As readers know, this week The New Yorker ran a short story by a former Israeli soldier, Shani Boianjiu, in which Palestinian demonstrators at a checkpoint begged Israeli soldiers to shoot them so as to get into the newspapers and manipulate world opinion to pity them– when they are actually leading OK lives. The story erases the many Palestinians killed and maimed during nonviolent protests of a military occupation and misrepresents a famous incident in which an Israeli attack destroyed seven members of a Palestinian family. Boianjiu’s soldier protagonist says that Palestinian ordnance killed the family– and lest there’s any doubt who we’re talking about, the New Yorker used the real name of the child who survived that attack, Huda.
(Adam Horowitz deconstructed Boianjiu’s fiction here. Annie Robbins did it here.)
We’ve been reading periodicals for a long time. Neither of us can remember such an exaltation of the idea of blaming-the-victim in such a prestigious publication.
But maybe Shani Boianjiu has carved out a new literary genre?
We’re announcing a New Yorker fiction parody contest, “Put your spin on history.” Here are the rules:
–Entries must be no longer than 4 paragraphs
–Entries must be works of imagination, but they must deal with a recognizable historic struggle.
–All entries must include a character who is a soldier or officer of the law.
–Submit your entries in the comment section below for all to see and judge or to editors@mondoweiss.net. Entries must be received by next Friday, June 29.
We will announce a winner and runnerups by the Fourth of July. Winner will receive a copy of a wonderful exploration of Palestinian history, Footnotes In Gaza, by Joe Sacco.
Oh, and here is a sample entry aimed at spurring your imaginations:
It was a hot day in Amsterdam. The mist hung over the canals like a swollen wound. Rhees sat at his desk in the Central Police Station and felt the sweat trickling down from his scalp to his collar in a rhythm. He was a sergeant, but a reluctant one. He didn’t care for order particularly, he didn’t like guns. He would rather be on a bicycle than a motorcycle. But wartime pressed everyone into unaccustomed roles.
Adding to his misery was the airless room. All the oxygen was being consumed by a highly-agitated Dutch family on a bench. They had been brought in that day to be transferred to prisons on the mainland for housing code infractions. They weren’t even a family. Some were Jews, some weren’t.
It was Rhees’s lot to have to take away some of their possessions. The process unleashed fresh fits and appeals to Rhees to hide the children. Hide them? These people had such bizarre ideas about what would befall them in custody. The worst case was a little girl with big dark sunken eyes, hugging three books. She was elfin, couldn’t be over five feet tall. Evidently the books were journals. Rhees had to get to his knees to pry the books from her hands. Her wild intelligent eyes were filled with the deepest darkest thoughts, and he had comforted her by name. “There there Anne, you will get these back before long, but you cannot bring them where you are going…”
The prize is a comic. Could the entry also be a comic?
your call
Really too much, your example—too good. If I could write fiction, even as parody, I would try. (Something about a fiction writing course in high school English, which I switched out of, convinced me otherwise.)
Gone were the sour playground days of his youth when jolly apes would snicker and make fun of him and his name. “No one kicks Alan Dershowitz around anymore” Mr. Dershowitz said out loud with a great deal of satisfaction. Mr. Dershowitz smiled as he reflected on how far he had travelled, how high he had climbed: a Harvard chair, a made-for-hollywood profile on the legal defense team of a black football star, and invitations to the White House.
The White House visits were the best of it, and Mr. Dershowitz prided himself in always remembering why he was there. He was there to remind the President, Mr. President whatever-your-name-is, that it is Mr. Alan Dershowitz who speaks for the Jewish people. As long as he made this point crystal clear he could say, “mission acomplished”, and rest easy on the eve of his visit. Mr. Dershowitz was intent on making this point clear this afternoon when he travelled to the White House to meet with President Bush. He brought a signed copy of his book, The Case For Israel, with the intension of personally presenting it to the President.
“How’s it hangin’, Dershy?’”said President Bush, slapping Mr. Dershowitz on the back. It was out of character for Mr.Dershowitz to feel nervous, even in the presence of the Commander in Chief, but when the time came Mr. Dershowitz’s hands trembled a little. His book felt heavy and Mr. Dershowitz understood this to mean that it wasn’t just a book. It was Yaweh’s design for the President’s ME foreign policy. It was written for powerful lawmakers who need to be reminded constantly of the exalted role that the Chosen People play in in our own universe and beyond. Mr. Dershowitz presented his book with both hands. His eyes were moist. “Thanks, Dershy!, that’ll be a great prop for election season!” said the President, slapping him on the back. The President never touched The Case For Israel. A White House staffer snatched the book out of Mr. Dershowitz hands, and briskly left the Oval office with The Case For Israel teetering on a tall stack of note cards and pizza boxes. “Now let’s talk business, Dershy.” said the President. “Do you have a check for me and can you deliver Pennsylvania?”
I’m at something of a loss. All the choices that come to mind are either too arcane or too grim to be funny.
It’s pretty hard to top the original, really.
Sitting in his office in the sweltering summer heat of Beirut, General Sharon thought back to his childhood and his father, Adolf, the man he could never please. It had always been the same, the small boy doing his best, the father, distant, ignoring him. That time he came first in the Grade 4 inter schools race- immediately he crossed the line he looked up to catch the eyes of his father but the bastard had his back turned and was reading the stock prices in the FT.
That was before he started eating to compensate for his lack of paternal love. Those croissants, they never let him down. Or the Jewish speciality his mother brought to the Holy Land from old Poland- that baklava. Or the famous Israeli dish his aunt Rivka invented in her apartment on the Jaffa Road back in the autumn of 1936 – tabouleh. The one that went global. They even eat it now in this benighted city he thought to himself. Where would they be without Jewish genius ? Even in Shatila. And why did they call the other camp after the Sabras? He too was a Sabra, he thought.
And his father, he wondered, where was he now? He hadn’t seen him in 20 years.
Hobeika rushed into the office. “Yalla let’s go” he said. General Sharon gave the order. Within a minute Shlomo had set the phosphorous flares going and the Kataib teams set to work. The smell of blood filled the Beirut night. He could hear the screams of the women through the window.
After about an hour he went to the gate of the camp. Such a magnificent job, all his work. The teams would power on into the night. He lost himself in thought.
Felt a tap on his shoulder , and a voice said “well done Arik. I’m proud of you !
He turned around
« Dad!”
The tears welled up.
He barely managed the next question
“And who is that beside you ?”
« Moshiach »
Nobody really wants to serve in Judea. The people there really don’t appreciate us and are constantly kicking up pointless rebellions, usually motivated by their bizarre, monotheistic cult. And then they very often fight to the death, impelled by some strange lust for martyrdom–thinking that the scribes will write five pages about them, no doubt.
I was serving in the fourteenth legion when another one of their prophets began to stir up trouble. This time, praise Jupiter, the serving procurator decided to take aggressive countermeasures and suppress the movement before it actually grew into a rebellion. As centurion on duty, I was leading the crucifixion party, and I have seldom seen an uglier crowd.
Typical of his people, the prophet–I forget his name–seemed to positively lust for martyrdom. It was an old-fashioned crucifixion, with nails rather than ropes, and he kept acting like he was doing us a favor by letting us do it. Some claim that it was one of our boys who stabbed him in the side on the cross, but the legions know it was one of the Jews.
It worked, though–the rebellion was nipped in the bud, and the city spared what we would have done to it–not that they showed any gratitude. And I won this nifty cloak gambling with the boys under the cross.
Westy, the American officer, had stopped feeling his own body since the acid took effect four hours ago. He lay on top of his cheap tattered Chinese beach chair, holding an old copy of the New York Times, blocking the sun. He had to stretch out his arms to hold the wide page above his head.
“Oh, shit, he said.
“The fuckin’ ARVN didn’t do it,” Van said. He flicked his joint carelessly near a gasoline can. He was talking about Kim, the little Vietnamese girl on the road. The picture in the newspaper showed her running, screaming and naked, amid a group of other hysterical little ragamuffins in various stages of undress.
“I know,” Westy said, “This is a manipulation.”
The world said they were hit by napalm when the South Vietnamese Army pilots mistook them for enemy soldiers. But the American Army knew that this was a staged event by the Vietcong to garner international sympathy for its flagging cause. Westy looked at Van. The orange yellow glare of the sun and the acid made Van look like a demon-warrior. Westy wondered if his countrymen would appreciate the hardships his troops had suffered here amid this faceless inscrutable enemy 50 years from now.
This one gets my vote by a nose. I am impressed by the submissions by the others as well. The one by dbroncos is a close second. I wish I could write like you guys!
Werner was only 20 but already had logged more flight time than most of the senior officers twice his age. He was more comfortable in the cockpit than anywhere on solid ground. As he sped toward his target, he glanced to his right and could clearly make out Hans, no more than 70 meters away, with one hand occupied eating a sandwich, no doubt his usual bratwurst with sauerkraut, and the other hand casually on the controls. Werner chuckled softly to himself, alternately thinking about Hans’s legendary appetite and his legendary piloting skills. How angry he would have been to see anyone else having only one free hand while flying at such close distance!
Suddenly, Werner’s thoughts turned serious. He could recall every word of Reichsmarschall Goring’s speech that morning. This would be Werner’s first combat mission, and his first flight for international solidarity. The Communists were advancing in Spain, and the Generalissimo had begged for German assistance. This may be the turning point in the campaign, the decisive moment when the Bolsheviks would learn a lesson they would never forget. Some pilots at the morning’s briefing appeared anxious about bombing a town where many civilians might be killed. But the Reichsmarschall had assured them that the Communists who hid among the town’s inhabitants were counting on good German boys to have scruples, and it was the Communists alone, not the proud sons of Germany, who were imperiling the lives of common folk.
As they walked to their planes, Hans had expressed doubts. He was worried that the Communists were goading them to kill civilians to gain international sympathy and attract recruits – useful idiots! – from all over the world to fight – ignorantly! – for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Werner recognized his friend’s brilliance, but assured him that the Reichsmarschall had thought of that, had thought of everything. This was Spain’s hour of need, and if Franco needed our help, how could we abandon him?
Then the town appeared through the slight haze, about 20 kilometers straight ahead. Werner wondered about the Spanish pronunciation for Guernica. When the Reichsmarschall said it in German, it sounded like a combination of a sneeze and a cough. Werner smiled again, but quickly trained his mind on the mission. It would be only a few minutes more before he could make his first contribution to his Fatherland and its most valuable allies. He knew his life could end at any minute, as the town was overrun with Communist soldiers whose anti-aircraft fire could find his plane without any warning. Every man dies, Werner thought, and death for a cause is the most honorable. His mind turned to sharp focus on the details of his task. Werner felt nothing but a slight bump on the wing as the plane released its payload. As he turned around, his thoughts turned to schnitzel and beer, and how Hans would finish his portion, refill his plate, and finish that before Werner was half-way through his meal.
A favorite. Does my vote count?
It took all his effort and energy. But he did it. He’d blinked again. He’d opened his eye again. For just a few milliseconds. Slightly longer than the first time
“A dot and a dash” he thought. “Now if I can get the time between them down from an hour and a half to less than a second..” Smug with success, he bent to the task of trying to remember morse code while he waited for someone to come into the room who might notice a blink.
An hour went past, or maybe a day, a week. He wasn’t sure, when “What was that? …… Footsteps coming down the passage?” His mind raced through a jumble of dots and dashes he’d need to blink to say.. “Uh……. Oh sh*te! What am I gonna say? I need a bed pan?”
Closer they came, sounding like the .. his heart sank .. “the janitor. The janitor never comes in. Oh well, practice some more psychokinesis.” Though he hadn’t seen anything except a few milliseconds of the ceiling in two recent blinks, he was sure the door handle had almost wriggled yesterday when the janitor passed.
Deep in concentration on the handle again it suddenly dawned on him just how long it’d take to write his biography, in morse code, by blinking.
Another indeterminable time passed til his thoughts were awakened by the faint fluttering sound of wings and an equally faint, soothing breath of air on his face. “What was tha.?” What was it?
He concentrated hard and blinked. In the tiny flash of sight he saw a small, remarkable looking creature. It radiated a soft light and it was sitting on his nose, looking straight at his closed eyes. “A pixie? An angel? A demon? Did I just see what I thought I just saw? Doesn’t matter. M U S T blink morse code!”
“Hi, Ariel” the little creature said in a cheery, somehow seductively manner, warming her dainty bare feet on the bridge of his nose. “How’re you doin’ ?”
“It… it knows my name?” he thought. I wonder if it even knows morse code.
“No need!” said the cheery little creature with a laugh as she slid, wispy dress flying, legs wide apart, down the bridge of his nose, where she sat astraddle. “Morse schmorse. I, can read, your mind!”
“You can what?” He thought
“I……c a n …. r e a d …. y o u r …. m i n d! I’m the BiograFairy. Kind of like a TroothFairy .. for extractions that’re put into books!”
“Wh…?”
“The BiograFairy. Here to help you. Set up a web page. Online we can instantly tell the world the truth
“Oh. But if you can read my mind, you’ll know if I’m telling the truth or lying, right?”
“Right! Now where shall we start Mr Sharon?….
…Mr Sharon. Where would you like to start?
..Mr Sharon?
…..Ariel, where would you like to ….. er start?
Mr Sharon?
Sir.. … your biography. Was it something I said?”
Sir..”
We were movers. Half of New Jersey looked upon us with the distain normally reserved for a common cockroach.
We carried sofas down 10 flights of stairs. We hauled books for the semi-literate from one sh!tty apartment to another, accepting small tips from the condescending creatures we labored for.
“Thanks!”, I said to Jamal, or whatever its name was. I lifted my sneaker onto his coffee table, pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills, and added Jamal’s ten dollars to the fold. The look on his slack jawed face was priceless, like a square inch of Judea.
We were movers alright. We were movers. Bibi had once said that America is a thing that can be moved very easily. Among ourselves, we knew he was talking about people like us. Movers.
The big morning seemed to last forever. A beautiful sunrise over the Statue of Liberty reminded us that a new day was coming. A new day for liberty, and a setting sun for Islamo-fascism.
But the calm, cool morning seemed to last forever, until finally, a flicker in the sky appeared over Brooklyn. Like the Star of David, it shone brighter than even the unobstructed sun.
The thunder and lightning that followed reminded me how the creator must have felt during those first six days of creation. Six days. Our fathers had created a new Middle East in six days as well. Now we were creating a new world in one. We would rest for six days, not one.
The others lifted their lighters atop the van, as if they were at a rock concert. I was more humbled by the moment, in a deeply philosophical way, but took their picture anyway.
They were movers.
Not bad. I’m not on board with the whole ‘Israel staged 9/11′ schtick — but not bad. ‘…priceless, like a square inch of Judea…’ is a gem right there.
The following is neither fiction, nor is it especially funny, nor is it original with me. It’s not even intended to win the prize. It is, however, appropriate. At least, I think so.
“…Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. The assignment was not to his liking, indeed it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities. If it would make their task any easier, the men should remember that in Germany the bombs were falling on women and children.
“He then turned to the matter at hand. The Jews had instigated the American boycott that had damaged Germany, one policeman remembered Trapp saying. There were Jews in the village of Josefow who were involved with the partisans…”
– from Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.
I have a truly heart warming story to tell. There is this settler, a retired soldier with an honourable record. I cannot name him, his humility resists the acclaim his generous spirit so surely deserves.
His parents were among the very first to survive the stormy seas and reach safety in this fairest of lands and he was born within a year of their arrival. As the years passed he never tired hearing the stories his parents told of their journey. Again and again he would beg them to recount how on their arrival an Arab family had raised hands to heaven in welcome and, refusing all recompense, gladly offered them land and a home before disappearing westwards never to be properly thanked. Even now, after a long full life, the story still moves him. It moved him so much indeed that a year ago when news was brought to him of a young Arab so severely damaged in some reckless youthful adventure that his parents were in despair for his survival, he summoned a doctor and, without a moment’s pause for reflection, sent him urgently to the youth’s parents with his offer to donate his own body that the youth’s heart might survive. It seemed to him the very least he could do, and as a direct consequence of his spontaneous act of generosity the boy’s heart is beating strongly even as I tell the story here.
this guy, a member of a mossad team killed a commander of an elite israeli army commando unit named yoni during a faux ‘rescue’ mission of an airline highjacking operation on the 4th of july in uganda.
yoni was screwing the mossad agents lover, a hot young american named bill whose father owned an influential cia affiliated magazine called Kommentary. it wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. young bill was only supposed to be the bait, to lure yoni into a compromising situation to blackmail (big gap..read pt 2)..but it didn’t turn out like that, the 2 fell in love and the mossad agent used the opportunity of the operation to get rid of him. so there’s the plot anyway. i don’t know how to pretty it up. i like the whole yoni/bill hook up tho. besides, gay is hot right now.
This one is too long to qualify, but a good editor like Marty Peretz could probably trim some fat here and there. Written in one tangent.
Shtetl Police
The veterans center was chaotic. A line of patients spilled out into the sticky Haifa night.
I held up the beta version of the Karmameter (pronounced car-mameter) into the smokey air. The light blinked red as soon as I turned the device on.
The red light went solid whenever the device was pointed at the crowd, accompanied by a piercing noise.
The line of men and women looked at me, and the device exploded in my hand. Despite the second degree burn which would later require medical treatment,
I was actually relieved when the Karmameter broke. The red light and beeping were supposed to indicate BAD karma, and a lump of despair had filled
my throat before the explosion.
Back to the lab for reprogramming, I thought. Besides, the technology was rumored to have originated in the US.
Inside the veterans center, several large classrooms were re-arranged for group therapy sessions. In each room, semi-circles of twenty chairs faced an elevated lectern, each with a movie screen behind.
I stood in the back of room 4, but searched about for something, anything to sit on. Schindler’s List was 3 hours, after all.
The session began with a quick statement from the group counselor. She was a short, stocky woman, and not particularly easy on the eyes.
“Hi everybody, I’m Elena K. Most of you know me from the past few weeks, but we have a visitor tonight from Wired magazine. Mr. Ackerman, say hello.”
I smiled and said “hey” in my best friendly-insecure-Jew voice, to put them at ease. Hopefully the exploding device episode was behind us, I thought.
“Okay, who’s up first toight?”, Elena asked.
A tall, strong guy stood up. He must have been 230 pounds of pure Jewish muscle. I couldn’t help but smile, pride swelling within my Abercrombie zip-up
hoodie. THIS is a Jew that kicked ass in gym class, I fantasized.
But Nathan-Amshel spoke in a low, mumbling voice. His body language read “loser”, and my Jewish pride got a case of shrinkage not seen since that episode of Seinfeld.
“Two months ago, my unit was outside Hebron,” Nathan-Amshel began. “an American family was with us, a Jewish family, and my commander wanted to show them some action.”
Yeah? I thought. I knew then and there that my verbal skills would make me pretty f’ing smooth in a setting like this.
“As the only sniper on duty that day, my commander told me to get in firing position” Nathan-Amshel continued. “I did as I was told, and the American family got more and more excited.”
The other soldiers in the circle started hanging their heads, undoubtedly out of boredom. Only Elena and I seemed engaged in the story, and her eyes met mine. Yeesh.
“When I settled into firing position, my commander handed a pair of binoculars to the American father, and said, ‘do you see that red shirt, next to the white car?’
The father said yes.” Nathan-Amshel stopped speaking, and the room was silent.
“You’re doing great, and you should be proud of your service,” Elena said warmly. “Remember who we are dealing with. They are not like us. They would make lampshades out of your children, and it wouldn’t be the first time that happened, you know.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Go on,” Elena said, more sternly this time.
At this, big Nathan-Amshel buried his face in his lap and started bawling. Silently at first, before the wails came on.
“You’re ashamed, aren’t you?” Elena suddenly yelled. “You want to turn your back on this whole war, don’t you?”
Nathan-Amshel’s sobs got louder and louder.
“You want to be a martyr, don’t you? You want to be a martyr for the Arabs.”
Nathan-Amshel shook his head as if to say no, but I knew he meant yes.
“Guards!” Elena yelled.
Two uniformed IDF came in the room, but the big martyr was not easily tasered. After the third shock, Nathan-Amshel finally got hold of one of the guards. The other guard, a balding, overweight fellow, smacked the martyr on the side of his face with the butt of his AR-15. Nathan-Amshel fell to the floor, but got up quickly.
“Shoot me! Martyr me!” Nathan-Amshel cried. The balding guard shook his head no, but the big martyr started towards him. The guard let out a quick burst of 5-7 shots, and Nathan-Amshel dropped to the ground, flopping like live lox on a bagel on the F-train before Smith and 9th Street.
“Any more martyrs in here?” The guard asked. He no longer looked balding and overweight to me. He looked like a Nazi god of full-bodied hair. The role reversal was really something.
“Not to be the shtetl police,” I said to the other patients, “but Israel really needs all of our support.”
The air was tense.
Past tense.
It was after all 64 years ago.
A momentous event was about to bound through the vomitory and onto the stage of Palestine’s age olde theatre of war.
The 2,000 years since the Roman era, a period where Arabs and Jews lived together as Palestinians. A period where Palestine, its territories, its people and their existence had been under the rule of numerous occupying powers. The longest occupation in history and by far the longest period in the history of the Jewish people in the region as Palestinian Jews, was about to draw to an end.
The LoN Mandate for Palestine was finally about to come to an end as we travel back thru the corridors of time, down the halls of history. Weaving our way through wars, conflict, bloodshed, propaganda. Wading through 64 years of nonsensical bullsh*te until we stand, at a closed door.
We huddle closely, silently in the doorway and listen intently to a barely perceptible conversation …… someone is speaking
“We accepted the UN Resolution, but the Arabs did not. They are preparing to make war on us. If we defeat them and capture western Galilee or territory on both sides of the road to Jerusalem, these areas will become part of the state. Why should we obligate ourselves to accept boundaries that in any case the Arabs dont accept?”
“Because Mr Ben-Gurion, our own Rabbi Silver has already stated at the UNSC on Friday, 19 March 1948, that //“The setting up of one State was not made conditional upon the setting up of the other State.”// “
“So what?“
“Well David, this is serious, you can’t make a Rabbi look like a liar, because he told them not once, but TWICE! Again on the 19 March 1948 . // ” The statement that the plan proposed by the General Assembly is an integral plan which cannot succeed unless each of its parts can be carried out, is incorrect. This conception was never part of the plan. Indeed, it is contrary to the statement made by the representative of the United States during the second session of the General Assembly. The setting up of one State was not made conditional upon the setting up of the other State. Mr. Herschel Johnson, representing the United States delegation, speaking in a sub-committee of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question on 28 October 1947, stated, in discussing this very matter in connexion with economic union: “The element of mutuality would not necessarily be a factor, as the document might be signed by one party only.” // “
“Oh. OK let’s say we…er….we just didn’t accept UNGA res 181 because UNGA resolutions aren’t binding” spluttered David Ben-Gurion
“But you just said we did and on Friday, 5 March 1948 our own Rabbi Silver told the UNSC // “we accepted the decision which appeared fair and reasonable to the United Nations”// and that //“We feel under the obligation to make our position unmistakably clear. As far as the Jewish people are concerned, they have accepted the decision of the United Nations. We regard it as binding, and we are resolved to move forward in the spirit of that decision”// “
“He what?” exclaimed Ben-Gurion, his hair frizzling out to twice its usual friz.
“He had to David. So we could be accepted into the UN.”
“WTF are you babbling about?” yelled Ben-Gurion, whose hair now seemed to be attempting to rip itself out by the roots
“David, UNGA Resolution 181 says this, //”F. ADMISSION TO MEMBERSHIP IN THE UNITED NATIONS
When the independence of either the Arab or the Jewish State as envisaged in this plan has become effective and the declaration and undertaking, as envisaged in this plan, have been signed by either of them, sympathetic consideration should be given to its application for admission to membership in the United Nations in accordance with article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations. “// ” … Didn’t you read it?
“WTF. Why didn’t someone tell me?” Ben-Gurion seethed, neck engorged with irate Jewish DNA filled blood, hair flapping like an Albatross chick learning how to fly. Suspended by his flapping hair, his two feet were now two feet off the floor by a good six inches.
“So. You didn’t read it David.”
“OK. Then we won’t mention borders. Solved. Next!“ Self satisfied, David Ben-Gurion mopped his brow and sat back in his chair
“Er Mr Ben-Gurion… States don’t mention borders in their declaration. Don’t you remember what you just said about America’s Declaration? So you’re refusing to do something you don’t have to do. Why? It doesn’t make sense!”
“That’s LOGIC!!!“ Snapped Ben-Gurion, now curled up in the foetal position in his chair, slowly breaking out in a cold sweat and beginning to shake
“We must abide by UNGA res 181 to become a UN Member, Mr Ben-Gurion”
“But. But. But …. that’s more logic!“ wimpered Ben-Gurion, convulsively retching and shivering. “Not fair!
“Yes it is Ben. It is logic and fair. Remember, we’re Jewish, famous for our logic and fairness“
“We are?”
“Yes Mr Ben-Gurion. We are.”
“So we should just…?”
“Right David! We’re glad you’ve seen the light!”
“LIE?“
“YES!!!!!“
What We Talk About When We Talk About Birthright
Miriam was sitting at an outdoor bar with her other American friends on Ben Yehuda Street. The fifth day of the Birthright trip underway, she felt as though she had been in Israel for years. In fact, according to her Hebrew teacher, rabbis, and Hillel coordinator in the U.S., she had been. She remembered fondly the poster in her Hebrew class at Brandeis that said, “Your soul is here. Bring your body here too.” The four friends sat drinking beer. They were people-watching. She saw an unshaven soldier in his olive shaded uniform. He was cute. He was protecting her. She looked at him, determined to make eye contact. With his M-16 slung over his shoulder, he looked back. “Yes,” she said to herself, “Israel is awesome.” This was their first of two free nights during Birthright. “No rest for the weary,” their guides told them as they schlepped around Jerusalem. And, really, they were tired. Visiting the Western Wall, ancient ruins, Yad Vashem, David’s Citadel, the Israel Museum, and shopping in the shuk, was a lot for one day.
They ordered a second round of drinks. It was hot and they were all feeling the exhaustion of the day mixed with the alcohol they were drinking. Looking out at the buildings, she saw the sunlight hit the limestone in a way that made the stone look rose colored. She reflected on the walks in the ancient ruins earlier in the day. She felt connected to the land and aware of her past, in these ancient ruins, where clearly people had once lived. After all, it was this connection to her past that led her to come on the Birthright trip. Suddenly, she remembered another important part of her past. “Hey, you guys,” she said to the others at the table, “let’s play the Anne Frank game.” Zack squinted at her as he lit a cigarette. The others stared into their phones and scrolled. Through the haze of alcohol, she wasn’t sure if anyone knew what she was talking about. Only Zack seemed to care, smoking and staring. ”You know,” she continued, “We go around and think of people in our lives and then we decide if they would have hidden us during the Holocaust.”
Miriam started. She thought of her friend Jackie and decided that she was too passive. “No, Jackie wouldn’t have saved me.” Zach went next. “I know my girlfriend would’ve,” he said. “I don’t know about that,” said Miriam, “I mean, Zach, we’re talking about the Holocaust. She won’t even make you dinner.” Zach looked sullen and depressed and ordered another drink. This was getting intense. Miriam looked again over at the soldier. “I know who would save me,” she said to the others, making eye contact again with the soldier.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the soldier making his way over to her. She knew it wouldn’t be long before they took a walk and did the Birthright hookup. Her friends had given hand jobs to soldiers in Bedouin tents. Why couldn’t she? After all, it was her birthright.
Give this one a vote. You’re a budding Evelyn Waugh. Actually better. You’re understated — which Waugh certainly never was.
Anyway, the sequel?
Parody Beinart’s ridiculous defense of the original piece. I haven’t the energy, but for example:
Start by disparaging someone’s criticism of Jew Suss by alleging subtle irony and fictional devices and things that they didn’t get. It’s not the point that the whole thing was created to justify the Holocaust. How can you be so ignorant? Throw in a French phrase that doesn’t too obviously mean ‘add more garlic.’ Harlan was ‘Un homme qui portaient pantalon à carreaux.’ (if that’s odd somehow, it’s because I used Babelfish.)
Then drop the artistic angle without explanation, and start emphasizing the need we all have to immerse ourselves in anti-semitic propaganda so that we can empathize with anti-semites. If we don’t watch “Nazi historical fiction,” we’re shirking the demands of moral empathy. It’s an obligation. Everyone should sit around and watch Jew Suss. Make the kids watch it. Don’t suggest to them it’s in any way inaccurate. This is the way it was. That’s why the Germans committed the Holocaust. Remember: empathy.
I walked quietly up to uncle Jacob who was sitting on a rock on the side of the hill, looking over what we’d accomplished that day. A book lay at his feet. Spine broken. It’s partly burned, tortured pages flapping and flying away in the evening breeze, over the eerily glowing embers of the old Palestinian olive grove.
“We did well eh” I always enjoyed nights like this
” “
His silence told me more than I wanted to know. I tried to avert the direction I knew things were about to go, “Look at it uncle Jacob. Quite a sight in the sunset. Beautiful.”
” “
By that I knew this was going to go in only one direction “Ok uncle Jacob, what is …. uh …. was the book about?”
“UNSC Resolutions against Israel” he sighed. “Ever read ‘em?”
I shuffled uncomfortably, thinking I must work harder to overcome the way I shuffle uncomfortably when I hear anything beginning with UN. Damn unsettling when you’re talking to your ‘un’cle. Even more ‘un’settling that it’s ‘un’settling and ‘un’comfortable
I tried not to stammer. “Uh? No u u u u n … Jacob. I er…uh… haven’t. What’re they about?” I replied, thinking as I did of early life in NY and how I’d always found it difficult lying to my uncle.
He slowly turned to face me, sighing again. Louder. Deeper. With an impatient edge I could feel. His eyes fixed on mine “You know what they’re about”. I began to sweat.
“I remember thinking at the time, I gotta get this cold sweating thing under control. Any way, I never did get it under control because uncle Jacob was right and we all knew it. That’s the night I stopped stuttering and when your mother and I decided we’d be raising Brooklyn kids. Now go to sleep and don’t bother your mother. Uncle Jacob and I are gonna go play bowls at Melody Lanes”
“Dad…. tomorrow, can we make a card to Mohammad Alsaafins family to celebrate Palestinian Independence day?”
The minarets and towers of Baghdad glittered in the setting sun falling behind the city. The plain smelled faintly of smoke, but the army was so used to its smell, the sight of fire and smoke, that they did not notice it, and if they had, would not have thought it anything special. It was the stench of this miserable, dead, hostile land. Both horses and men were drinking greedily from the river, and slaves were busy setting up tents and small temporary palisades to surround them. There was a real sense of excitement in the camp, and secretly most people were hoping the peace negotiations would fail. They had hardly travelled ten thousand kilometres, for a year and twenty days, for a peaceful exchange of prisoners.
In the largest tent at the centre of the camp the Khan of Khan’s brother-in-law was discussing the matter with a vizier from Baghdad. The Arab was a small man, rather young, and with the countenance of a schoolteacher or horse attendant, rather than a respectable diplomat. Still, he tried to present his case with conviction: “the great God in heavens has granted the Caliph the greatest power on Earth, with his divine blessing, his force which not all the armies of men could match, it is God’s will”. The Mongol had heard similar arguments day in and day out in his talks with the Arabs, and was still uninterested in attempting to comprehend the petty theological niceties of their banal and crude religion. For him, the affair was very simple: “in the eyes of all the gods, who see all that happens on Earth, there is no one greater than the Khan of Khans. He institutes his right and will by might, and demands that your Caliph bows down to him in submission, like his god has done. We wish you and your people no harm, but simply an arrangement of the powers that be into a more natural order. Our subjects are happy, our vassals prosperous: your King would benefit from our protection, from our highly evolved financial and judicial policies.”
The Turkish soldier guarding the tent was all tense from the quiet arousal that had overtaken him in the last few days: Baghdad was in sight, you could almost touch it, and inside it were all the stunning riches which the folk tales spoke of. He was so happy the Mongols had arrived: they would spread the wealth of Iraq to their warriors, the rough and illiterate men of the steppe, those who no one had taught to read. The Arabs would receive what had been coming to them for so long, now it was time for the men of Asia to enjoy God’s blessings.
The haughty and stubborn Caliph until the last minute would not allow freedom for his subjects, would not allow them to bow down to the King of Kings, Caliph of Caliphs, the Conquering Wrath of Allah. He refused to accept the possibility there was a greater man than him in the deserts of the east, in fact he failed to comprehend it, and when the barbarian army surrounded the city, he was sure it was some fiendish trick played by his brother. He loved that sort of pranks. Even when he was unceremoniously rolled in a rug and thrown out of a palace window, the Caliph, in his pitiful tribal pride, refused to accept any offers of friendship, assistance and co-öperation.
I hereby submit, slightly edited, reformatted and titled, giladg’s comment of June 29,2012 at 9:19 am. The substance and spirit are entirely unchanged and all due credit goes to giladg as the creative genius behind this polemic. However, please file under my name, giladg’s humble copy editor, as I have some aspirations of my own, especially as discoverer of lost gems.
Nothing inspires people to heights of creative fiction like Mondoweiss!
The Injustice
The injustice of being accused of something he did not do!
The something that apparently convinced the judge to renege on the plea-bargain agreement. The injustice of one man, Caspar Weinberger, sending a secret letter to the judge, a letter that changed the case. One man can write a secret letter without being vetted, a letter that has profound impact on another human being – the travesty of it! The injustice of the length of sentence for spying for a friendly country when no other sentence for similar, and even worse acts, received a fraction of the time he has already spent in jail and solitary confinement.
Injustice you ask? you betcha.
Weinberger and Co. hoped that the long sentence would deter others. Let us all hope that there are still brave and upstanding men who can find the strength to do the right thing. Undo the evil of Pollard’s superiors who allowed their hate for Jews and Israel, to hold back on insuring vital info be passed on to a strong friend and partner of the US.
There will always be those who will be willing to make the sacrifice and continue to do the right thing and not go over the edge with others. Pollard’s superiors were not of this type. Neither was the judge in the case nor Casper Weinberger himself. Most certainly not the judge who later denied a late appeal.
Conspiracy, injustice? Absolutely!
Free Jonathan Pollard and let justice ring again in the land of the free and Home of the Brave!
As she lay on the ground before him, writhing in agony, he courteously turned his head and spat. “You disgust me. Get up, get dressed and get the hell out of my sight.” He opened the interrogation room’s door and stepped to the side.
Using the wall to support herself, and fighting back both her pain and her tears, the woman slowly stood up. Her numb gaze fell upon his boots, upon his proudly-stained trousers and upon the cold pistol at his hip, but her eyes could not bear to look upon his face. “You took everything from me,” she whispered, her voice eerily empty.
Flinging her dress at her, he laughed coarsely. “I took only what was mine to take. Now go, before I decide that you still have something which belongs to me.”
The woman hesitated, overwhelmed by the pain, the loss and the laughter. Her dress betrayed her, slipping from her shoulder and exposing her breast. His eyes flitted over it. A smile crossed his lips as he slowly closed the door.
Isaac sat down for a moment on a stool to drink from a bottle of abandoned orange juice he had found earlier that morning. What he really needed was a bottle of wine but these heathen Muslims foreswore such beverages. Maybe a Jewish residence would turn up soon? The loaf of bread sitting three feet from him only filled him with revulsion. He had been stuffing himself with food all morning, because there was a limit to what he could carry, and now he was suffering.
Downstairs he could hear two of his fellow crusaders quarreling over some abandoned jewelry. Idly he wondered if the remission of sin for undertaking this sacred war applied to stabbing a fellow soldier who was trying to cheat you out of your loot. He decided he didn’t want to test the idea, although as far as he knew there were no restrictions.
An interminable, heated debate had been dragging on for ages over whether the remission only applied to those who died during the conquest of Jerusalem, or if mere participation was enough. He fervently hoped for the latter, especially after the widespread cannibalism during the siege of Ma’arra, when their supply lines ran short. He much preferred solving problems with his sword to these frustrating theological disputes.
Out of the window he spotted the German Hans entering another abandoned property and glared at him with suspicion. Hans did not speak French and had strange habits. Was he a true Christian? In his own village someone like that would have been burned as a warlock in a split second. Right now his ruler, Baron Leopold, and Hans’ lord, Baron Frederick, were engaged in a bitter dispute over the size of the domains they would acquire from this conquered land.
Isaac stood up and resumed looking for valuables. It would take weeks, even months, for them to finish searching Jerusalem for abandoned property. Their sacred mission, however, was now nearing an end. Now that Jerusalem had been captured and the infidels expunged everything would be different.
Late entry, please consider
————
Cindy had done it for the money — it was the shortest path between her folk’s home in Lafayette and a diploma in veterinary technology. and all the bucks that went with that. Field exercises four week-ends per year — that’s all they wanted. The deal seemed cold enough. Then came the letter in the mail.
Baghdad in summer was bad enough, but the cinder block hellhole where Cindy was stationed cooked your brain like Jambalaya shrimp. Most of the action went down in the next wing but she still heard shit, the long halls acting as acoustic guides. Her posting could have been worse — she could have been charged with a bunch of men. As it was, the duty cycle was light. Boredom reigned. Cindy spent a lot of her time lying on her bunk, thumbing through old porn mags.
“Sgt. Boulard! C Block. Now!”
That’s how the call would usually come.
Cindy would sit up and cluck twice. “C’mon, Sam,” she would motion. “time to go.” Sam would lift his head, half-cocked, and lumber to his feet. His tongue would pant like nothing she’d ever seen back home. “That’s a good boy,” she’d say as she scratched his ear and affixed his leash. “That’s a good boy.”
Then Cindy herself would get to her feet, don cap on cropped hair and, camera in one hand, Sam on the other, exit her room and head down the hall.