Germany and the World Cup

The day Germany played Belgium in the World Cup Quarter Finals was the sixtieth anniversary of their first World Cup triumph. They played Hungary in the finals in Berne in 1954. Earlier in the tournament  the Hungarians beat them 8-3. In the finals the Hungarians lead 2-0 when the Germans came back and scored three goals to beat the Hungarians in this most critical game. It was a critical game not only because it was the World Cop Final, but because it was a contest between East and West, Capitalism and Communism. It was possibly the most brutal encounter in the history of the World Cup. It was more about politics at the height of the Cold War than about football. We have come a long way in these sixty years. The current games in Brazil are just a huge carnival. In the end it doesn't matter to the world at large who wins and who loses, it is about people having a good time. Not all people of course. The stands are full of beautiful pink women and men. Black women and men, beautiful or otherwise are conspicuously absent. Brazil is a predominately  Afro-South American country, but few Afro-South American Brazilians can afford the price of these matches. But perhaps in the end they will all benefit from the investment, from the money the tourists spend, and should the Brazilians win the tournament, from the collective honour and glory. It might also provide some poor Brazilian lads with exceptionally ball skills the opportunity to pick up a lucrative contract with some European club and earn really big bucks.

Mohammed Abu Khdeir

My heart goes out to the parents, family and friends of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teenager whose burned body was found in the Jerusalem forest. At present it is not known who is responsible for his death. I just hope against hope that it was not Jewish extremists who killed him in revenge for the murder of the three Israeli youths. Should it be Jews responsible for this atrocity their action would divide Israel and the whole Jewish world. Such revenge killing cannot be condoned in any circumstance. What did the murderers hope to achieve? I what way did they imagine that this murder would make Israel a safer place, bring peace nearer? And if they were religious zealots I hope that the entire religious leadership would condemn them.

Robert McNamara's Lessons

Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defence under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In the documentary film, The Fog of War (2003), which I watched this week, he reflects on the mistakes he made in his time as well the things that he got right. He was a seriously brilliant man, and his advice is worth listening to. He discussed two great conflicts in his time, one of which was resolved well, the other lead to disaster. During the Cuban missile crisis (1962), the Russians placed ballistic missiles in Cuba, which threatened the United States. The Chiefs, Commanders of the armed forces, recommended an attack on Cuba, which would have resulted in the annihilation of the country. President Kennedy refused to take this advice. Instead, he negotiated with Khrushchev through a former ambassador who knew him, and the Russians dismantled the missiles. The Americans could claim that they protected the country from the threat of  of these missiles, while Khrushchev could claim that he defended Cuba from American attack. It was a win-win for both sides. In Vietnam President Johnson and his military advisers thought that they were fighting to save the world from the spread of communism, while the Vietnamese fought to free themselves from colonialism, as they did fighting the French. They had no intention of spreading Chinese communism, they had fought the Chinese for generations. But the Americans and the Chinese didn't listen to each other and didn't take the trouble to undeerstand each other. McNamara's first rule is:

1. Empathize with your enemy

I am concerned about the current sabre rattling of the Israeli government, blaming the Hamas administration for the murder of the three boys and inflaming hatred within Israel, possibly encouraging vigilante action. It so happens that I am in the middle of reading David Landau's very long biography of Ariel Sharon. Begin and Sharon got involved in the Lebanon war on the pretext that they needed to revenge the murder of an Israeli diplomat. The war was a disaster and lead to the death of hundreds of young Israelis. It would be a tragedy if the murder of the three students would be used, as it threatens to be used, for political ends. It would be a more fitting memorial for them if the tragedy would lead to talks and a better understanding of the enemy, and perhaps a cessation of hostilities if not peace.

Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah

The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah were found today in a field near Hebron. They were kidnapped three weeks ago and shot apparently soon after. It is impossible to get inside the minds of the two Arabs who were responsible for the kidnapping, and I don't want to go there. Whether they were members of Hamas or some other crazy fringe group is immaterial. It is also immaterial that the two men have served time in Israeli prisons and were released in a prisoner exchange. They were killers. What did they try to achieve? Did they hope that the Israelis would release more prisoners in exchange for the three boys?  Was it a kidnapping that went wrong? Were these hapless men trying to kidnap soldiers and found only three school boys? Whatever they had in mind, they only undermined the cause of the Arabs and made the lives of innocent people, Hamas or otherwise, more miserable. Hundreds were arrested, the lives of prisoners were made more difficult, and they confirmed the image of Palestinians as blood thirsty savages with whom negotiations are futile. But although I don't believe in collective punishment, and certainly don't approve of using the death of these boys as a political weapon to score points against Hamas, I agree with the message that murdering Jews is not OK, throwing lethal rocks at Jews is not OK, and feel much less sympathy for those who were killed in the course of protests or were caught in the cross fire than I do for the families and friends of the murdered Israeli boys. I can't condone soft-hearted pity for my enemies. I reserve my pity for my people. The boys could have been my grandchildren, the soldier killing stone throwers could be my grandson.

The trouble with the World Cup

The World Cup plays havoc with my daily schedule and gets in the way of my blogging. I get up at 4.00 in the morning to watch the games. I am awake anyway and the games are a marvellous way of distracting my mind. There is so much drama, drama that it is impossible to explain to anyone not brought up with football. Twenty-two men run around for 90 minutes and more and have only one, may be two goals to show for it. How can this be anything but boring. But if you follow the game every movement of the ball is poised with possibilities. There are near misses that the outcome may depend on, fantastic individual ball skills, watch Neymar cut through the defence, outpace the fastest defender, shift balance from one foot to another and dispatch a powerful shot. Share the youthful enthusiasm of the Brazilian team. What if no one is left behind to protect the goal, they all want to be up the front scoring. Yet my sympathies went out to the struggler's, the Chileans, who played with great commitment. Perhaps no one expected them to get this far in the tournament except their coach pacing up and down the sideline, but having got this far they had the ultimate prize in sight. My hero is the Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, flying through the air, stopping impossible shots with his split second reaction. You don't have to know much about football to appreciate it.  It is a great thrill to participate in this huge Brazilian carnival. It is only 28 days and then it is all over, Then I can sleep in again. Hope that I will be around to enjoy the next tournament in Moscow in four years' time.

Genetic markers and other nonsense

This week Hal Levine talked about Karaites and Khazars at Kia Torah. Like everything Hal says, this was interesting, or rather what he said was interesting, but there was a lot he didn't say that I would have found more interesting. How can you talk about the Khazars without mentioning Kuzari? Most of the Karaites lived in Egypt. How did they get to Crimea? Were the Crimean Karaites the same people as the Egyptian Karaites? Koestler's Thirteenth Tribe got a mention, a weird book, which if I remember rightly, argued that as most of the Jews of Europe are descendants of Khazars, they are not semitic and have no claim to the land of Israel. Someone went a step further and argued that it is the Palestinians who are the Israelis, descendants of people left behind after the destruction of the Temple, who converted to Islam. With all this nonsensical argument we got on to genetic markers that proved or disproved these arguments. I am sure that genetic markers are real, they do exist. But looking at the DNA of people you find whatever you are looking for. The DNA of any organism would contain lots of genetic markers, and you can show that my make up is probably a mixture of Jew, Magyar, Moravian, Turk, Spanish, in other words a whole gulyas of European ethnicity. Talking in the Holocaust Centre about Nazis and racist ideology, I argue that classifying people of Europe, and particularly Eastern and Central Europe, you can't define people in racial terms. They are all a mixture of different races that invaded, conquered or survived in these lands. Imposing a racist classification on them is a Nazi corruption of Darwinism and genetic science. Hal Levine countered my argument that whatever race I belong to, there is not any Polynesian, Far Eastern or African gene in my make-up. I grant you that I am not Polynesian, not Chinese, and not African, but given that I am European, further racial refinement is meaningless. The World Cup underscores my argument. The national team of Germany is studded with players with Polish and Turkish names, the Dutch, French and Portuguese teams have Africans playing for them. I would prefer to define the people of Europe in football rather than racial terms.

History and imagination

I am working on a new edition of my booklet on the Deckstons. I want to expand it and write about the children they brought out to New Zealand and why they did it. Our display in the Holocaust Centre focuses on the children. I made the assumption that Annie and Max Deckston went to Poland in 1932, times were tough in Poland, it was the time of the Depression, they saw something that appalled them and they decided to do something for these poor children. But information came to light as I was rewriting my essay, which showed that they did not go to Poland in 1932, they might have gone there or been there in 1930. More important, they were not that fussed about saving Polish Jewish children, they applied to bring out sixteen Jewish orphans from London. This sheds a new light on the motives of Annie and Max. I need to get inside their minds to understand why they decided to do this. It had nothing to do with conditions in their homeland. Obviously it is impossible to get inside the minds of people who had been dead for some seventy-five years and left no records, yet understanding their motivation is important in telling their story. So I have to imagine whatever might have motivated them. I know that they were difficult, cantankerous people, but they were also charitable, putting up their money to bring out members of  their extended families, even if at times the help they gave to these relatives was less than the relatives expected. So we can assume that their motive might have involved charity. But was there more to it? A letter from the London County Council's Public Assistance Committee says that the New Zealand government had approved the immigration of sixteen Jewish orphans from London. Somewhere in New Zealand archives there must be a record of this, which might explain why the government agreed to the request of the Deckstons. More questions, more research. In the scheme of things this detail hardly matters, but getting it right matters. The original printing of my Deckston Story sold out. The new second edition has to be as right as possible, without losing the flow of the narrative. It is an interesting story of some colourful unusual people.