Masada or the Samson Option

I really wanted to stay out of this fray. After all, I do not have a bitch in this fight.

But still, one must weigh in sometimes … even against one’s common sense.

On the face of it, both the Arabs and the Jews have a right to exist. That is a given and it’s that simple. But I promise you that everything else is anything but that.

Historically, Palestine tried to extinguish the fledgling light of the state of Israel in 1948. And then again after the 1956 Suez fiasco via the Fedayeen war of infiltration through the Sinai into Gaza. And then again, in alliance with the Arab world in 1967 and once more for kicks in 1973.

So, Palestine and the Arab world tried war from 1948 to 1973.

Afterwards, Palestine tried terrorism starting in the 1970s, Intifada in the 1980s, and again terrorism in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s.

During the Cold War, Israel, confronted by mostly inimical states supported by the USSR, was supported by the USA. The United States saw and continues to see Israel as a firm wedge deep in the heart of Pan-Arabism. That’s how Washington managed to control the Arab world, the oil flows, and geopolitics of the entire planet by spending a measly USD 4 to 7 billion per year in aid to Israel.

Now, Israel is occupying Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank). Some say illegally, others claim that the occupation is quite legal.

I proffer a different viewpoint. Like Schrodinger’s cat, the occupation is both legal and illegal. Without it, Israel would be at risk of being attacked every 10-20 years or so. History attests to this.

But by occupying Palestine, Israel continues to see a renewed cycle of violence via terrorism. But what is terrorism? One man’s Terrorism is another’s Freedom Fight. We may not like it, but it is what it is. Look at ETA. Look at the IRA. Look at all the organizations that have fought an oppressive regime.

America herself came to be via acts of terrorism against British Regulars. The history of colonial America is replete with acts of terrorism against the Indians. And the latter replied in kind via indescribable acts of savagery.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which side of the fence any of us belong to. In the end, might makes right; regrettably but inexorably. In the last month, the IDF has dropped between 20,000 and 30,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. This tally increases with each passing day by one thousand of tons of explosives. Each hour 60 people die. That is the rate of attrition of the Israeli-Palestinian 2023 War.

For comparison, in February 1945 the USAF and the British Airforce dropped 3,900 tons of incendiary and HE bombs over Dresden killing 25,000 civilians and displacing 100k-200k refugees.

A month later, the USAF dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary and HE bombs on Tokyo, burning 130,000 civilians to death. Tokyo went up like a candle in a fiery wind. America killed more people then than it did in August 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WW2 had an average rate of attrition of 1,500 KIA every hour for 6 years. That gives out a total of 78,840,000. And that was a conventional world war. WW3 casualty figures would range into the hundreds of millions in the first hour of the conflict. By the end of Day 1, those numbers could go into ten-digit territory.

The thing is humanity doesn’t have a lot of demographic slack built in.

This is why I say that our opinions, feelings, and notions have little impact on the situation on the ground. What matters is brute force. Palestine has almost none. Israel has lots and lots.

Not only that. Israel, and most people do not get this, or they do but their latent antisemitism prevents them from recognizing it internally, always fights for its life. Because look, when the Israeli win a war, they occupy some land. Sometimes they give it back to the original owner (Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt, southern Lebanon back to Lebanon). Other times, they do not (Palestine, Golan Heights).

But winning a war is irrelevant for Israel. Because why? Because the Arabs will always resent them, hate them for it, and will always try to get back at them. This is not a war between rational actors. This is a religious war between two cousins who hate one another with so much passion that they would see the whole world go up in flames before they made peace.

But if Israel lost a war with the Arab world, that would mean the end of Eretz Israel. The Muslim Arabs would throw the Jews into the Mediterranean. It would be game over.

Some of you may remember from history or cinema that great story of the Masada siege whereby the Romans surrounded a group of Jews who took refuge on a plateau on top of a cliff. By and by, the Romans considered the Jews as pesky, despicable rebels. Rome also considered Jews to be worse than Arabs, who they saw as hit and run dessert thieves. Honestly, the more I think about the Jewish wars of the 1^st century AD, the more I realize that antisemitism started in the Roman Empire, predating the Christian blood libel BS and Protocols of Zion by a lot of time.

Historical Context

Consider this. Although many other peoples went on conquering Judaea and Samaria and killing lots and lots of Jews, enslaving them, bringing them to faraway corners of the world, it was finally the Romans who brought the issue to its conclusion. Not the Egyptians, not the Assyrians, not the Babylonians, it was Rome who orchestrated the uprooting of a sizeable segment of Jewry from Judaea.

After spending 20 years and a mountain of gold to put down a series of revolts and rebellions known as the Jewish wars, Rome decided to destroy the Temple and uproot the unruly Jews from their homeland and disperse them throughout the empire.

What happened at Masada will endure in History and the Jewish psyche as the noble signature of its people. After running out of water and food, rather than surrender to the Romans, all the Jewish ‘bandits’ as the Romans called them, took their own lives. When the centurions finally penetrated their refuge, they found their bodies strewn on the ground.

What separates Israel from most of the rest of the world is that it learns from history. Each and every one of its lessons are stored, analyzed, and actioned by its leaders, scholars, and people.

You see, there is an ongoing public sentiment prevailing in Europe and other parts of the so-called civilized world.

I saw this video more than five years ago and at the time I had mixed feelings about it. In it, Alain Soral, a French/Swiss writer & comedian talks about Jews with DieuDonné, a French stand-up comedian. The gist of it is these people believe that everywhere Jews went in Europe, they created problems, and as a result they got punished for it. Now, I don’t know about you, dear readers, but most people out there are dumb mother lovers. They take whatever platitude is offered to them and run with it.

And that’s also one of the reasons, we cannot have good things like Freedom, Free Speech, or Gun Rights. But to circle back to Soral’s anti-Semitism, I agree that wherever Jews go, there are problems. The thing is Jews do not create problems. It’s the local species of troglodytes who cannot live with the notion that a foreigner is smarter, better with money, and future-looking than he is. And that’s what Soral et co. do not get. Anti-Semitism is a manifestation of plain good old Xenophobia, or fear of the stranger, but many degrees of magnitude stronger and more heinous.

This public feeling goes a little like this. When Jews show up in your town (feel free to insert here your town, and historical era), soon thereafter problems start between the Natives and the Jews. Now, most people would extract from this that Jews are the root of all problems because if different people react negatively to Jewish actions, there must be something wrong with what the Jews do. The onus is never on the Locals. The focus, the Eye of Sauron, is always on the Jews.

So, before we come down one way or another, let’s examine what they usually did in their migrations. A Jew or a hundred would show up and set up shop in your neighbourhood. They would usually be well or better educated than the local yokels. They would be a grocer, a doctor, an entrepreneur, who would also seek to buy land, if the local law allowed it.

Because they actually have a knack for making a shekel into two, the Jewish population would grow rich over time, while the locals would usually grow poorer. But hey, you’re talking about honest work, rewarded over time by wealth accumulation. In my mind, just because a group of people is good at financial mitosis, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are doing anything illegal.

By the way, does anyone know how copper wire was invented? Itzik found a 1-cent coin in the street. Yeah, cheap comic relief is the best. I am pretty sure my Jewish friends are LOL.

And because the Jews keep their blood relations inside their ethnic group, that money would not spread out over generations, but also accumulate in-house.

After a couple of centuries of thrifty living, you do not have a wealthy scion of the original peregrine Jew. What you end up with is a powerful family in control of land (sometimes but not everywhere), with access to lots of ready coin (gold, chattels, good standing credit), who can also bend the ear of the local magistrate, potentate, Church, King, or Emperor. Sometimes, this Jew is into banking. Other times, he is into international commerce. Most times, he stays small enough that he corners the market for grocers, pretty much like Koreans and 7/11s in modern America.

Over time, his legend grows, and the locals become resentful. Because you see, most people do not try to emulate someone’s success. Most people choose to envy what they cannot achieve themselves. And when enough mother lovers hate your guts, pogroms and genocides happen. Because why? Because the human condition, that’s why.

Ah, when the public sentiment, that is large masses of people start dispossessing, burning, and torturing innocents, the powers that be, a.k.a. the Church, the Secular Powers, the mighty see the writing on the wall, and join in like vultures to spoliate the poor Jews, whose only fault was to make it big in the gentile’s world. And yes, I use the word ‘poor’ in its non-pecuniary denomination. I refer to their lot in life, not financial acumen.

So, they all jump on the antisemitic bandwagon, demanding restitution for made-up blood libels, extorting the local Jewry. By the way one must not fail to note how overtime the once migratory Jews have now taken roots and became one with the locals. And guess what, when the fecal matter hits the proverbial fan, the Jews are happy to pay any price just to be able to escape the mayhem that used to be their country. After ceding most of their riches to the local chapter of thieves, they move on to better locales always hoping to find a place that would not take their talent hostage.

And yet, this always ends up in disappointment. Such is the human condition: cruel and uncaring.

So, you see folks, that’s the root cause of antisemitism. And when you apply these lessons to 2,000+ years of recorded history of bigotry, extorsion, and mass-murder, you arrive to the 20^th century.

By now, Jews are a fixture everywhere in the world, but most predominantly so in central and eastern Europe. Western European Jewry has had a most difficult lot in that it came to butt heads with the Spanish inquisition, which decided to burn them at the stake in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. These are known as Sephardic Jews.

Incidentally, the Central and Eastern European Jews are known as Ashkenazi.

Before World War 1, Jews were actively persecuted in France (see the Dreyfuss Affair) because they were seen as agents of the German Empire, which was France’s Enemy #1 at the time.

In all fairness, the French were onto something in general because Jews living within the confines of the German Reich prior to 1914 were better off than most of their brethren. Fairly well integrated, they were part of the Prussian military even, they stood with the Kaiser and with the Fatherland as proud members of the 2^nd Reich.

During the War, Fritz Haber, a German Jew, saved the country from a premature, shameful peace early in the war by inventing a new chemical process that synthesized the ammonia from air. This allowed Germany to keep producing ordnance. Haber also developed chlorine gas, which gave Germany the lead in chemical warfare.

During the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews died for the Fatherland. Their memory was desecrated by a quasi-unknown Austrian corporal who had an axe to grind with the Austrian Jews who had thwarted his artistic attempts in pre-war Vienna. That corporal’s name: Adolf Hitler.

I believe I do not have to spell out the rest of the WW2 story of the Holocaust. But since I would be remiss not to at least attempt to cast a light on the plight of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945, here we go.

During this time, more than 6 million Jews were exterminated by the National-Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler, in German-controlled Europe. While attempting to flee Europe, almost no other countries would receive them. In fact, Switzerland, often blamed for taking in the assets of murdered Jews and dealing with Nazi Germany, took in more Jews than America, when we factor in the number of refugees vs. their respective populations.

After the War, nobody wanted to have the Jews who managed to escape alive from Nazi concentration camps. Nobody: not the Russians, not the Poles, not the Romanians, not the Germans, not the French, not the English, not the Americans, not the Italians, not the Swiss, not the Swedes, nobody.

So, in a move of desperation, the Jews organized themselves and defied all Allied attempts to block their passage to British Mandate occupied Palestine (you see there is a theme here). They ran the British blockade without stopping to think of the risks they’d encounter along the way or on the shores of Palestine.

For them, it was not even a matter of choice. Caught between the proverbial European rock that had crushed them almost into oblivion, and the hard inhospitable place of Palestine, the Jews saw only one way out: FIGHT or DIE.

And so they did. They fought, and they died, but in the end they prevailed. They set up their state and for the last 75 years they managed to not only hold on to the land their forefathers got expelled from by the Romans, but also increased its productivity, making it into a fertile piece of real estate.

They basically took over a desolated piece of arid dessert and managed to bring it back to life using ingenuity, wherewithal, and sheer persistence. The story of Israel is the story of what smart, industrious, and dedicated people can do to land, when they do have a bitch in a fight. And that fight is for the survival of one’s own people.

This is how errant Jews became Israeli citizens, and this is how arid, desolate Palestine became lush green Israel.

Speaking of industriousness, in recent times, Israel came very close to burying the hatchet with the Saudis, one of their mortal enemies. This is also due to Jewish ingenuity. Because while the Saudis have lots of oil, and while the world craves oil, before you need power, you require water. And while the region is awash in seawater, you cannot drink it. But it just so happens, Israeli desalination plants are the best on the planet. And the Saudis, and others like them, are Thirsty People. So, the Israeli were ready to give them the technology if they were open for business.

Before the Hamas ill-fated attack on October 7, 2023, Saudi Arabia was ready to recognize Israel and start dealing with it normally. Free Trade was going to be the name of the game. But since this would have destroyed other regional power’s plans, I am looking at you Persia or Iran, this was not meant to be.

Now I am not saying Iran was behind the Hamas move. I am saying that if they had wind of it, they did nothing to prevent it. Moreover, they have supplied Hamas with cash and military hardware, hoping the Sunni Palestinians would advance their agenda. Because the Shia Iranians give two very small sized f.cks about Palestinians and their struggle. And people need to know that.

Some commentators go as far as to say that Iranians consider Palestinians little more than animals meant to be sacrificed for the cause of Shia Persia. They are all useful idiots whose role is to keep Israel entangled in a deadly struggle while Iran grows stronger and more powerful in the region.

Most people do not realize that the House of Islam is at war among itself, and that Arabs and Persians have only one thing in common. That is religion and even there, they managed to cock it up without outside help, so to speak.

I would go as far as to say that this is the single cause that allowed Israel to gain a geopolitical foothold in the region.

At this point, I must stress out two internal contradictions apparent in both Judaism and Islam.

Jews are the worst self-enemies in the world. Have you ever heard of the ultra-orthodox Jews who believe that Israel is an abomination that should be eradicated in order for Messiah to return?

Not many of us realize the Jewish people are comprised of all sorts of people, including morons. Why would we know this? Most people still struggle with the idiotic myth of Jews ruling the world; they cannot see that all peoples have good and bad apples. Jews are just a people among a myriad other. They are not superior or inferior. They are just resilient. Because history threw a lot of curved balls at them, and they had to learn how to cope with it.

Also, the long-standing civil war between Shia and Sunni has made the monolithic Islam a brittle theological creation. It allowed other powers to use them in silly ways, destroying them, and controlling their political destiny from far away places, like Washington D.C. and Moscow.

Israel as a Zionist State

Have you ever hard the story of Theodor Herzl and the Zionist Movement?

Herzl was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and activist who created the Zionist movement in the last years of the 19^th century. BTW I do so hate that word ‘activist’ as of late.

Wikipedia dixit that while covering the Dreyfuss Affair in Paris for the Neue Freie Presse, he realized that Jewish assimilation was impossible both due to internal and external factors, namely Jewish religion imposing a degree of cultural schism from society and anti-Jewish sentiment. Herzl foresaw the likes of Hitler. This was not a radical idea fueled by paranoia since pogroms and genocidal crimes had taken countless Jewish lives since times immemorial.

Consequently, he embarked on a quest to convince affluent Jews all over the world, but mainly European and American mosaic communities, to sponsor and rally behind his plan to establish a Jewish state. In 1896, he published Den Judenstaat whereby he proposed a certain vision of a Jewish Homeland or Commonwealth.

In 1897, the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland.

One will note how well represented most of Europe was at the time. You will need to keep this in mind when you think about how this thriving Jewish population got wiped out during WW2 at the hands of the Nazi. Caveat emptor! Not to worry, if this slips your mind, you can bet your life this does not happen to Jews.

The Congress chaired by Max Nordau decided that “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.” Meaning that of the Ottoman Empire, which was the occupying legal authority in Palestine.

The Congress achieved the following goals:

1. Formulated the Zionist platform or Basel program centered on establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine
2. Established the Zionist Organization, which worked to settle Palestine as an expression of practical Zionism
3. Adopted Hatikvah as its anthem – maybe put a weblink to the minions singing it with a legend explaining that the biggest asset of the Jewish people is its humour (credit Kim maybe)
4. Absorbed most of the previous Hovevei Zion societies, which were created to succour Jews fleeing the pogroms of the Russian empire
5. Suggested the establishment of a people’s bank, and
6. Elected Herzl as President of the Zionist Organization and Max Nordau as 1 of its 3 VPs

This was Herzl’s finest achievement for he declared proudly but privately in his diary, since he had not lost his faculties, that:

Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word – which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly – it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State.[3] If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.

Theodor Herzl

Truer words were never spoken. A World War later, his dream would come alive.

And this is how the European Jewry came together in Basel in 1897 and decided time had come to start purchasing empty land lots in Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. So, even though there were local Jewish communities still spread throughout Galilee, which entitled them to historically claim their own traditional native lands, European and local Jews decided to go against the established prejudice (“Jews are cheapskates!”). The Jewish Joint paid good money to the local Bedouins, Arabs, Druze, Muslim, and Christian communities for the land they purchased.

Between 1897 and 1948, when the State of the Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion, the Zionist Organization established the Jewish National Fund. The Fund started purchasing land in Palestine, while the Zionist Commission started to study ways to improve the social and economic condition of the Jews within the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel).

In 1907, the Commission established and expanded its Palestine office, to cover departments for agriculture, settlement, education, land, finance, immigration, and statistics. This shows a remarkable degree of foresight and extraordinary organization skills, which would later make the difference for the survival of the Jews in Palestine.

In 1921, the Commission became the Palestine Zionist Executive, which acted as the Jewish Agency, to advise the British mandate authorities, which took over Palestine from the Ottomans post‑WW1.

The Jewish re-settlement of Palestine was not an easy smooth endeavor. Several crises and multiple massacres occurred at the hands of the local Muslim communities. For instance, the Hebron pre-Zionist Jewish community was all but destroyed in the 1929 massacre.

Israel has come a long way from its humble beginnings. While an underdeveloped country that struggled to house, feed and employ its people in 1948, it has grown into the world’s 29th-largest economy in nominal GDP and 13th by nominal GDP per capita, which is the real indicator of sovereign wealth.

Most people do not realize that every inch of Israeli soil has been paid for both in gold and blood many times over by its People. And since Jews do not have another backup homeland to go to, the world must come to grips with the notion that Zionism is here to stay, whether it likes it or not.

And while there are some people who have gone to lengths to try and calculate which secular powers and Faiths have held sway the most in Eretz Israel over the last 3,500 years, I firmly reject this historical method of determining who deserves to live in Israel.

I know History can teach us a lot, or at least most of the lessons, but for once I believe with all my heart and soul that the answer to this question is best answered by looking at the consequences of what happens when Jews are prevented by outside or inside forces from living in Israel.

It is therefore tragic that some people do not get it in their heads that a two‑state solution that would have Jews and Arabs live side-by-side, will no longer work. There are for all intents and purposes 48 Muslim majority countries in the world today. If Islam is a Religion of Love, let any or all of them take the Palestinians in. But you know something, none of them will. Because why? Because Palestinians exist so that Islam can keep Israel strategically on its defences. They are being used by their own co-religionists to keep up the flames of Jihad.

When we were in Florence last year, we saw Giambologna’s chef d’oeuvre before we saw Michelangelo’s David. The sculpture is monumental both in its physical as well as metaphysical stature. Here Samson is slaying a Philistine. I must go back to our photo library and retrieve the original and post it here because the lighting was so much better. But if I don’t, imagine yourself standing at his feet. Giambologna really does transport you 3,000 years back in time.

The Samson Option – Israel’s Nuclear Deterrent

Samson’s symbolism is powerful. It is said in the Old Testament, that Samson, a biblical Israelite Judge, pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had captured him, crying out “Let me die with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30).

If ever Israel is in the process of being defeated or destroyed by its enemies, it will unleash its atomic arsenal at Dimona, deep inside the Negev dessert, against the four corners of the world. Its more than 150 ICBMs are sufficient to turn vast areas of the globe into smoldering radioactive fields for the next couple of generations. In fact, the Israeli have borrowed a page from the Field Manuals of the USA and USSR, by building up their nuclear arsenal.

Year	Number of warheads
1958	Construction of the Negev Nuclear Research Center begins near the city of Dimona.
1962-1964	Heavy-water nuclear reactor comes online.
1967	First nuclear weapon is produced. For context, the Chinese Project 956 atomic weapons tests occurred in 1964 (nuclear) and 1967 (thermonuclear). Israel is de facto the 6th nuclear military power in the world.   By the end of the year, IDF has 13 operational nuclear warheads. In June 1967, Israel pre-emptively strikes the Arab coalition forces, securing the Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights. The Dimona nuclear project is so secret that Israel goes to extreme lengths to protect it. The reactor complex was reportedly overflown by unidentified jet aircraft prior to the Six-Day War in 1967. At the time the aircraft involved were thought to be Egyptian Air Force MiG-21s, although a controversial 2007 book argues that they were actually reconnaissance Soviet MiG-25s. During the same war an Israeli fighter jet, damaged in a bombing raid over Jordan, was shot down by air defenses protecting the facility after straying over it, killing the pilot, Captain Yoram Harpaz.
1973	Faced with resounding tactical reversals in battle, the PM of Israel, Golda Meir, authorizes a nuclear alert readying 13 atomic warheads for use by missiles and aircraft.   The CIA believed that Israeli nuclear weapons ranged from 10 to 20, between 1974 and until the early 1980s.
1979	The Vela Incident. The South African-Israeli military cooperation allows a series of nuclear atmospheric testing in the Indian Ocean.
1986	The Israeli’s equivalent of Soviet dissident Sakharov, scientist and whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu reveals that the Dimona reactor purposed exclusively to produce weapons­‑grade plutonium operates at 150 megawatts, putting out 40 kg of plutonium, enriched Pu per annum. Based on his account, Israel had then between 100 and 200 nuclear devices. Sometimes between 1980 and 1986, Israel gains access to its first thermonuclear weapons.
1991	After the dissolution of the USSR, 20 Soviet-Jew scientists emigrate to Israel.
1992	German intelligence estimates 40 top Jewish Soviet nuclear scientists are believed to have moved to Israel since 1989.
1995	Israel receives US clearance to import the first US built supercomputers.
Mid-2000s	Israel has now between 75 and 400 modern nuclear warheads. Why did Israel start so late yet made up for its belated arrival in the field, so fast? Israel also has uranium enrichment capabilities at Dimona. Gas centrifuges, critical to enrichment of fissionable material, have been operating in the Negev since the 1970s. Machon 8 and Machon 9 laser enrichment plants are based on the 1973 Israeli patent on laser isotope separation. Israel is the leading expert in military-grade material enrichment.
2004	Allegedly, Israel stops production of nuclear weapons. This is highly unlikely.
2014	Former POTUS Jimmy Carter declares that Israel has 300 or more nuclear weapons.
2018	The Dimona complex is renamed after Shimon Peres.

By 1995, Israel was in possession of a complete repertoire of nuclear weapons, covering the whole gamut of launch and range systems: atomic, thermonuclear, neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons, and suitcase nukes and EMPs and nuclear land mines. It could thus deliver nuclear warheads accurately via Jericho 3 missiles up to 11,500 km.

BTW, a Hungarian-Jew, Edward Teller developed the first viable thermonuclear weapon design in 1952. The morale of this factoid: Do Not Mess with the Jews!

Conclusion

I guess the best way to finish my foray into Israel’s geopolitical reality is to go back to the artistic license that brought together two consummate actors in 1981. That’s when the movie Masada came out. It depicts the end of the Jewish Rebellion that saw the prevailing Romans destroying their Temple a second time.

The film is about the siege of the last stronghold of a group of ‘bandits’ or ‘freedom fighters’ depending on whose side you’re on, who had taken refuge on the Masada plateau, situated on top of a steep cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, about 1908 years prior.

In it the Roman governor of Judaea, General Cornelius Flavius Silva played flawlessly by Peter O`Toole meets the Jewish Rebel Chief Eleazar ben Yair. These are a few of the lines of dialogue, which made this cinematographic experience memorable.

Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva:
You invite me to try? Your country is one long and narrow graveyard already. Your cities are flatter than your deserts, your temple has been destroyed and most of the survivors are slaves. All for seven years of us trying. Give us our due, man, we know how to kill.

Eleazar ben Yair:
As long as one of us is alive and remembers how to start a fire or hold a sword, this war will go on.

Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva:
Honor is like family. It has its limits.

Eleazar ben Yair:
Spoken like a Roman.

Eleazar ben Yair:
I’ll tell you a secret not even Nero knew. Do you want to know how to destroy the Jews? Leave them in peace. They’ll be at each other’s throats soon enough. But as long as we have an enemy, we are brothers.

Eleazar ben Yair:
We want our freedom back. We want our country back.

Gen. Cornelius Flavius Silva:
Back? When was it ever yours? It has always belonged to somebody. Babylon, Egypt. For a thousand years it has been a recognized war trophy. A costly one.

Masada (1981) with Peter O’Toole and Peter Strauss. An Irish Roman vs. a Jewish Jew. Quite the treat.

The story of the Jewish people is that of a people who will not abandon the fight. That would be enough in my book to deserve my respect. But the Jews have something else going on for them. Not matter where they are, they need to become the best, to adapt, to survive, to thrive, to succeed, and thus become indispensable. Most of the world is not made like that.

And that is why most of the world cares less for Jews. It’s this lousy quiet Jealousy, unadulterated envy of the crass, that has met the Jewish way of life everywhere, and that has instigated the crimes perpetrated against them. And while the Jealousy is subdued, the hatred has always been out in the open.

By the way, the Romans besieged the unrepentant and unbending Jews until one day they realized they had won. But rather than surrendering to the enemy, all Jewish men, women, and children who were surrounded, decided to take their own lives rather than be killed or enslaved by the Romans.

In other words, the Jews decided to die free than live in chains. They chose to be Free in Death over the Comfort of a Life in shackles.

And that, my friends, tells me everything I need to know about a People.