Parable of the Exocet Missile / Lloyd

An AM39 aircraft-launched Exocet

I have been mulling over the following comment to our last posting, Senator Orrin Hatch writes a Hanukkah song and Jewish reaction: 

. . . I've been trying to decipher my own feelings toward the Jewish people. The simplest way I can describe it is: I love them. I don't know why I feel such charity towards them. I really can't explain it to myself much less anyone else. I wish I could because then I could show them my love without it being misinterpreted as Sen. Hatch's song was by the "angry" commentator.

Since I was age 13 I have been very pro-Israel and all things Jewish and for this reason attended Yeshiva University. But I would like to offer a cautionary note. I call it the "Parable of the Exocet Missile:"

In 1982 Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland and South Georgian Islands, British territories in the South Atlantic. In the ensuing military conflict the Argentine Navy used an Exocet anti-ship missile to sink the HMS Sheffield, a British destroyer. Given advanced anti-missile naval defenses, the Exocet Missile should have been easily intercepted and destroyed. However, the Argentines had acquired the Exocet from the French Navy, and the HMS Sheffield's anti-missile defense computer classified the Exocet as a French allied weapon, and let it pass unchallenged.

Bernard Madoff's $50 billion dollar Ponzi scam particularly hit Jewish investors, including among many: the Wunderkinder Foundation, a Steven Speilberg charity, and Elie Wiesel's Foundation for Humanity. It appears that many financially savvy Jewish investors, not only charities but also officers in corporations and banks the world over, may have suspended their professional skepticism because Bernie was himself Jewish.

Then there was James P. Lewis, Jr. in Orange Country California and, more recently, Shawn R. Merriman in the Intermountain West, who were both Mormons and Merriman a Bishop," who ran Ponzi-schemes that defrauded many, many Mormons. Just as Bernie Madoff worked his fellow Jews, Lewis and Merriman leveraged their Church membership to swindle many in the Latter-day Saint community.

Some will blame the victims of greed, but I believe that many good people were blinded because their on-board computers classified these scoundrels as friendly, allies, members of an admired and trustworthy group.

In Indications and Warning Intelligence the watchword is: Evaluate true risk, disregard perceived motive and intentionality; rather focus on the capability to do harm. Analysts must be especially careful to discover within themselves unexamined prejudices, both positive and negative, that may blind them to real threat. To this end I offer the "Parable of the Exocet Missile."