A SHORT HISTORY OF WARFARE EMPHASIZING THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

摘要

Denial of water or food once guaranteed success to an aggressor. If the effects of such denial were fully reversible after capitulation and once the defeated had fled, then the aggressor gained a considerable victory. There is a nice example of this "reversible" activity in The book of Genesis, chapter 26. Isaac, son of Abraham, lived and prospered in the land of the Philistines. This did not please the Philistines, so they routinely blocked up the water wells of the people of Isaac. In order to survive, the people of Isaac kept digging new wells but the Philistine herdsmen attacked these too, so that eventually "the people" of Abraham and Isaac were forced to leave that region. The Philistines did rather well from this victory as they then unblocked all the old and the new wells, none of which had suffered permanent damage.