| | Well, if this thread is going to devolve into a discussion of Israel, Zionism and anti-semitism, I guess I can go there. My preferred method of doing so is to simply excerpt my uncompleted novel, The Halaunbrenner Grant. This kills two birds with one stone -- it gets my views across and also demonstrates why I have, at least for the moment, decided to forego writing fiction.
As far as background goes, the novel is about a foundation that concerns itself with hunting down Nazi war criminals (specifically Alois Brunner, one of Eichman's close lieutenants) and Arab terrorists, and the interaction of that foundation with a researcher who believes that there's still an existing connection between the two (there were certainly earlier ones via Nasser et al -- and Brunner, now in his 90s, was known and is still thought to be living in Damascus). In the vein, more or less, of The ODESSA File.
Here's the relevant (Warning! Didactic speech!) excerpt:
-----
"There are some things we need to get straight, Fred," he continued. "Your work is your own, and all I ask is that we get the first look at it. But it is part of a larger purpose. We don't screw around with meaningless things like non-disclosure agreements here, for the simple reason that an honest man doesn't need one and a dishonest man wouldn't abide by one. I'd like to tell you more about the Foundation, but I won't -- I can't -- until I have your word of honor that you'll respect our need for that information to remain secret."
Fred physically felt the other man's tension, mixed with his own. "I think I can give you that word," he replied. "But there's one thing I have to know up front. Is this a Mossad project?"
Alan stared across the table at him. "Would it make any difference if it was?" he asked.
"Yes," said Sorensen. "I deplore the reality of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism since. I've done what I can to reveal and expose the realities and I have no regrets about that. But I'm just not a government type, if you know what I mean. They tend to take more than they give. And they tend to give a little, once, and then demand a lot, ever after."
Weiss stood abruptly, and for a moment Sorensen was sure that he was about to be roughed up and shown the door. Instead, to his astonishment, Weiss began to applaud loudly.
"Bravo! Bravo! I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you that you were our sort, my boy!" Beaming, he sat once again and leaned forward, taking up his glass of wine, gulping a bit down and spilling the rest as he absently returned it to the table.
"I give you my word that neither I nor the Halaunbrenner Foundation are employed by the Mossad or the State of Israel," he said. "We've received limited cooperation from them -- after I had some well-placed friends lean hard on the right elbows -- and we occasionally provide them very specific information of a very limited scope.
"Early on, the Mossad sent a 'resident agent' to take charge of the Foundation. I showed him the door, and when he didn't get the message, I showed him my gun.
"The purpose of the Halaunbrenner Foundation is not to provide Israel or its functionaries with political advantage, nor is it to protect the existence of the Knesset or to provide justification for Israeli settlements in the West Bank, nor is it to lobby Washington for aid to Ariel Sharon and his cronies. The purpose of the Halaunbrenner Foundation is to defend Jews from those who would kill them and to retaliate against those who have done so ...
"On an individual basis. We aren't Israelis, we aren't Mossad agents and we aren't even, strictly speaking, Zionists. Is that good enough for you?"
Sorensen nodded, speechless, then had a gulp of wine himself before remembering what was expected of him.
"In that case, sir, you have my word of honor that whatever you have to tell me will remain between us."
"Actually, I guess I inadvertently revealed the most important part of it in my little diatribe," said Alan, "but I'll try to be a little more specific.
"Israel is a bad solution to a worse problem. Oh, I could make a fair argument on its behalf, but I'm an individualist, not a collectivist, as strange as that may seem given my self-identification with the Jewish people on the basis of my ancestry.
"I'm not a religious Jew. I don't keep kosher -- that's a good Italian sausage cooking in the sauce over there -- I don't attend synagogue, I don't observe the Sabbath.
"I'm not a Zionist. I don't see anything particularly sacred about the land in Palestine and I'll laugh in the face of anyone who tries to tell me that the way to solve a problem is to create yet another government. As a matter of fact, as best I can tell, governments have been at the root of the problem since the beginning.
"It was the German government that built the camps for the Jews. It's the Arab governments that exploit the 'Palestinian' Arabs to perpetuate their forever war on the Jews.
"Take it all the way back to Samuel. He tried to warn us about the nature of kings, but we didn't want any of his guff -- we demanded a yoke on all our necks."
He paused. "Let's get another bottle of wine out and get dinner on the table. The bread should be ready and I don't want the pasta to get cold."
Half an hour later, the three had finished gorging on spaghetti and garlic bread and were halfway through the second bottle of wine. Alan wiped his face with a napkin, then leaned forward and took off as if he'd never interrupted himself.
"I'm a Jew by ancestry, but more importantly I'm a Jew by choice. After the Babylonian captivity, the Greek and Roman occupations and 2,000 years of diaspora, pogrom and ghettoization -- all at the hands of government -- we got Hitler, the camps, and six million dead. That's a powerful incentive for banding together for self-defense.
"You did a wonderful paper on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Those Jews weren't jammed together in the ghetto because they wanted to be. Some of them were religious. Some of them were atheists. Some of them were Zionists, some were Communists and some of them just wanted to be left the hell alone.
"But Hitler and his thugs wouldn't leave them alone, and the end result was that they had to work together to resist and to survive, or at least to pass on the lesson that if you won't stand up for yourself, no one else is going to stand up for you.
"There are two conflicts in the Middle East. One is between the Israeli government and the Arab governments. The other is between five million individual Jews and an unknown number of individuals who want to murder them.
"The former conflict exacerbates the latter. Government, by its very nature, is incapable of caring for the needs of five million individuals. It is structured to care for itself. It does things wholesale. A 'Palestinian' Arab throws a rock and the IDF moves in with tanks and levels a whole neighborhood. Then people wonder why the argument escalates.
"Our approach -- my approach -- is retail, not wholesale. If you're a Jew-killer, I want to kill you first if possible, later if that's the only way.
"The purpose of the Halaunbrenner Foundation is to identify Jew-killers and kill them, or at least give others the information necessary to do so. One at a time, ten at a time -- but never nine Jew-killers and one innocent. That's the government way."
-----
On re-reading that, I have to say that I am probably more pro-Israel than the speaker at this point. As a matter of fact, I'm hoping to learn enough Hebrew and get in good enough shape to get over one summer on a volunteer program that Israel runs, where fat old civilians like me do three months in the Civil Guard so that reservists can be freed up for active IDF duty.
Tom Knapp
|
|
