Professor David Peimer
The Generals: Dayan, Rabin, Sharon and Captain Zvi Greengold

Professor David Peimer | The Generals: Dayan, Rabin, Sharon and Captain Zvi Greengold | 07.06.24

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- And today, we’re going to dive straight in talking about the generals and in the context of Dayan, Rabin, Sharon, and Captain Zvi Greengold, who has got a fascinating story from the 1973 war. What I want to do is look a little bit at their life and a little bit less with all the military language, if you like, but more about the idea of leadership, leadership in times of war, and what actually can we glean from these three guys and their quite astonishing careers. If we would really step back and think about it for a moment, astonishing careers and extraordinary lives that they lived, what they achieved, their human flaws, their achievements, their insights, thoughts, their sense of, you know, just carrying on and doing it. And what about it can give us perhaps something that we can glean about leadership today in a military context and in a statesman-like context as well. Because it’s one thing living through part of the era of their lives, or part of it at least, or some of it, it’s another thing stepping back and looking historically like we might at leaders of the Second World War, or the First, or going way back in history to whenever, where the icon has already become, the iconic and the myth become almost the imagined reality, you know, in our imaginations.

So it’s dealing with that sense of the reality, the history, the myth-making machine that our imaginations have got to do and mobilise. And at the same time, what we can glean. And from such a small country, which we all know, obviously, and yet producing these remarkable individuals. And I say remarkable not to be cliched, but when one thinks about where they came from and the odds they were up against in their own lives, as well as the obvious, greater odds of being surrounded by, you know, massive, massive populations with armies, and attacks, an endless war almost. What they did and how they thought, and what can we see inside the character that perhaps has not nostalgic or romantic, but has some meaning for us today. And because I’ve always felt that it’s not only in drama, content of drama or theatres or novels, stories without conflict. I mean, you couldn’t have it unless there was conflict between characters, which means there’s something profound in human nature that needs to see conflict on stage or on the screen or in stories we read, you know, there’s always a protagonist, antagonist in, you know, the stories. Then we get, it might be around some historical situation, or it might be the circumstances or family or generational or tradition and modernity, whichever. It may be cultural and identity.

There’s a sense of how conflict is so born into, is so fed into human life, human nature, and therefore, societies, of course. And the constant juggling of how to find the tensions of conflict, in order to understand, you know, this profound sense of leadership in those times, leadership in the experience of conflict. And what makes a truly great general? Not just a brilliant strategic thinker. That’s one thing. And there can be many, there can be spin doctors who are great in strategy and others, but it’s the ability to combine all of this because it’s then inside the leader who’s going to lead people in a terrifying context of life and death. So to begin, I’m going to just briefly look at a couple of thoughts from some ancient thinkers and more contemporary ones as well, and their ideas on leadership. I really want to try and avoid cliches, platitudes, all the phrases we know, the jargon, you know, you got to have this, got to have that. And a bit of the, you know, all that stuff, because I really think it’s cliche.

You know, when one tries to understand the essence of something about leadership, and when I’m looking at some of these quotes or phrases from some of the ancients today, and then actually not so ancient, when one thinks of the stories are so similar, you know? Technology may have changed and, of course, times have changed. And, you know, science, medicine, and many things have evolved, and systems of social structures, right? You know, democracy, dictatorship, whichever kingship. But it’s more the sense of there’s human nature qualities inside dealing with conflict, how to lead people in times of terrifying, anxious, enormous pressures of conflict. So starting with the first one, Mr. Homer, going way back to the “Odyssey”. And what strikes me always in reading the “Odyssey” is just one thought. Bob Dylan called it, when he gave his Nobel Prize lecture. And he spoke about the three books that influenced him the most as a kid growing up. And one of them was Homer’s “Odyssey”, fascinating. And he talked about Odysseus and the trickery of Odysseus. And the literal translation from the ancient Greek is tricks and trickery.

In our times, and I’m not trying to be pejorative here, but the true meaning of the word cunning, which is to out think, out-flank, outwit any opponent or, you know, put in a bigger scale, an army. So it’s this idea of cunning. And there’s a phrase from Homer, which he gives to Odysseus, “I drew on all my wits until a trick came and it pleased me well.” And of course, the Trojan Horse, it’s trickery, you know, go with a small commander inside a Trojan Horse, which is a crazy idea. And I’m sure Homer made it up probably. And then, you know, all the Trojans are going to bring this huge horse into their city inside the wall. That the Greeks on the beach are going to leave a wooden horse, a huge one as a gift after they’ve been trying to kill the Trojans, you know, for years, months. And then inside at night, the commandos sneak out, 30 of them, out of the Trojan Horse, and they go and they open the gates of Troy, and in comes the Greek army, and it destroys Troy forever. It’s the essence of the whole war. It’s the essence of so much of that story, trickery. It’s Odysseus is renowned for his cunning, his trickery. And he always talks about, I drew on all my wits, and the most direct translation with the ancient Greek is the word wit, which means in this context, trickery or cunning or out-flanking, out-thinking.

So it’s this idea that I want to focus on a bit more than the platitudes of leadership in a way, how to really be a great leader, a great military general, if you like, as well. Then there’s the other side of it, in the same story of Odysseus is at the early part of the long poem of Ulysses, Homer sets up Agamemnon. He’s the great king of Greece, and he is the big king, and he’s got to organise all the other Sparta, all the other sort of minor city states to join Athens in this big battle to go of to Troy. I’m not going to talk about the history of this, and whether it actually happened or not, we don’t even know. But what happens, Agamemnon is the real big shot in the whole story, and the real big king. And Odysseus, and Achilles, and others are, if you like, some of the generals of the times. And Agamemnon is told by the gods, you must kill your daughter to prove you have the courage and the ruthlessness that you can really beat the power of Troy. It’s an extraordinary image of Homer.

Whether he made it up or not. We don’t have a clue, it doesn’t matter. It’s the myth that contains the meaning of this idea of one of the most extreme images you can imagine. And he pretends, Agamemnon pretends that his daughter will get married and you know, that his going to marry Achilles, the great physical warrior hero. But at the so-called wedding, he gets up and he slits his own daughter’s throat, and then the gods of the seas and the winds are satisfied and all the winds are in his favour, and the ships can sail off to Troy, his wife freaks and gets revenge later. That’s just another part of the story. But it’s this idea of being the most ruthless imaginable image, of the father killing his daughter to prove that he can be tough enough to defeat the enemy. So we have this sense of what for me is a kind of such an extreme image of ruthlessness in military leadership. And on the other hand, we have this cunning, this trickery. And the third part of the main characters in the story is, of course, Achilles. And Achilles is the one with physical prowess. And he will always lead from the front. He will lead the soldiers physically no matter what, he is at the front. And he will show them, and they all the soldiers, the soldier boys love him.

They follow him because he will never step back from leading from the front. And it’s this sense of physical prowess and this sense of dynamic, charismatic leadership from the front. And Achilles is given the word always of anger. He’s driven by a kind of inner rage and anger. Not to kill, not for the love of murder or anything like that, but to prove ambition, and achieve, and win. It’s this hunger to win. Aristotle, of course, was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and he teaches him all these stories. And Alexander has these in his head of the three, Achilles, the physical, heroic, romantic, fit leader. We have Agamemnon, certainly ruthless, you know, extremes like a kind of, I suppose you could imagine a Stalin and other characters today. And then we have thirdly, of course, the intelligent, the cunning, the out-thinking one of Odysseus. I share these because these come down over two and a half thousand years. And I think they can help form some sense of an archetype. Obviously, looking at the young Sharon and Rabin, obviously, very complex human beings. They are real people. They are not, you know, archetypes in a fictional poem.

So I’m not trying to draw, you know, banal analogies or simple polemics, but I think something of these things can be found in these individuals. And the question is, when to be trickery, when to be cunning, when to be more ruthless, not to kill one’s daughter, of course, that’s just a myth in the story. But when to press which buttons more and which ones less. Napoleon was not a micromanager. One of the great achievements of Napoleon was how he delegated authority to his generals. He gave them autonomy to make decisions in the moment in the battlefields. And he rewarded them, promotion, medals, titles, land, and made them feel respected and valued. These guys, I believe, also did that. Confucius. Confucius had a fantastic phrase, which I’ve always loved, a leader easy to work for but hard to please. “A great leader is easy to work for but hard to please. A petty leader is hard to work for but easy to please.” It’s a way of playing with language and rhetoric that Churchill loves. And so many other speakers and writers of speeches play with that rhetoric.

Shakespeare is the master of it, ultimately. A leader is easy to work for, a great leader, easy to work for but hard to please. a petty leader is hard to work for but very easy to please, flatter, and all the rest of it. Alexander the Great, “I’m not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep but I am afraid of an army of sheep led by one lion.” I love that phrase and I’ve always felt it in so many contexts of leadership. And I think these guys have it. They did it in their lives. They achieved it for all the false mistakes, their flaws, their human frailties, their human contradictions, and realities, they were lions. They were not sheep leading lions, they were lions leading sheep or leading armies who then follow. Napoleon again, “Glory is fleeting but obscurity, that’s forever.” “In politics, stupidity is not necessarily a handicap. A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of a coloured ribbon on his chest.” It’s true. And then the one, of course, that Napoleon is famous for, “A leader is a dealer in hope,” from down through the ages since Napoleon’s life. “A leader is a dealer in hope.” And he’s got such an ambiguous set of meanings in that, of course, there’s cynicism, but there’s also idealism in it.

And there’s a cold reality, perhaps. Shakespeare on the taking of smart risks, which for me is the essence of all of this, in a way, is understanding, but the ability, how to be smart with risk. “There’s a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” What an amazing, I’ve always loved that phrase, I’m sure we all know it very well. Churchill’s, “A leader’s job is not to do all the work for others. It’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves. Get them to succeed beyond what they thought possible.” And he was a master of that. “Failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” It’s always, and the word courage was his favourite word. “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” Churchill is playing with words in the same way as Homer and Shakespeare. It’s flipping the opposite. You know, of the phrase that goes before. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” “Continuous effort is the key to unlocking potential.” From a very ancient source, a military leader and a pharaoh of ancient Egypt, Thutmose III. And of course, there’s Hannibal and many others. Thutmose III reformed Egyptian military system.

It had remained unchanged for God knows how many years, hundreds of years, there were new tools of war, mass conscription, training soldiers, logistics. It all came with this one Pharaoh. It began there anyway, because Egypt had to change. It had to deal with isolationism versus engaging with the world. And the world was threatening. The world was changing, the world was outside. There was trade, there were new things happening, new tools of war, new tools of trade, food, different ways of doing agriculture. All things were changing, Egypt had to adapt and change. And he had to adapt the ancient Egyptian army going way back at least two and a half, 3000 years, whatever, we’re not sure. So mass conscription, one out of every 10 men was called up to an army. This has never happened before in recorded history anyway. One story to show his Odysseus-type trickery. There was a path to the city, the town of Megiddo. And he asked all his generals, he’s young, so he asked all his general, so what should we do? How should we beat the enemy here? And they said, well, we should go along this path, that, everything, et cetera, but don’t go along that very narrow path up in the mountain there by the ravine.

It’s way too risky. He said, well, then it’s exactly what we’ll do. It’s like Hannibal in the Alps. We’ll do exactly the opposite of what the generals advise. Why? Because he said to them, well, if all of you generals think that, then, obviously, the enemy’s generals are going to think the same, so we do the opposite. We choose the path, in Kennedy’s phrase, that we will do it not because we can but because it is hard. To adapt his going to the moon speech because it’s the opposite to what they would expect. The same with the Normandy landings, ultimately, that Eisenhower and the others organise. We will do the opposite to what is expected. It’s so obvious but it’s not used that often. And it’s this thought that is Odysseus, this is the cunning, the trickery. This is the real meaning of the Trojan Horse. The idea of out-flanking, out-thinking and doing the unexpected, taking a smart risk. And this to me was Churchill’s brilliance and going back with all these others as well. And these three guys for me had it. And I think even in totally different ways, you know, Rabin, politically, but Rabin able to see it in certain leaders.

Dayan, certainly, and for me, Sharon, who Rabin said was the greatest field commander of Israel ever. Sharon certainly had without a doubt. It’s to do the unexpected. Just one or two other quick examples from ancient times is Alexander, you know, in the great Battle of Gaugamela, he’s got a small army compared to this huge Persian army of Darius the Great. And he said, all I can do is cut off the head of the snake and the rest of the army will run away. So the entire battle is geared towards, he’s outnumbered, we think, three or four to one. It’s all geared towards going to Darius at the back of his army and threatening him with killing him. Darius actually ran away in his chariot with his soldier protectors around him. And then his own army looks back and they see, oh, the leaders left. We are out of here and they run. The great Battle of Gaugamela of ancient times that made Alexander the great’s reputation so much. Clips off the head of the snake, always trying to find an unexpected way to win or to lead. So it’s, you know, I think there is an element of the gambler, of the risk taker, but it’s the idea of a professional gambler, not just the enthusiastic amateur.

And then the other part of it, which I relate to the contemporary Eisenhower, which these guys had, certainly Sharon, in spades, was the extreme amount of planning and meticulous detail, and Rabin and Dayan, enormous amount of planning. We know the amount of planning went into the allied invasion of D-Day. You know, 150,000 soldiers in one day get off those ships onto those beaches, all the rest of it. But the amount of organisation of the ships, of the Air Force, of everything is extraordinary. And the element of surprise, of trickery, of Odysseus, you know, so that the Germans obviously think it’s going to be the part of Calais, near Calais. and a huge amount of trickery that went into that, setting up a fake army. These guys had it in spades. They understood how to combine some of the Odysseus’ cunning and outwitting with the meticulous planning. Eisenhower understood it completely. It’s incredible, understand the great Battle of Cannae, you know, of how to trap the enemy, suck them in, and then when the last thing they expect, you know, defeat them. Okay.

So these are some examples from ancient times but I think it feeds into some of the qualities that make for a truly great leader, not just a superb strategist but a great leader in so many ways. Dayan was commander of the Jerusalem front in the ‘48 war. Just look at for a second what these guys actually achieved. He was the Chief of Staff in the 1956 Sinai War. He is the Defence Minister during the Six-Day War, '67, I mean '48, '56, '67, and then, of course, the nightmare of the October, Yom Kippur War, in 1973. You know, but he is at the forefront of all of these major moments, you know, in the life of the small country of Israel, extraordinary. And at the centre of leadership, you know, and you got to learn fast and on the hop, there’s no, you know, massive training or this or that, or going to a college for three years or, you know? And let’s remember the context, you know, this is, you know, before the war, and then, of course, learning, you know, and then after the war, the Second War. The 1950s, he joined the Haganah and the Special Night Squads under Orde Wingate, the British officer who helped to train him and others. And he was part of it. He lost his eye to a sniper in a raid on the Vichy forces in Lebanon during the Second World War.

He was very close to Ben-Gurion, I’m sure everybody knows this. And then he is going way back to before the Second World War, during, and then afterwards. So he’s got such a history of leadership and military, and learning and trying to understand, you know, how to become better all the time. We know the nightmare that happens in 1973 with the Yom Kippur War. Whereas the defence minister, he was blamed for the lack of preparedness. And of course, you know, because he advised Gold and maybe people have seen the new Helen Mirren movie on Golda Meir. There’s a fantastic scene. Where he says, no, well, let’s not call up the troops, the reserves, and let’s hold, after Yom Kippur we maybe will think. Of course, it turns out to be wrong and he’s blamed together with her, you know, and others. He resigns. He later joined Menachem Begin. And, you know, the peace treaty that came about between Egypt and Israel, et cetera, and completely depressed, obviously, after making that one massive mistake in his life. He’s human, he’s real.

But if we look at the whole life in the context of that extraordinary history that he’s living and he’s trying to establish the brand-new state for the Jewish people in these times and these amazing achievements. He’s born in a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee. He spoke Hebrew, Arabic, and English. He joined the Haganah at 14. 1948, his brother, Zorik, was killed in fighting. We can go on to the next slide, please. This is Dayan in the early days, here he is on the left, the age of 14. He joins the Haganah, you can see him as a kid. Okay? And then we’ll go to the next slide, please. Here at 1948, this is him making a peace agreement after with the Jordanian leader, after the 1948 war, at the top. And then, of course, at the bottom, the Sinai Campaign. The Sinai War, Suez. And there he is already as the chief of staff of the army. And here he is at the bottom right inspecting the army as the chief of staff. So he’s going from such beginnings as a teenager, 14 years old, he’s already joining the Haganah and fighting. We have to try and imagine in our times if we were 14 or our 14-year-old grandkids, or you know, whichever, great-grandkids or kids, we have to imagine their lives at this time and what they were really trying to do, quite extraordinary when one thinks about it. Okay, we can go to the next slide, please.

1967, of course, he’s the heroic leader and he is partly romanticised with the eye patch and, you know, it becomes iconic. But he is the heroic leader because, you know, whatever the reasons, and there’s some debate about the reasons, but nevertheless, it’s a crucial war, it happens. And it combines some of that Odysseus, that trickery with some of just the physical bravery, not being scared to be seen, to go around, to get out there, you know, to be seen with the ordinary troops, the guys. Of course, he’s older and he’s the leader, you know, and he has to have a certain amount of ruthlessness and, you know, go for it. And then at the bottom we see the diplomat, 1970 with Nixon already, you know? So we see the contrast of the statesmen-like and of the leader, the leader of men in times of great conflict. We go on to the next slide, please. And here even more, it’s the military leader becoming the statesman with Begin, of course. And, you know, the final, the peace treaty, Israel and Egypt that happens. Okay, we go on to the next slide, please. Okay, so I’m going to come onto Rabin in a moment. But also what happens with with Dayan is that he articulated quite clearly the idea of reprisal raids in 1950 after Suez, that retaliation, he wrote, I’m quoting, “Retaliation is the only method that has proved effective. It’s not moral but it’s effective. We have to harass the nearby village so the population comes out against the infiltrators, collective punishment is effective. What other effective methods are there?”

It’s highly, of course, it’s debatable in our times, but he is aware of it going way back to 1950. He’s aware, he’s thinking, he’s read many of the ancients, the generals, the leaders, not only Napoleon, but many others. He’s understood and he’s trying to think, he’s trying to come up with plans and ideas, Dayan. And then the idea of this punitive cross-border retaliation raids. And I’m quoting again, “We cannot save each tree from being uprooted, we cannot prevent the murder of workers in orange groves, but we can put a very high price on their blood, a price so high that it’ll no longer be worthwhile for the others to pay for it.” So it’s this idea of how do you deal with constant attack, constant infiltration, constant, you know, troops or individuals or small gangs coming in. You know, what do you do? What do you do, ultimately? And it’s not that he doesn’t understand peace but he understands the context again, he understands what do you do? You know, do you go ruthless? Do you go trickery? Do you go with lead from the front prowess, a combination or aspects of all three, you know? So it’s a tough, hard situation that, you know, he’s human in the end as well. And it’s this idea of being human, which is so ancient in Greek, you know, the human flaw. And I don’t think it’s arrogance. It’s also a sense of what is the choice? It’s not just hubris, it’s what is the final choice? What alternative can there be? You know? And these guys all, I think, profoundly thought about it. And it’s not just, you know, a quick receive and dismiss sort of iconic image of them.

It’s something much deeper because then, ultimately, they are human. Okay? And I think this sense of Rabin, sorry, of Dayan, and the Yom Kippur War where he did, you know, take the responsibility and he, in the end, was terrified and he lost confidence. He, I think, felt so destroyed, obviously, by the mistake that he and others, but you know, he was probably the main one, did. He called it the downfall of the third temple. Golda Meir forbade him to speak or to say that kind of thing, because the image of Israeli’s army invincibility was if not destroyed, it was certainly put up for question. But then later, there’s a peace treaty, him, Begin, Egypt. So constantly aware that things can and will shift. And it’s part of leadership, it’s part of the journey of life for these people. Sharon had a very interesting comment about Dayan. He said, and I’m quoting, “Dayan would wake up with a hundred ideas, of them 95 were dangerous, three had to be rejected but the remaining two were brilliant. He courage amounting to insanity as well as displays of a lack of responsibility. Once Ben-Gurion asked me, 'What do I think of the decision to appoint Dayan as Minister of Agriculture?’ I said to Ben-Gurion, ‘It’s important that Dayan sits in every government because of his brilliant mind, but never as Prime Minister.’ Ben-Gurion said, ‘Why not?’ And I replied, ‘Because he does not accept responsibility.’”

If we take Sharon’s word for it, it’s the thought that he is so brilliant, he has all the elements of Odysseus, but he doesn’t have the responsibility. He can be trickery, he can be out-thinking, out-flanking, cunning, you know, he’s intelligent, constantly coming up with alternative ideas, a brilliant leader, but he doesn’t have a sense of responsibility. Yes, he becomes the statesman later and makes the peace treaty with Begin. But if we take Sharon at his word for it, he doesn’t have the sense of responsibility enough. Every human has their flaw or multitude of flaws. It doesn’t, I think, detract from greatness. Okay? Rabin, I think he did combine this kibbutz, secular identity with pragmatism. And there’s deep love for Jewish people in Israel, is so deep in Dayan. He becomes the mythic hero of our times, I think, if we look back in history, and in more recent history. Rabin is a totally different type of leader. Military leader, organiser, planner, Eisenhower-type image, as well as great statesman or tries, you know, wants to be. A deep thinker, not necessarily, you know, the man at the front as much, but the thinker, the meticulous, the Eisenhower image almost more and becomes like Eisenhower, you know, the Prime Minister of Israel as well.

Rabin, this a picture of him as a little kid with his mother, Rosa Cohen, his mother. And it’s a picture of him, obviously, an older age with his whole family. Very different kind of pictures we get with Rabin, you know, with, and obviously I’ve chosen them. But you know, he is aware of family, of Jewish identity, and family, and culture, and context, and a broad sense of this great sweeps of history and life, and the Jewish history of the Jewish people, and Jewish land. The Prime Minister twice. Then, of course, in 1992, the second time until his assassination in 1995. Born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, was raised as a Labour Zionist, in a Labour Zionist household. And that’s his mother, Rosa Cohen. She was born in Belarus. Her father was a rabbi in Belarus, obviously. And he opposed the Zionist movement, interesting, but she was there. As a teenager, he joined the Palmach, he oversaw Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. He was the overall mind. Dayan is much more Odysseus, you know, he’s the general going out there, you know, to the front, and organising, and dealing with the literal, you know, practical facts on the ground and coming up with brilliant ideas, how to solve problems. Rabin is much more, he was in overall command in the Six-Day War.

Step back, look, and think, and understand. Superbly complimenting each other in my imagination. He, after Golda Meir resigned in 1974, after, of course, the Yom Kippur War in ‘73. He becomes the Prime Minister for the first time. And the other, there’s that together with, of course, the Oslo Accords, and, of course, the meeting with Arafat or the treaty with Arafat and Clinton, Oslo, Nobel Peace Prize. But then, of course, the other great part of it is that he is in charge with the Entebbe raid, one of the great real and mythic experiences of leadership, being a general, being a leader, a great leader to give that go-ahead, to give a raid of that enormous magnitude, to fly all that way, all the soldiers to go, you know, if we think about it again, this is, you know, when they’re doing it, decades ago, and how they’re doing it. And he’s got the ultimate responsibility, if one thing goes wrong, and all those terrified, you know, aeroplane passengers, the Jewish passengers are killed. It’s going to be on him.

If all those soldiers in those planes, something happens, you know, it’s on him. He has to make the final decision, you know, but he does. And in Entebbe, of course, we know. So he at 14, similar to Dayan, he joined the Haganah. He comes from a secular national understanding of Jewish identity, similar to Dayan. They’re not religiously driven, they’re are secular driven, but they’re driven by Jewish history, the land, Jewish people, the culture, everything. Of course, this is their era, their time. Dennis Ross said, and I’m sure we all remember the American diplomat, the enormous amount of work at the time, Dennis Ross, “That Rabin,” quoting, “was the most secular Jew in the whole of Israel that I’ve ever met.” He was Israeli Ambassador to America in '73, and there he’s at Camp David, the peace treaty with Egypt, signed in 1979. 1995, he revived the use of a British mandate era legislates that you can detain people without trial, you can demolish houses. Because he’s faced with the same problem Dayan faced. And now comes the First Intifada and Rabin adopted harsh measures, and he authorised what he called I’m quoting, “Force, might, and beatings.”

Again, asking the same question, what is the effective thing that you do? Not the moral thing necessarily, that’s a different question, but what is the effective thing? Let’s go to the next slide, please. This is a young Rabin, who’s joined the Haganah, and on the left. And is the young on the right, when he’s joined, just the very early stages of what becomes the IDF, you know, two images. And you can see almost this idea of the step back, broad thinker, you know, if you imagine it from those eyes, thinking, looking, observing, trying to understand in a calmer, in a thoughtful way, there’s something different in this disposition here. I don’t want to make too much just of photo images, but I think it does capture something, you know, and look how of young they are, again, and where they are, and what they are doing, what he’s doing. We go to the next slide, please. Much later, we go from that as a kid and teenager, here he is with Kissinger, here he is with Golda Meir, and there he is on the left in the picture, you know.

So he’s going from those humble beginnings as a teenager, kibbutznik, all the way through, and it’s military that’s forging him and forming him together with the history of the Jewish people, the history of the times, post the Second World War, before the Second World War, what has happened, and what to do about it. And how to understand that bigger picture. To me, he’s a bit closer to Eisenhower, meticulous planning, organising, the ability to be the diplomat, the ability to negotiate with leaders of many places, many countries, the ability to try and organise and bring brilliant minds together. Not be threatened. Bring Dayan in, bring this one, bring that one, you know, Golda Meir, take over from her afterwards. Bring, not be over-threatened by greatness around, intelligence that is more intelligent or greater or better than him. Dayan is better on the field. Sharon is better in the field. But you know, who is going to be the Eisenhower figure behind them all? And I think it’s Rubin that becomes the statesman. And the ability to change, you know, like Eisenhower, like even Churchill, and I’m not talking about the speaking powers of any of them, that’s quite different.

But there are qualities of leadership here. And that still keeps in with the idea of the unexpected and to have the ability to cherish those who can think outside the box like Dayan and later, Sharon. Can really think outside the box, like Odysseus, ring them in, you know? One needs them. Okay? As a leader, he also helped to significantly change, as a Prime Minister the Israeli economy, expands privatisation. Moshe Arens called it a privatisation frenzy. He helped to create or be part of the development of universal healthcare in Israel. He increased spending and education in Israel by 70%. Shows the thinking and the values, the broad understanding, you know, and it’s a different kind of great leader in my mind, you know, and having learned from the world of the military experience. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. From that young teenager, you know, joins the Haganah at 14 like Dayan. To standing, you know, outside the White House as the statesman who has gone from thinking it’s war. There’s no choice.

Not in a naive, idealistic way, to make peace or to try to, you know, but to understand, well, let’s see if that can be effective. Of course, we know the result. But it’s easy, I think to be quickly cynical that he was too idealistic or too romantic. I don’t think he had any illusions whatsoever. You don’t come from that background, from being a teenager. He just had a bar mitzvah, he’s 14, and he is already fighting in Haganah. You don’t come from that background and be naively idealistic in making peace much later. You go on an extraordinary journey, you know, to giving some kind of reconciliation a chance at least, or see maybe. And I know all the debates, of course, and everybody does, you know, is he naive? It’s too idealistic or whatever, all those things. But you know, one can’t ever say he didn’t try or that somebody didn’t try. And that is part of visibility, ironically, as a statement to think outside the box, in the way that I’m saying with Dayan and in a moment with Sharon, they did it as military commanders. They did it as, you know, great generals on the battlefield. And yeah, you know, he’s trying to. And, of course, there are political, there’s economic, there’s global geopolitical influences happening that lead up to this moment. And the Oslo Accords, the 'Bel Peace Prize, and all that. And, of course, there’s huge pressure from America, from Clinton, and others, and other Western powers. So I’m not denying that context for a second.

But, you know, he didn’t have to, in a way, ultimately, have to do this. So he’s trying to, in a way, you know, be the ultimate statesman, I guess. Give it a try. Okay. And sorry, going back to that question of Dayan, what is effective? Okay, if we go to the next slide, please. Here, of course, the pictures we all know very well. And then on the right-hand side, it’s just before his assassination speaking in the mid-nineties, just before he is assassinated. If we think from those backgrounds, the image of these guys as teenagers, just after bar mitzvah going all the way through their lives, what an extraordinary life. Ending up with a Nobel Peace Prize, standing next to Arafat, you know, then on the White House lawn with the American president. Then here, giving a speech, you know, in a huge rally in Tel Aviv before he’s assassinated. I mean, you know, great leadership takes risk, takes smart, calculated, thoughtful, Eisenhower-type risk, but planning, thinking, informed, trying in all these ways. It works or it doesn’t work but he’s trying, and that’s ironic for me, as I said, that as a political leader, he takes the big risks. But even within Entebbe, the raid, with, you know, taking over after Golda Meir, 1974, just imagine being Prime Minister after the horror of being completely out-thought, completely taken by surprise with the Yom Kippur War in '73.

He’s taking over as an ex-Prime Minister with a traumatised society, a traumatised, you know, world of Jewish people, massively traumatised, and scared, terrified, but he’s not scared to step up to the plate. Okay, the next slide, please. And then this is Naomi Shemer, who adapted Walt Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain.” You know, Walt Whitman was obviously writing about Lincoln, and she wrote it, she adapted it in Hebrew into a song about Rabin after his murder. And it’s interesting that she adapted the Walt Whitman poem, you know, and what is Lincoln? What is the image of Lincoln? You know, not that far. You know, the great iconic leader of America, you know, the Civil War, with everything that Lincoln is dealing with, not as a commander, but ironically, the risks that he’s going to take. To put it, if I may, in a kind of Damon Runyon way, professional gambler, rather than an enthusiastic amateur at taking risks. Okay, if we go to the next slide, please. So Sharon, the last one I want to look at before briefly, Captain Greengold. And here we see again, here he is as a kid, 19. This is his life from 1928. On the bottom picture on the left, he’s 14 as well. And amazed you find these pictures of these guys at 14, you know, it’s a year after their bar mitzvahs.

Let’s just imagine it for a moment. They’re already fighting. They’re already, you know, doing all these things, a completely different generation in a completely different historical time. But they rise to the occasion, Sharon. So he is born in, of course, what was called then Palestine to Russian-Jewish immigrants. He’s part of creating Unit 101 and reprisal operations. And then he’s part of reprisal that I mentioned before that Dayan spoke about. 1956, the Suez Crisis, he’s part of the Six-Day War, '67. The Yom Kippur War of '73, where has the great out-flanking movement to defeat the Egyptian Third Army. Which I’m going to come to in a moment. So there is already happening, he is part of reprisal operations. You know, we just would think about him, the Second World War, he’s born there, he’s living there just after it. He’s part of Suez '56, Six-Day War, '67, Yom Kippur War '73. I mean, these are huge. This is not just one war. This is massive as a general, as a leader of men who are going to live or die for their country. And he has to take responsibility what he accused Dayan of not being able to take responsibility, but recognising his brilliance. Rabin said that Sharon, and I’m quoting, “Was the greatest field commander in our Jewish history.”

It’s quite a phrase, quite an extraordinary phrase from Rabin. Rabin, recognising Dayan, recognising Sharon, their brilliance each into their own field. You know, if we’re going to organise a robbery, we want a great thief. We want to organise going to the moon, we want, you know, calm, great astronauts, whatever, you know, horses for courses, the ability to pull the different minds and the different character together, which is that Rabin statesmanlike quality. Not the Agamemnon ruthlessness that he can kill but the ability of being the great leader who can pull in the better minds or the right minds for the right occasions. To take smart, calculated risks, you know, to have something of Odysseus. But ironically, as an overall leader, or as a, if you like, more political leader. Of course, you know, he has in 1977, Sabra and Shatila massacres, which he’s responsible for, or at least partly.

So each one of them have their flaws, they have the complexities. None of them are saints, obviously, but they’re also not pure sinners. It’s ridiculous to think of binaries of, you know, saint or sinner. I mean, that’s a lovely phrase but, you know. So we have to see the fullness of character. Same with Churchill. Churchill, Gallipoli, is responsible for thousands dying, you know, and for many other problems. But Churchill rises in 1940, completely different. Of course, he also goes, and he leads a whole lot of guys at the Al-Aqsa complex on the Temple Mount, which is part of triggering the Second Intifada. But he also pulls settlers out of Gaza against enormous political opposition, Sharon. So he’s trying to find a way to adapt from the military context to the political. He’s not scared to try something, may or it may not work, but he pulled the settlers out, as we all know, in the mid 2000, 2005, he has a stroke. I mean, that’s a risk, that’s a seriously thought-through risk, stroke in 2006, Sharon, and then, of course, he dies.

He has a stroke and he’s in a coma for eight years and dies in 2014. He’s a war hero. He is a great military commander, great, of Alexander quality, of, you know, Dayan, even better. Which I’m going to show in a moment. And he tries to see if he can feed that into the political, he’s trying, right or wrong, flawed, problematic in all different ways. He grew up in a moshav. His family were from Tbilisi in, sorry, in Georgia and secular like the other two as well, throughout his life. This picture here, he’s in the top second from the left with members of Unit 101. So he’s there next to Dayan, of course, you can see him, and at the bottom picture is him as a much younger guy on the left-hand side. You know, this is the generation, the world, that these young kids are growing up in and are forging their identity. And a mythical and realistic Israeli and Jewish identity. Okay, we can go onto the next slide, please. So this is '67, and this is one of the maps of, you know, his Sinai Campaign. How he led the troops in 1967 as a tank commander. It’s one of the maps that, you know, to show, I don’t want to go into deep military detail, but the complexity, the planning, the meticulousness of it all.

He wrote about this, and I’m quoting him, “It was a complex plan I had developed for many years. The idea of close combat, night fighting, surprise paratroop assault, attack from the rear of the enemy, attack on a narrow front of the enemy. I did meticulous planning, the relationship between headquarters and field command for me and for the enemy. All the ideas had already matured.” He’s completely aware of the need to be the huge planner, same as Alexander, same as Eisenhower, and others. Such detailed planning. And this is just one of many maps of how to go about the battle, what exactly, this, that, and everything, et cetera. You know, there’s a serious planner in the mind here, a responsible meticulous thinker, you know, of chess playing step by step in a way. Okay, if we go on to the next slide, please. This is 1973. And of course, we know, and sorry, if we can just go back to the previous slide, Hannah, I just want to show one thing. Thank you, this year also, this idea he had, which is one of the great ideas, which is studied in the American Army in training, and the British Army, and others.

But when they train the officers, and the idea is, it’s quite simple if you think about it now, but wasn’t at the time, is that don’t just go with a huge army and try and defeat them. This comes from Alexander and partly some others. Don’t just, you know, send a whole big army to take on another big army, which may be much bigger than you, but instead divide up your army, your group, okay, here’s a group which is going to attack from behind. Here’s a group which is going to attack where the enemy’s leader is. Here’s a group which is going to go for the radar. Here’s a group which is going to go for artillery. Here’s a group which is going to go for the aeroplanes . Here’s a group which look at the tank, the fuel for the tanks and other things. So set up a whole lot of smallish groups, send them all out, and attack different pieces all over. So in the end, the enemy’s going to be feeling, God, what do I do? Here’s this, this, this, and this and this.

They’re going to just try and desperately defend and save their own lives. They’re not going to coordinate themselves to fight back. They’re going to just think, I got to save my life because I’m being attacked. But it could be a few thousand or a few hundred, you know? And so they forget, they’ve got to coordinate themselves to take on an attack. And then once you’ve gone on all these kind of smallish raids and you’ve attacked all over, and you’ve completely disrupted the enemy communications and the enemy understanding of what’s going on and confused them, like Alexander at the Battle of Gaugamela, then bring in the big army. It’s Sharon, and it goes back to Alexander, and others, the Battle of Gaugamela that I mentioned, and others as well. You know, this idea, and Odysseus, you know, the Trojan Horse, I mean, it’s not a literal Trojan. We have to think of all the ways of out-thinking the opposition, whoever that opposition is. And this is brilliance because you are able to think in the way the other is thinking, and through cunning, and trickery, and a certain amount of ruthlessness, of course, able to see how to disrupt everything. And then come in with the bigger army, instead of trying to just take them on, you know, face-to-face. Hannibal does the same at the Battle of Cannae, when he does it with the Romans and defeats the Roman.

You know, so similar and with some others in all different times of history. Napoleon, of course, was the master of this, able to do all different things, you know, plan and do all different things instead of just having one huge army just wait, attack, you know, go for it. Completely different approach. Okay, if we go to the next slide, please. This is, of course, this is the part of the battle plan for the 1973, the Yom Kippur War, where he, and it’s quite interesting, where he encircled the Egyptian third army. The Suez Canal in the middle. This is just two maps of many of planning with such detail of Eisenhower and other traditions. So much planning that goes into all these things, you know, such detail and meticulousness, you know, it’s not just send a whole lot of tanks across the Suez Canal and encircle the whole Third Army of Egypt, which is, you know, thousands of soldiers. It’s so huge. It’s all organised and planned at different time, different things, this will happen, this will happen, that way, you know, and so on. I don’t get into all the detail, but that’s just the essence of the idea. You know, it’s like, you know, trying to put on a Shakespeare play, all the different details and aspects of it and so on, or write a great novel, there’s so many characters and things to think of.

Okay, so this is, for me, it’s part of the brilliance of Sharon and what Rabin means by he was the greatest field commander. Not only the bravado of Achilles, and the physical, and the prowess, and come on, let’s go, and do, and lead from the front always. Yes, he has that, but he also has this that’s been going on for a long time. A friend of his said to him, just before this, what are you going to do? How are we going to get out of this? You know, after the Yom Kippur War started in October '73, and Sharon said, you don’t know, we’ll cross the Suez Canal and I’ll end the war. The idea was already there. The idea had been thought of by him, not others, okay? He also, after the Six-Day War, going back to that for a moment, the Israeli chief of staff had this idea after the Six-Day War, Bar-Lev was the chief of staff to construct a border wall made of sand, really, and earth. And while this will stop anything of the Egyptians coming again and doing the same thing, there were endless provocations. So, they built this huge wall in the, you know, in the desert, you know, the Bar-Lev line. And Dayan said it was one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world. Sharon said, nonsense, it’s a ridiculous waste of time building a big wall with the sand, and earth, and everything.

Think it’s going to stop, you know, another army coming through? He said, nonsense. He said, what it’s going to do, it’s going to make the Israeli army stuck because they’re going to be stuck behind this huge wall and what are they’re going to do? How they’re going to get over it, how are they going to get around it? How are they going to, you know, it’s going to be there and the enemy can just send artillery or whatever over and just, you know, annihilate them. It’s ridiculous. And the enemy will get through it. What a huge sand wall and all the rest of it. Well, it took the Egyptians two hours to breach the Bar-Lev line. He was right, Sharon, Dayan was wrong. Anyway, there were many other things that he did and he achieved, and we know about him being the Prime Minister, and I mentioned the two massacres of Sabra and Shatila because they’re all flawed. They all have, not hubris, I don’t think necessarily arrogance or pride in the ancient Greek way, but they all have complexities as humans and make huge mistakes, terrifying moral dilemmas, terrifying, you know, bad decisions. Terrible. And they know it. It’s not as if they lust, I think, for blood or that they lust to, you know, conquer for conquering sake. I don’t think so. I think they really are going for it in a way because what choice is there? To go back to Dayan’s question, what will be effective, what does one do? Okay?

He also spoke out against the antisemitism in France, against French Jews in 2004. You know, he said they should come immigrate from France to Israel. He expelled nine and a half thousand Jewish settlers in 2005 from Gaza, as we all know, you know, he’s trying in all these different ways politically, as, you know, obviously, Rabin had tried certain things before as well. In the end, he suffers terribly. I think it’s eight years in a coma. And of course, he’s overweight, he’s obese, and he’s so fat, you know, everything. But he says, I love life, I love all of it. In fact, I also love food, that’s Sharon in 1982. So a larger-than-life character, but these guys are characters. But I think they have all these moments of brilliance inside them as great leaders, and God knows what would’ve happened to the state of Israel without these three. The last one I want to mention very briefly is Captain Zvi Greengold. Go onto the next slide, please. This is him crossing the Suez Canal. Just an image here of the tanks. Okay, the next slide, please.

And this, of course, we know, here’s Sharon meeting a younger Putin and Clinton, you know, tried to reach out, he reached out to India, to Russia in these times, you know, I’m not talking about today, but these times trying to, you know, become the statesman. On to the next slide, please. They reached out to Bush as well, and to the next one. Okay, thanks. This is the last one, Captain Zvi Greengold, born in 1952. And he was the remarkable guy who, when the 1973 Yom Kippur war happened, and he hitchhiked up to the Golan Heights, got in his tank, and basically took on a whole lot of the Syrian tank army, born in a kibbutz founded by Holocaust survivors. And he said he destroyed 10 enemy armoured vehicles from his tank and a whole lot of, you know, in his 20 Syrian tanks. In other words, he embodied the spirits of, as soon as that war started in 1973, get out, go, and lead from the front, Achilles. It’s the Achilles myth in the heroism, in the romance, but the reality, and the heroic leader who’s not scared to physically go out and do it, it’s Achilles. And an extraordinary story in 2016, Brigadier General Yair Nafshi, the IDF, said that the story of him single-handedly destroying so many Syrian tanks was fiction.

He said we needed to put the story together because we had to rebuild the brigade. We needed a story. So whether, and there’s some debate in contemporary thinking, whether it was true or not, that it actually happened or it didn’t happen. But I don’t think in the end, and I do believe it, you know, I believe it was true from the research, but there is debate and we have to be honest and real about it. I think what it does is it shows the last example I wanted to briefly mention was the Achilles one, of the guy who will physically go out and do it. The ultimate hero, if you like. A hero in that sense, as opposed to great leader. That’s very different. And his story echoes through the ages, our times, and goes way back to, you know, the mythical Greek, and Roman, and many, many others that we’ve talked. And we need these stories, I think as humans, not only as Jews, and Jewish culture, and Jewish history, but we all need these stories. We need mythical heroes. You know, not only James Bond, but we need mythical heroes. We need the stories, the stories that come down through the generations. The Red Sea parting, the story of David and Goliath, did it ever happen, didn’t it? Who was Goliath? All the rest of it.

But the story is so archetypal. It may have been a collective fiction, as Harari would say, of course, probably was, I’m sure. But these are stories of greatness and destiny. These are stories of leadership, from being a teenage boy taking on Goliath. It echoes through the ages as human society and human nature. The art of telling stories is not only a Jewish quality, but obviously, so it’s crucial, but it’s a societal human quality. And it’s captured the stories, that’s why I mentioned the Homer story of Ulysses from the beginning. It’s not because, you know, David and Goliath and these others, not because it is necessarily a reality. In fact, it’s more powerful than reality. It’s really because these stories inspire, and for me, these individuals inspire us, finally, sorry, I’m going over time here. But finally, it inspires. They’re cunning, there’s trickery, there’s out-thinking, there’s risk, there’s dealers in hope, but they are not petty leaders who are hard to work for, but easy to please. They are all leaders, easy to work for, but hard to please. So I think that they are in a way, lions, and I think this captures something I wanted to talk about and I hope this has gone away from platitudes and cliches, which can easily be expected, this kind of topic.

Okay, thanks. Let’s go into the questions.

Q&A and Comments

Okay, Audrey, hi.

Q: Has Israel for forgiven Dayan for giving up the Temple Mount? A: Well, I think that, you know, all these mistakes that have, I’ve tried to give a kind of overall picture of these individuals in the greater picture of what makes a great leader, but they’re going to make huge mistakes, there’s no question. And has Israel forgiven Dayan? I don’t. I mean, you know, what can we say? It’s maybe some yes, maybe no, it’s a great question, Audrey, but this is more the question of their flaws or mistakes in their decisions as well.

Myrna. Agamemnon equals Akada. I’m not sure about that, Myrna. I need to check. Thank you. Sandy. In addition to all those Greek human qualities, these heroes were also aided by certain gods, today we’d call them luck, good weather, calm seas, et cetera. Yep. I mean, you know, it’s a great point as well. And we have to remember that the reason I’m using these fictional stories is because I think it captures something of what human nature calls greatness, leadership, destiny, heroism with all its flaws.

Susan, all three were soldiers, none were orators, all were leaders on the battlefield, two Prime Ministers. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I wanted to show that, you know, the one, I think Rabin is more successful as a Prime Minister and less on the battlefield, and the other vice versa. Sharon definitely, and Dayan. Well, he didn’t become Prime Minister, but yeah. So all different kinds of leaders in a way. And we have to remember, I mean, Churchill was a brilliant leader from 1940 to '45, of course, huge. But he also made massive mistakes in the First World War of the Dardanelles, of Gallipoli, you know, and many, many others as well. Great orator, you know, of course. Anna, I was with him during the 10th anniversary of Israel. We were with Dr. Jack Penn, who had done surgery on his eye as well as many other surgeons on Isreali soldiers. Gideon was respected and revered, yeah, as we walked around Tel Aviv. That’s amazing. Oh, that’s extraordinary. Thanks for sharing that, Anna. What an amazing thing is lockdown. The community is so amazing that Wendy and Trudy have set up.

Susan, Rabin had a strong sense of history. Yeah. He made a pilgrimage to the grave of Mickey Marcus. Yes. At West Point. Marcus is your side. Yeah, it’s absolutely true. I think Rabin had the best sense of history. Marilyn, I believe Rabin suffered a nervous breakdown after the Six-Day War. Yeah, I’ve tried to research that before. I’m not sure exactly how much it was or it wasn’t. Certainly Dayan, after his mistake in '73, you know, completely had a, I suppose what you would call a nervous breakdown, but a complete freakout. Rita, Jacob, Rabin has admitted he did suffer. Oh, that’s great. Thank you. Thanks for helping there. Clara, please comment on the book “In the Land of Israel”, by Amos Oz, ah, that is such a fascinating, I’m just running over time, just very aware. So my apologies. I’m probably going to be accused of ducking the question here. I’ll come back to that. Okay. But that’s a great book. Esther, it’s a huge question though. I don’t want to answer it glibly.

Q: Do you feel that Israel has that type of leadership today? A: No, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t. I don’t think there is as much planning, thinking, and I think that some of it and some of this, the understanding of history and leadership, I think some of it’s, you know, tragically is not as good as it was. It’s my personal opinion and it’s just an opinion. It’s not objective, of course.

Thank you.

Q: David, in retrospect, was it a mistake by Sharon to leave Gaza? A: Well, I mean that’s part of the huge debate. You know, I think it was a mistake to not know what was going on after he left, whether it was his mistake or others afterwards, but to not know what’s going on, you know, especially so close or anywhere else, or it’s a neglect or it’s a mistake. Yeah, I think that’s pretty clear.

You know, Rita, Thank you. Dianne, thanks. William, D-Day, trickery in Normandy, not Calais. Yeah. Well, what I was saying here, William, was that they set up a fake army under pattern with rubber tanks, and rubber planes, and artillery, and everything up in the middle of England, as if they were going to go with pattern leading an invasion in Calais. So they kept the Germans guessing was it going to be Calais or Normandy and many, many, or even some James Bond-type ideas on, you know, trying to keep them unaware that it was going to be Normandy, not Calais. So in the end, it worked because the Germans did not send their Panzer tanks and divisions to D-Day, to Normandy until much later on the 6th of June.

Ralph, it’s an irony, the idea of successes against conventional armies. Ah, this is brilliant. We are lorded across the world, perhaps made them less prepared to deal with terrorist militias like Hamas, Hezbollah. Yes. You know, there’s an interesting, one of the pictures I was going to show of Dayan who went to Vietnam to understand guerrilla warfare or terrorist militias, exactly what you’re saying, the Viet Cong against the Americans to understand what do you do? I mean, let’s not forget the idea of tunnels coming from Vietnam. The horror of what, you know, the insane horror of Hamas. So exactly. It’s this sense of, you know, Sharon went to South Africa even to advise the South Africans on how to deal with county insurgency. Not many people know. He went to Namibia, even linked to where the troops, the African troops were, and there was quite a lot of dialogue between the two. So it’s exactly this idea of what to do when it’s not conventional war. Sharon was completely aware, you know, his mind could see all these images, all these ideas about all different types of terrifying warfare. And I agree with you, you know, that the idea was not sufficiently planned terrifyingly, you know, for this. Sadly, tragically, tragically.

Susan, they were soldiers first then leaders. Yeah, absolutely. David, I met Dayan in Vietnam. He came to our hospital. Oh, that’s extraordinary, David. That’s an amazing thing. God, thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate. Well, thank you very much everybody. And David, your comment at the end, you met Dayan in the hospital you were in Vietnam. It’s amazing. Just thank you very much. This is a truly extraordinary community of individuals on lockdown and sharing all these stories together of people’s lives.

Thank you so much, everybody, and thank you, Hannah, and hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend. Cheers.