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Relocating to Jerusalem the following morning, they dump their bags at the Waldorf Astoria, pile back on the bus and drive to Damascus Gate to visit the souk open air market inside the walls of the Old City. Benny the guide leads the way, making sure they know which shopkeepers are Jews and which are Arabs. “Ho hum,” says Barbie Quint. “This don’t impress me much.” Taking selfies, they talk to everyone they meet, arguing with soldiers who examine their passports at impromptu checkpoints.
“Now where exactly,” asks Patrice Gerard haughtily, “are you hiding the Jerusalem crickets? Stenopelmatus fuscus.”
Since no one knows what he’s talking about, Barry pulls out his tablet, goes online and googles it. A night burrower common to the southwestern United States. “Please stop,” Barry beseeches him.
“But these Israelis— ”
“I know, I know, but please stop asking about crickets.”
Oso Buko wants to know if booksellers stock Hebrew – Reformed Egyptian dictionaries. Firstly, this isn’t London or a bridge over the Seine. It’s hard enough to even find a bookseller. Secondly, the ones they do find don’t have anything in Reformed Egyptian. No novels, no Bibles, not even The Book of Mormon. The proprietors suggest he try a university bookstore.
They pause in the doorway of a shop belonging to an ornamental lamp-maker from Vilnius. Wearing a skullcap, sandals, a jerkin and a tattered tan apron over gunny sack pants, he looks about 100 years old. “When my grandson said he wanted to do something for the country…” he complains forlornly, “…I didn’t think he meant joining a hip hop band! Israel is supposed to be a light unto the nations,” he adds, indicating his wares.
“Some people prefer an urban-inflected awakening,” Barry consoles him.
“Says the New Yorker,” quips Erit.
Shiraz, from Wales, bursts out laughing. “Make ’em all into lampshades,” he suggests to the gnarled craftsman in a thick Cardiff accent. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, eh, old sport? (War thar’s smock, thar’s fahr, eh, auld spahrt?) Send ’em all up through the smokestack, that’s my solution.”
The Old City is crawling with armed Israeli troops, a veritable sea of green. Niceties aside, simply for the sake of survival, Barry asks Shiraz to please, please, please mind his tongue.
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They tour the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, at least the accessible part. Amidst major scaffolding, a Greek crew is renovating the entire chapel, which is collapsing under its own weight. Using stabilizing mortar and titanium bolts, they hope to permanently restore the 200-year-old structure. This is the fourth chapel. The holiest place in all Christendom, followers of Christ have been praying here since A.D. 66. What is said to be the tomb of Christ lies underneath a towering rotunda. During his rule, Hadrian built a pagan temple to the goddess Aphrodite atop the tomb to discourage Christian pilgrims. The Emperor Constantine dismantled Hadrian’s edifice and built the first chapel in the 4th Century. That building was destroyed by the Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim in 1009. The Crusaders built the second chapel, later destroyed by the Khwarezmian Turks, who rode into the church on horseback, lopping off the heads of praying monks. A third chapel burned down in 1808. That’s when the Greeks built this current domicile to the spirit of Christ.
While bored again Christians and sticky-faced schoolchildren ogle the sanctuary, under the hawk-like gaze of Eastern Orthodox monks in somber black robes and amazing hats, Erit and Barry probe deep into the basilica. “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so,” he murmurs over and over under his breath. In this deeply spiritual place, he finds it nurturing. It’s chilly in here. They discover an out-of-the-way, hidden chapel containing the raised tomb of some obscure crusader. Opening an intricately fashioned metal gate, they approach the tomb. “Nobody we know,” confirms Barry. Silently stripping off their jeans, they do the down and dirty atop the chilly stone lid. Having screwed their way to victory in a Men’s Room stall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they are old hands. Maybe they can fornicate their way to salvation. Who knows? It sure beats getting crucified! Even if, G-d forbid, they should get caught, they know the authorities won’t do anything. Nobody wants an international incident. Do the hippy shake!
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Somebody tipped off the Arabs. Flashing diplomatic credentials, looking strangely out of place, an Egyptian delegation visits them at their hotel. “We know who you are. We are great admirers. We would like to assign to you this man, Colonel Daoud el- Wasabi, as a bodyguard for the remainder of your stay,” explains Saïd Ramadan, Second Secretary of the Egyptian Embassy.
Everyone looks at the Colonel. Granite-faced, dressed in an olive-drab suit, he seems like a rough customer.
“An Egyptian bodyguard?” croaks Oso.
“We come in peace,” insists Barry, at a loss.
“I’m sure that will not be necessary,” hisses Erit. “Here in Israel, the IDF is perfectly capable of providing protection.”
“Okay,” says Saïd, looking worried. “Just don’t venture into the Sinai. We cannot guarantee your safety.”
Once they leave, Barbie Quint comes out of the bathroom, where she’s been hiding. “What did they want???” she asks shrilly.
“They offered us additional security,” explains Patrice.
“Against whom?!”
“Against everybody.”
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In preparation for the West Bank, they receive an Intel briefing. “Military Intelligence reports— ” begins the officer in his immaculately pressed uniform, indicating the first slide in a Power Point display.
“Whoa!” shouts journalist Roger Kaminski. “Just, whoa! Now there’s an oxymoron, if I ever heard one! Military… Intelligence? I. Don’t. Think. So.”
“Bravo!” cheer Barry and Erit. “Sock it to ’em!” Jumping to their feet, they applaud enthusiastically. Huzzahs! A standing ovation. Get down! Hooray for anarchy!
Embarrassed, the Crazy for Peace people roll their eyes and sigh audibly. “Could we at least hear what the IDF has to say?” they beseech their guests.
“You Israelis may have created drones, but we Americans invented the light bulb, the phonograph and basketball!” counters Barry. The Americans are annoyed. Sitting down, they listen stolidly. This certainly isn’t the way things are done back home!
“As you may have heard,” the same officer begins again, smiling ever so slightly, “Donald Trump has announced in Terre Haute, Indiana that he will broker a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians. We’ll all look forward to that!”
The room fills with discreet laughter.
“On the home front, Amnon Reshef has founded Commanders for Israel’s Security. They call their peace plan Security First. Reshef’s idea is to stop waiting on negotiations. Instead, he suggests we finish the security barrier, stop building settlements, and then put pressure on both sides to negotiate. Stabilize. Secure. Then negotiate. It’s an interesting concept. Something might actually come of this.
“Further afield, our own Yisrael Katz, Minister of Transportation and Intelligence, is exploring the option of building an artificial island three miles off the coast of Gaza. Once again, the purpose is to stabilize a bad situation. It would give the Gazans a commercial port, solving a major logistical bottleneck, and open up Gaza to international trade. Putting the port off-shore allows Israel to man checkpoints on the causeway between the island and the mainland. Hopefully, this will prevent the importation of weaponry and contraband. The island could also feature an airport. Budgeted at $5 billion, the Israeli Security Cabinet is batting the ball back and forth on that one. If anybody finds $5 billion floating around, please let me know.”
More discreet laughter.
“Finally, the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Tel Aviv food court at the Sarona Market in which two West Bank cousins in suits shot and killed four Israelis and wounded 15 others. Their attack with homemade “Carlo” type submachine guns, based on the Swedish K firearm, may be interpreted by some as a violent critique of the chocolate brownies and coffee served at the café. Our investigation has led us to the unequivocal conclusion, however, that the young men showed up already planning to attack the patrons, regardless of the food quality at the Max Brenner desert emporium. Theoretically, a high Zagat rating may actually attract terrorist attacks. Terrorists like big venues with lots of soft targets. Think about it. Attractive locations draw big crowds.”
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You would think that in a city as large as Jerusalem or a country as diverse as Israel, Barry and his group could go about their business reasonably incognito. Not so. On their second visit to the Old City, ostensibly to talk with Arab vendors about discrimination, three healthy-looking young Israelis in H & M sports clothes and matching black and white tees— two girls and a boy— track them down. “Hey, man!” they whine. “Who do you think you are, coming here out of the blue, no invitation from us, Jewish Voice for Peace, no experience in the IDF or anti-war movement, tourists with no real roots in the country, most of you not even Jewish, and you are going to write about Israel?! Get real!”
“Well, the purpose of our visit is to examine the very issues— ” Barry placates them, but all they do is give him the finger and walk off.
Young people! So impatient. Do they have any idea how long it takes to proofread the galleys to a book of 320 pages, including Acknowledgments, Footnotes and Bibliography? Have they ever struggled to find inspiration in The Hamptons?
Tramping the same streets and alleyways a second and even a third time, it’s Patrice Gerard who announces, “These A-habs ain’t the bros we lookin’ fo’. They’s all in on the system.”
“Please talk like a human being,” Oso requests.
“These Arab merchants have obviously sold out. We gotta look further afield if we want to hit pay dirt.”
Their search for authenticity takes them to East Jerusalem. As they meander through the narrow streets, the number of Israeli patrols increases alarmingly. “It’s not a war zone,” they keep reminding themselves. “People live here.”
It’s a sandstone city, built on two levels. “Hi!” shout the locals, waving from their terraces. When approached, they turn out to be Americans from Skokie, Illinois or West Palm Beach, Florida. The walk starts to feel strangely surreal, the landscape alien, the people entirely too familiar. Far from being on edge, the local inhabitants appear happy, these exuberant transplants, happy in a way the rest of the country hasn’t displayed.
“Aren’t you afraid of Arab riots?” Barbie Quint asks a young housewife named Miriam, dressed in the long skirt of the Orthodox. “You live so close by them.”
“The Arab Quarter? We don’t associate much with them,” Miriam explains blithely. “They do their thing, we do ours.”
“Something’s not right,” Patrice decides, after another ten minutes of walking doesn’t seem to bring them any closer to the Arabs. “Every time we approach the east end of town, the street is blocked off, bricked up or sealed shut.”
“Word,” replies Barry. “What’s going on, Benny?”
Interrupting his cellphone conversation, Benny sheepishly acknowledges that the Jewish and Arab communities of East Jerusalem are fenced off from one another.
“WHAT???” demands Barry.
“Come.” Benny mounts stone steps to the upper level and, sure enough, through a chain link fence, they find themselves looking into the courtyard of an elementary school.
“Arab,” explains Benny. “Look but don’t touch.”
“Fuck.”
“It keeps the peace,” he suggests apologetically.
“Hey, little school kids!” hails Patrice genially, waving, when some Arab boys in green and white school uniforms and brown shoes pour from a doorway. “How ya doin’?!”
Startled, the children glance up at the gaggle of strangers lining the fence above them. Quietly consulting one another, they disappear back inside the schoolhouse, as shy as birds.
“Damn,” swears Patrice. “Fucking apartheid.”
“Everybody wants it like this,” insists Benny. “Jerusalemites have learned to live together but apart for generations.”
“Now you sound like bloody Likud,” growls Shiraz. “Separate but unequal.”
“Oh my G-d,” replies Benny, taken aback. “Maybe you’re right. I never thought about it like that.”
Shaking his head, Barry sighs wearily. ¡Mierda! Maybe Benny is prepped regarding the West Bank, but he seems woefully uninformed when it comes to East Jerusalem. “Go back and find out the party line,” he requests. “I refuse to believe the Arabs of East Jerusalem are content being penned up like cattle.”
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Avi.
Cousin Avi is one scary dude. Not actually estranged, he and Erit have at best a distanced relationship. While Barry and Erit can look down their noses at everyone living in Israel simply because they don’t live in America, Avi divides his time equally between Jerusalem and California. Whereas they are writers and can secretly chortle at working stiffs, Avi runs a political consultancy that wields real power. While Barry preaches that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” Avi isn’t averse to chopping off heads. A chameleon, neither Republican nor Democrat, Avi works both sides of the political spectrum. He is consul for several small Eastern European countries who find his lobbying efforts in Hollywood and Silicon Valley both timely and effective. Where Barry and Erit have three million dollars in the bank, Cousin Avi has seven million. The fact that he doesn’t give a shit scares them. Having fought in several of Israel’s wars, when in America, Avi likes to take helicopters onto some of Colorado’s more inaccessible peaks in the San Juan Mountains and downhill ski on virgin snow.
“It’s too hot to stay cooped up in the apartment. Let’s visit Masada,” he purrs into the phone.
So while the rest of the gang does the museums, B & E accept the invite of Erit’s least attentive cousin. As chisel-jawed and crinkly-eyed as Paul Newman, his scalp is shaved to a quarter inch of peach fuzz. He exudes charisma from every pore. Dressed in hiking boots, khaki shorts and a green jungle shirt with a dozen pouches, he drives them down to Masada in a vintage Renault that sputters like a tea kettle. An enthusiast of archaic technology, he has one of those cassette adapters that plugs into the tape deck on the dashboard, allowing him to play compact discs on a portable CD player. Blaring from tinny speakers, his musical taste centers on Rami Fortis’s punk bands from the 1980’s and rapper Lay-Z.
“Why bother with all that mechanical junk to play music if all you listen to is techno?” complains Erit.
“I’m into Conceptual Art,” Avi exclaims. “It’s the idea of the thing that counts. I’d play 8-track if I could get the equipment.”
“What’s 8-track?” asks Erit.
Barry and Avi look at one another and roll their eyes. “Still psychic after all these years?” taunts Avi. “Or is it psycho?” An obvious throwback to their childhood. “You never knew Erit when she was a girl. A total tomboy. She took piano lessons but preferred rope climbing.”
“That’s true,” she admits. Barry hopes Avi can make some sense out of modern Israel. Erit harbors no such conviction. The fact that Avi writes for rightwing political magazines in the States is just another mark against him. “How are your parents?” she remembers to ask.
“They’re in Tel Aviv working at a desalination plant,” Avi replies, laughing. “Can you imagine? At their age? Engineers never grow old. They convert sea water into drinking water. My sister says hello.”
“Ronit?”
“That would be her, unless she’s changed her name.”
“Still with the military?”
“She continues to devise weapons of limited destruction,” Avi cracks, with obvious pride. “It’s all so hush-hush, even I don’t know what she does. We’re Israelis. We achieve.”
His teeth are clenched so tightly, Barry’s getting lockjaw.
Masada is a mountain fortress 1300 feet above the Dead Sea. According to Josephus’ account, it became the last redoubt in Israel’s revolt against Rome in 69 – 73 A.D. Besieged for three months, its 953 Jewish rebels preferred to take their own lives rather than be captured and enslaved by the Romans. Selecting ten executioners by lot, the Jews allowed their throats to be slit, one by one, after which the executioners dispatched each other. When the Romans arrived, they were greeted by the only survivors: two women and five children. Modern Israelis see Masada as a symbol of resistance, resilience and courage.
Starting at the Masada Museum, they take the Snake Trail on the eastern side of the mountain. They hike for 10 minutes in silence. Avi gazes at the Dead Sea through binoculars. “So, how do you like Israel?” he asks.
Oh, no! Not again, Barry groans. If I say I don’t like it, I get an argument. If I say I do, I get an argument. “Too early to tell. Hard to say. No comment,” he mumbles, dissembling.
“C’mon, man!” guffaws Avi. “I’m not asking you to sign away your inheritance. You’ve been here awhile, what d’ya think?!”
“NO COMMENT.”
“That figures. This is the year of Disaffected Jews,” Avi remarks.
” ‘Scusa?” replies Barry tartly. “Say again?”
“You’ve got Lubavitch, ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism in America. Where do people like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein come from?”
“Who is Jill Stein?” pants Barry. The climb is leaving him badly winded. It must be 100 degrees on the mountain.
“Now you sound like Ayn Rand,” comments Avi with a dry chuckle. ” ‘Who is John Galt?’ Jill Stein is the presumptive nominee of the Green Party. She’ll probably get four percent of the vote. Another Disaffected Jew. She wants to cut off military appropriations to Israel. She favors Palestinian statehood. She wants to try Israelis for war crimes.” Pulling out an Army compass, he checks magnetic north.
“I thought the Greens were like the Amish, non-violent, horse and buggy, homegrown chickens and a cow in every yard. Anti-nuclear.”
“That was the 1980’s edition,” Avi comments bitterly. “Since the Communists hijacked it, the Green Party has become rabidly anti-Semitic.”
“I prefer to think of them as pro-Palestinian,” hisses Erit.
“Not since the 1970’s, have I met so many anti-Zionist Jews,” Avi insists. “Not pro-Palestinian. Anti-Zionist. Tough times breed contempt. As the last of your ‘pro-Palestinians’ leaves the smoldering wreckage that was Israel, who’ll turn out the lights?” he asks. Returning to the binoculars, he scouts their surroundings for terrorists, grinning. “We’ll have peace about the same time that Antarctica qualifies for the Winter Olympics! Sea lions take gold in tobogganing! Penguins take gold in slalom!”
“You bugging,” observes Barry, gulping water and chewing on an energy bar. Between the heat and the exertion, Masada is killing him. “You’re upset. How very post-modern!” He’s curious about Avi’s living arrangements Stateside, but bites his tongue, lest he find himself extending an invitation. You live in Manhattan, everyone wants to stay with you when they come visit the Big Apple.
“The stylish left inside Israel is always rending its garments and crying ‘Mea culpa! My bad. Forgive me that I am not kinder to the Palestinians.’ It’s damn hard to cuddle a porcupine,” Avi complains. “You get shot full of quills.”
“This… That’s…” pants Barry. “That’s what I hate about you proponents of realpolitik,” he blurts, perhaps the most honest thing he’s said in the last 30 years. The altitude is having that effect. “You see the glass as half empty, while I see it as a golden opportunity to create an entirely new reality! All of us together as brothers and sisters, united. Man, woman and child. A spiritual rebirth!” To hell with it! He plops down on a cairn of stones by the side of the trail. He needs to rest.
“We’re into the other thing,” Erit proclaims adamantly.
“What other thing?”
“The alternative universe. Astral projection. Time warps and black holes. Dark matter lives!”
“Not on my watch,” growls Avi, looking, for the first time, truly angry.
Erit lets it slide.
“What are you going to do about the Shiites and the Sunnis?” asks Avi. “The Alawites versus everybody else? It’s not like every Arab loves his brother.”
“That’s cold,” complains Barry. He looks out over the valley floor and feels himself blacking out, his vision a sweaty blur.
“You’re trembling,” remarks Avi, opening his knapsack and handing him salt tablets and a fresh water bottle. “The Jews of Masada held out for three months and when faced with defeat, they chose death over enslavement. I wonder what the American Jews will choose under a fascist Trump presidency.”
“That’s not fair!” explodes Erit furiously.
“History repeats itself. We’re back in the 1930’s and it sure doesn’t resemble farce to me,” suggests Avi, calculating their elevation on his smartphone.
How barbaric! decides Barry. “You are so far to the right of Genghis Khan, you risk falling off the edge of the planet,” he protests angrily. “I thought it was just your iconoclastic, libertarian style. I didn’t think you actually believed all that stuff…” Groaning, he adds, “Next time, let’s take the cable car.”
Avi laughs, not even winded. A typical sabra, born in Israel, bred for the desert.
How unreal, thinks Barry. We come all this way and the bad guys get all the breaks!
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It turns out, Masada is only a foretaste. Every day after 10 a.m., the cool, clear air of morning gets incinerated by a yellow sun that fries everything to a golden crisp. Panting in the blast furnace heat, chugging liters of water, Barry and his crew fear for their very survival. “Get me through this one day, Lord,” they pray. Reason says it’s just hot weather, but instinct rings alarm bells in their heads. “Sweat freely,” reply the Israelis. They do.
Eating a light lunch in a Greek bistro in Petah Tikva, Erit orders dolmades. “I think these stuffed grape leaves were rolled in the last century,” she complains.
“They are marinated in olive oil,” explains the server, a dark, petulant Sephardic Jew whose family was among the few to escape Salonika before the Nazi massacre. “Dolmades have a very long shelf life.”
“They are rancid,” Erit insists, demanding to see the manager.
The closest thing to a manager is the cook, who comes out in a white smock covered in blood stains. Bald as a bowling ball, he carries a meat cleaver. Waving it threateningly, he asks, “Why did you order dolmades if you cannot eat them?”
“It’s fine,” sighs Barry, shoving the guilty appetizer to one side. “Fuhgeddaboudit. Here, Erit, eat some hummus. Try the pickles. Tomatoes! Pickled tomatoes.”
“If grape leaves are on the menu and we ordered them and they served them,” she reasons, “they at least should be edible.”
“Try the moussaka!” Barry pleads. “It’s pleasantly spicy.”
“What about my grape leaves?!”
BAM!!! With a mighty crash, the cook smashes his meat cleaver upon the offending item, shattering the white porcelain plate and sending shards of pottery in every direction. Thus rendering the meal inedible. “PAY… and… LEAVE!” he bellows, his face red, eyes bloodshot with anger.
Temperamental Greeks, thinks Barry. Fortunately, most of their group has already devoured enough to hold them until dinner. Barry pulls out his black American Express Centurion charge card.
“Mah-zeh?” asks the cook suspiciously, while the server rolls his eyes.
“Benny!” yelps Barry. “Explain to these cretins what a credit card does. Pul-lease!”
“That’s a hard one,” Benny points out. “This is Petah Tikva. Can’t you pay cash?”
By scrounging everyone’s shekels, they are able to cover the bill. “We’ll go to the bank as soon as we’re out of here. Or an ATM machine,” Barry promises.
“I don’t mind paying my way,” claims Barbie Quint bitchily, “but I never forgive a moocher.”
“I’M NOT A MOOCHER!” howls Barry.
“Yu-u-u-uge!” Barbie primly replies.
Another meal down the hatch! Another Israeli experience.
Avi has given them a phone number to a member of the Israel Bridge Federation. When they call, a Russian answers. “Da?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m calling to discuss a bridge date with, uh, Yosef.”
“Da. I’m Yosef.”
Barry explains who they are.
“Seven o’clock,” says Yosef, giving them directions. “You’ll pay the fee in shekels?”
“Of course. We’re looking forward to the game.”
“Da, da. We cannot take dollars,” Yosef laments. “Some shlemiel might accuse us of currency smuggling.”
“We’ll play a lot of bridge,” Barry suggests excitedly.
“Oh? You are in Israel a long time?”
“No. I meant we’ll play every evening while we are here. We’re leaving at the end of the week.”
“This is not a lot of bridge,” the Russian admonishes him, making him wish he’d never made the call.
“Lama lo? WHY NOT?” interjects Erit, taking the phone. “Are you afraid to play with us?”
Ta-ta! It’s all right. The Russian can’t wait to see them that evening for bridge.
Erit has a penchant for bidding “No Trump.”
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As the days wear on, everyone admires Benny, their guide, saddled with a dozen thankless tasks. “Benny didn’t like his time in the IDF,” confides Shmuel, the driver, to Barry. “So a lot of it is personal. Getting back at people in the military. His position on the Settlement Watch team of Crazy for Peace pays next to nothing, but Benny’s a clever boy. He always finds other sources of income.” True to form, Benny tries to sell them customized Swatch plastic wristwatches smuggled from Switzerland.
They bus to Tiberius to inspect the ruins of a Roman villa purportedly once the home of centurion Marcus Fartus. Standing on the crumbly site strewn with potshards, Benny lectures them on the righteousness of their mission: “The French statesman Georges Clemenceau told us, ‘Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.’ I think he meant it’s not melodious, it’s no Brahm’s lullaby and it may not even be justice. Behold, my friends, the shattered remnants of the spoils of war. Tempus fugit, time is short, war’s ill-gotten gains are at best temporal. Booty is as booty does. Thus passes away the glory that was Rome, assigned to the dustbin of history. Only the proverbial pushpins and paperclips of antiquity remain.”
“I don’t see any pushpins,” Oso complains, plucking a dirty paperclip from the ground.
“They must be on the other side of the villa,” Barry suggests sardonically.
Kicking at the rubble, Barbie Quint announces, “Lookee here, this whole show don’t impress me much.”
As if on cue, Land Rovers come roaring up in a cloud of dust. Students from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev embark carrying buckets, shovels, trowels and sieves. Sporting Timberland hiking boots, blue shorts, a baggy university sweatshirt, a floppy blue hat and a bright red beard, their nominal leader marches up to Benny and declares, “Scram! This is an archeological dig! Who gave you permission to be here? Fuck off, fellah!”
“I was just showing— ”
“Yeah, yeah! Take it up with the university provost!”
So Barry and the gang get back on the air-conditioned bus and proceed to the West Bank. At the security barrier, a wall reminiscent of West Berlin and Donald Trump, an armed Israeli soldier climbs aboard. Walking down the aisle, he points to each parcel in the overhead rack. “Shay-lee?” he asks. “Shay-lee?” He waits patiently for someone to claim the item as his own. When the baggage has been accounted for, he walks down the aisle again, slowly, staring into each person’s face in turn. “Kadima! ” he commands, signaling with the business end of his rifle that certain parties should vacate the vehicle: Shmuel the driver, Benny the guide, Patrice Gerard, Oso Buko and Oki Nawa. Introducing them to the joys of a truly thorough examination of their documents and the reason they are in Israel. “If we’re lucky, they’ll skip the full body cavity search,” Benny suggests consolingly, dreaming of fat tips.
“I’m poet laureate of my prefecture in Japan,” sobs Oki Nawa, plainly terrified. “I’m here in Israel to compare and contrast as many kinds of falafel as we can find. I saw graffiti on the walls. Is this a hippy hangout?”
Writers!
“We members of the black community take offense at your racial profiling,” Patrice Gerard tells the Israeli soldiers, handing them his business card. “I can get you very reasonable rates regarding Holocaust survivor demands for restitution from the German government for artwork looted by the Nazis. I’m familiar with the process and have colleagues who sprechen Deutsch. In the meantime, I protest this curbside outrage in the name of the Malagasy Jews, the Lost Tribe of Israel in Madagascar. Indian Ocean, calamine lotion, mad Maddy Madagascar be the biblical land of Ophir, a major source of lemurs and vanilla extract. Descendants of the Levites be ’round the ‘hood in Vatanasina-Vohipeno. You knows any of them Joes? Ark of the Covenant be buried on the island. No lie! It’s a good thang. Why you makin’ a beef?”
Wisely, Benny shuts him down before the situation escalates any further. Eventually, everyone is allowed to resume their journey.
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They make their first stop in the West Bank, a hilly desert full of scrub.
“This is our WALK FOR FREEDOM!” chants Oso belligerently. He sashays forth, looking regal in his round cloth hat and flowing, multi-colored African robe.
“But you’re only walking from the bus stop to the Visitors’ Center,” counters Roger Kaminski. A journalist, he demands a modicum of fact mixed in with the rhetoric. He writes well, but everything comes out scathingly negative. Which is why Barry has chosen him, hoping for an exposé or three. Israeli white slavers. Russian prostitutes. Maybe the Israeli Connection in drug trafficking.
“Even the longest journey begins with a single step,” Oso declares magnanimously. “Walk the walk and talk the talk, whitey.”
A young Arab boy approaches, offering to sell them souvenirs. “Wood from the cross, parchment from the Dead Sea Scrolls, shell casings from Baruch Goldstein’s Uzi machine gun.”
Charitable, Barry buys three shell casings. Irritated, Erit tells him he’s an idiot. “It’s murderabilia,” Barry protests. “There’s always a resale market for this stuff.”
“Whatever,” fumes his wife.
Looking over the sandstone building, Barbie Quint announces, “That there don’t impress me much.” They’re beginning to understand that she says this upon arrival at every new location.
Inside the Visitors’ Center, they meet Yehuda, a weathered local politician of some renown. Dressed in Arab sandals, sun-bleached denim shorts and a torn white tee, two days’ stubble on his chiseled jaw, he’s a walking example of the psychic toll the Occupied Territories take on Jew and Arab alike. Of all the positions open to him as a local dignitary, the one Yehuda wanted most was Chief of the Regional Power Grid. Thoroughly entrenched, he loves driving from settlement to settlement after 10 p.m. every night in his jeep, Snap’s The Power blaring on the stereo: “I’ve got the power! I’ve got the power!…” Unlocking the cage to the control panel just off the main road at each checkpoint, he pulls out his bullhorn and gaily shouts in Hebrew “Lights out, suckers!” Pulling the switch, he plunges his coreligionists into medieval darkness. Nobody crosses Yehuda. He has the power.
After the usual greetings, shalom this, shalom that, women in sun frocks and kerchiefs serve them Turkish coffee in tiny cups. Each coffee comes with a glass of chilled well water to offset dehydration. “Le chayim,” exclaim their hosts. “To life!” The visitors walk around, studying the charts, graphs and displays lining the walls. These illustrate population growth, crops, livestock, economics. Facts and figures. There’s also a presentation about SodaStream, an example of the pernicious influence of the BDS movement: Hounded out of the Occupied Territories by the threat of an international boycott, now relocated inside Israel proper, the once-thriving local factory ist kaputt — it’s gone! — and 470 paid Palestinian jobs with it. Call it withdrawal symptoms. “If we withdraw from the West Bank, it will just become a repeat of Gaza,” Yehuda tells them. “Israelis out, terrorists in. Everyone loses except the terrorists.”
A considerate host, he takes Barry on a tour of the fields. Accustomed to getting a baker’s dozen on every purchase, one-on-one, no witnesses, Barry hopes to get the real dope regarding the occupation. “What do you grow in the greenhouses?” he asks for starters.
“Carnations,” replies Yehuda, taking him inside. “For the European market. We’re losing market shares to Spain, but flowers are still a moneymaker. We grow tomatoes and eggplants, too, you know, but they sell so cheaply around here, you can’t make a living on fresh produce.”
Aha! Exploitation of the local economy!
They walk back out into the sunshine. A Bedouin stands by the nozzle to an irrigation pipe. As the sparkling water gushes forth, he fills one of his two plastic buckets. He has a blue one and a white one, the colors of Israel! He smiles at the westerners sheepishly.
“Why does he look so guilty?” Barry asks, visions of Mandingos dancing in his head.
“Because, Jewboy, he’s stealing water,” harrumphs Yehuda.
“Hey, you punkin’ me? ” asks Barry. “Surely it’s his water, too!”
“He didn’t pay for prospecting, drilling the well, the steel pipes, the nozzle or the faucet. What he is doing is simply stealing water.”
“Certainly the water belongs to him, too!” insists Barry. “It seems so obvious. He lives on the land, you live on the land. The sunlight, the air, the water should be shared equally.”
“You think so?”
“Of course!”
“Listen, grauber yung, not even the Bedouin thinks that!” Yehuda concludes vehemently, pointing at the robed Arab, who dances around in the hot sun, embarrassed. Embarrassed, but getting the water.
Despite further probing, Yehuda’s well seems to run dry right before Barry’s eyes.
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DATELINE, Hebron – A group of renowned international writers, advocating greater autonomy for the Palestinian people, today visited the grave of notorious mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli-American physician who went berserk in 1994, took his machine gun to the local mosque in Hebron and killed 29 Palestinians, wounding over 100 others. Under the leadership of prize-winning American author Barry “The Dude” Lipowitz, the writers stood sweltering in the heat at the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Contemplating this shrine to the Settler Movement, Lipowitz warned, “We’re not having the bestest day, but we’ll do what we can to understand the enormity of criminal conduct behind the actions of this murderous creep. Hitler would be proud. Or Mussolini. Maybe Stalin. He would have made one of them proud, I’m sure! Ou sommes nous? There are certainly Arab-haters in the world, and no doubt they idolize someone like Geldman. We, on the other hand, think Goldwasser had a language deficiency. Unable to express his rage in words, he resorted to bullets.”
Goldstein, that was his name, Goldstein! George Orwell’s 1984. Goldstein, the Leon Trotsky fifth-columnist betraying the revolution through his simple declarations and insidious propaganda. A little like Donald Trump. Goldstein! Barry and his entourage know all about Emmanuel Goldstein, thank you very much. Obviously, in this case, the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree!
“Baruch Goldstein,” Benny the guide intones, a sour look on his kisser. “The inscription says he died a martyr with clean hands and a pure heart. His admirers place small stones on his grave in lieu of flowers.”
“How did he die?” asks Barry.
“Oh, the enraged Muslims overwhelmed him and beat him to death.”
“Sweet,” gulps Barry.
“The last time I was here,” hisses Erit, dressed in a halter top and shocking pink hot pants that accentuate her curvy legs, “I brushed the stones off his headstone. Such a beast deserves no commemorative stones!”
“Show some respect for the dead,” murmurs Shmuel the driver, looking shocked.
“What about the Palestinian dead?!” rants Erit, her face a furious red.
“Relax. Relax, honey,” implores Barry, nervously taking her arm to console her.
Erit pulls out an e-cig and stalks off for a quick time-out.
“Hey, you!” catcalls a group of local boys, abandoning their game of soccer. “What you doin’ with that creep?!” Pointing at Benny, they address him as “Hey, fatso!” Never actually touching anyone, they manage to stampede among the adults in a threatening horde. Soon, they are joined by angry settlers shouting “Get outta here!” and “Murderers! You’re no pacifists. You don’t mind violence, as long as the victims are Israelis. What about our dead? If you cut us, do we not bleed?!”
“That’s… you…” Barry sputters, but it’s like trying to argue with a swarm of angry badgers. He feels like he’s being ripped to shreds.
More children dog their group, some holding aloft black and white photographic enlargements of Jayne Mansfield. “You people come here, understanding nothing,” insists a youngster who can’t be more than 10. “Then you treat us like Arabs!”
“Somebody has to portray you as the blackguards, troublemakers and provocateurs you are!” Barry blurts out. What the f—, I’m having a political argument with a 10-year-old??? he marvels, appalled.
Having heard enough polemics, the kid asks instead, “Hey, you wanna buy a Jayne Mansfield poster? Fifty shekels! I can get you Ann-Margret Olsson in hot pants! Shiksa hotties sell.” The kid has a whole sales speech worked out. “For you, ’cause I like you, special price: Two for a hundred!”
“Are those by any chance cypress trees?” asks Sir Razor Babcock, pointing daintily to a clump of foliage in the distance.
“I don’t know,” Barry replies, hightailing it back to the safety of the bus. “I’m not an arborist.”
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Clutching the Palestinian waif to his breast, Mike Hudson braved a barrage of insults and innuendo from the angry protesters. Let he who lives in a glass house throw the first stone. His eyes smarting from the tear gas fired in canisters by the panicked troops, he rounded a corner and stumbled into the Aid Station. Karen, impeccable in her starched brown uniform of the Women’s Auxiliary, approached, brushing white splotches of encrusted pepper spray from his leather vest. Her hands trembled ever so slightly. “Oh, Mike,” she breathed, “I was so worried…”
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A Birthright Israel tour group is staying at their hotel, 40 young adults plus chaperones. Even if he’ll stoop to churning out YA lit, using the pen name Alicia Bennett, to rake in some guap, it bothers Barry that a crowd of noisy kids in identical Taglit T-shirts are utilizing a five-star hotel. Aren’t there kibbutz guesthouses for groups like them? This whole Birthright Israel thing strikes him as preposterous propaganda. You never see any Sudanese children in a Birthright group, only Americans. The Israelis are playing them for suckers, Barry feels, when all the Israelis really want is the three billion dollars a year in military appropriation from the U.S. Congress. It makes his stomach ache to see the kids in the lobby, gaily laughing and earnestly talking, wildly enthusiastic. Barry’s group of adults aren’t laughing. Nor are they wildly enthusiastic. “While you’re laughing, the teenagers of Gaza are weeping,” he tells two boys and a girl who are practicing secret handshakes.
“You mean the Palestinians?” asks a redheaded boy whose nametag says “Ricky.”
“I. Mean. The. Palestinians,” answers Barry meaningfully, clutching his tablet and thrusting out his chin.
“We meet with groups of young Palestinians as part of the program,” replies the girl.
Empty-headed bitch! “Well?” asks Barry.
“They’re having a very hard time. They’re really unhappy. They want a homeland. Only we’re not going to give them ours. Still, we all think peace is the answer.”
See! It’s totally impossible to talk to these people!
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Shmuel the driver calls in sick. He’s had enough, disassociating himself from the project. It could be their behavior. Whenever they pass another tour bus on the road, they scream, wave their arms and stamp their feet. The smoked glass windows mask most of this pandemonium, but Shmuel had taken to wearing chipped green ear protectors left over from his Army career. At rest stops, Barry and his gang boorishly accost groups of Japanese tourists, schoolchildren on field trips and, especially, other Americans. Hooting, sticking their tongues out and pretending to pick their noses, they yammer in Hungaro-Croatian, a fake language they’ve developed to confound their enemies. This is Israel and they fight way below their weight class; they make damn sure to avoid brawls. They’d end up in the hospital.
Shmuel’s disappearance is a wake-up call. “Reality check, people!” announces Barry. “This shows we’re doing some good.” His fondest hope is to have the BDS movement rechristened to Badger, Disrupt and Stymie. The actual BDS proponents he encounters online in their chat rooms take a rather dim view of this suggestion. “What are the economic consequences?” they keep asking. Yasser, the lanky new driver, is a 20-something punk with coal-black eyes and a gun-barrel stare. An Israeli Arab, he is named after the peerless Yasser Arafat, freedom fighter, esteemed leader of the PLO and sticky-fingered father of his country. This Yasser, taking his instructions solely from Benny, is so angry at everything and everyone, he won’t even talk with the rest of them.
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“Barry Lipowitz and Erit Sameach, we’re B’Tselem,” declares a talking midget, putting aside a copy of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth to ambush them in the lobby of their hotel.
“Oh, wow!” replies Barry. “T-Slam, eh? I have your album ‘Loud Radio’ on vinyl. You have no idea how exciting it is to actually meet one of you musicians!”
“That’s not us! We document human rights violations in the Occupied Territories.”
“What d’ya want us to do about it?”
“What does he want?” whispers Erit, leaving a dull ache buzzing in Barry’s ear.
“How can you write about the situation without consulting us???” complains the dwarf.
“As Ronnie Reagan said, ‘There you go again, casting aspirations,’ ” replies Barry.
“He means aspersions,” corrects Erit. “Casting aspersions.”
“We’re happy to talk to everyone!” Barry insists. “We’ve never encountered an Israeli act of self-defense that we couldn’t smear. Listen, any response is a disproportionate response. How many dead Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb? War is war. Are we supposed to give Israel credit for avoiding civilian casualties?”
“We talk, you listen,” suggests the dwarf. “Do you ever do that? Listen?” Checking dates, they touch smartphones, automatically exchanging personal data.
It takes a while for Barry and his crew to realize that all over Israel, their cohorts in the anti-war movement are in a months’ long process of mourning over the passing of Swedish sculptor Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, designer of the iconic peace symbol of a revolver with its barrel tied in a knot. Entitled “Non Violence,” Reuterswärd created the knotted gun in protest over the assassination of his friend John Lennon. The image became so ubiquitous, it even appeared on postage stamps. United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric calls it “a true symbol of disarmament… a true symbol of peaceful resolution of conflicts.” There’s a version of it outside the U. N. building in New York. Tourists love to pose with it in the background. All politics is local.
Barry is sure his time has passed. He remains “America’s greatest living Jewish author,” certainly, but no more than that. So he feels pleasantly surprised to find himself in demand. As a person, as a traveling companion, maybe even a friend. It’s one thing to never return calls, something quite different when your phone never rings. A practitioner of the former, as of late Barry has become familiar with the latter. The New Yorker no longer publishes his short fiction.
Tramping around the West Bank from settlement to settlement in their bus, they don’t feel so much unwanted as a fifth wheel. Whatever opinions they have don’t seem to make a dent among people whose entire lives are taken up, hardscrabble, with farming, harvesting, growing grapes, making wine, educating their children and carving out an existence.
Stopped by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to take pictures of the local flora, Barry spreads his arms wide and cries, “I christen thee Wadi Del Margo. Ladies and gentlemen, timeshares are available! Please speak to my secretary on my left.” Such is frustration. He’s reduced to making bad jokes.
Armed to the teeth with high-tech surveillance equipment, they wound their way amidst the squat gray Arab villages of Tatooine, the incessant warbling of Arab women’s voices piped in from above. Unbidden, their unbridled doubt joined the roar of the diesel bus engine, echoing forlornly across both olive grove and citrus orchard. Justice cried out from a cloudless blue sky, he writes, intent on crystalizing the group experience down to its very essence. A tingle up his leg turns out to be a centipede.
Standing at the entrance to still another barbed wire enclosure topped with concertina wire, they drink from their plastic water bottles, rub the dust from their eyes and wonder if they’ll ever get to the root of the story.
Barry grows angry with the settlers. He and his group are world-famous writers, yet these dumb villagers seem more concerned over their livestock and pets than making a good impression. Such nonchalance will not go unpunished, Barry promises himself. These settler fanatics are bad news Jews. They give Judaism a bad name. He, Barry Lipowitz, will skewer their self-righteousness in blistering prose.
He can’t wait to get home and get started!
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Barry and Benny the guide are accosted by an Israeli woman in Hasidic garb. “Mah atah rote-seh?” she demands gruffly, looking Barry up and down. “Lar! Whatchoo want?” she adds in a Boston accent.
“We’re here to protest— ”
“Your Arab driver says you’re touring Judea and Samaria,” she exclaims, talking straight over him. “What about the Golan Heights? Youse ain’t seen Israel ’till youse seen the Golan.”
“— protest the mistreatment of the Palestinians and the illegal expropriation of their land— ”
“Yeah, right!” she insists abruptly. “Only, up on the Golan, we got lovely rooms, Swiss chalets, guest houses with all the mod coms, most within ten miles of the Golan Heights Winery. They got the cleanest air you’ll ever breathe in your life, superlative hiking trails and views over Syria like you won’t believe.”
” — ‘Cause the inequality reeks to high heaven and I mean, just look at you, the Settler Movement. The Israeli Army holds the Palestinians down while you run roughshod— and for what, a lot of pre-fab concrete blockhouses and barbed wire enclosures! You’re back living behind barbed wire, just like the Jews in the concentration camps!”
“Listen, bub, I know Debbie Wasserman Schultz and you ain’t no Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” she declares. “Now get serious! I’m talkin’ Bed and Breakfast. B and B. It’s simple to book online. You can get an Egged bus or take a taxi. They arrange your arrival at the checkpoints, they see you have plenty of grub, they provide maps of the area. My brother runs a guest house. I can guarantee you the time of your life! And if you’re religious— ”
“No! No way, José. You don’t understand why we’re here!”
“Oh, I know exactly who you are, Mr. America,” she declares, without a trace of condescension. Pity, if anything. Spitting, she says, “You struggle to meet the car payments on your SUV, you spend your days searching for a café with decent wi-fi, then you think you own King Solomon’s copper mines if you can pay the rent and still have some geld left in your pocket.”
“What are you talking about???”
“You are a shanda fur die goy, an embarrassment to the Jews! Listen, 57% of religious hate crimes in America are directed at us Jews. We, who constitute less than 2% of the population. We don’t need you adding kindling to the fire! Look at the life you lead. Get it together, mensch! You’re so farblondjet, you’re coming back around the other way! Check your Bible. Join the Settler Movement. Learn to live Orthodox. You won’t regret leaving the empty life behind, I can assure you!”
“We are patriotic Americans!” insists Barry, ready to tear his hair out. “Look! Boat shoes. Purchased at Macy’s. I’ve made two tax-deductible contributions to the Clinton Foundation! Two! On the 4th of July, Cuatro de Julio, we light fuse and retire quickly. I don’t see any Israelis lighting fuse and retiring quickly on the Cuatro de Julio. Unless, of course, they are blowing up half of Gaza!” Helplessly, he turns to Benny, who apologetically explains to the woman in Hebrew that he’s a spokesperson for the Israeli left and opposes virtually everything she represents. When he finishes speaking, she spits once again at their feet, turns to Barry and says, “Google it. Golan Heights + B and B.” Turning, she marches through the gate without a backward glance.
Word! Barry concludes. This Settler business is a lot harder than I thought.
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They are tired, it’s been a series of long days. Barry decides to reward himself by having sex with Galit, the attractive brunette from the Ministry of Culture. They are in the bar of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, drinking cognac. “Cross-cultural pollination requires spadework,” he jokes. Galit doesn’t seem to get it. Taking his remark seriously, she delivers a long, involved explanation of the effect of Americans on the Settler Movement vis à vis Israelis.
Downing his third cognac, Barry says “Let’s fuck!”
“Excuse me?” answers Galit, blushing crimson, a fleeting smile crossing her luscious lips.
“You heard me, let’s do this thing,” suggests Barry in his best Scout leader basso profundo tone of voice. Then he beams like a 10-year-old, just in case she takes offense, busy undressing her with his eyes.
“Well,” she replies, playing with her pack of cigarettes on the counter top. “I am flattered, but the services provided to writers and journalists by our ministry don’t include that. If you are truly in need, I can suggest an escort service. They are Russian, but discreet.”
“C’mon,” chuckles Barry, “you know you want to. Booty call! Who’s your daddy? I’m your daddy!”
“Well, it’s late,” remarks Galit, checking her Rolex and hopping from the bar stool. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”
Barry takes that as a provisional “yes.” He offers to escort her to her car.
“That is not necessary.”
“I insist!”
At the car, he waits until she opens the driver side door before grabbing her roughly and pulling her to him. His need is very great.
Kneeing him in the groin, Galit swings her heavy purse into his face, pulls out a canister of pepper spray and gives him a royal dousing.
Blinded, on his knees on the rough macadam, Barry says in a loud voice, “I take it this means a tentative ‘no.’ ”
Ripping open two foil packages, she provides him with portable hand wipes. She stands by her car while Barry cleans the chemical from his eyes, nose and mouth. Israelis! World leaders in self-defense!
The life of a writer is never easy, he consoles himself, stumbling to his feet.
“Good night,” says Galit curtly and drives off into a night humming with big-city traffic.
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Barry has an epiphany. Lying in bed, asleep, The Land of Israel calls out to him. Awakening amidst lightning and thunder, a deep voice rumbles from the heavens, “Barry Lipowitz! I am Yahweh, the Lord Your G-d. I command you to become devout and follow the laws of the Torah.”
He looks desperately to Erit, but zonked out on barbiturates, she sleeps as if dead.
“You mean become an Orthodox Jew?” asks Barry, unsure where this conversation is going. “The settlers are Orthodox Jews. No good can come of it.”
“I have made a covenant with the People of Israel,” proclaims the voice of G-d. “You shall have no other god but me. Bow down before your maker. Show penance for your trespasses. Obey the laws.”
“I do,” insists Barry. “I’m a gastronomical Jew.” Feeling this fulfills his commitment, he turns over and goes back to sleep.
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The next morning, they depart for Ramallah. As they bump along in the tour bus, klezmer music adds an Eastern European vibe. Route 60, an asphalt road, unwinds before them, meandering over the hills like a strand of weak spaghetti. Once past the Arab village of Jenin, a perennial flashpoint, the road intersects with Ramallah Street. Passing through three heavily armed checkpoints, they arrive at the lobby of the exquisite five-star Mövenpick Hotel on Emile Habibi Street in south central Ramallah. Head tilted skyward under a ridiculous canvas sunhat, Barbie Quint examines the façade of the $42.5 million luxury hotel and announces, “If it don’t say ‘Trump’ right up front, it sure as hell don’t impress anybody. Leastways, me!”
They are ushered into a conference room and served tea. Through the sun doors, they can see a patio and a swimming pool, its blue azure water beckoning. Instead, they are given a lecture by one Abdullah from the Palestinian Authority’s Office of Information. Gruff, with a “take it or leave it” attitude, dressed western, sporting French cuffs and a Guard’s tie, smelling of cologne, his English is clipped and precise. Roger Kaminski records him on his cell phone. “The Israeli aggressor is a thief in the night, stealing our land and oppressing the people!” Abdullah suggests, deeply offended on behalf of Palestinians everywhere. “The land of Palestine is our holy inheritance,” he hectors them. “Ever since the Ottoman Turks, we have been betrayed. They sold so much of our land to the Jews, land where our fathers and grandfathers are buried. Heretics and foreigners, the Jews show no respect for our culture. They exploit Arab labor… for a pittance! No wonder our young people are desperate for a solution, their wrath exploding uncontrollably. Palestinian anger knows no bounds! Entire villages rise up, crying for intifada, crying for vengeance on the oppressor!
“Make no mistake, the West Bank is Palestinian. Give us our political sovereignty— free of Israeli interference— give us a land bridge to Gaza, a unified Palestine, and we shall work out the details.
“The so-called Two-State Solution is devolving into a two-state delusion. Every day, more Israeli settlements spring up, further separating Arab villages. How can we Palestinians ever attain a cohesive nation if the Israelis divide the West Bank into cantons?
“We, too, believe in a two-state solution, mind you! A unified Palestine on the one hand and the Jews living somewhere else, in a second state. Two states. Palestine and Madagascar. Palestine and Uganda. Anywhere else that will take the Jews. Cuba. Venezuela. Tasmania.
“We see Hamas and Hezbollah as moderate rebels. No more genocide! They kill off the Jews one at a time.
“The Israeli aggressor must be thrown into the sea,” concludes Abdullah. “After that, we can begin long-term negotiations.”
Barry records the speech on his tablet. He finds this data extremely useful. Israel-bashing never goes out of style.
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They spend the afternoon at Crazy for Peace’s own hillside bungalow outside Jerusalem, doing laundry and catching up with themselves. They sit in the shade on wicker chairs and concrete benches, sipping almond smoothies handmade from blanched, crushed almonds and individually mixed. Everyone has a hundred emails to delete from their online accounts. There are angry emojis from groups who feel ignored: The activist organization Gush Shalom. Parents Circle Families Forum. Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement. Neled: Women for Coexistence. Tandi, the Movement of Democratic Women for Israel. Bat Shalom, the Coalition of Women for Peace. The New Israel Fund. Machsom Watch who monitor checkpoints and the bureaucracy of the Occupied Territories. Zochrot who document the Palestinian naqba or “catastrophe” that was the founding of Israel. Combatants for Peace. Breaking the Silence. The pacifist New Profile. Tent of Nations. Just Vision, a media outlet. Sikha Mekomit, a webzine.
“Let’s not get all tight over this. I will address the issue at a later time,” announces Barry, bathed in sweat. Yikes!
Worse still is the response to an online article on The Times of Israel website detailing the nature of their visit. The talkbackim in the comments section tends toward the vitriolic, accusing them of being pawns in the pocket of the Palestinians, indulging in neurotic self-hatred, a gaggle of fifth columnists, Obamaniacs or clandestine supporters of a Bernie Sanders leftist revolution. “Go home and overthrow your own government,” writes SonofGideon123 , “instead of measuring the Knesset for drapes.”
Meanwhile, Angry Yasser, their driver, leaves in a taxi. One less headache.
Erit reads aloud from her latest work: “As I say goodbye to this mortal coil of pain and woe, I leave behind those I met and all that I know. A draft dodger and daft jogger on the treadmill of life, I’m full of sound and fury, decibels of strife. Next year in Jerusalem, Katmandu or Myanmar, he who travels longest is he who travels far. The sidewalk out front needs a hosing, even as the coffin lid is softly closing. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphats spit wooden nickels as they pass through the doorway to my demise. Headaches, heartaches, political tricks meet the boatman on the River Styx. Sherlock, Skylar, hemlock and Shylock cannot stop the ticking of G-d’s celestial clock.”
Applaudissement poli, polite applause, from her literary competitors. There are only so many openings and jackals don’t share.
They spend almost two hours participating in International Solidarity Work. In their case, this consists of folding hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian flags and placing each one in its own plastic bag. “This is crazy,” complains Barbie Quint, feeling she’s been shanghai’d into doing manual labor. “Why don’t you just let us make a monetary contribution and pay someone to do this?”
“Who are we going to hire?” bleats Benny the guide plaintively, dressed in a forest green military style shirt from Adam Levine’s designer label. “Palestinians?”
“Either you show solidarity with the Palestinian freedom movement or you don’t,” Barry calms them, feeling the comfort zone of childhood slave labor reawakening.
Not fooled by pretty words, Oso Buko laughs derisively. “White man imperialism replaced by Arab imperialism,” he declares.
Bang-o! Everyone stops working.
“KEEP FOLDING!” screams Barry, mouth agape. “PLEASE! For my sake. So we don’t lose face. Pul-lease???”
Reluctantly, they get back to work.
“You,” Roger Kaminski insists to Patrice and Barbie, fellow Americans, “can be unconventional and tear the party apart at the convention in Cleveland in July, choosing a centrist Republican like Mitt Romney as your candidate. Or you can elect to go with Mr. T and experience thundering defeat come November. Either way, the Republicans lose.”
“Say again? We ain’t Republicans,” Patrice assures him.
Downing duty free Scotch from a hip flask, Roger sinks into a frumpy fugue of introspection.
The visitors also get their first opportunity to hear from former IDF soldiers themselves. “Shalom!” says a bewhiskered young man, running to fat now that he’s no longer on the front line. “We are Sour Grapes, a pro-soldier sounding board for anonymous complaints from members of the Israeli Defense Forces. Keep in mind, military service is compulsory in Israel. And please, for maximum candor, no video or audio recording! Feel free, dudes, to complain at any time.”
“The meals at our Forward Observation Post were really terrible,” exclaims one soldier.
“I had to rifle-butt young Palestinians, both boys and girls. Who wants to do that?” asks another.
“My commander forever smiled and said ‘Now we’ll give the little pigs a taste of their own medicine.’ He should be cashiered from the Army,” insists a third.
“Three years! Three years in the IDF! We shot people and detonated explosives all over Gaza that summer. Life sucked big-time,” says a fourth.
“De flesta verkar småskärrade,” announces Erik the Swede = Most of them seem still in shock.
Barry returns from a bathroom break to find Patrice Gerard monopolizing the attention of the group. “I know you are concerned about my qualifications,” he pontificates. “First and foremost, I am very tall.” The others shake their heads in agreement. “Secondly, and this is important, I have a letter from my doctor attesting to my fitness to serve as president of the Guggenheim or the United States of America, whichever comes first. It’s amazing what $3,000 can buy. Baby, am I into baby aspirin! Although not necessarily the healthiest, I will be the shrewdest individual ever elected to such high office.”
“What’s he talking about?” Barry wonders.
“If the Republicans dump Trump, Patrice is prepared to do a Norman Mailer and throw his hat in the ring!” explains Barbie.
“Why am I not surprised?”
News of the latest stabbing reaches them over the Internet. Same old, same old. A young Palestinian, acting alone, a so-called lone wolf, has attacked Israeli civilians at a Jerusalem bus stop. His weapon of choice, a fish knife. The assailant was shot dead at the scene. Three injured, one critically. Israel’s reprisals include demolishing the house of the perpetrator’s family and revoking the work permits for every member of the perpetrator’s clan. Let them sit among their ruins in the West Bank and rot!
A pall falls upon Barry’s group. “My heart is breaking for the poor Palestinians!” insists Oki Nawa, their resident Japanese. Hey, it’s the first time Barry has heard a peep out of her! Such a drama queen, he thinks. His heart isn’t breaking, although his investment in the Ramallah futures market obviously took a hit. Very volatile is the economy of Ramallah. Good money to be made, although even their municipal bonds are a shaky proposition. With so much smuggling from Jordan, there’s no such thing as stability in the West Bank antiquities market. Maybe he shouldn’t have bought that sarcophagus purported to have held the mortal remains of Jesus Christ.
Win some, lose some, thinks Barry philosophically. He decides to use the tale in one of his novels and deduct the loss as a work-related expenditure.
“I don’t want to sound like a complainer,” says Barbie, “but this trip is all screwed up. How can I write about murderous Palestinians when I haven’t met a single one?”
“That’s where fiction comes in,” counsels Barry. “Choose Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh or someone else heroic, slap on an Arabic name, throw in a love interest and write your heart out. Like your Sniper’s Cave series, but different. Don’t use Napoleon. Tales based on Napoleon never seem credible.” Teaching creative writing has made him a master of technique.
“How bad is the apartheid in Israel?” asks Oso. “Can I mix in whites with my colored wash?”
“Oh yes!” Erit assures him.
“Actually,” he chuckles, a guilty look on his face, “that was more in the style of a joke.”
“I need an Israeli joke,” Barry points out, reviewing his notes.
“So do we all,” sighs Patrice grimly.
“Hey, I got this,” smiles Benny. He’s busy baking fresh pita bread in a brick oven set into the hillside. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Okay… Why?”
“To detonate his suicide vest, blowing himself up and taking a dozen Israelis with him in the name of global jihad and the Islamic State.”
“Any others?” Barry gulps, video recording.
“Sure. Why did Moses walk 40 years in the desert?” quips Benny. “Your typical male, he was too proud to ask directions.”
Once started, Benny is hard to stop: “Liebowitz and Trump are out on the golf course. Their long game and irons being about equal, Liebowitz is phenomenal at dropping the ball into the cup in one. On every hole. He just taps ’em in. Finally, exasperated, Trump asks him, ‘Tell me your secret!’ Liebowitz looks at him and says, ‘My wife kisses my balls. It makes my putz go straight.”
“Stop! Ma-speak! Enough,” groans Barry.
Losing patience with the local fauna, Benny breaks off his baking to scoop up a hardboiled egg from a serving bowl. “Die, mother!” he screams, hurling the egg, pegging a little gray mouse squarely on its head. Chunks of egg white and rich yellow yolk explode in a dozen directions. Stunned, the encrusted rodent falls on its side, tale inert, its four pink legs jerking spasmodically. “Incoming,” Benny proudly smiles.
Yasser returns… with his mother! Her name is Fatimah. Is this an Arab courtesy thing, “Meet me, meet my mother”? Is it a sympathy ploy to garner larger tips? They’re confused. “Maybe the old lady’s here to collect the tip money,” Barbie wonders. That’s something a character in the Sniper’s Cave series would do, bring his mother to collect his money.
“I want you,” announces Yasser to all and sundry, “to hear the Palestinian narrative from someone who has actually lived it firsthand. My mother!”
So they gather ’round in the shade, give the woman an almond smoothie, clean the wax out of their ears, hold aloft their smartphones and listen. Dressed in a shabby black dress and a patterned shawl, a green kerchief covering her hair, she only speaks Arabic and a smattering of Hebrew. Yasser translates with an assist from Benny.
“Palestine under the Pasha was a tranquil land of farmers and tradesmen,” she begins.
“That’s the Ottoman Turks,” explains Benny.
“A land where happy families lived for generations, venerating their ancestors, farming and raising their children. We had no quarrel with the Jews, even as they bought up our land and pushed my family to the fringes. Then the Jews made war on our neighbors! I was not yet born, but my mother told me of the naqba, the catastrophe, that befell our people. In the midst of battle, we were further driven from our lands, the Jews grabbing everything, everything, for themselves! Overnight, we became second-class citizens in our own land! Suddenly the Jew was the lord effendi and we the fellaheen peasants. Entire families ran to take shelter in neighboring countries. Where their Arab brothers and sisters treated them like vermin! As penniless refugees, they were shoved into refugee camps. At the mercy of the international community, generation after generation of Palestinians await the glorious day of our return to Palestine! It shall happen! It shall happen! Insha’Allah! God willing.”
“This is our suffering!” screams Yasser. “This is the rage that festers in every Palestinian heart!”
“Peace now?” marvels Barry. “Fuhgeddaboudit!”
It is all they can do to calm Yasser down. Murmuring sympathetic comments and wiping away tears of compassion, they thank his mother profusely, raining cash down upon her head. They follow Yasser and her to the highway and wait while he sends her home in a taxi. When they return to the courtyard, Benny points out, “Palestinian women wear the pants. No one hates like a Palestinian mother. They never, ever forgive a slight or a misdeed.” Shrugging, he tells them, “Palestinian society is rife with blood feuds.”
Yasser stomps away to the bus, but he doesn’t deny it.
Waking from his torpor and not entirely satisfied with the progress of their Kix odyssey, Kikes investigating existence, journalist Roger Kaminski corners Erit and Oso. “You seem the most vocal,” he points out. “What exactly is your beef here? So life is unfair. The Settlers are redeeming the land. I don’t see anybody else doing that. Ramallah seems dead set on playing the obstructionist card. In their eyes, nothing the Israelis do is ever any good. You show up with the publically declared intention of maligning Israel. Have you no conscience?”
“You don’t understand!” seethes Erit. It’s a long afternoon and tempers are frayed. “Sie verstehen nicht!” she cries, lapsing into German in a desperate effort to explain herself. Ten days of inner turmoil has left her totally fritzed. “My great grandfather worked in the secret bullet factory underneath Kibbutzim Hill in Rehovot. An underground factory the size of a tennis court, they produced five million bullets from 1945 to 1948. Even if Israeli soldiers only hit their targets once out of every ten shots, I share the guilt of half a million Arab deaths. Half a million! How can I ever wash away the stain? Why couldn’t he have been a baker and worked in the adjacent bakery? But no, he had to be a machinist, the most pernicious of warmongers. Woe is me! Wehe mir!” she cries, tears streaming down her face.
Torn, Roger feels for her. He’s also delighted to finally have a story to tell.
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The bus slows on a curve and pulls off the road.
“What’s wrong?” Barry asks worriedly.
“It’s a Bedouin encampment,” explains Benny. “You should experience this for your writing.”
There are tattered black tents and stubby black goats everywhere. Gnarled, brown-skinned Arabs with furrows in their faces, long bony hands and broken fingernails are dressed in traditional layers of Arab garb. Stinking of incense and goat milk, they come forward to greet Benny’s group, smiling at the Americans with brown teeth. “Come Sāhib, you are our guest,” exclaims the oldest male present, latching onto Barry and graciously dragging him to the largest of the tents. Ducking under the flap, Barry catches a last glimpse of Bedouin women surrounding Erit with offerings of cloth and brassware. For sale, obviously. It all makes sense. Give the tourists an adventure to write home about while injecting life into the local Arab economy. Why should the Settlers make all the money? The odor of incense inside the tent is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Barry feels his head spinning.
“Come! Sit!” cries the tribal elder grandly. His name turns out to be Fayyad. “This is my joy, my youngest son, Ramzi,” he prattles, busy pouring tea for Barry and himself. He dusts it with brown powder which Barry assumes is sweetener. The tea is cloyingly sweet and pungent enough to make his tongue twitch. Wow! A real Bedouin experience. Meanwhile, Fayyad lights a quiff of what smells like very raw hashish, takes a major hit and passes it ceremoniously to Barry. Pulling the white smoke deep into his lungs, Barry feels it burning its way down his throat. It’s like inhaling sandpaper. Nothing. He takes another drag. That’s when it hits him. Sitting on his haunches on the dirt floor, Barry feels himself floating into space. Now he knows the secret of Aladdin’s flying carpet! Floating, flying, he grandly surveys the colorful cushions spread out at his feet. Surreal.
A small black goat noses its way into the tent, bleating. “Ah, Suha!” cries Fayyad happily. “My prize goat. She makes wonderful milk.” Barry sits staring at her in a daze. She’s such a pretty goat, so well-proportioned, with short, prickly hair and a wandering eye. The day seems endless. The tea tastes so sweet. Laughing hysterically, in a mellow fog of hash-induced euphoria, Barry only has the vaguest notion of what may or may not be inter-species coitus. One moment the goat is nuzzling his ear, the next, Fayyad’s steady brown Bedouin hand seems to guide Barry’s swollen staff deep into the goat’s murky hindquarters. Not that it matters. And the sensation of release— percussive! explosive!— is like nothing Barry has ever experienced before in his life.
“The East shall shake the West awake” dreamily passes through his thoughts until he discovers Ramzi, the 11-year-old, holding a smartphone and shaking him. “Wake! Wake up, mister! You wake!” cries the boy in his squeaky young voice. Leading Barry groggily from the tent, they join the others by the tour bus where Fayyad is deep in conference with Benny the guide.
“Ah, good, you are awake!” Fayyad greets him, as solicitous as ever. These Arabs! Nothing can beat their hospitality!
“When we return to Jerusalem, I’ll take you to the local clinic for a shot of antibiotic,” suggests Benny.
“Why? Is somebody sick?” asks Barry.
“Precautions. Precautions,” replies the Israeli curtly in a show of typical Israeli brusqueness. Barry is sure it is something in the water that makes them so testy. He hands Fayyad a crisp American ten dollar bill before leaving.
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“Hey, baby,” leered the Israeli soldiers, ogling the Palestinian schoolgirls. “How ’bout a quick ficky-ficky for a packet of Elite spearmint gum?” This was the backside of the occupation, Barry conjectures, the dehumanization of conquered and conqueror alike.
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On Twitter, he reads
#Trump The Islamic State is CRAZY for The Donald. They know he will put America in the doghouse.
#Trump 2016 Sales of anti-depressants rise as Trump nears the presidency.
#Election 2016 Party politics: Hillary’s a donkey. Donald J. Trombone leaves a trail of elephant dung everywhere he goes. Messy year for the USA.
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Even as America mourns the 49 dead in the terrorist attack on a gay club in Orlando, Florida, Barry and his group march in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem in protest over the latest Turkish-Israeli peace agreement. The rapprochement forgives Israel for the 2010 attack on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara. The background: Loudly proclaiming their intention to break Israel’s naval blockade, a group of Turkish activists sailed a small flotilla carrying construction materials and humanitarian aid toward Gaza. Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos boarded the ship from speedboats and helicopters, intending to force it into the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. Hand to hand fighting broke out. The Israelis ended up killing nine of the Turkish activists. Ten of the Israeli commandos were wounded, as well. “Down with Israeli aggression! Freedom on the high seas!” chant the protesters, although whether the Mediterranean can be considered a high sea remains open to interpretation. Pariahs in the land of Daniel, it feels good to have something concrete to protest about.
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On his blog, Barry writes: Nationalism has never been more popular. That said, we can relegate to the scrap heap of history such concepts as democracy, socialism, communism, syndicalism, unionism and the unadulterated corruption called religion. G-d spelled backwards is dog. Agnostic spelled backwards is citsonga. Dance to the music! Perhaps all we need is a single strongman— iron-willed, resolute, convinced of his divine right to reshape the world. He shall lead us all to a New Jerusalem! Although Old Jerusalem isn’t bad for the money. I give it three stars.
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To: Barry Lipowitz
From: Sid Harmon Agency
Subject: New Project
Need U 2 brush up on Ralph Lauren & Calvin Klein as prep to pen script for medium budget block comedy “Dances With Wool.” Think “Breakdance” meets Groucho Marx in the Garment District. International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union on board big-time. Sid
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America beckons. He’s booked to give a speech next Wednesday before HAHA, the Hasidic American Hebrew Association, a major, non-profit advocacy group providing gainful employment for the Goldfarb, Becker, Mankiewicz and Lippmann families. It’s not like Barry isn’t a professional speaker. Move over, Hillary! Our boy’s résumé includes speaking at the United Nations! Not in the General Assembly, per se, but on a soapbox outdoors under the open sky at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza overlooking the East River. He attracted quite a crowd— almost a dozen listeners— before the NYPD men in blue told him to “Pack it up and move it along there, ace!” (It all happened so fast, he didn’t even have time to get the blue-eyed blonde’s telephone number.) When you got it, flaunt it!
As self-effacing as he is, Barry nonetheless likes to consider himself a student of the Talmud. The campaign of a certain presidential candidate, also from New York, is using one of Barry’s more intellectual treatises, The Handbook of Over-ripe, Half-baked, Fully-cooked, Warmed-over and Burned-out Ideas. So ineffectual is this guide, anybody watching the campaign would think the candidate and his staff are simply winging it. It’s in the Lipowitz genes: Not for nothing was Barry’s dad a leader in used auto parts.
As any successful author can tell you, the publishing industry is voracious: Once you become an established winner, you can put sheets of used toilet paper between book covers and sell it.
A final confab among the scribes is a revelation. Patrice Gerard’s chapter will be free-form Gonzo journalism called “Boom or Bust on the Israeli Stock Exchange.” Tipped off about several investment possibilities, he’s made some dead ass choices. The bro is seriously in the cheese. Sir Razor Babcock has fallen in love with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Finally, an archive that covers every aspect of anti-Semitism from soup to nuts! Murder squads. Gas chambers. Josef Mengele! Adolf Eichmann. He doesn’t know where to begin his writing. Oso Buko has discovered common ancestry among Israel’s “Falashas,” Ethiopian Jews from Gondar Province. He intends to return to Israel very soon. Erik Andersson the Swede has decided to stay, requesting membership at the Sha’ar Ha’Amakim kibbutz outside Haifa. It’s the same place Bernie Sanders once stayed as a volunteer in 1963. Erik intends to write freelance and make his living by producing solar water heaters at their on-site factory. “It may not be pure socialism,” says Erik, “but I like it.” He’s ain’t leaving.
Have these people no sense of allegiance? wonders Barry. He isn’t holding them to a written contract, but he assumed it was in their own best interest to stick with the critical focus of the project. “We come not to praise Israel, but to bury it” has been Barry’s motto this entire trip. Now he feels like a fool.
Roger Kaminski at least is writing an exposé. Entitled “Cutting Edge Israeli Anti-Missile Technology Will Blow You Away,” it’s Life Magazine in tone, nerdy in detail and a fuh-yucking puff piece for the Israeli defense establishment. Oki Nawa is composing a sonnet to hydroponic husbandry and crop rotation. Barbie Quint is busy writing “The Miracle of Ahava – New Life From the Dead Sea,” her stream-of-consciousness experience of Israeli spa life and the cosmetics industry. Barry feels a little sick reading about the many beneficial uses for mud. Erit finds it interesting. For her part, she is composing an ode, “Life Among the Ultraviolent.” Loosely based on The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian tale from 2500 B.C., she portrays the Jews as the villains. Barry is left with “Bad Vibes In the West Bank,” wherein he maligns as many fictional straw men as possible within the specified 10,000 word limit. Keepin’ it real! This is not what he expected.
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In their hotel room, packing their imitation Louis Vuitton luggage to leave for the States, Barry reminds her, “We’re heading home to a strawberry moon over Manhattan.” Erit gives him a sad look, a last vestige of the romantic passion they once shared. He also gets a text message and enclosed video from little Ramzi. “Sank U 4 wisit, we enjoy yu company,” texts the child. “Daddy say U maybe send us 5,000 shekel thru tour guide Benny, maybe we no show nobody these video.”
The clip is short, less than 30 seconds, in full color. In surprisingly sharp detail, Barry can clearly be seen buggering Suha the goat, stupid looks on both their faces.
“What is it?” hoots Erit, sensing disaster. Dropping a handful of clothes on the bed, a swirl of motion, she grabs the tablet from Barry’s trembling hand. “Fuck!” she swears vehemently. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“STOP THAT!” screams Barry hysterically. “I can see very plainly what I did!” Weeping, he adds in a small voice, “I am so sorry. It was the hashish. Or the tea. Or the incense… Or all three.”
“Goddam Arabs!” seethes Erit. “It’s called sextortion. Very popular in some circles.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Send them the goddam money, honey! Five thousand shekels isn’t the end of the world.”
“But it will never end! They’ll be milking us for small change forever and ever,” wails Barry Lipowitz.
“Welcome to the Middle East,” replies his Israeli wife.
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********** Now. New. No? No way! Way! Dig it! **********
^^^ The Box. $99.95 The Box. $99.95 The Box. $99.95 ^^^
Join your fave authors Barry Lipowitz and Erit Sameach in a celebration of Palestinian independence. This multi-media, 3-dimensional Concrete Art collection includes: Miniature flags of Hamas and Hezbollah. A Hamas decal. A mint green one-size-fits-all elastic Hamas headband! Thumb drive containing a complete travelogue of Occupied Palestine with photos and commentary by Erit Sameach and New York fashionista Barbie Quint. Street map of Ramallah. Map of the Proposed Free State of Palestine (formerly the entity known as “Israel”). The Hamas Charter in English and Arabic. The Fatah Charter in English and Arabic. The Palestinian Liberation Organization Charter in English and Arabic. The Proposed Charter of Free Palestine in English, Arabic and the original Swedish. Facsimile menu from the Greek Pavilion Restaurant, Petah Tikva. Egged bus schedule. Full-color photo of Yasser Arafat. Photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Photo of Gamal Abdel Nasser, early proponent of Palestinian statehood. E.A.R. ear plugs. EL AL sleep mask. Israeli playing cards. No. 2 pencil Made In Occupied Palestine. Plastic knife, fork and spoon manufactured specifically for the Free Palestine Collective, Ramallah. Palestinian Authority™ porcelain coffee cup manufactured in Occupied Palestine or on its behalf. Bottled water (1.22 fl. oz.) from the River Jordan! Palestinian Commemorative Coin, Hebron. Three Star Safety Matches, Ramallah. All this and so much more! Fun for the whole family! IRS approved. Makes a great gift in time for Purim! A product of Sweeney Farlow Graham & Co.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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************************** DISCLAIMER *************************
Any reference to Israel (aka Israel, Israel, ISRAEL, ISRAEL or ISRAEL) shall not be construed as binding the reader to a specific interpretation of Zionism per se nor the Jewish State nor milk (for the lactose-intolerant) nor honey (for the just plain intolerant, period).
While recognizing all halachic and cultural variations thereof, the preceding narrative abstains from promulgating any single worldview. You are not required to support Jabotinskyism, Palmachniks, Messianism, Hasidim, etc. Like John Adams or the U.S. Constitution, I try to be all things to all people, impartial. When giving offense, I try to offend all sides equally. As the tough, young Vietnamese businessman standing outside the Golden Dragon restaurant proposed, throwing his cigarette angrily to the pavement, “Hey, man! That my girlfriend! You want I cut off your balls?!” The lesson: Either never visit the neighborhood of Little Saigon or keep your gaze averted when you do. Covert beats overt every time. I feel the same about my writing. All characters, characterizations and descriptions spring directly from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real, living or imagined human beings is entirely coincidental. Where dealing with factual material, I have tried to be accurate.
Like you, I am an antidisestablishmentarian. Unless, of course, you prefer democratic socialism or intend to overthrow the government! That makes you a disestablishmentarian. As a budding capitalist plutocrat hoping to score big money on this tome, I strenuously object.
The opinions expressed herein are primarily those of the author, his immediate family, his cousins, friends, editor, literary agent, historical figures and the occasional Arab. What you see as plagiarism, I consider homage. No animals were injured during the writing of this book.
********************* k.feingold@hotmail.com *******************
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