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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: obituary

The Passing of a Legend

23 Mon Mar 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on The Passing of a Legend

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Freedom House, Lee Kuan Yew, National University of Singapore, obituary, People's Action Party, philosopher king, Plato, Reporters Without Borders, Singapore

Lee Kuan YewIn the early hours of March 23, 2015, Lee Kuan Yew passed away at Singapore General Hospital; he was 91. Having dominated Singapore’s politics for over five decades – as prime minister from 1959, even before the city-state’s independence from Malaysia, to 1990 and then in a ministerial capacity until 2011 – Lee seemed virtually immortal. In his time at the helm, Lee transformed Singapore from a tiny tropical port city with no natural resources and a multicultural population to a glistening first-world metropolis with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

Lee was truly one of the great men of his era, though of a different sort from most leaders. He did not command vast armies nor did he possess enormous wealth; he did not seek the limelight nor did he shun it. In its early days, Singapore was as ridden with ethnic conflict (Maria Hertogh, 1964 Race Riots, 1969 Race Riots), linguistic differences (Malay, Tamil, English, Mandarin), and poor literacy as any of the other new post-World War II countries. Yet Lee was able to mould a functioning state from these disparate elements and foster prosperity among its citizens.

Lee’s remarkable record is even more poignant when juxtaposed with the results of the policies of the galaxy of new world leaders that emerged in the decolonisation of the 1950s and 1960s – Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Soekarno, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong. Not one surpassed Yew in providing their citizens education, sanitation, the rule of law, employment, infrastructure, and security. Or aspiration. Singapore is today an inspiration for the countries in the region.

What marked Lee out from his early days as prime minister until his death was a clarity of thought and directness of speech few politicians ever exhibit. His utterances were always considered, never verbose, and substantial. Lee was never afraid to buck the trend – he spoke and acted with conviction that came from careful thought rather than opinion polls or outside influence. His model of governance, though it has come under much flak, was a peculiarly Asian understanding of the political process that was at once liberal yet restrictive, democratic yet paternal.

Lee offered – unintentionally, perhaps – those who wished to emulate him a style of politics that was a palatable alternative to the European model, one in which liberty did not mean license and decorum was insisted upon in public life. Graffiti, slander, and a media that reveled in mockery and reporting the prurient was not tolerated but the press was not muzzled as one might expect in an authoritarian state. However, harsh libel laws kept most publishers on edge. In fact, publishing houses were made to issue special “management shares” that carried more voting privileges than regular shares and these were held by Singaporeans appointed by the government. This gave the government influence in the media without taking it over completely. The ministers of Lee’s party, the People’s Action Party, defended this measure by arguing that not all ideas were worthy of consideration and undesirable ideologies or philosophies could not be allowed to infect the people of Singapore. Lee kept the foreign press was kept at bay, allowing them to report Singapore to the world and bring the world to Singapore but denying them the right to play a role as “invigilator, adversary, and inquisitor” of the Singaporean democratic process.

A famous example of Singapore’s libel laws is the case of lawyer and parliamentarian, JB Jeyaratnam. Lee relentlessly sued his opponent over every act of libel until Jeyaretnam was declared bankrupt and barred from standing for elections for a while. When asked about the incident in an interview, Lee merely pointed out that the libel laws apply to him as well and no one had ever sued him for libel. Dignity in the public sphere trumped the freedom of expression.

Lee’s Singapore did not believe in equality, at least as it is normally defined in the West. In fact, the late prime minister unequivocally rejected the notion. However, the state provided quality education, free up to a certain level, to give Singaporeans the opportunity to better their lot in life. Citizens were equal before law but social equality had to come from the character, conduct, and effort of the individual.

Lee inculcated a spirit of meritocracy and elitism among Singaporeans. For him, it was essential that the best man for a job do it; after all, the rulers must be beyond reproach in a paternalistic system. For the less competent and non-elite, these were labels worthy of scorn for they denied access to life on a grander scale. Lee was absolutely unapologetic about the unofficial class system in his country. Statecraft was serious business, he argued, and it affected the lives of all. Government could not be left to the whims of anyone who might be interested in the trappings of power.

Housing laws in Singapore enforced heterogeneous neighbourhoods: regulations dictated the approximate ethnic breakdown of each locality so that ghettos would not form. A ghetto of location transforms quickly into a ghetto of mind and could become a divisive force in Singapore. Harsh fines against litter, spitting in public, failure toflush public toilets, and even chewing gum were enacted to clean up the streets and waterways of the city state. A clean, law-abiding, and peaceful city would be a place of pride for the people, Lee thought, and it would also attract foreign investments. An excellent public transport system was developed to encourage commuters to give up private vehicles.

Some have criticised Lee’s Asian model on the grounds that Western liberal democracy can just as easily implement conservative policies if there is support for those ideas. Unfortunately, this does not grasp the full nature of Lee’s model which has at its core an unapologetic elitism. Lee did not believe that the common man was capable of always deciding in his best interest, let alone that of larger society. In Lee was embodied the closest 20th century approximation of Plato’s philosopher king.

The greatness of Lee was in that he recognised what was required for and of society. He unabashedly pointed out that none of the Western democracies were born liberal; there is no instance of liberal democracy having assisted in the development of any poor nation. While human rights organisations complained about Singapore’s authoritarianism and Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders gave Singapore a poor rating in their indices, Lee was forthright in declaring that he judged a system by how well it provides for its people’s needs, not by what some theoretician on democracy opined.

As the generation changed in Singapore, the mindset of the new youth changed too. Lee was sensitive to this transformation and stepped down from office voluntarily in 1990. “The time has come for a younger generation to carry Singapore forward in a more difficult and complex situation,” he declared in his letter of resignation. As Lee told one student at a National University of Singapore forum in 2009, the old generation built the country up, the next generation made it wealthy, and now it was for the youth to figure out where to go next. Lee continued to stand for parliament until the elections of 2011 when he finally retired from public life for good. For 21 years after his resignation from the highest post in the land, he served the people of Singapore but in an increasingly less prominent role. He was senior minister until 2004 when he became minister mentor.

The new generation is indeed different from the one of their parents or grandparents. They do not know of dire poverty, desperation, or what it is to live in a flailing state. And thank the gods for that. In this new era, Singapore has different problems – immigration, radicalisation, terrorism – that may require different solutions. Lee was traditional, perhaps, but he was not orthodox. He recognised that the era of his top-down governance was nearing an end and stepped down to make way for someone capable of handling the new times. Lee had done his part – he had set Singapore on a very firm footing. Only the next 50 years will tell if Singaporeans have learned Lee’s lessons well.


This post appeared on FirstPost on March 24, 2015.

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Ariel Sharon – A Portrait in Blood and Sand

11 Sat Jan 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on Ariel Sharon – A Portrait in Blood and Sand

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Ariel Scheinermann, Ariel Sharon, Battle of Abu-Ageila, Biscari, David Ben-Gurion, Disengagement Plan, Entebbe, fedayeen, Gadna, Gdudei No'ar, Gush Emunim, Haganah, Hassadeh, IDF, Israel, Israeli Defence Forces, Kadima, Kfar Milal, Lebanon War, Likud, Mapai, Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael, Mitla Pass, obituary, Operation Peace for Galilee, Phalangists, Pinhas Lavon, Qibya, Rheinwiesenlager, Sabra, settlements, Shatila, Six Day War, Suez Crisis, Unit 101, War of Attrition, War of Independence, Wilhelm Gesenius, Yom Kippur War

Ariel Sharon is dead. Warrior and politician, Arik, as he was known to his friends, was reviled, feared, and admired by many. He lived his life under a shadow of controversy and epitomised Israeli sabra culture – lacking in charm, eloquence, or idealism but having an abundance of self-reliance and no-nonsense, can-do grit.

Ariel Sharon 1966Born Ariel Scheinermann on February 26, 1928, in a family of Belorussian Jews in Kfar Malal, Sharon joined Hassadeh, a Zionist youth movement literally meaning the Field, at 10. At 14, he took the week-long training of the Gdudei No’ar (youth battalions), and participated in armed patrols of his moshav. Sheinermann joined the Haganah the same year, 1942, as the turbulence in Europe reached a frenzied pitch in the Middle East. With the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the Haganah became the Israeli Defence Forces and the future prime minister was pulled into Israel’s first war. For his valour at the Battle of Latrun in which he was severely wounded, Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion bestowed upon the young Sheinermann the name of Sharon, meaning ‘body armour’ in Hebrew (it is unlikely that a Jewish audience would have taken theologian Wilhelm Gesenius’ meaning of Sharon as upright or just).

Sharon was regarded as a tough soldier and a brilliant commander which helped him rise rapidly through the ranks despite his frequent insubordination. By the end of Israel’s War of Independence, he was already a company commander; during the Suez Crisis, Sharon was a major. He rose to major-general rank by the Six-Day War, and in 1969, he was put in charge of the IDF’s Southern Command. Sharon retired from the military in 1973 just a few months before the Yom Kippur War to form the right-wing Likud party, a complete about-turn from his early inclinations towards the socialistic Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael, or Mapai. However, Sharon paused his political career to return to military service and fight in Israel’s most trying conflict.

As in his military career, Sharon moved through different positions in the government – special security advisor to Yitzhak Rabin, minister of agriculture and minister of defence under Menachem Begin, minister of national infrastructure and the foreign minister under Benjamin Netanyahu – until he rose to the highest office of the land in 2001. After losing the support of his own party in 2005 over the removal of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, Sharon left the Likud to form the Kadima and called for general elections – elections he appeared poised to win had he not suffered a serious stroke in January 2006 and gone into a coma until his death.

It is not surprising that Sharon’s life was surrounded by bloodshed; his long military career and Israel’s troubled existence hardly allowed anything else. However, Sharon’s critics point to the several massacres by Israeli units under his watch in the military or in government. To them, Sharon is an unrepentant war criminal and a scheming politician whose actions were excessive even in times of war.

As head of Unit 101 in 1953, Sharon’s men were accused of massacring over 60 civilians at Qibya in Jordanian-occupied West Bank. However, this was in retaliation to the constant raids by Palestinian fedayeen into Israel – over 9,000 between 1948 and 1956 according to Israel – that had left dozens of Israelis dead and damaged agriculture and infrastructure. Moreover, the attack had received sanction from Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon and Ben-Gurion himself. Despite public perception, most of Unit 101’s raids were on military targets in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

Ariel SharonSharon’s aggressiveness got him into trouble as many times as it earned him accolades; his command came under strong rebuke during the Suez Crisis in 1956 for disobeying orders and provoking a battle with Egyptian forces at Mitla Pass, but his actions at Abu-Ageila proved decisive on the southern front during the Six Day War and received praise from strategists all around the world. In Israel, he was christened, The Lion of God (meaning of Ariel in Hebrew), and The King of Israel by the public. Similarly, during Israel’s darkest hour during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Sharon’s forces crossed the Suez into Africa and moved towards Ismailia and Cairo to cut off Egypt’s Second Army and encircle its Third Army in the Sinai. As a result, Sharon was seen as the architect of Israel’s military victory in the Sinai in 1973.

It was during the War of Attrition, that death-by-a-thousand-cuts period between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, that Sharon earned a reputation for being in favour of Israeli settlements in disputed and occupied territories. Not only was this a blatant violation of international law, but the settlements resulted in dispossession, deaths, and deportation of Palestinians from the areas. In 1971, as a measure to pacify the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Sharon had resorted to bulldozing hundreds of homes in the Gaza Strip. Again, although Sharon’s actions in the Gaza Strip did not have higher authorisation, he received full support from then prime minister Golda Meir and the evacuations were given post facto approval. As a new minister in Begin’s government, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim settler movement and doubled the number of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories before the end of the decade.

Perhaps the most controversial episode in Sharon’s career was the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Sharon, then defence minister, is thought to have masterminded the operation with the end goals of evicting the PLO from Lebanon, ending Syrian influence in the country, and installing a Christian pro-Israel government in Beirut. The war has a complex background and history with several paramilitary actors fighting alongside government forces, and in September 1982, the Phalangists, a Christian militia, entered the camps of Sabra and Shatila and massacred anywhere between 800 and 3,000 Palestinian men, women, and children with incredible brutality as revenge for the assassination of their leader, Bachir Gemayel. It was later learned that the assassination was masterminded by Syria and not the PLO.

The Knesset-appointed Kahan Commission, despite its many weaknesses, found that Ariel Sharon bore a personal if indirect responsibility for the massacre as he, along with Begin and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, had agreed to allow the Phalangists into the camps to search for terrorists. Given the ties between the IDF and the Phalangists, not to mention the IDF forward command post barely 200 metres southwest of Shatilla, it would be impossible for the Phalangists to have done their dastardly deed. However, a bodyguard of Phalangist commander Elie Hobeika wrote in his memoirs that the massacre at the camps had been carried out contrary to Israeli instructions. If this is true, it reduces Sharon’s culpability but the safety of the camps was, regardless, Israel’s responsibility as the occupying power and it is improbable that the IDF did not know what was happening just down the road.

Despite his aggressiveness on the battlefield, Sharon was ultimately a pragmatist. During the Camp David talks with Anwar Sadat, he advocated the dismantling the settlements in the Sinai if it bought peace. In 2003, Sharon accepted a Road Map to Peace proposed by the United States, European Union, and Russia. Israel adopted the Disengagement Plan the next year, and by August 2005, all Israeli settlements in Gaza and a few in the West Bank had been abandoned. Sharon faced strong opposition not only from the military and intelligence arms but also within his own party. Among the public, initial support for his plan was at nearly 70% but dropped to approximately 55% by the time the settlements had been removed, probably due to disenchantment with implementation.

Yet Sharon’s military record and reputation for aggressive strategy gave him credibility in any peace overture – few Israelis had forgotten that their prime minister had fought in every one of their country’s wars. In popular parlance, he was Israel’s Nixon who could go to China. To be clear, Sharon’s plan was no naïve utopia – it was merely a foundation upon which peace could be built if, as he stressed, he found a reliable partner for peace. Palestinians were not consulted in the removal of settlements, nor did Israel give up control over Gaza’s coast or airspace. Furthermore, the construction of the security fence was accelerated.

Sharon was a deeply controversial figure, a war criminal even, for those who think that life is quantifiable and can be neatly codified. A pertinent question to ask is whether Israeli history would have been different without Sharon. Given the country’s policies and other behaviour, at Entebbe for example, it is unlikely that Suez, the Six Day War, or Lebanon could have been avoided; it would just have been someone else instead of Sharon.

It is ironic that the final legacy of a man of war was peace – almost. After conquering land for Israel and expanding Jewish settlements throughout his career, Sharon’s last days were spent considering land for peace and giving up the settlements. The former Israeli prime minister has been made out to be a monster but his did nothing more than many generals in war. Even the haloed George S Patton was implicated in the massacre of 73 Italians at Biscari, and the same callous approach to prisoners of war was shown at Normandy on D-Day. Similarly, over 10,000 German prisoners died at Rheinwiesenlager, the Allied POW camp, from starvation, dehydration, and exposure. There is also the case of the massacre of the Dachau prison guards by American soldiers who flew into a rage at the sight of the camp’s inmates. While one crime does not excuse another, these incidents illustrate the nature of war.

Ariel Sharon remains one of Israel’s most popular sons, and for all the differences they may have had with him, Israelis will miss him. May G-d comfort him among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

המקום ינחם אותך בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on January 11, 2014.

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