yustyoking

 

***   [ The next-to-last chapter in the Jack Reacher parody Sodden Death. ]   ***

 

In the midst of an otherwise uneventful afternoon— I’m washing the mud off my clothes after disposing of a dead body— joking! I get a mystery phone call from my old buddy Mike Greer. [ Publisher’s Note: Broken Record, 2007 ] “Josh,” he claims, “there’s a humanitarian crisis demanding our immediate participation in war-torn Palestine.”

Ugh! Like everyone else, I’ve seen the news clips of the bombs falling. The missile strikes. The Palestinian youths throwing rocks and burning perfectly usable, stolen radial tires. With more tread on them than I have on my Citroën. “What do you want, Mike?” I ask warily.

Paranoid plus, he won’t talk over the phone. So I have to mix him a bourbon and branch water and sit him down in my nicest chair in my living room to get anything out of him. His story: “In conjunction with the installation of a natural gas pipeline, excavations southwest of Jerusalem have uncovered a 2,300 year old farm. Currently in the hands of the Israel Antiquities Authority. With the war and all, some sticky-fingered volunteers at the dig have purloined ancient coins, stone tools and what is probably the world’s oldest ceramic dildo, anatomically correct in every detail. Our job will be to smuggle this blunt instrument and all the other stuff out of the country while everyone is preoccupied with war hysteria.”

“Sounds a little dicey,” I tell him.

“Each of us gets a grand.”

“I’m in!”

While America experiences a chilly taste of the polar vortex, Mike and I visit gay Paris. High summer, the weather is perfect. I telephone and then drop by the apartment of Sophie Kornblatt, one of the great loves of my life back in the day. [ Publisher’s Note: Diaper Rash, 2002 ] Mike and I loiter outside on the sidewalk for, like, hours waiting for someone to let us in the front door. Seeing we’re Americans, a little old French lady walking her fuzzy, fussy wire-haired mongrel does us the favor, shaking her head disapprovingly and pursing her lips. I’ve beaten up 11-year-olds for less! Sophie opens her door, but only just. “Wow!” I marvel. “Sophie! If you’re a relic of my past, you are one well-preserved piece of history!”

“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez, Josh?” she asks coldly.

“Sophie, you’re the greatest!” I coax. “How ya been? Let me take you out to dinner! Let me buy you some baubles at Harrod’s!”

“Harrod’s n’existe pas ici. Harrod’s est établi seulement que Londres,” she reminds me. Women can be difficult, asking what I want and then telling me that Harrod’s doesn’t even exist in Paris, only in London. Jesus Christ!

            “Sophie!” I plead beseechingly. “Open the door! Let me in.” The oval face, the porcelain skin. The regal Louis XIV nose. The amazing blue eyes, shooting angry looks like a nail gun. Mammary protrusions that were the talk of the 12th Arrondisement. She slams the door in my face. I guess she’s going to get her coat.

“What’s the deal?” Mike asks impatiently, standing behind me on the marble landing.

“Womens,” I assure him. “They do take their time.” Twenty minutes later, as I incessantly ring the bell, I’m not so sure that Sophie is glad to see us.

“Let’s just go,” whines Mike.

We fly south on what we used to call “a rubber band airline.” Everyone took turns winding up the rubber band that kept the propeller twirling. Today, Europa Airways is flying Airbus A320’s. Once airborne, Mike gets plastered, as is his wont, while I order things off the bottom of the drinks cart so I can admire the stewardess’s derrière as she bends over. Life’s small pleasures. Amazingly, the stewardesses seem to think my hard-drinking, hard-charging buddy— babbling obscenities and grabbing at them— is more virile than I am! Probably because he’s flaunting his cash. On the last round of drinks before landing, I order a ginger ale. “In fact, make it a double ginger ale,” I leer suggestively. To no avail. They keep plying Mike with napkins, the name and phone number of their overnight hotel scribbled in indelible ink on both sides.

 

Not standing on formality, the Israeli authorities arrest us straight off the plane. Even before we reach the terminal. They’re efficient, if nothing else. They sequester me in a beige interrogation room smelling of flop sweat and old cigarettes. “Take off your clothes!” a tall, redheaded woman Israeli intel officer commands.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” I reply hopefully. The full body cavity search she and her colleagues perform isn’t quite what I anticipated.

“Purpose of visit?” she barks as I put my clothes back on. Holding aloft my customs and immigration form, she is as sure as I am that it’s a pack of lies.

“Business,” I bark back. “We’re here to smuggle stolen antiquities out of the country!”

“Please don’t make bad jokes,” she admonishes me woodenly. “We have heard all of these stupid answers a thousand times before!”

“Yeah, that’s true, I’m sure,” I agree, feeling ashamed. “Nah, we’re here to bathe.”

“Tourism. Vacation,” she notes, jotting it on my blue form. “There’s a war going on. We have our troubles. Please be careful and report any suspicious activity.”

Eventually, they reunite Mike and me, escorting us out front to the taxi stand. “How did you make out with your lady?” Mike asks, stifling a yawn. “Mine put a garden snake down my pants.”

“Really?” I ask.

“You wish!” he scoffs. Good old Mike.

The sun is a brassy yellow, the sky cloudless, pale blue. It’s like walking onto a movie set: Sirens are wailing, people are running for bomb shelters and the taxi drivers talk, read their newspapers and smoke cigarettes. “Take you to Ashkelon?” asks a tough little guy who looks half Armenian.

“Why would I want to go to Ashkelon?” I ask incredulously.

“It’s near dinner time. I’m hungry. I live in Ashkelon,” he explains.

While Mike is on his cell phone to our contact “Izzy,” I stand bleary-eyed, examining a spindly, rusty metal sculpture of a mother deer and her fawn. Entitled “Dawn.”

“It’s by Tanaka Kyoti,” a passing Israeli says. Although not my size, he looks beefy enough to go a few rounds with Hulk Hogan. “You’re American?” he guesses.

“What? Yes.”

“You wear Tommy Hilfiger, you’re American.”

“I only bought this shirt for the trip.”

“How do you like Israel?”

“I don’t know, we just arrived.”

“What?!” he bursts out argumentatively. “I’m not asking you to buy the place! You must have an opinion, man.”

“It’s very nice.”

“Sorry about the war. Every few years, we need to remind the Palestinians who’s in charge.”

“I can commiserate,” I assure him. “I’ve just seen some of your Palestinians. Ugly black skin, gobbledygook language, bad hair, shabby clothes.”

“Actually,” he tells me, “you’re describing the Falasha, the Ethiopian Jews of Gondor. They claim to be descended from Menilek the First, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Israel is extremely proud to have rescued that lost tribe.”

Oh… Uhhh! From his tone, I can hear how offended he is.

 

A chilly night on a hill outside the farming community of Netiv Ha’asara about  7 miles south of Ashkelon. Mike and I stand among the locals, looking across the border 800 yards away as the Israeli Air Force pounds the Gazans into submission. Or not, as the case seems to be. I feel like Napoleon at Borodino, surveying the battle from the heights. Geckos rustle in the underbrush. I intro myself to the man standing next to me. He’s wearing jeans and a gorgeous hand-knitted cardigan. His name is Shmuel. “How do you like Israel?” he demands.

“It’s very nice.”

“How long have you been here?”

“We just arrived.”

“Eh! What do you know? Everything is a mess!” he retorts angrily.

Like soldiers everywhere, we compare notes.

“The only Jews marching into the sea at this point are beachcombers and tourists bathing,” I suggest. “The Gazans must be sorely disappointed.”

“The contrast between Israel’s military efforts,” Shmuel replies, “and Hamas is all you need to know about the morality of the cause. We make phone calls and drop leaflets, endeavoring to prevent killing civilians in Gaza by warning them beforehand. Hamas endeavors to kill civilians in Israeli while using their own civilians as human shields. And PR opportunities if anyone gets injured. You know where the Hamas leadership is currently headquartered? Inside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City! They fire rockets from the roof!”

Hmm. “Since surprise is half the battle in combat,” I opine, “this current Israeli op cannot even be classified as an attack. It’s a policing operation, a clean-up detail.”

“Yes, until we send in ground troops,” replies Shmuel. Dourly. Ending the discussion.

I’m a tourist. What do I know?

 

We return north the next day to a spookily empty Tel Aviv. Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, has mobilized 40,000 reservists, rotated active duty personnel south from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and amassed three brigades along the border with Gaza.

Mike and I haven’t walked four blocks before two female security officers in brown khaki uniforms stop us to check our I.D.’s. “Americans? Journalists?” they ask, comparing my passport photo to my face. “You look better clean-shaven.”

“Thank you,” I reply. “I try to do my best.”

“Journalists?” they repeat, growing increasingly hostile.

“No, no,” Mike insists. “We’re just two tourists here to smuggle stolen antiquities out of the country while everyone is preoccupied with the war.”

Shaking their heads disapprovingly at our brand of American humor, they return our passports, saying curtly “Have a good stay.”

Ten minutes later, the screeching throb of the air-raid sirens sends us scurrying in three different directions. Until it dawns on us that neither Mike nor I have a clue where to seek shelter. Standing in the middle of the street, we are impressed by the double boom of the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system taking out an incoming rocket. The first boom is louder than the second. Then an eerie silence descends on us all, quiet as the grave. Until, eventually, birds begin to chirp, people converse and traffic starts up. Like emissaries from behind a shroud.

Iron Dome was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It is the only system in the world for intercepting and destroying incoming missiles that has this level of capability. Using algorithms, Iron Dome calculates the trajectories of incoming rockets, focusing firepower only on those destined to hit populated areas. Of the rockets it does target, Iron Dome boasts a whopping 90% kill ratio! Nice. In spite of similar looks, we’re not talking Katyushas from World War Two. Making our way to the nearest battery, the IDF personnel let us stand at a distance and admire the array. The detection and tracking radar is mounted on a truck a block away.

“Don’t kid yourself,” one soldier tells me, on a smoking break, his M-16 slung casually over his shoulder, but instantly available. “People in Israel are plenty angry over this rocket fire. Hamas has overplayed its hand. Even the Egyptians are fed up with Hamas’s militancy. You need to travel far and wide to find Hamas supporters nowadays. Only Qatar remains in their corner.”

 

Going online, I find weird shit, like 500 people at a Saturday, July 12th demonstration in Antwerp in Belgium, where a featured orator shouts in Arabic “Slaughter the Jews!” The chant is readily picked up by the crowd. Attending this fun event are politicians from the Flemish Socialist Party, the Flemish Green Party and Labor.

On Sunday, July 13th, in gay Paris, there’s an attempted lynching in the midst of a riot outside a local synagogue. While 200 Jews find themselves under siege inside, police and Jewish guards brawl openly up and down the street with dozens of angry, young, pro-Hamas toughs.

Social Media Manager Rene Smit of the African National Congress Western Cape— busy desecrating the legacy of Nelson Mandela— posts an image of Hitler on Facebook with the title “Yes, man, you were right…” Followed by the caption “I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them.” Cute. Eventually, after official protests, Rene’s post gets deleted.

On their podcast, The Jerome & Joanie O’Doyle Christian Crusade condemns the Israelis and Netanyahu, the Palestinians, the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, Russia and Putin, the Catholic Church for apostasy, Silvio Berlusconi, and “the Jewish cabal in Washington.” Joanie’s litany of complaint goes on for so long, abetted by her yes-man husband, she reaches the point where it sounds like a joke. “The whole world is complaining! We’re in the End Times!” she assures us. “Jesus is coming! And I mean soon! ”

She sounds like an American Ylva Eggehorn.

I log off.

 

That evening, we take Izzy, our contact, to Sing Long, a hidden gem of a Chinese restaurant on Salame Street down by the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. A squirrely little weasel, Izzy asks “So how do you like Israel?” Mike and I look at each other, no longer willing to get ambushed. My fortune cookie says: The weather is wonderful.

Which seems totally irrelevant.

 

Egypt calls for a six hour humanitarian truce on both sides. Signing up, the Israelis cease bombing at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 15th. For the first time in over a week, Gazans are free to move about, restock their larders and make long-term preparations without fear of death from above. Hamas finds six different reasons why Egypt’s proposed ceasefire is totally unacceptable. Senior Hamas leader the baby-faced Sami Abu Zuhri announces that (1) Hamas was not consulted in advance. (2) The Egyptian proposal is a trap. (3) Hamas has been insulted! “We are holding in our hands a proposal we got off social media,” complains Zuhri. “We refuse to be dealt with in such a way.” (4) Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt must first be reopened. (5) Hundreds of prisoners jailed last month by the Israelis must be released. (6) Gaza’s financial assets must be unfrozen so Hamas can pay back wages to teachers, police officers and government workers who have gone unpaid for months.

Then they’ll consider a ceasefire!

Next Zuhri will be telling us Wernher von Braun was Palestinian. Hamas’s rockets continue to fall on Israel during the entire unilateral cessation of hostilities. So after six hours, the Israeli government has had enough and resumes their offensive.

 

Inured, the Israelis don’t close up shop just because there’s a war going on. Leaving my jet-lagged compadre asleep at the hotel, I go to the University of Tel Aviv library to study up on antiquities. I’m sitting at a desk among the stacks taking notes when I look up and see a strikingly handsome young woman with jet black hair and freckles staring at me. In shock. She wears a clingy blue dress, tight in all the right places. Widening her hazel eyes, she appears totally terrified. Not wanting to shout, I get up and quietly approach her. “Are you all right?” I ask.

“You… are… so… big,” she says in halting English. “You… frighten me. You are… a giant.”

“That’s me,” I joke, “I am a giant among men.”

“Layla,” she says, offering me her hand. Red painted fingernails as sharp as stilettos, long tapering fingers. Soft to the touch.

She jumps, as if jolted by an electrical charge. “You are busy? We go for coffee?” she asks, already drifting toward the exit. Following in her footsteps, unable to take my eyes off her bodacious body, it’s all I can do to go back and grab my stuff. Let somebody else re-shelve the damn books!

We walk across campus and plunk ourselves down in the Ma sh’lom’chem Café. We sit in a booth. Layla has a long, bantering conversation in Hebrew with the waitress.

“They know you here,” I surmise.

“Of course. I’m a student,” she tells me, her English fluency growing by the millisecond. “So what brings you to Israel, Mr. Englishman?”

“I’m American. Studying antiquities. We intend to smuggle some of them out of the country,” I joke.

Widening her eyes, Layla says “That’s illegal!”

“I’M JOKING!”

“Oh, in that case— ” she says primly, opening her purse and plucking out an e-cigarette. Going through the motions, she inhales a cloud of vapor, blowing two streams elegantly out through her pretty little nostrils.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Why?” she demands suspiciously.

“You’re a lot of woman!” I point out admiringly.

“Oh, goody!” she says brightly, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “We like each other! I’m an Israeli Arab. You take me with you to America!”

I have to laugh. “That,” I tell her, “is about the most complicated process humanly imaginable. You need a visa, you’re dealing with the State Department, there are quotas, waiting lists, applications, health exams, vaccinations and a vetting process that can take over a year.”

“I’m here,” she declares forthrightly. “I’ll never be anything but a second-class citizen in Israel. I can wait. A year? What’s a year!” she jeers, running her fingernails up and down my arm playfully, leaving marks. “We’ll go to the embassy. Your embassy. I’ve been there! It’s right here in Tel Aviv.”

Oh, boy! My very own Palestinian. To have and to hold.

Jumping to her feet, Layla comes around to my side of the booth and sits down next to me, pressing against me, one hand finding and massaging the bump on the back of my noggin. “I’m a lonely person,” she croons in my ear in a sultry voice. “I’m such a lovely person!”

The waitress brings the coffee, glaring furiously. She all but drops the cups on the table, hissing volubly in Hebrew. Layla answers right back, raising her chin defiantly. I start to get an erection, in spite of myself. “If we like each other, why shouldn’t we be together?” she asks innocently, her other hand discreetly squeezing my crotch under the table. She licks my ear for good measure.

I try to disengage. This girl is strong as an ox! Kissing my neck. Whispering “I love you, big boy!” Boring a hole in the back of my head with those fingernails. Her other hand deep inside the waistband of my trousers.

“Okay! Okay! Layla, stop!” I beseech her fiercely. “We’ll go to the embassy. For God’s sake, relax!”

Pulling away from me, she drinks some coffee, vapes on her e-cig and looks out the window distractedly. “I’m… upset… because… of… the war,” she stutters, a single glistening tear running down her cheek while that treacherous left hand caresses my nether regions absentmindedly. This is what life is going to be like with this girl, high drama interspersed with constant edginess. I wonder if she ever sleeps. I didn’t come to Israel for this. Already, she’s pawing through my spiral notebook, ostentatiously studying my notes. “It’s all about pottery!” she remarks, surprised.

“Most antiquities are pottery,” I explain. “Stone tablets. Bowls, flasks, statuettes, tools.”

“You’re not really going to smuggle things out of the country,” she decides. “You’re an exporter.”

It suddenly dawns on me that as an Israeli Arab, Layla is probably terrified of run-ins with the law. “I’m an exporter,” I assure her.

A genius with my cell phone, quick as a wink, Layla’s got us a taxi and we’re on our way to the American Embassy. On the ride over, she makes two more calls, also on my phone, which— mercifully— has international compatibility. She speaks fluent Arabic both times.

The plot thickens.

Of course, at six p.m. on a weekday, the embassy is closed… Closed, closed, closed, the windows dark, the sentry at the gate waving us away with his hand, his automatic rifle slung across his chest.

“Where are you staying?” asks Layla.

“The Golden Med. It faces the beach…”

Her busy little hands running through my hair and inside my jacket, she begins a long, complicated conversation in Hebrew with the driver. Laughing, she explains: “He’s just like me. We’re both Israeli Arabs. Yet we converse with each other in Hebrew. Funny, no?”

“A riot,” I gripe, wondering what I’m going to tell Mike. We arrive at the hotel. I pay the driver cash, in dollars— always welcome— and follow Layla through the lobby, her head held high, past the bellhops, to the elevators, her heels tapping a tattoo across the marble floor.

“What’s your room number?” she whispers, clutching me with both hands.

“804.”

We take the elevator up to the 8th floor and wander down the hall to my room. I let us in. Layla checks it out appreciatively, the foyer, the closet, the bedroom, the bathroom. “Who’s he?” she asks, kicking off her shoes and peeling off her dress, prior to taking a shower.

“That’s Mike, my traveling companion,” I reply, pointing to his comatose head peeking over the edge of the blanket.

“You’re not gay?!” Layla gasps, widening her eyes, arms all akimbo.

“Relax, honey, I’m not gay.”

She lays down on my bed in her undergarments, atop the Navy blue coverlet. Flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, she decides, “This bed is hard as concrete.”

“Eh! When have you ever slept on concrete?” I chide. Considering it’s my hotel room, I find her critique a little unfair, a little extreme.

“Have you ever lived in a concrete blockhouse in the Arab quarter?” she shoots back. “Have you ever slept on a stone floor with a blanket as thin as tissue paper?”

I have to admit I haven’t.

And don’t you know, our conversation awakens Sleeping Beauty, who is delighted to find a scantily clad woman lying on the bed adjacent to his own. Mike and Layla get along like gangbusters! Why not? Two crooks, they’re made for each other. She doesn’t even seem embarrassed to go from being my girlfriend to Mike’s fiancée.

Youth. Forever hopeful.

 

Of course, you can’t be involved in criminal activity without showing up on the radar screen of the Russian mafia. It wouldn’t be Israel otherwise. Two gorillas are waiting for us in the lobby of our hotel. “You!” they tell Layla. “Scram! ”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she calls desperately, as we’re led from the building. No one shows a gun. No one needs to! We are driven, unblindfolded mind you, to an office building downtown. Clearly, they want us to know who we’re dealing with. Mike and I are taken to the sub-sub-basement of a parking garage. Sure enough, there’s an office cum storeroom there, stacked to the ceiling with boxed computers and widescreen TV’s.

“Can I use my Best Buy gift card?” quips Mike.

“You have a sense of humor,” says our host, “Sergei,” approvingly. Ponderous, a Yul Bryner look-alike, he has a bald head and a huge paunch. “These dealings can get so boring otherwise.”

“I thought Russians in Israel were all thin and rakish,” I exclaim in a “hail fellow, well met” tone of voice, wishing to take the initiative.

“We sweated your stooge Izzy,” Sergei informs us stolidly, glowering. “He spilled the beans like a jam jar.”

“He what?” asks Mike.

“You,” Sergei explains, ignoring Mike’s interruption, “will share 50% of the profits on this one-time-only transaction taking place solely in our jurisdiction. You will not come back to Israel and you will not participate in the antiquities trade ever again.” He doesn’t even raise his voice, sipping borscht from a bowl with a tablespoon. Slurp! Slurp! The man dabs his purple lips with a napkin.

“Uh, listen, uh, look here, man! Wow! I mean…” Mike splutters like Dennis Hopper in the movie Easy Rider. “Sure!”

“That means you agree to our terms,” Sergei asks, each word like a slow punch to the kidneys. Mike and I look at each other and shake our heads timidly. We’ve heard about the Russian mafia. We want to get out of there with all our body parts.

“SPEAK!” Sergei roars, half jovial, half threatening.

“We agree to your terms,” I croak.

“Good! Now get the hell out of here! I have a lot of work to do!” he commands, a biznessman in the middle of his day, even if it’s 11 o’clock at night.

His goons hand each of us a business card. “Better not lose,” they mutter, sending chills down our spines.

Yikes!

 

Layla, bless her scheming little heart, requires a day or two alone with Mike to close their deal: She needs to intro him to her folks, drag him to the U.S. Embassy for paperwork, buy rings and win him over with her winsome, womanly ways. An Arab, there’s no touchy-feely before marriage. Flirt, flirt, but no touch. This traditionally leaves the suitor in a state of high expectation and unrequited hysteria, turning him into clay in the fingers of any wily Palestinian damsel. Witness Samson and Delilah, for God’s sake!   Poor Mike!

With time on my hands, I take my pen and spiral notebook to the offices of The National Herald. They don’t know me there, of course, although I’ve haunted the fringes of both old and new media for years. [ Publisher’s Note: Cheap Shot, 2013 ]

At 6′ 2″ and 250 lbs., I definitely freak out the Arab boy photogs, sitting around on chairs in the courtyard smoking cigarettes, awaiting assignment. There’s a cool breeze in the shade, which is more than you can say about most of Israel in the summer. The screechy chirp of parakeets on adjacent balconies is deafening. “Anybody home?” I enquire.

“American?” they shrug, pointing to the inner sanctum. Going in, I find all the windows wide open, the ceiling fan thrumming, and two countrymen: Gene Pascoe, the half-bald bureau chief seated at his desk, and Lydia Lincoln, one of the two journos in Tel Aviv assigned to the Israeli-Palestinian story. The third, Hank Nordmark, is currently a denizen of Gaza City and only in touch electronically.

“Josh Preacher!” I say forthrightly, extending my hand. “I freelance.”

“Oh?” asks Pascoe sardonically, eyebrows raised. “Everybody freelances. Got any creds?”

I list a few cable TV channels, the BBC, even drop a name or two on the editorial side at The National Herald. “Telex them,” I joke. “They’ll vouch for me.”

“Will they still vouch for you via satellite?” asks Pascoe, not amused.

“Yes.”

Surprised at my steely gaze, Pascoe swivels in his chair, looks out the window and asks, “What can we do for you?”

“Press credentials, of course.”

“No way! Not without permission from the home office!”

“Send a fax.”

Not entirely pleased, Pascoe and Lincoln find themselves saddled for the next two days with a stringer. “You tag along with Lydia. As far as I’m concerned, considering your bulk, you are nothing but a bodyguard,” insists Pascoe.

“Works for me!” I reply enthusiastically.

“You file here at my office or not at all. If you come up with any interesting angles, I’ll be mighty surprised and the first to congrats. Although I doubt it!”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Lydia adds as soon as we get outside where she nervously lights her fifth cigarette of the day. “Gene tells everyone that. Welcome to the Holy Land, by the by!” She actually reaches out a crabby hand and gives me a man-to-man handshake.

The Israelis treat us with a grudging forbearance, letting us attend press briefings, funerals, interviews with officials announced well in advance and “frontline tours” always ten clicks north of ha kadima, the action. I can see why Lydia has become cynical. The IDF girls assigned as our press monitors, guides, minders, babysitters and sheepherders are all of a type: Perky. Brittlely self-assured. Small-breasted. Noses in the air. They don’t take “no” for an answer and virtually all they ever say to us is “no.” Since only Hank Nordmark over in Gaza City can interview Gazans, we’re left trolling for Israeli news and public opinion. Seeking out the prettiest housewives I can find, I instruct Judas Abbas, my photog, to quietly take pix and “Try not to leer so openly, okay?!”

Best is the equipment: Black flak jackets with PRESS in huge yellow letters for everyone to see, blue Kevlar helmets and green foldable ear protectors like nobody’s business. The noise anywhere near the front is deafening, the dust suffocating.

And it’s fun!

“The Palestinians in Gaza have over 260 dead and 2,000 wounded. Their hospitals are charnel houses, families hardly have time to bury their dead before the next bombardment, Hamas is hiding in the hospitals or in their own personal tunnel shelters and you are flirting with pretty ladies,” Lydia points out over Turkish coffee at an outdoor, French style café on Rehov Dizengoff. “Some people know how to live!” she marvels. “While I get to bang my head against the side of the tent interviewing military spokespeople or go purple with rage listening to prepared statements by cabinet ministers, you have all the laughs. Now I ask you, is that fair?!”

I apologize and pay for the coffee, which mollifies her. For the moment.

And, of course, beginner’s luck, I’m the one who lands an interview with Hamas leader Raed Abu Hashish, hiding out in Ramallah in the West Bank. Judas Abbas hails an Arab taxi which takes us right to Raed’s door. Some security. “Hebron would be safer,” he assures me straight off. “I can stay with the Qawasameh clan. Nobody hates the peace process like the Qawasameh! Even Hamas bows to their valor. Instead, I live in this rat-hole here in Ramallah. Which, after all, politically, is where the action is! I am not only the Hamas liaison to Abu Mazen, I am also Hamas liaison to Allah.” Smoking like a chimney, bearded, bareheaded and smelling of old sweat and men’s cologne, he’s your typical grizzled warrior. “How do you like those Israelis?” he chides me. “They cross into Gaza and get their asses kicked. They never learn! Our warriors have fired the Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles at their jeeps and tanks. They have many casualties! While we have none! None! We are invincible. Who is eyeless in Gaza now?

“We have unleashed a secret weapon we call The Army of Abdullah. We strap explosives to donkeys and explode them among the Israeli aggressors. Insha’Allah! Very effective, I am told. There’s no beating the Palestinian spirit.”

“You make tunnels,” I propose, as a starting point for the interview. “I can dig that. We have tunnels under some of America’s mightiest rivers. Enormous tunnels with many lanes of traffic in both directions. Baltimore’s Harbor Tunnel. The Holland Tunnel between New York and New Jersey. New York’s Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. How about you build something above ground for a change, Raed? Anything!”

“Tell Obama! Tell el-Sisi. Tell Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and your pretty lady Katy Perry! A new generation of fedayeen has arisen. We are born warriors! We are victorious always! Even our exploding donkeys are victorious.”

“True, you are very brave,” I agree. “But it doesn’t lead anywhere. You cannot defeat the Israeli war machine. They cannot defeat you. Not militarily. Fine! But where do you go from here? When the fighting stops, do you use Israeli cement mixers to build up industry in Gaza or do you continue to pour $200 million into tunnel complexes and armaments?”

“That figure is wrong!” Raed swears vehemently. “It is only $180 million! The rest went toward medical supplies and helping the people. This no one can deny! Who told you $200 million? A typical Zionist fabrication!”

“If you keep this up,” I protest, “you’ll find yourselves tunneling to nowhere! ”

“Don’t cop an attitude with me, white boy! I majored in political science at UNC at Chapel Hill!” he insists, catching me totally off-guard.

“You— ”

“Hamas has tunneled itself into the hearts and minds of the people! George Lucas’s Star Wars is based on the glorious history of the Palestinian people. Everyone knows that Princess Leia was a Palestinian! Just look at her eyes. She has Palestinian eyes,” he points out morosely. “We are the sharks swimming in the sea of minnows. Chairman Mao said that.”

“Raed, you can’t tunnel your way to China! Give peace a chance,” I suggest. “There’s so much you guys could do together with the Israelis— ”

“Never!”

“Then what about the Crazy Water Aqua Fun Park built in 2010? Three swimming pools, a 100 meter long canal, water slides, ponds with pedal boats, a restaurant, a café, piped in music. The clerics called it a sacrilege and you guys burned it all down!”

“Islamists burned it down,” Raed insists balefully. “Hamas did not burn down the water park! That is a falsehood. As your Churchill said, ‘We shall fight them on the beaches!’ Men and women mingled. This park violated the Koran. The people rebelled. Hamas does not make war on amusement parks.”

“Well, you’re at war now!”

“We are constructing Tunnels of Love!”

“That may be so, but you’ve turned Gaza into one big military base. No civilian infrastructure to speak of.”

“What’s your point?” Raed asks, fidgeting visibly.

“What are your plans for the future?” I beseech him, hopeful that I am at least planting a seed just by asking.

Eyes glistening, Raed licks his lips and smiles mischievously. “A surprise,” he whispers. “Once Iran goes nuclear…” he laughs and, his hand to his throat, makes a cutting motion.

 

England, Spain, Poland and India announce the formation of a Coalition of the Willing, vowing to do whatever it takes to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, including

— Telephone terror, harassing Gazans by phone

— Protests at the United Nations

— TV advertising campaigns belittling Palestinian manhood

— Contracting the Gazans to build tunnels under the Great Wall of China

— An exploratory committee to investigate the feasibility of sending all 1.7 million Gazans to live on Mars by the year 2025.

Obama vacillates over joining this coalition. Despite pressure from Congress, he says he favors “American impartiality” over “agreements that would tie us down to any one course of action.”

 

A thousand dollars richer but no wiser, I return to Arlington, Virginia. Who started this fight? It seems to me the fuse was lit when three Israeli teenagers on their way home from school got kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Although you’ll never get the Palestinians to admit that it was them what did it!

Now that I’m home, I don’t exactly enjoy reading The National Herald and America’s other leading newspapers, not when their worldview portrays valiant Palestinian freedom fighters battling oppressive Israeli occupiers. What’s their context, the 1948 War of Independence? Which Palestinians call the “naqba,” the catastrophe that gave their country to the Jews? Since most Americans abhor suicide bombers and missile attacks, Americans automatically side with the Israelis. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 have left their scars. A reader, no longer down there myself, I cannot help but notice that newspaper editors at America’s largest morning dailies apparently feel it is their job to counteract this public sympathy, by emphasizing casualties and suffering among the Palestinians. All too often we see pictures of massive Palestinian funeral cortèges, while the Israelis are left to bury their dead in journalistic silence.

Even with a ratio of 1:100, are Israeli fatalities any less dead than Palestinian? I think not. As Shakespeare put it, “If you cut me, do I not bleed?”

For three generations, Palestinian refugees have sat in their camps, living on alms from the international community, gnashing their teeth in anger and bemoaning their fate. Their schools teach them that “Israel stole Palestine like a thief in the night,” as the Palestinians in East Jerusalem so eloquently put it. How do you make peace with someone who nurtures that mindset?

Probably, you don’t.

They are all k’tsat araveet as the Israelis say, “a little Arabic.” Meaning untrustworthy and unpredictable. (Never-the-less, not even the Gazans know smuggling like the Palestinians of East Jerusalem!)

The war drags on, Israel claiming that it’s only in Gaza searching for illicit pita bread. Rockets are falling and you’re closing off tunnels? Get rid of the rawkits! Netanyahu goes on TV and declares, “Bread smuggling leads to food fights. Sheket, bevakasha! We want quiet on the border.” The Neil Young concert scheduled for outdoors in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park, months in the planning, has been cancelled.

After watching John Kerry, our indomitable Secretary of State, make a fool of himself for the umpteenth time at a televised press conference, I get annoyed enough to talk with Jim Poindexter at the CIA. “It doesn’t help anyone, American, Israeli or Palestinian,” says Jim, “when American officials sound off in public. They should consider their statements before they speak. I do.”

What possible credentials qualify a dork like John Kerry for Secretary of State? Swiftboat captain in the Vietnam War? Senator? Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Failed presidential candidate? Married into the Heinz Ketchup fortune? Choose any of the above.

A recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize, I think I can call myself eligible to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. (You make a $100 charitable contribution to the Mumbai Peace Institute, Inc.— a diploma mill in India— and they send you a handsome, embossed, congratulatory certificate suitable for both résumé and framing.) Kerry’s in Cairo, I’m waiting, but my phone doesn’t ring.

Meanwhile, demonstrators from Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, parade noisily outside the White House, calling on Israel to cease and desist. Dressed in kaffiyehs, carrying mock headstones, they claim Israel’s attacks on Gaza are unprovoked.

By the rockets’ red glare… unprovoked??? UNPROVOKED???

I miss Layla terribly.