It was the eighth inning of the Yankees-Red Sox game, the Red Sox up 7-5, and two Jews, neither a Zionist, were sitting at a bar on Seventh Avenue talking about the issue with one eye on the game.
“Here’s what I wonder. How quick would they be to use nukes?” said the older one.
“Oh, they would use them. And the Americans would back them.”
“They’d be completely isolated in the world.”
“I think you’d be surprised by how far America would go to back them.”
“Let me tell you how I think about it,” the older one said. “If I could wave a wand and end Zionism and create a democracy there, I’d wave that wand in a second. I mean, I know it would be no picnic, they’d be at each others’ throats, it’d be a mess, but still– I’d wave that wand. And what I wonder is if there was a guy out there who really could wave a wand and do that, some guy sitting in the desert or wherever, would they drop a nuke on him just to save Zionism. The idea of Zionism?”
The younger one shrugged. “Bibi would want to. Bibi is kind of crazy. But I want to think there would be a debate. That there would be some discussion about it, and he would back down.”
“Cooler heads would prevail?”
“Yes wiser people would say, Hey, you can’t do this. This won’t work. You’re only going to isolate us more. But I have my own thought experiment.”
“Talk to me.”
The younger one held up his iphone. “I invent a perfect time machine. I’m going back to 1939 and I’m going to kill Hitler.”
“Killer app.”
“Yeah. And we unveil it at the Smithsonian or the Holocaust memorial—it’s front page news. I’m going to prevent the extermination of not just 6 million Jews but the other 5 or 6 million victims of the Holocaust, the non-Jews. What would happen?”
“I don’t know. It’s your thought experiment.”
“Some Zionist would knock me off.”
“You think?”
“Sure. Before I got a chance to do it, a Zionist would knock me off. One of them would be gunning for me.”
“A lot of people would be cheering.”
“Sure. But it would only take a few Zionists. Because that’s why Israel is there. They wouldn’t be there but for the Holocaust. The horror and the ashes. It took the worst thing in history to make it so it’s no surprise it’s rotten.”
It was the 9th inning of the Red Sox Yankees game. The Red Sox were now up 9-5, Papelbon was in to close, and two Jewish guys, neither a Zionist, finished their beers at a bar on 7th Avenue.
