Rise and Kill First and Meditations

Using an article on my WeChat account to present [Excerpts from Yesterday's Reflections] might be a nice idea.

Provided I'm quick about it, and can resist my urge to ramble and my urge to make the layout perfect.

The other side of my favorite book, No Room for Small Dreams, shows up in this book, Rise and Kill First.

Why Israel relies on assassination

This has to do with the dire situation on the eve of and in the early days of Israel's founding in 1948: surrounded by powerful enemies, with limited strength of its own, international aid and support still uncertain, and on top of that the psychological trauma of the Nazi Holocaust in the Second World War. All these factors combined to create a deep and lasting fear within the Israeli state and society: one false move could make the entire Israeli state and people vanish into thin air. So, to survive, the newborn Israel had to use every means available to guarantee its security and eliminate its enemies.

2. In politics, there really are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends. Britain "supported or abandoned" Israel according to whether it was "useful or useless."

During the First World War, the Palestine region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, which sided with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria in the war. So Britain needed an ally in the Middle East to keep its colonies from falling into enemy hands, especially the hub of global trade and transport — the Suez Canal. Britain therefore decided to support the Jews' return to their ancestral land of Palestine to found a state. Yet after the First World War, the pragmatic British government decided that the Jewish presence in Palestine looked weak, and so, to protect its own political and economic interests in the Middle East, it ought instead to court the powerful Arab tribes that had been established there for many years.

And so, in May 1939, British Colonial Secretary MacDonald put forward a brand-new outline of Middle East foreign policy, which was adopted: this was the MacDonald White Paper. Its core content was that within ten years, Britain would help the Arabs establish a sovereign Arab state in Palestine, while restricting Jewish immigration there.

The same goes for the United States.

With the Israeli intelligence services' string of successes and victory in the Second Arab-Israeli War in 1956, Israel rose rapidly: this small country once thought to be living on borrowed time quickly became a military power and an intelligence powerhouse. At the same time, as the Cold War escalated and intensified, the US also decided to upgrade Israel into an important military and political ally in the Middle East, to block Soviet infiltration and expansion in the Arab world. Under American leadership, Israel, Iran and Turkey secretly formed an intelligence cooperation and exchange alliance, code-named "Trident."

3. This passage is simply brilliant — I slammed the table!

It gave me a new understanding of Shimon Peres's "using creativity to forge peace." And also: only with strength is negotiation possible.

Beginning in 1962, Israeli intelligence learned that Egypt had recruited a group of German scientists from the Second World War era to develop ballistic missiles, and had already carried out test launches. Egyptian President Nasser publicly declared that these missiles could strike anywhere on Israeli territory. So secretly sabotaging Egypt's missile program became the Mossad's top priority.

The head of the Mossad believed the most direct and effective approach was to carry out targeted killings of these German scientists, or to frighten them into leaving Egypt.

In August 1962, Mossad agents tracked down Krug, a German scientist on the core team of Egypt's missile development program. He was at home in Munich, in southern Germany. Mossad agents posed as envoys from Egyptian military intelligence, went straight to his door and abducted him, then drove across the German-French border and took him to Marseille. In Marseille, Krug was injected with a heavy dose of sedatives. The Israeli agents forged a false identity for him, claiming he was a gravely ill Jewish immigrant, and put him on an Israeli passenger plane prepared in advance, flying straight to Israel. Under interrogation, Krug revealed everything he knew about Egypt's missile development program, but in the end he was still secretly executed. The Mossad went on to plan several other assassinations of German missile scientists on German soil, but because of various unforeseen circumstances, these operations did not succeed.

The failed assassination attempts caused an uproar in Germany and across Europe, instantly plunging the Israeli government into a diplomatic predicament. In fact, Israeli intelligence agents and special forces of the Israel Defense Forces would go on to carry out many more covert operations that violated international law and infringed on other countries' sovereignty, sometimes killing and injuring many innocent civilians, leaving Israel persistently isolated and condemned.

In the end, the Mossad had to change course and strike a deal with a former mortal enemy: they sought out the notorious Nazi war criminal Skorzeny, commander of the SS special forces.

Skorzeny, nicknamed "the most dangerous man in Europe," had led many special operations during the Second World War, including Operation Oak in 1943, which rescued the Italian fascist leader Mussolini, and he was deeply trusted by Hitler. As a result, Skorzeny knew many of Nazi Germany's top secrets inside out.

Although he had regained his freedom after the war, Skorzeny still lived in terror, afraid that the elusive and ruthless Israeli agents would come knocking. So the Mossad and Skorzeny reached an agreement: Israeli intelligence would let bygones be bygones regarding his past crimes, but Skorzeny had to use his connections to provide a detailed list of all the missile experts, and persuade these scientists not to go to Egypt anymore.

To save his own skin, Skorzeny completed the task quickly and efficiently. At the same time, an Israeli government delegation including Deputy Defense Minister Peres visited West Germany and used the intelligence provided by Skorzeny and the Mossad to pressure the West German government. In the end, the West German government agreed to have West German aerospace companies lure all the German scientists back with high salaries; with that, Egypt's missile development program collapsed.

Meditations

Pay attention to who and what you are influenced by.

5-16 Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

5-21 Revere that which is best in the universe; and this is that which makes use of all things and directs all things. And in like manner also revere that which is best in thyself; and this is of the same kind as that. For in thyself also, that which makes use of everything else is this, and thy life is directed by this.

2. Choose to let good things move in first

5-12 If any man should conceive certain things as being really good, such as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, he would not, after having first conceived these, endure to listen to anything which should not be in harmony with what is really good.

But if a man has first conceived as good the things which appear to the many to be good, he will listen and readily receive as very applicable that which was said by the comic writer.

Thus even the many perceive the difference. For were it not so, this saying would not offend and would not be rejected in the first case, while we receive it when it is said of wealth, and of the means which further luxury and fame, as said fitly and wittily.