Toward the end of WWII, Russian Army raped just about every woman in Germany. I’ve never had a problem with that. The wholesale rape was not a military measure by any standard; it didn’t serve to crush the German will to fight which was already at the low point by then. The rape was not an expression of Russian barbarity: female populations of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe were largely spared. The rape was an act of vengeance, and I wholeheartedly approve of vengeance.
Societies punish criminals vengefully. In terms of prevention, it would suffice to ban, say, corruptioners from their jobs, but societies sentence them to prison. Relatives of the victims of violence long for revenge rather than mere prevention. Hebrews were commanded to exterminate Amalekites for the offenses of their ancestors. Vengeance is not nice, but it restores righteousness.
Defenders of the US nuclear attack on Japan bring up the necessity of crushing Japan’s will to fight to the last man. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t achieve that end. After the first town was annihilated in nuclear attack, Japan did not react at all. The losses were actually much smaller than in Tokyo’s fire-bombing, and consisted largely of civilians – not a matter of the imperial army’s concern. Still, the US dropped the second nuclear bomb. The role of nukes in the capitulation is still a matter of historical debate in Japan, but most historians agree that exhaustion and the American promise of retaining the monarchy were the critical factors behind capitulation. Nuclear attacks on Japanese cities were a viable, but unnecessary military action. They were a legitimate act of revenge. Such was also the fire-bombing of Dresden – the answer to German attacks on Coventry.
Without vengeance, wars would become a limited liability affair. Aggressor can torture the victim’s civilian population, but the victim – once it gains the upper hand – ostensibly shouldn’t reciprocate. Such an arrangement, if ever implemented, would provoke the aggressors’ brutality: in the best case, they quash the resistance, while in the worst case, their civilians still won’t be harmed.
Fortunately, vengeance prevails in wars.
As do I. The need for vengeance is deeply embedded in the human psyche and is a force that cannot be written away with laws or reasoned away. People know, instinctively, what constitutes fairness, and vengeance is part of that. As the Golden Rule (and its contra-positive) so eloquently point out, reciprocity is the basis of the notion of fairness and vengeance is nothing more than the completion of reciprocity.
Any society that restricts the reasonable exercise of just vengeance (which includes some very ruthless acts, as you have pointed out) is on an inexorable path to destruction, as that society will build up feelings of unfair treatment by their own government as transgressions by others are not properly addressed.
SO far I always found something of value and inspiration in his articles, even when if I happened to disagree. This time I find ZERO validity. I am not objecting because of the moral reasons; I object on the factual grounds: There is Zero validity to this theory that raping populations prevent future wars. If anything in many cases it saws the seeds of future wars. It certainly degenerates the winning hero's into the level of criminals.
American forces raped substantially fewer German women than Russians; Yet the West-Germans did not turn out to be more war-like than the East-Germans!
Almost every war in the history of humanity involved mass rapes and massacres. One should think that this would prevent future war, unfortunately no such evidence exists: On the contrary wars continue all the time.
The mass sadistic rapes by Russian soldiers served to brutalizing not only the German women, but also the Russian men committing these crimes. What kind of human beings are they going to be after returning home: How are they going to treat their own women and children? Does not seem to be a very good record as Russia is full of drunken rapists. After raping German women, they went home and raped Russian girls and women. If they raped somewhat less, it was only because it was more dangerous, their humanity and morality non-existent.
This is also the case with the Arabs: They are rapists at heart. (During the WWII, most rapes by American army was committed by the Moroccans fighting with the Americans)
The epidemic Arab raping, has never prevented them from fighting another war.
Decisions to go to wars made by the rulers, they don't care if a significant portion of their population get's killed and raped.
Put simply, what a warped viewpoint. If this were true, we would all be terroists.
Some of the best Jews were terrorists. Menahem Begin proudly called himself a terrorist. Drawing a line between himself and Arafat, Begin said, "Yes, I'm a terrorist, but he is bandit!"
Ray, Obadiah argues that rape is a means of vengeance. It indeed has no value for prevention of future wars, as you note correctly.
Though, you may have noticed, the Germans did not invade Russia since.
Danny,
Obadiah's article says:
"Without vengeance, wars would become a limited liability affair. Aggressor can torture the victim’s civilian population, but the victim – once it gains the upper hand – ostensibly shouldn’t reciprocate. Such an arrangement, if ever implemented, would provoke the aggressors’ brutality: in the best case, they quash the resistance"
Te me this clearly says that vengeance prevents future brutality. There is no historical evidence to support this. On the contrary, one could expect that vengeance will only bread further vengeance (as in the brutal Arab clan feuds). So far I have loved and admired Obadiah's thinking because he was the least ideological (most rational) political thinker. (Unfortunately not always when it comes to religion, but still far more rational than bot the so called leftist and conservatives. His "Machiavellian analysis" for the first time gave me a somewhat clear perspective on the events.
I understood that it will not possible for the Jewish people to prevail against our enemies while upholding radically higher moral standards. On the contrary by doing so, instead of seeking a decisive victory (even at the cost of great suffering of the enemy population)we will only succeed in indefinitely prolonging both our own and our enemies suffering.
So while I generally love Obadiah's clear and amoral thinking. Here I find him in error:Rape and cruelty by our soldiers would only debase, dehumanize our soldiers.
I can only allow for vengeance in one case: When it is directed towards the perpetrators, not against (potentially) innocent women and girls, who had the misfortune to be born German at the wrong time in history.
=
Otherwise perhaps you'd suggest that we should go back to impaling, flaying, crucifying and in other ways torturing our enemies to death for the entertainment of the masses?
You're right, though I still see the argument about the limited liability as illustrative rather than the reason per se.
I also don't see him advocating that Israeli soldiers rape the enemy populations (there are not a few such cases, actually), but rather justifying the general approach.
I'd say, in Israeli situation, scorching South Lebanon or North Gaza would fit the necessary vengeance. It's not only rape, you see. Nuking Germany would have been similarly acceptable.
About torturing enemies… I would love to see the Nazis tortured, slowly and painfully, to death en masse. And I would have no problem crucifying Nasrallah or Barghouti, or their cohorts. See, it's whether you hate them or not. Anything goes against a really hated enemy.
I dont know anywhere in any of my readings and learning, that the rape of German women would be a tolerable act by god, regardless of the crime committed by the nation, when the nation had endured enough and had already surrendered. That was an act of shear barbarity. Girls as young as 13 were gangraped by the hundreds for years and years, with some of the last documented offenses taking place in 1953, 8 years after the surrender. We didnt hear about American, British or French soldiers committing wholesale rape of the women in their zones, which tells me their morals were more elevated… As a jew I find that the rape of German women and girls to be a the last great crime committed against humanity in WW2.
Germans, you say, endured ENOUGH??? Amalek was exterminated for the crimes against God's people incomparable to Holocaust.
Germans, Ukrainians, Croats, Lithuanians, Estonians etc can never suffer enough for what they did to Jews.