During the 1980’s we saw the miniseries of Masada on South African television. I was in my teens and before that I had never heard of Masada, a battle well known and imprinted in the minds of Jews, the world over.
Peter O’Toole played the Roman Commander, Lucius Flavius Silva, Peter Straus was the Jewish Sicarii commander Elazar ben Ya'ir, whilst Barbara Carerra played the mistress of the Roman Commander…basically sleeping with the enemy.
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Without knowing the outcome I was following it night after night, watching the Romans build their ramp to the summit of Masada. The people on Masada were about 1000, the Romans about 5000. What a disappointment the outcome was. I was fully disgusted.
Being no stranger to my people being heavily outnumbered in historical battles such as Bloodriver, Majuba and Spioenkop, I actually expected the Jewish Sicarii (root of Iscariot) to have put up a fight and win or go down in a blaze of glory…What a letdown it was when it came out that the Sicarii killed each other and then themselves apparently to deny the Romans the pleasure of enslaving them.
Today on the East Side there is a cable car taking school children and tourist up to Masada. The site is also used to swear in their soldiers.
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After finishing basic training, they would climb the crest of Masada at dawn and take a solemn oath, “We shall remain free men; Masada shall not fall again.”
Ever since seeing that miniseries the battle of Masada has been in the back of my mind. I simply cannot agree with slitting the throats of my own children, my wife and committing suicide in order to deny my attackers a victory. It screams against everything inside of me. I would fight to the last breath. It is absurd…without putting up a fight I then has actually given my attackers their victory.
The whole episode of Masada screams against the laws of nature of fighting to the last breath. It is against all the laws of Judaism that holds self preservation as the ultimate law.
Fact is that the people on Masada were an odd bunch. They were the Sicarii, who were cloak and dagger assassins in the true sense of the word. They would wander around in market places carrying daggers concealed in their clothing and stab or slit the throats of Romans or liberal (traitor) Jews, including Rabbis accepting Roman rule.
They were extremely well trained and lightning fast and would disappear into the crowd long before anyone actually noticed anything. They even went around butchering entire towns including women and children. They were so bad that other Jews turned against them.
Roman rule eventually caught up with them and chased them up a Mountain called Masada…the rest is history. Or is it?
The Jewish Historian Josephus Flavius who were first on the side of the Jews and then switched sides to the Romans gives an account of this in The War of the Jews, Book 7:402-406.
From 1963 to 1965, a distinguished Israeli general and archaeologist, Professor Yigael Yadin, led an international expedition to plumb the secrets of Masada. Volunteers from dozens of countries paid their way to Israel to help professional archaeologists unearth the ruins.
Only three skeletons were ever found at the top. Some other skeletons were later found in a cave lower down.
Yadin put the number of human remains at twenty-five and later claimed, “they can be only those of the defenders of Masada.” In 1969 the Israeli state arranged for a full military burial of these remains in Jerusalem.
Before his death in 1984, Yadin admitted he was pressured by the Israeli government to make that connection, even though the cave contained pig bones among the skeletons, a common sacrificial burial practice for Roman dead.
In Israel there are learned people who totally disagree with with the Masada myth. In fact it is dividing the nation .
Israeli sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda believes that Yadin’s portrayal of the rebels at Masada as “freedom fighters” and “patriots” was a far stretch. In 1995, he released a book entitled, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel.
Maybe Masada was only a small part of a much larger Jewish revolt against Roman Imperialism…a revolt that ended in total defeat of the Jews and the burning and razing of their capital.
Nevertheless it was a great TV show with great actors…all in Technicolor so I suppose it just had to be true. Let us for a few moments pretend it was all true…
…Just  like we pretend today certain wars  with certain victor’s were real.
After the SA forces slaughtered 5000 of the Cuban and MPLA forces in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale losing 31 of our own, the Cubans still claimed a victory…despite executing General Ochoa Sanchez upon his return to Cuba for suffering the most humiliating defeat on African soil since the Second World War.
At The Battle of Bloodriver 464 Boers faced 10,000 Zulu soldiers…killed 3000 of them and lost none. Only three Boers were injured. A total defeat of the Zulus…
At the Battle of Isandlwana about 20,000 Zulus attacked 800 British troops with about 1000 helpers. Death toll was about a thousand on each side, yet the Zulus claim a victory today.
At the Battle of Majuba an evenly matched Boer force of farmers defeated a professional army of the strongest military force at the time, the superior power of Great Britain.
At Spioenkop an outnumbered force of 8000 rag-tag Boers against 30,000 British forces, spanked the botties of the British in a battle they will never forget.
2500 years ago 300 Spartans took a stand against 200,000 forces of the Persian King Xerxes and died a heroic death.
Today the only thing that counts is who are still here.
The Spartans are no more; the mighty Roman Empire that assailed Masada is no more. The once mighty British Empire that fought the Zulus and the Boers has shrunken back to their little Island, today being colonized by their former colonies. The heroic Boers of a 100 years ago have assimilated into Afrikanerdom and White South Africa…today a handful still claims the title “Boer”…
Napoleon is gone; France has never won a major war since. The mighty Empires of Genghis Khan, and Attila the Hun have disappeared…only mentioned in history books today. Nobody gives them a second thought.
Fact is that we can dig up the history of heroic fighters and myths of heroic fighters as much as we want to…In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel-San that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, as long as you put up a good fight, people will respect you…
At the end of the day Mother Nature, that cruel bitch, has the final say in who will survive and who will go under. Today the Afrikaners are faced with several questions. Shakespeare in Hamlet raised the most important question for them…”To be or not to be”…
When they were faced with that question in 1948, the Jews chose “To be”, at any cost. Whether the Afrikaners will also take such a decision is arguable.
The beauty of history is that it is written on a daily basis and the book is never complete. We determine history.
It is all nice to bask in the light of past heroic ancestors, but what will future historians say about the Afrikaners or the Whites of South Africa? Will we simply be forgotten? What do all our heroic battles and the sacrifices of our people mean when we choose “Not to be”?
The priority of every Afrikaner today, whether liberal or conservative, whether ultra right or ultra left, should be the choice “To Be”.
It is a conscious decision in our minds. We have built this country to be here for a thousand years, we now have to synchronize our minds to that endeavour. We can choose Masada or Thermopylae, but the priority is that we now adopt a long-term strategy. Do we want to be here 50 years from now or 200 years from now?
It is fine that we build on the heroic battles of the past, but we should never forget that we still want to be here a thousand years from now.
