An Aside on Israel's "Chinese" Admiral

I mentioned in passing a couple of days ago the current scandal in Israel over the Navy Commander, Admiral Eli Marom, who is under fire for visiting a strip club and then (the coverup as usual being the real issue) claiming he only visited it once when apparently he is a regular patron. As I indicated there, this seems a rather silly diversion for a country that just fought a war, has no government in place, etc. etc.

But it offers an opportunity to note one unusual thing about Marom: he's Chinese.

Actually only a quarter Chinese; his father was a German Jew who fled to China during WWII; his mother the daughter of a Chinese man and a Russian emigre Jewish woman. The photo on his IDF profile shows that he is visibly Asian, however, and he's apparently known as "Chiney" in the service. (And, given his present problems, probably wishing he wasn't photographed with a wine glass in hand.)

It's also a reminder of the diversity of Israel's population, where in addition to the predictable European and Middle Eastern stocks you also find Ethiopians, Indians and others.

The Navy is very much the junior service in Israel, where the Air Force are the elite and the Army has near-universal service (though Orthodox religious exemptions are growing rapidly). It has very few flag officers and apparently there's some uncertainty who would move up if Marom had to resign.

An interesting note for the linguists out there: the Navy Commander's rank is Aluf, which in the Army is usually translated as "Major General," that is, in US terms, two-star rank. Normally a Naval officer of that rank would be translated as Rear Admiral, but I note the IDF here translates it as "Vice Admiral," which in US usage would be the three-star rank. Normally, the only three-star (Rav-Aluf) active duty officer in Israel is the Chief of Staff. (I say "normally" because there has been one exception when a former Chief of Staff, Haim Bar-Lev I think, was recalled from retirement during the 1973 war as a corps commander, so there were briefly two active-duty three stars.)

I suspect the decision to use "Vice Admiral" rather than "Rear Admiral" is essentially one of making it sound like a higher rank, and the fact that most people would address him as Admiral in English anyway. Aluf comes from the Semitic root for 1,000, and is a Biblical term by origin.

UPDATE: According to this article, he's authorized to call himself Vice Admiral when meeting foreign officers, under a system initiated over a decade ago, and only for the Navy Commander for some reason. I guess it's like the reason the US added the rank of five-star general during World War II: Eisenhower, with four stars, was commanding Field Marshal Montgomery, who as a Field Marshal theoretically outranked him, so they created a new rank, which however hasn't been used since shortly after the end of World War II.