She was taken aback to hear the jeers and boos of the crowd."
I'm not at all surprised at it. I was born immediately after the war. I heard about this from my parents' generation. They were of the view that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime. There was no point to it, at a time when, for Germany, the war was lost.
Whatever we may think about it now, my parents' generation saw it as, so to speak, not cricket. Our side was surely better than that? The dastardly Nazis may have been capable of such savagery, but not us!
They were unimpressed by claims that it was done to destroy civilian morale. The Blitz hadn't done that to British civilians: in virtue of what would anyone have thought it'd work with German civilians?
That view was passed on to their offspring, and, doubtless, it was in turn passed to the next generation.
Gaza is a concentration camp by every definition. What is happening now is the systematic, industrial scale killing of innocent people, mostly women and children.
Shutting off food, water, and electricity for 2 million people and then carpet bombing one of the highest density urban areas on the planet is disgusting. The fictitious story of babies dying because they were removed from their incubators in Kuwait was used as grounds for a war on Iraq yet today Netanyahu’s government refused pleas to allow fuel for powering the incubators, fridges and dialysis machines at the 4,000 bed al-Shifa hospital. The world is getting to see the face of a truly a ghastly regime.
This is not self-defence. It is cruel. It is depraved. It is genocide.
Spell check may have a Freudian lean, I of course meant Israel wish to eliminate Hamas. Sadly, the result of the military action may end in illuminate.
It's a terrible thing Loz.
You have to wonder, therefore, as to the purpose in the extreme provocation in the first place. It obviously wasn't a military objective by any accepted definition. Perhaps the deliberate targeting and murdering, rape, torture and capture of innocent civilians in the cruelest way imaginable (and unimaginable) was intended to provoke this reaction. The Gazans used, not only as human shields, but propaganda fodder? Make no mistake, Hamas have no respect for life, their own or anyone else's. What they seek is the death and destruction of the Israelis and Israel; the lives of their own people are not collateral damage but a necessary component of that genocidal obsession.
I will tell you where a Palestinian state is going to go ... Neverland.
When the Palestinians, and their stupid supporters, get to Neverland, give my regards to Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
There never has been a country called Palestine. There has never been a country called Aotearoa. And in both cases, there never will be.
If any pro-Palestinian commentators want to put their money where there mouth is, might I suggest they go to Gaza and fight the Israeli military machine.
Allah willing, you will become a martyr to a lost cause.
Death to America! Death to Israel! Long live all of those Muslim/Arab liberal democracies with good human rights records!
In 2010, the Dresden City Council, sick of the speculation, commissioned a study which came back with a death toll of 25,000 or so.
Looks like I missed out quoting the judges comments from my link The Nazi Case for Hamas:
A city is bombed for tactical purposes… it inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to these same railroad tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women and children and shooting them.
A couple of points on the Atomic Bombs in Japan:
And why two atom bombs? At least partially, to test two different types of bomb. Hiroshima got the "gun" design of a uranium bomb, Nagasaki the "implosion" design of a plutonium bomb. The later "worked" better, and the US built only plutonium bombs after that.
Nope. The implosion design had already been tested in the New Mexican desert. There was no need to test the "gun" design because it was so simple that experiments showed it would work, the main question being whether it would be dud producing a few hundreds tons of TNT equivalent power, or something larger.
And the reason for moving ahead with the implosion design had already been set before any test, when it was recognised that plutonium production via nuclear reactors would far outpace uranium enrichment via multiple processes. In other words the logistics of production drove the weapon choice, not any test.
WRT the influence of the Atomic bombings on the Japanese decision to surrender, there was some temporarily popular revisionist history (a term I detest since most history is being constantly "revised") on this in the 1980's that argued the surrender was driven more by the Soviet attack the day after Hiroshima.
But in the spirit of revision recent work has been done analysing the Japanese motivations behind their plans for hitting the expected American ground invasion. It turns out that the Japanese military were well aware that they had lost the war and would be lose against the invasion. That didn't matter; since the war was lost the point now was for the Japanese nation to die gloriously, even if that meant 100 million deaths and absurd charges by civilians with wooden spears.
From a Western POV it sounds crazy but that's why such "rational" analysis has been inappropriate. Given the motivation there's no reason to think the approach to the Soviet invasion would have been any different.
But the Atomic bombings provided no such glory. People would simply stand around watching the sky and then be vapourised while the US fleet and troops stood offshore. Hiroshima and Nagasaki thus provided an argument to the Emperor's advisors that they could use to finally defeat these insane (from our POV) arguments of the militarists.
Mention should also be made about what the death toll would have been had the US decided to simply blockade Japan and starve them into surrender. Of all the options that were available including invasion, endless conventional firebombing, and atomic bombing, the blockade-starvation one would have been the most terrible - and given the militarist fanatics desire for glorious death it probably would not have not obtained surrender either.
Israel had many many chances over the past 7 decades to reach a negotiated settlement and a political accommodation with the Palestinians -- if it had wanted to. I grew up in the US in an area of the country where a significant percentage of the population were Jewish, and many of them wanted Israel to reach such a settlement (this was back in the 1970s). How could it have been done? Well, the US had plenty of money and could have funded a purchase of land for the Palestinians to settle on. Or non-Jews could have been accepted as full citizens of Israel. These are just 2 options; there were more. Would they have been perfect? Of course not, but they would be better than what has since come to pass, and likely would have preempted the rise of Hamas. From today's perspective, Yasser Arafat seems a moderate. Why wasn't it attempted? Because a significant and powerful faction of those in Israel believed that all the "Holy Land" was set aside for them by God; the God of the Old Testament had designated them the Chosen People. Not everyone there believed this in any rigid form; they wanted a Jewish homeland where they could be safe, and in the aftermath of World War II, who could blame them? But the more rigid, the more extremist, view prevailed. Intransigence precipitated Arab anger and Palestinians' growing resistance. This happened over decades. Can it be reversed? A good, even essential, first step would be the US telling Israel enough is enough and cutting off support. Will this happen? When pigs fly.
"the military analysis of terror bombing of civilians had not been done."
Should we be calling it "terror bombing"? I suppose in a way it is as good a name as any, and I guess the idea was to crush the morale of the people you were bombing by destroying their homes among other things. The problem was of course that no one could hit anything, so there was pretty much no alternative until later in the war when the Luftwaffe had been defeated and planes could bomb from a low altitude much more accurately. It was then that in spite of Harris, results were more apparent particularly in the area of fuel.
On the other hand, the terror bombing of cities did cause a lot of absenteeism from work, which at the time seemed to be a reasonable aim. And it's not as if anyone has refrained from terror bombing a great deal in the 80 or so years since World War II. The days when more damage was done by anti-aircraft fragments falling to the ground than by actual bombs are long gone.
@David George
If you haven’t already, I’d suggest contemplating the 1956 Eulogy given by Moshe Dayan for Roi Rotberg . The horrible logic that would create & guarantee hatred from the dispossessed Palestinians is chilling.
We don't hear a lot about the Great March of Return. Israeli snipers killed hundreds on unarmed civilians - involved in peaceful protests but that's normal. I know the objective of that march - it's the same objective always dreamed of by Palestinian refugees.
I think Haaretz columnist Amira Hass wrote an extremely poignant contribution:
"In a few days Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing – military incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity, being targets of vengeance, indiscriminate lethal fire at both those involved in the fighting (soldiers) and the uninvolved (civilians), a position of inferiority, destruction of buildings, ruined holidays or celebrations, weakness and helplessness in the face of all-powerful armed men, and searing humiliation."
She described the actions of some of the fighters as an Orgy of Vengeance. Perhaps the objective was to provoke a response so great that world would be forced to acknowledge the conditions Palestinians live under? Who knows for sure. What is for certain from the horrors being seen in Gaza are shocking the entire world.
Israel finds itself in an existential conflict as old as humankind. It cannot be understood outside of a Biblical framework.
Way back in the book of Genesis chapter 12 God made a promise to Abram (Abraham)
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Theologians call that promise from God the “Abrahamic covenant” That ‘great nation’ of which God promised Abraham became the nation of Israel.
God later entered into another covenant with Israel through Moses where he promised them blessing for obedience, and cursing for disobedience. See Deuteronomy chapter 28. In that chapter Moses foresees the Babylonian captivity of Israel which took place in 597BC, and the scattering of Jews/Israel amongst the nations, which took place in AD70 when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.
However, in Deuteronomy chapter 30:5 God promises to restore Israel to the land he promised to Abraham. These promises are confirmed again in Isaiah 11:11-12, Jeremiah 23:3-8, Ezekiel 37:21-25, Isaiah 60:18-21 and in many other passages in the Old Testament.
The restoration of Israel took place in 1948 after almost 2000 years of Jewish Diaspora. Their ability to establish themselves in the midst of surrounding hostile nations is nothing short of a miracle.
Those of us who read the Scriptures understand that Israel has a central place in God’s purposes for all peoples and all nations, either as a blessing or a curse. The Abrahamic convenient with its promises has never been rescinded by God, and its ultimate fulfilment will take place in time and history. What we are witnessing today is an attempt by the forces of darkness to thwart God’s purposes for the nation of Israel and all those peoples and nations who have been blessed through Abraham and his descendants, of whom Jesus is preeminent. Countless millions have been blessed through Christ through to the present day.
While we don’t know all the details we do know that Israel will play a significant role in the end times as they are spoken about in Scripture. You don’t have to be a Christian to see the significance of these events. (but it helps).
Just putting aside the absurd Christian romanticism -
DNA has just been recovered from an ancient Judean site. Analysis is being carried out. I can give reasonable confidence that the results shall show that the European and Middle Eastern Jewish populations will show a very high relationship with the ancestral remains. It will show a reasonably close relationship with other Canaanite people,. But, the highest commonality will be with the Palestinian people .
After the Jewish - Roman wars, the city of Jerusalem was laid waste and repopulated, but the majority if Judeans ans Samaritans remained on the land. Under Rome and Byzantium they converted to Christianity, then under the Muslim invasion took up Islam and absorbed Arab culture.
So Brendan, at what stage did they cease to be the inheritor of Abe? Were they still when Christian?
Geopolitical situations should be free from those trying to use the bible as history and even more from those using it for prophecy.
We only have a certain amount of sympathy and sharp intelligence (not too much or we'll cut ourselves) to go around. And of course we can be patronising from our own point of prominence on Maslow's levels of self-knowledge leading to seraphic heights. War requires that moral principles that some have been imbibed with are overturned as if they never existed. Turned off as with a switch and then turned on again when ordered to do so. Part of human plasticity and deviousness which we have to somehow adjust to; no wonder we have mental problems FTTT.
Dear Barron
You raise a good question which I understand to be: “Who is a Jew today, who are Abraham’s descendants”?
Briefly there are two parts to this answer, first the story of genealogy. To be Jewish is to be able to trance your ancestors back to the patriarchs, back to Abraham if you will. The Bible is full of genealogies, more than 340 of them in fact. Jews have a long memory. To reinforce the point, the Gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, all the way back to Abraham.
Scripture tells us that Abraham has two kinds of offspring. In Genesis 22:17 God says to Abraham “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.”
Descendants as numerous as sand on the sea shore speaks of Abrahams natural descendants, those who are his physical offspring by birth. Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky speaks to Abrahams spiritual offspring, those who follow his example of believing God, and through faith receiving the promised blessing. The Apostle Paul explains this in his letter to the Romans chapter 4.
However back to the present day war in Israel and Gaza. The Jews are presently the focus of Islamic jihad through the vehicle of Hamas and the other proxies of Iran. Rest assured, should Israel be wiped off the map, which is the stated intention of Hamas, this will not be the end of Islamic jihad on earth. The next group in their sights, having removed the Saturday people, will be the Sunday people. Should they be successful, the next group will include any freedom loving person who stands in the way of the global caliphate.
Consequently every person living in the West is unavoidably impacted by the outcome of this war.
I know it is your faith Brendan, but as you use it to impact upon current geopolitics, I think I am justified in response.
The first issue is that all secular, and most theocratic scholars now accept that the patriarchs never existed. No Abraham, no Joseph, no Moses, no Joshua, no David, no Solomon. No flood, no Egyptian slavery, no exodus, no 12 Tribes, no conquest, no unified kingdom of Israel. The work of Thomas L Thompson (The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, 1974) has been confirmed by Israeli archeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (The Bible Unearthed, 2001). The people of Judea and Israel (Samaria, the Northern Kingdom) are Canaanite settlers of the high lands of the southern Levant. They seem to have shared language and religious development, with this commonality to be linguistically and culturally seen as Hebrew.
The Hebrews were certainly polytheistic, but prioritized the Canaanite chief deity El, eventually both replacing and merging this with Yahweh as the God of Israel. This went from the head deity to monotheism, it is not clear when and the first real evidence for this is during the Hellenistic period. The Septuagint, written in Greek, is the oldest known version of the Hebrew bible (although it is widely believed it was composed in accordance to older Hebrew documents), and a recent book, The Origins of Judaism: An Archeological - Historical Reappraisal (2022), by Yonatan Adler of Ariel University in Israel, has suggested that the people of Judea and Samaria did not show evidence of wide-spread following of Torah practice until well into the Hellenistic period, and may not have been enforced until the Maccabean rule. [I will make a very quick point as I do not want to take Professor Adler out of context, and feel obliged to note that he is currently very forceful on Twitter and other media as to the right of Israel to defend itself and the current actions of the IDF].
The point I made in my previous response to you seems lost. My point is that the Palestinians share the same genealogy as the Israel Jewish people. While some were part of many diaspora, both before and after the Jewish - Roman wars, many others remained behind. These Jewish and Samaritan people were on the land and when Constantine adopted Christianity, and when Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion, most of those that were Jewish in Palestine converted from Judaism to Christianity. Later the Arab conquests led the same group of people to convert from Christianity to Islam. Not all did, and there remains those that maintained their Jewish identity throughout and there remains Palestinian Christians.
The Jewish people of the diaspora retained cultural and religious identity, and largely maintained a close gene pool. Those that had converted several times, but remained on the land, took on the influence of the surrounding Arab culture and identity. My point being that the recent find of ancient DNA from pre-Hellenistic 'biblical' times, will have a very close relationship to both those that identify as Israeli Jew and those that identify as Palestinian.
I make this assertion because there is a lot of rubbish trying to justify that only one group has historical roots in the land. Both do, and the majority of Palestinians have undisturbed occupation on the land (at least until 1948). I should emphasize that history can be misused. When looking at the situation today, Israel as a Jewish state exists and must be accommodated. There are two groups that are going to have to co-exist and the resources must sustain both peoples. This is a complex situation and any dialogue and solution is impaired by religious justification from either those of the Jewish faith or those of Islam. What is truly preventing the parties from commonality is the fundamentalist Christians trying to impose their romanticized religious world view over the needs of the people of that land.
Just a few more points Brendan -
Have you not noticed the genealogy in Matthew and that in Luke are not the same?
There is a problem presuming or assigning the bible is univocal. It is composed of a number of authors over a number of centuries. Each one at each time writing for a purpose and agenda relevant to their power position at the time of writing. At no time in the bible does it claim inerrancy and the closest it comes to 'the Devine Word of God' is 2 Timothy suggesting "all scripture is breathed out by God". Of course the problem here is that 2 Timothy is a pseudepigrapha, a forgery, and is almost universally accepted not to have ben written by Paul, but a later scribe pretending to be Paul. This somewhat undermines the meaning.
This means that people take from the bile stories and interpretations that fit their arguments for today, and discount that which does not suit their arguments. There is no such thing as a Christian literalist as that would be unsustainable.
As we are situating part of this exchange on the edge of the Sanai, it might help to scamper over the exodus. According to the story, Moses led 600,000 foot men out of Egypt. It has been calculated that if we include women and children, the number would be about 2 million. About the population of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth today.
Setting aside that this was possibly more than the population of Egypt at the time, the logistics must have been incredible. The amount of time the Sea of Reeds (yep, not the Red Sea c.f. the Egyptian Field of Reeds) must have parted for 2 million to pass - without an army catching up (not even mentioning the sea monsters). But I will give you one exercise - his God allowed Moses to get a water spring from a rock when his people suffered thirst, how long before the 2 millionth person got to the spring?
Dear Barron
I note you have taken the time to respond in some detail and while I find some points of agreement with you, as you can imagine there are points of disagreement as well. For the sake of brevity:
Unlike the religion of Islam where it is believed the Koran was dictated to Mohammad by the angel Gabriel as the “literal words of God”, as you point out the Bible does not make that claim for itself. Rather the Biblical Scriptures are inspired by God but delivered through human agency. In this way the inconsistencies and differences in accounts of events can be explained. That said, the Bible begins with a garden and ends in a city. In between it describes God’s love for all people, and his plan of redemption for all of creation. It is a story of hope and forgiveness, sin and salvation. It is a story we are all participating in whether we recognise it or not.
Ultimately belief or unbelief is a personal choice, but as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, faith has substance such that we may be confident of things we do not see. The Christian faith is not simply a ‘leap in the dark’; for believers it is supported by an epiphany or if you prefer a revelation that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.
Now in your reply you state: “When looking at the situation today, Israel as a Jewish state exists and must be accommodated.”
This is a very rational and reasonable statement. The problem we are addressing however is not one that lends itself to rational discourse, neither is Israel engaging with reasonable people. In my earlier comment I provide a link to the Hamas charter. You will find there is no desire for accomodation with the Jews of Israel, but rather their total annihilation.
In this context all reason brakes down; all that remains is a will to power. Consequently Israel has little choice but to defend itself against a suicidal aggressor who believes violent jihad is the pathway to eternal paradise. The ‘dispute’ was never about land, that is simply a pretext to justify the extermination of the Jewish people.
The Palestinian people, all 2.2m of them could easily be accommodated in the surrounding Islamic nations by their Muslim brothers. They refuse to have them for reasons that must be obvious to you. Seemingly it is only the Western nations that are willing to accommodate Muslim refugees and economic migrants under the banner of multiculturalism, inclusion and diversity. As the Israeli Hamas conflict demonstrates and Europe and the West is discovering, when it comes to Islam you can have multiculturalism or social cohesion, but not both.
Any literature gives a window into other places other times and experiences. The Hebrew Bible, Christian Bible and Koran offer these stories and should be respected and understood in line with what the various writers intended at the time and why. Not to do do imposes an interpretation over the stories that may not be the intention of the writers and cultures. Alot is missed by trying to use religious literature to accommodate people's power structure and prejudice.
As for Islamic intolerance, this simply lacks historical accuracy. The Caliphates had high acceptance of other religions, and it was usually the tax benefits if being Muslim that got conversations. For the first few centuries the Syriac church was larger and alongside Islam within the Arab conquests. Many top administrators were Jewish. This is repeated in Andalusia and the Ottoman Empire.
Today we can look at Jordan, Bosnia and many of the African Muslim nations which have few problems with coexistence.
I have previously stated that Hamas cannot be considered a legitimate international voice. The challenge is for the world community to raise Gaza so that the conditions that incubates extremists are altered.
My statement that regardless of the nature of the foundation, Isael exists today and myst be accommodated, does nor endorse current borders or political structures in regard to Isael or Palestine. But that is a discussion for another thread.
Dear Barron
You say:
“As for Islamic intolerance, this simply lacks historical accuracy. The Caliphates had high acceptance of other religions”
With respect this is not borne out by the facts. People of other faiths in conquered lands who were not forced into dhimmitude or slaughtered or forcibly converted to Islam fled for their lives. It is widely believed that up to 80,000,000 Hindus were slaughtered in India by the ruling Caliphate. Wikipedia is more generous putting the number closer to 10 million killed.
https://icdn.today/worlds-biggest-holocaust-islamic-invaders-killed-more-than-80-million-hindus-in-india/
Wikipedia also states that at December 2022 there were three (3) Jews living in Egypt, that’s down from an approximate 80,000 jewish population around the turn of the 20th century. What happened to these Jewish communities in Egypt, did they just decide to stop having children?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt#:~:text=As%20early%20as%20the%20third,%2C%20Samaria%2C%20and%20Mount%20Gerizim.
At the time of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, there were approximately 140,000–150,000 Jews living in Iran, the historical center of Persian Jewry. A 2021 estimate puts the current figure at 8,500. Would anyone want to venture how many Jews or Christians are living in Afghanistan? In 2022 Pakistan had around 900 Jews and the persecution of Christians there is well known.
Life in majority Muslim countries for religious minorities is very, very difficult today, just as it was during the period where the Islamic caliphate was expanding its influence around North Africa and Europe. There was a period when the southern coastline of Italy was depopulated by Islamic aggression through the 16th to the 19th century:
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/long-run-consequences-pirate-attacks-coasts-italy
Through the 9th to the 16th century Muslim rulers traded in Spanish Christian slaves, often to fill the harems of North Africa, and to train captured Christian boys as the next generation of Muslim warriors.
Also in Africa:
https://www.dw.com/en/east-africas-forgotten-slave-trade/a-50126759
Still the case still today:
https://time.com/longform/african-slave-trade/
I’m opposed to whitewashing the Islamic Caliphates history and pretending that their rulers were largely benign. Nothing could be further from the truth. Islam was a horror to those whose lands were conquered by the Caliphate.
There was no country called NZ, until recently.
Why should they move elsewhere? Would you be happy if you were exiled from Wellington to Kaikohe? Why don’t the Jews move back to Poland and Lithuania or alternatively why doesn’t the US give them Brooklyn or Florida?
Chris - pretend the story in Gaza started now, today instead of October 7. The Gazans have an absolute right to fight this invading colonial settler army by whichever means necessary. If civilians die, then so be it. They tried the peaceful ‘March of Return’ but were met with bullets. The Palestinian fight is just. They don’t pretend they don’t target civilians whilst Israel pretends. It’s just that you fading old Labour elite don’t realize it. Bet you spent some time in an Israeli kibbutz in the 1970s? Am I right?
Not endorsing the current boundaries does not mean expelling anyone. In fact Israel does not define its boundaries.
I was referring to the initial Arab conquests. While previously portrayed as religious fanaticism, it is now accepted that there was little forced conversation. There was tax concessions to those that became Muslim and, not to whitewash, many of the conquered were taken into slavery and would eventually choose to convert.
It is generally accepted to be more tolerant than Byzantium or Carolingian contemporaries.
Islam today is in many parts of the world, including those I mentioned above and many of the former Soviet republics. There is nothing inherently intolerant, indeed.
For reference-
Robert Hoyland, in God's Path; the Arab conquests and the msking of an Islamic Empire (2014)
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