The Judean and Palestinian State

Pt. 1: “THE NEW ZIONISTS”

Pt. 2: “The Parallel States of Isreal and Palestine”

Pt. 3. “Seperation and Hudna until later Union”

A Three-Part Chorus of Revisionist Zionisists sing to a divided Palestine

SING: 

‘What kind of man wear’s a pin stripe suit on a bus that costs ten dollars to ride?

And how many people does he have to recruit, to cross over to the other side?

He says he loves her, but is it true? He’s combined his two favorite songs for you.

And there’s been hard times that the booze cannot erase; but everything of beauty is compared against her face.’

Sebastian Adon called Zachariah Artstein/ Abu Yazan

“There was a great big bang kiddo. A flash of thunder and then some lying bloody in a long hard rain before lying even longer in a bright white ER; and in the confusion of that calamity I certainly lost my God. There was only a past I needed to now forget quickly, someone else’s made up religion to cling to and the realization that I had wandered quite far in the desert from my home.”   

Emma Soloman called Maya Rose

“Naked I came from the womb of that ship, but so help me God, naked shall I not depart.”

Avinadav called Andrew the Saint

א

El Al flight 510 touched down at Lod International Airport on May 9, 2001 at exactly 15:04 Israeli time, which differs from the time in the rest of the zone by always being fifteen minutes behind schedule. 

The passengers on the plane start clapping as the wheels hit the tarmac. Many of the passengers are very happy to be home, and happier still that the Palestinians didn’t manage to hijack or ‘explode’ the plane. Someone whispers that things had gotten much worse in the weeks leading up to Independence Day. There had been two bombings the week before. The second Palestinian Intifada has blown the top off the kettle. 

“Welcome to Israel,” the flight attendant tells us. 

She gives the date, time, and weather in Hebrew and then repeats it in thickly accented English, and then once again in Arabic, which is the second national language. English lettering is below all the Hebrew/Arabic signs because America foots the bill around here. 

We descended onto the tarmac from the hatchway in the back of the plane. I have an urge to bend down and kiss the ground, but do not. It’s not very dignified something tells me, a voice inside that once had a name. It is brutally hot. I am wearing my kosher, blue pinstripe suit. I am glad I left my Kashmir trench coat in Spain. I stop for a moment and cover my eyes, lowering my head. 

“Shma Yisrael Adonoi Elohanynu, Adonoi EhHad.”

This is the only prayer I can remember that would make any sense in this occasion. 

The revolution had failed me completely. But I knew I had also failed it. I had been misguided. The staunch atheism that the Family School had instilled in me for a time seemed to have been shattered by my last three weeks in Golder’s Green. Rabbi Tatz had opened a door for me only to have it slammed in my face when Rabbi Gabi declared that I wasn’t’ a real Jew. As I stared out the open window of the cab I saw the green fields of my people’s land blooming, highways filled with compact cars, and new buildings being erected everywhere. I was home and ready. Babylon was behind me. There was no more need to struggle needlessly.

***

All of Tel Aviv was bouncing off the walls. The streets were filled with loud and pushy people. There were beautiful women with olive skin and manly guys with tight t-shirts and jeans. There were all drunk. Everyone had a gun and a flag. It was Israeli Independence Day and Israel had just won the basketball championship against all of Europe. I have never seen so many beautiful girls in my life. Tel Aviv was wild and free like New York on a beach. They may have driven us into the sea with gas and bullets in Europe but now we struck back with basketball and, well really fucking attractive women.  I found the basketball win hard to believe, but it made me happy. The racist in me asserted that Ethiopians had evidently been put in charge of the team. Some girl told me they had just recruited a bunch of American Blacks. Even better.

I checked into a hostel on Kikar Diezinkoff or Diezinkoff Square. An elevated platform supported a white sculpture fountain with interlocking colored disks in the middle of the square. It was like a Union Square of the Middle East with more junkies and less skaters. The hostel smelled like radio deodorant-free Europe. I was in a coed dorm room with twelve bunk beds.  My bunkmates were mostly South Africans. Africanz is the ugliest language I’ve ever heard. I changed out of my suit, showered, and decided to go exploring. I grabbed a street map from the front desk and wandered out into the bustling, raucous Ben Yehuda Street, which I hoped led to the beach.

There was a rally going on in the square for the union which controlled Egged Buses, one of the two major government-owned lines. Groups of teenagers were hanging out and drinking in public, which I’m told is totally legal here. A group of Russian punks gave me some very cheap vodka and I slammed it back. I drew them a picture of a punk with a shotgun mashing. They gave me more vodka but didn’t speak a word of English. There was a large movie theatre on a corner of the square. What looks like a huge and shady motel occupied another corner under a huge red neon sign that says KDA. Hebrew is spoken everywhere or Russian.  I am enthralled and overwhelmed. It is almost too much to take in. The signs and language keep reminding me the land is ours. The cute girls with stacks of party flyers remind me that it’s not just another Friday night; it’s the biggest party night of the year. 

Eventually I wound my way down to the beach. It’s an endless strip of mini skyscrapers, hotels highway and the boardwalk, called the tiyeled. It is the land of see-and-be-seen, play-and-get-hustled, hoot, holler and dance. Little wooden pergolas and stone benches run miles in either direction. It’s the coast of the Mediterranean, but it’s more like Vegas than Nice.    Everything is all lit up in a hundred shades of red or blue and there is live music being performed on mini stages along the way, mostly salsa and house music. I stand below a huge white terraced structure called the Opera Tower and look down the main strip from Hof Yersushalaim, the Jerusalem Beach. Some came to the Holy Land for that broken down wall locked up in the mountains, but I like my pilgrimages to end by the beach with a cocktail. Cars fly by with Israeli flags flapping out the windows. The occupants are yelling on the top of their lungs blasting Arabic sounding music from their vehicles. Everybody keeps offering me shots. Every crew and their Russian girl friends have multiple bottles of vodka and hookah set up for the fireworks show about to light up the beach.

As I walked further down the boardwalk, halfway to drunk by now, I encountered every manner of hustler, hawker, pusher, and thief. Children selling flashy neon toys. Eastern European émigrés hustling the tourists at games of three-card Monty lured in by a cute Romanian girl that keeps winning and might just be the dealer’s lady. Tables set up selling trinkets, selling temporary tattoos, selling smokes, selling girls who sell the smokes and not a single street artist in sight. Or copper for that matter. I decided not to set up tonight. It’s the Shabos on top of Independence Day and Victory over Europe. Rabbi Tatz said I would learn to carry out the mitzvahs gradually. But then Rabbi Gabbi said I wasn’t a Jew, so why I kept referencing those Jews of the Green was beyond me. The Israeli government counts you as a Jew if a single grandparent was Jewish. This is surely better odds than having a halachically-converted Jewish mother.  

I heard a South African saying that it was good they let these not quite Jewish Ruskies in because with the uprising going on in, it was unwise to let the Palestinians cross the green line to work like dogs in all the jobs the Jews don’t want. Half the Russians I was drinking with had gold crucifixes come to think of it. Guess they had a Jewish grandparent before Communism made them Orthodox Christians or whatever-the-hell they are. 

I’m happy to be reunited with my Noblisse cigarettes. I remembered hoping they came in menthol when I first found them in the ubiquitous cigarette machines. They aren’t that bad for smokes which cost six shekels. That’s just over $1.50. Thank god for no more TOP rollies. These are Israel’s general-purpose cigarettes. They are the cheapest cigarettes you can buy when you’re poor.  They are also smoked by the kibbutzniks, because if you live on kibbutz, you’re inherently poor.  The Russians don’t smoke them. They smoke something only a little better called L & M, which feels more like a cheap Marlboro Light. 

With my sketchpad and accented-English flying, I befriend a Russian named Roman along with his car, his bottle of vodka standard and his three lady friends. I take off in this former Soviet’s car, a Roman who knew where the party was up country. At a good party you can forget about everything. So I ended up staying in Tel Aviv in the arms of a wild little Russian sweat thing named Anya for nearly a week before I ended up making moves north. 

ב

I was told it is very green up north in the shade of Mt. Tabor. I took a bus from the Techanama Gazit Central Bus Station to a town called Afula, which is as mediocre as it is relatively isolated. The kibbutz itself was still a good half an hour north, so I stuck my thumb in the air for several hours before a Bedouin trucker dropped me at the gates of Kibbutz Ein Dor. 

My one-night stand had turned into a good long week of come-on-in-sin. With less than $200 of my money left, I decided to quit my evil ways and earn to speak the language of the world’s oldest tribe while doing a bit of the old ‘agrarian collective labor’. 

Kibbutz Ein Dor was established at its present location facing Mount Tabor in the eastern section of the Lower Galilee in May of 1948. Its members came from groups of the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair from Israel, Hungary, and the United States. Later groups from Chile and Uruguay and much smaller groups and individuals from over 30 different countries joined them. Today the kibbutz boasts about 430 members and candidates for membership, and a permanent population of close to 800 when children, parents of members, and Hebrew Ulpan students are taken into account. The kibbutz’s economy is built almost entirely upon its cable factory, Teldor, which manufactures telecommunication and electronic cables. The kibbutz still cultivates a wide range of field crops, has a dairy farm, and raises chickens. That’s almost verbatim off the kibbutz Web site.

Ein Dor is situated where the Chesulloth Basin meets the eastern section of the Lower Galilee and the Jezreel Valley. There was a new electric entrance gate that was surrounded by a security fence made of barbed wire as old as the country itself. A guard was posted at the entrance. The young man had dark hair and a black uniform and was sitting with his feet up at the post with an Uzi submachine in his lap looking bored and disinterested. The guard was no older than seventeen. 

All of the buildings were white stucco with a solid earthy appearance and red corrugated tin roofs.  Massive olive trees and other shrubbery made the kibbutz exude abundance. Compared with the dry and dusty hills and the two small Arab villages with their scrawny sheep that flanked it, the kibbutz felt like a fortress of bounty. Flowers had been planted everywhere and the grounds were immaculate. Green grass covered the lawns of all the kibbutz buildings. As I walked up the main street to the central building, I saw what looked like a huge auditorium that served as the central dining hall. A sign told me as much in Hebrew and English, but not in Arabic.

The Russians Roman and Anya had told me that the Israelis hate the weak, naïve American tourists. That I come from New York means a lot less here. A lot of fat, rich, lazy American Jews live in that city. 

“Above your head there flashes a great big dollar sign,” the Russian girl Anya I made fuck with in Tel Aviv had said to me adding, “Your nice words will not so much to protect you here.”

Sometimes Americans call Israelis sabras after the cactus-like, thorny fruit with the sweet center when opened up as if deep down these Israelites were warm and respectful to outsiders. That’s very wishful thinking, which doesn’t last long past the two-week tour. 

I’m looking for a woman named Bruria who is the volunteer coordinator of the kibbutz. 

Bruria’s closet-like office was in a small shed attached to the main Volunteer Office building. I can’t help but thinking she looks like a man in a dress. Her English isn’t very good and I am informed that it will cost me a thousand, two hundred shekels and fifty agarot to enroll in the ulpan program. Everything they say about the poor, impoverished kibbutzniks must be truish because they actually want my agarot; the bullshit Jewish penny. Nobody chases those down the street.  

I feign agreement fully wondering where I am going to come up with that kind of money considering my net worth financially is perhaps no more than $180 at this time. She takes every penny and tells me I can pay the rest down the line. 

It’s hard times in the hills of Galilee.  I now don’t have a shekel to my name.  

The kibbutz does not make a great first impression. Built something like a cross between Jurassic Park and the Soviet Union, the adults seem embittered and cagey as Bruria brings me around. The facilities are pleasant, until we arrive in the area where the volunteers live. Stucco and pebble faced buildings give way to trailer bungalows near a sign that reads ‘welcome to our ghetto.’ There are close to twenty white bungalow buildings on a steeply inclined hill that are each only one story tall. Each bungalow has a porch with some irregular lawn chairs and assorted stools. Each houses four volunteers in two sets of ‘living quarters’. There are two outdoor showers per building, which four volunteers share. These dwellings overlook a series of olive fields and in the distance you can see the small Arab village of Deburiya. The Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer echoes across the valley five times a day she warns me.

“It may sound like a scary cry of war, but it is actually how they pray. They are good Arabs, long time neighbors we control now their water which makes them more good.”

Bruria unlocks my apartment and tells me to leave my stuff. I have just my one large black rucksack. The room she calls a ‘living quarters’ is a one-room affair with two dormitory steel cots and two adjacent closets. My roommate is rather neat. His t-shirts are all folded, his stuff tucked inside the large closet. There are no posters on the walls or art, just a small wooden table with an alarm clock that has a picture of pretty Israeli girl in black and white with X O X O scribbled on it and a big red lipstick kiss. Guess that’s what he’s doing here. 

It’s laconic, that is to say the bare minimum of what one needs. But after squatting for three months in a dirty hovel this is a marked improvement. She tells me my roommate’s name is Danny and that he is from Los Angles 

Classes are in session. The classroom building is on top of the hill. It is built in the same white stucco style with a red-shingled roof. Bruria interrupts the class and announces that I ‘will be the new student.’ There are about twenty other people in the class. All of them are easily twice my age by the look of it. I had been under the impression that there would be people my age forgetting that this was a program for new immigrants, not seventeen-year old radicals in some fucked up self-imposed exile. Everybody smiles and then gets back to work.  

Later that day I am introduced to the ghetto’s ‘North American social club.’ It on is the porch of a bungalow at the top of the ghetto on the hill. It has a third fridge on the porch. There is a Russian quarter, an Argentinean quarter with a Columbian among them here to garden not to learn, and the American section. The Russians only speak Russian; the Latin Americans don’t speak Russian or English well. And go figure, we don’t speak anything at all besides English including the Chilean girl and Canadian guy in my new ‘club.’ Everyone is learning Hebrew but vodka is the lingua franca by the looks of it.

My roommate introduces himself Daniel Asher Callahan who is questionably Jewish. He is tall and lanky, has dark hair with freckles and knows how to freestyle rap. The Canadian John Yuma, whom everybody calls Johnny Bravo, is all things loud, drunk, and misogynistic. Like Paul Bunyan and Izzy Vitz, he tells tall tales. According to his own booze soaked account, he was formerly a freelance soldier, this gun for hire in the French Foreign Legion for eight years. He boasts combat on nearly every continent ‘with the browns or yellows’ and is visibly a degenerate drunk. Bobby Brown is the third American in the social club. He’s part bookworm and part smartass jock. He has glasses and flashcards. He goes for jogs to Duriyah. He’s liberal but still doesn’t trust Arabs. Both Danny and Yuma aren’t sure it has been worth their coming here. The more they drank, the less they liked the Holy Land air and long summer months with no rain. Bobby Brown was a good little Zionist through and through. 

It’s my first day at the Kibbutz and they’ve extended me membership. Club activities generally involve pounding back Gold Star or Macabbi beers, the national swag of Israel, and puffing carton upon carton of Noblisse from the commissary. It is as if they pay us weekly in booze and smokes. That’s all our little company store stipend gets us in the end. Yuma spots me the beers. 

“You’re new so you get the shitty chair ‘til you steal a better one,” Danny says to me. 

“Steal anything that’s not tied down,” he says is the way of things. 

Bobby becomes more social the more he drinks. John Yuma seems to get louder and more lewd. 

School and work alternate everyday except Saturday. Depending on your assignment you work about eight hours a day with a two-hour lunch. Most volunteers are in the mess hall cooking, food prepping and doing dishes for nearly 800 three times a day, although I’m told many families eat at home. Other options include Yards, which means constantly weeding and laying sprinkler line or Gardens, which is helping to maintain the flowers and trees on the grounds. The ambitious and trusted either milk cows or work for TELDOR the chief kibbutz product, which is telecommunications wiring. Everyone tells me that I have to decide by tomorrow to work in the mess hall for obvious reason like stealing food and air-conditioning, but I need to be outside using my hands. 

We are all sitting on the porch of the North American Social Club drinking Gold Star beers that Yuma bought in Afula except for Bobby Brown who is immersed in the course work.

“So where are you going to slave,” asks John Yuma.

“I was thinking about Yards and Gardens.”

“That’s a lot of digging. You got to dig mini trenches for the sprinkler lines, which keep the place so green. You should get work to keep your soft hands not dirty. And fill our fridge,” Yuma says. 

“You see, a kibbutz is about doing as little work as possible and getting drunk as often as you can. And givin’ it to every new girl that comes.”

“I only say it ‘cause you’re scrawny. Teldor and field work is man’s work,” says Yuma.

“Where do all the curvy kibbutz girls work?”

“They don’t. Most of them are real underage. Like get locked up underage. Pickings are very slim these days. There’s a fine Brazilian girl named Carla but she he has a kibbutznik boyfriend. She works on Yards and Gardens if you’re looking for good eye candy. Girl is stacked and curvy,” says Bobby looking up from his books

“I’m always looking for eye candy. I’m a horny seventeen year old.”

Just down the hill at the bungalow below ours some Russians in our Ulpan Program start yelling at us from their window and waving with their arms for us to come down.

“What do they want?” I ask.

“They want us to get really trashed on vodka,” says Bobby Brown.

“Come on,” says John, “It’s a kibbutz highlight that never gets old.”

It was one we would have over and over again. Bobby and Danny sat it out. I had no idea why because I figured it was just for a shot. The Russians apparently really, really liked sharing.

There were four Russians in the small room. All four of them were in their early thirties. Three were Slavs and the other one was a dark Georgian. They offered their names but I only caught one distinctively, Alexi, who was the youngest. The Georgian had a crucifix around his neck, which he never took off. None of them spoke English and I wasn’t able to catch any of the names of the other three. The vodka was very cheap and highly flammable one of them demonstrated by igniting a wall briefly. We slammed two shots in the first minute or two. Then we chased each shot with water. I was laid out by the time I reached eight. It burned my throat and made my head spin. I fell off the cot as I yelled profanity in drunken glee. Alexi showed us a picture of his sister or girlfriend. Who cared or knew. Yuma told him ‘I’d fucked her in the ass.’ They all started cheering and patting me on the back.

And then a blackout, and a blur of sweat and yelling and more shots. 

The last thing I remember hearing was John with his arm around a Russian yelling, “WE’RE GONNA FUCK YOUR MOTHERS IN THE ASS!” 

They had no idea what he was saying so that just cheered and we all did another shot. I had to be practically carried back to my room by John and Danny sometime after midnight. I stunk of booze for a week. The Russians saw to that.

***

The girls on the kibbutz were all about 12 years old. So I settled on Yards and Gardens managed by a triumvirate two Latin laborers and the Kibbutz Yards and Garden foreman Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was half English/half Irish. He’d come here in the sixties leftist and reckless. He had gotten an Israelite pregnant and never left. He’d acquired kibbutz membership, married the girl and had three kids. He was a good guy with numerous yarns, which all seemed to amount to a warning about getting out before I got one of their girls pregnant. The girls were all 12 I told him. He told me he was talking about the country not the kibbutz. The other two weren’t Jewish either. Adonoi Gonzalez was Colombian and strapping. He’d been here a couple years. Said prospects were better here than in his own ‘piece of shit’ country. And there was the hot Brazilian, a tall gorgeous brunette, the hot sweaty eye candy Yuma had mentioned. 

Our work was largely the maintenance of the sprinkler system. Without it the hills would not be so green. The Israelis utilized a drip irrigation system. The pioneers in less than a hundred years had reclaimed vast swathes of swamp and desert and rock, but milk and honey had hardly come. The kibbutznik dream of agrarian socialism was over. They had outlived their colonial purpose. 

But if there was some timeless war going on, I hadn’t seen any of it yet. Not in Tel Aviv or the Galilee anyway. I dug up sprinkler lines shirtless, never seeming to burn in the nonstop sun. I was getting a little less scrawny with the three meals a day. The kibbutz was always the same work, the same food and the same people every single day. I’d get shit hammered drunk with the Russians and the North American Social Club. I’d sit bored in the classroom pretending to learn Hebrew. I wondered sometimes if I was in too deep. I wondered if Zionism was really the end of the ideological road for me. It had been too easy. I wondered when the hammer would fall or the real test would come. I was living in war zone wholly sheltered from the war. I wondered when I’d meet a Palestinian again. 

I wondered if little Kareem from the Wadi would light himself up in a bus that I was on or perhaps he had already. The kibbutz was a vacuum. Each weekend came and I hitchhiked down to Tel Aviv. To see Israel. To get fucked and hammered and blown by everything except Palestinians. My dreams were a dull silence. Mike Washington was truly dead it seemed. I had learned to sleep like normal people do, in quiet but without peace.  

Every so often some kibbutznik would tell me to put a shirt on lest I burn up, but I never seemed to. My blood wasn’t wholly infused with the European. Just my skin. My great, great grandmother’s rape had not been complete, as I didn’t burn. So I ate cucumber, onion, and tomato salads, tried to pick up Hebrew and fought the good fight to keep the yards and gardens green. 

After work I’d sit on the porch with Danny and Johnny Yuma  smoking cigarette after cigarette and downing frosty cold liter bottles of Coca Cola. We’d look out over the village of Deburiya and listen to their call to prayer go off around sundown. The ghostly Adhan echoed throughout the valley. We could sit in our walled little compound sipping Coke and getting hammered on cheap beer. We could pretend the Intifada was taking place in the cities and wouldn’t reach us. But like the village of Deburiya, we could cut off their water and lock them off their lands, but to ignore them would be impossible.   

ג

As soon as Friday came, I caught the last bus out before sundown and headed south. Sundown on Friday is when they shut everything down, everything except Tel Aviv. I needed eye candy and attractions. I needed to sell art because I was completely out of cash. 

And sell well I did that night far out pacing any records set in London. The tiyeled was packed. The strip was lit up particularly brightly. I felt really good about getting back to this city. I moved through the crowd impressed with how quickly I’d made my 100 shekels. This equivalent of nearly $25 was chump change except on a kibbutz. 

I could smell the cheap perfume of the Russian frehhote.  Many of the young Russian men had bleached their hair like Eminem. A salsa band was playing and an Argentinean Jewish woman was dancing and singing through a Madonna mike surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. Everyone was clapping to the beat. A group of Arab Israelis was hawking watches, lighters and bootleg L & M smokes from a foldout table. Some rough-edged Romanian hustlers and their friends were taking money off stupid, shit-brained cocky American Yeshiva boys in games of three-card Monty. On the beach I saw the flash of fire poi whirling in the night. The Opera Towers looked huge. I could see a security guard patting down Yemenite Jews because they look Arab while he let the paler Ashkenazim in without any trouble at all. 

Canadian Dave who is the bartender over at Mike’s Blues Bar gave me a bunch of flyers to hand out. They were taking up half the space in my bag. He’s giving me fifty sheks and a meal to hand them out. I got this gig through a girl I drew on the tiyeled a week ago. There are several big parties tonight. I off load flyers to anyone who will take them at drop spots along the way to the Dolphinarium. The Dolphinarium beach-bar-restaurant complex, which houses a mega club called Pacha. Built near the Dan Hotel where the boardwalk hits the Turkish Fort at Yafo. No one I give flyers to will actually go to Mike’s because it’s an American tourist jump-off right next to the American embassy. 

It’s 10:40 pm. I make my way to Abulafia for a couple of mini pizzas. Abulafia is a 24-hour bakery that sells mini pizzas and pita soaked in olive oil with zataar, a green fragrant spice that tastes like Palestinian oregano. The place has non-stop business especially around sunrise when it gets swarmed with club goers on the way home. That’s when the fights break out between the Russians and Arabs or the Russians and the Ethiopians. It’s always the Russians and someone else. The owners of Abulafia seem to have a lot of sons and nephews named Muhammad. They do a good business. One of them tells me they live in Yafo, the Old City, the Arab Quarter. It was the Arab port of long, long ago. The Yafo-Tel Aviv border is near the Dolphinarium and near a huge Ottoman prison that now apparently houses a BSDM sex club called the Dungeon. 

***

A man in a cab is approaching the Dolphinarium. He is wearing a club suit that covers a payload of ball bearings and nails. He thinks nervously,

‘It is too heavy. They will notice me as soon as I step from the cab. This vest and jacket are making me sweat.’

He looks out the window. The driver seems nervous. The man doesn’t say much. This is not a situation for small talk. He looks at his watch. It’s 22:53. He observes people strolling on the tiyeled as the cab speeds by. The cab passes the Sheraton Hotel. The man wonders if one day all this will be returned to his people. He wonders when these Jews will be driven back to Hell.  It’s 22:57. He takes a deep breath and tries to come to terms with the fact that he will be dead within the hour.

***

Roman is standing outside the Pasha Club in the parking lot talking to his friends.  He thinks,

‘Fuck this place. Fuck this place big time.’

Roman is of regular build and is wearing a tight black t-shirt and FOXX jeans. His shoes are polished. There is gel in his hair. He speaks in thickly accented Hebrew. He mixes in Russian words. When he gets angry he stops speaking Hebrew altogether. He never goes anywhere without his cell phone, which seems to never stop ringing. All his friends are from the Ukraine. They are racially Slavic and technically Jewish, which is to say that they have a Jewish grandparent. This doesn’t change the fact that they go to the Orthodox Church. 

This is his third time at the Pasha Club. He wouldn’t normally go to this venue, but the girl his friend is fucking dragged them along. Her friends are Russian and they act like whores when they drink like most Russian girls he knows. One of them is Georgian. Her family is using Israel as a halfway point between the former Soviet Union and the US. Like most of the olim hadashim from that part of the world, they have no intention of staying here too long.  Roman hopes his family get their U.S. visas soon because the Arabs are going crazy and he’s about to get drafted into the IDF.

The line is always too long. The Dan Hotel is across the street. Its plaza is large and white. He’s never stayed there, but he imagines it’s rather descent. When he gets to America he’ll stay in a hotel like that. Or maybe even own one if he works hard.

***

I remember the joy of walking in the damp sand by the water with no shoes. Zachariah and Sebastian equate this with happy childhood memories so it’s pleasing to the body they now share. 

I finally break free from the crowd as I get to the end of Jerusalem Beach. I deliberately walk on the sand even if it means no people to take flyers. I can see Yafo in the distance. Compared to Tel Aviv it is ominous and lower key. I’m wearing my khaki pants with the tan button-down work shirt that says Mike on the left breast and has a Drop Kick Murphy patch sewn on the right. 

I had passed out most of the flyers for Mike’s Blues Bar to groups of arsim and frehhote. They ask me questions in Hebrew or Russian, but I hardly speak either language well enough to know what they are asking me. 

I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled pack of Noblisse cigarettes. There are only three left. 

***

The waves are crashing against the levy. The rocks extend out into the water and you can walk along them toward the end, which is as a good a place as any to smoke hash. The levy is on the sea side of the Dolphinarium. This section of the Beach is called Tiki Beach. During the day people play Congo drums and an outdoor café serves overpriced beverages with a scenic view. There is a private club next to the Pasha and a barbed wire fence prevents people from climbing from the levy into its outdoor section. House music is blaring from Pasha. 

Slightly removed from the chaos, Ze’ev and his friends smoke a joint of tobacco mixed with hash. Ze’ev knows he’s a scumbag. The girl he and his friends had been gang-raping in his car had been left slumped against the rocks down by the water. They had pissed all over her before they left her. They’d slipped her a ‘knock out’ in the last club.

***

The man in the lethal club suit is approaching Target B in the cab. He had three targets to pick from.  He had rejected the other two as unsuitable.  

He thought, 

‘I have never been to this part of town before.’

He removed his wristwatch and placed it into an envelope in the front seat. The envelope already contained his wedding ring, his wallet and other petty personal effects. The only thing that remains is a small snapshot of his son and roughly 2 pounds of military grade plastic explosives. 

He begins a silent prayer,

‘My God is merciful, and all good things come of it. I will be your sword, my people’s sword against the Zionists who killed my son and stole my land.’

***

I finally arrived at the Dolphinarium with no flyers to hinder my game and my two-step. Long lines had formed to get into the club. Its clientele are mostly underage Russian immigrants. Dave doesn’t need or want this demographic at his bar, but fuck Dave. What’s twelve dollars and a beer. Absolutely nothing. I should just dump the damn flyers in a trashcan and rattle off some tourist spots I magically hit up. 

There are arsim everywhere. The word is sort of like the Bridge and Tunnel Crowd of Israel. A little meaner actually. They are dressed pretty much the same. Tight t-shirts, jeans, hair gel. They all reflect the same mannerisms and mentality. They always give me shit everywhere I go in the country while I’m selling art. My style is way too different for them. When they want me to draw something, it’s always crude and they never pay. They might sit and watch me draw and then wander off like crack heads with ADD. They are the club guys of the Middle East, the socio-economic equivalent to a mix of Jersey guidos and ghetto Blacks coming to Manhattan clubs with a hard-on and a roofy. They love the ultra violence. Most of them aren’t from Tel Aviv. They just come here for the clubs and the tiyeled. Packs of them will follow groups of girls around propositioning them until a rejection or a hook up or rape. They take Ecstasy. They are offensive to everyone. They frequent bad clubs and get into fights. Not unlike the Jersey guidos, they thrill me. Racially they tend to be non-Ashkenazi, Romanians, Russians, and the Yemenites who live in Israel’s smaller, rougher cities like Bat Yam, Rehovet, Peta Tikvah, and Pardes Hana.. 

I watch young, stupid people try to get laid after they wait on a long line for a high priced bottle of poison. The Russian immigrant girls look blazing. They are really loving this whole free market thing and are waiting eagerly to get visas for the US or Canada. In the meantime they’re made up as hell even when they are only going to the store for laundry detergent. 

I see my friend of three weeks, Roman, talking to a group of pretty former-Soviet girls. The Israelis are curvier and less made-up. I walk over to give him a pound and he introduces me to several of the girls whose names all end in ‘a.’ They, of course, don’t speak any English. They are maybe Russian, but could be from Kazakhstan because they look a little Asian. I have no idea what they are trying to say to me. Roman’s English isn’t too hot either. We mostly communicate through gestures and the occasional sentence or two in Hebrew. He’s excited to have ‘an American friend.’ Like most of the Russians I’ve met, I have only the most basic knowledge of who Roman is as a person. I’ve known him for less than three weeks. He was the first person I met in Israel and when I’m in Tel Aviv he always drops by to get his lady friends to buy sketches off me. Then we party in broken Hebanglish. 

***

Ze’ev wonders what that American asshole is doing here. He remembered how the guy looked at the girl he was with last week when he met them for the first time at his stupid hobo art stand. Ze’ev thinks he dresses like a hobo. I should tell my friend not to let that American hobo into the club. Nobody looked at his girls like that. Ze’ev wasn’t some little punk lookout anymore. He was moving pills and would soon get a piece of Jerusalem beach to milk or bleed. 

Ze’ev knows everyone worthwhile in the Tel Aviv club scene. It’s all he’s been doing for the past four years. He gets comped at most of the low-end joints and a few of the mid-end. He’s still too young for the real hot spots. He doesn’t like the niggers so most of the hip-hop venues are out. All the bouncers know he deals and that he’s affiliated so he gets in quick if the spot is Russian.

He wonders why those girls are flirting with the hobo. It’s because he’s American and they want to get to America by using him. It’s the only explanation. His pictures are stupid and communist.

***

The human time bomb stepped out of the black cab.

As he surveys the scene, he thinks, ‘I’m so close I can smell them. These Israeli girls smell like whores. It’s the scent of my enemy. They all look so young. I don’t see any soldiers. My lieutenant gave me orders, ‘Take from them their young as they do to us.’ In a few years they’ll all be in the army killing my people anyway. One of those girls is giving me a funny look. They know I’m an Arab and I’m wearing a suit that’s too bulky.’

Quick thoughts raced through his head.

He thought about his son. He thought about his people. He thought about the land that they stole from his people. 

Someone pointed at him as he edged near the line.

He tugged the ripcord at his sleeve. 

“Salwa, I miss you,” he whispered to his long dead wife. 

***

I’m chatting up one of the Russian girls when I realized I was out of cigarettes. I told the girl to hold on for a second. I asked Roman if he had one. He told me that he did not. Everyone smokes, but I really want a Noblisse. They all have L&Ms or worse. I didn’t want to stop talking to the Kazak girl, so I asked Roman if I could toss him some loot to buy me a pack. He didn’t pick up the phrase ‘toss him some loot.’ He looked at me like I was crazy. 

I looked at my watch. 11:31pm. I hopped the barrier and am about to cross into the parking lot. I don’t even know if the kiosk is open across the street. I look back to see if the girl is still. . . 

BOOM.

***

Ze’ev is telling his friend about ‘some chick that gave him head on the beach.’ That chick is a 16-year old that he and three friends raped. She is lying unconscious face down in the sand by the water. He tells them he came all over her 

BOOM. 

What the fuck was that he wonders. It came from the street by the club entrance. Of course he knows what it is. This is Israel.

***

Roman is on his cell phone. It’s hot as hell here, even in the night. He looks up and sees a quick bright flash. 

BOOM.

***

I’m on my knees half deaf. 

I hear a terrible ringing in my head, but I can’t hear anything else. There are tiny droplets of blood all over me, but I don’t think any of it’s mine. Dozens of people are screaming, slouched on the ground. Some of them don’t look like much more than bloody bundles of tattered flesh. 

There’s blood on the ground and there’s blood in my hair. I don’t really know what to do. I am slumped down facing what was once the outside of a really popular nightclub. I reach into my pocket to pull out a smoke and I realize it is the fucking cigarettes that just saved my life. 

My first suicide bombing.

Saved by a fucking pack of cigarettes. There are a lot of dead bodies less than twenty feet away from me. I see the lights of the paramedic trucks and hear the sirens through the cluttered tunnel of my inner ear. I see people trying to pick themselves up and help the wounded. I’ve never seen so much real blood. Not in real life anyway. Everything I thought I knew about anything was ripped to shreds in a fiery burst of nails, ball bearings, and sharp things flying through the air. Violence looks so cool until you meet him in person. Then he just looks like the Angel of Death.

I try to stand up. I can’t. I’m a coward in the face of it all. A part of me is thinking:  So that’s what a suicide bombing looks like. And another part of me realizes:  Holy fuck! I almost just got all blown up. 

And another part of me, the part that has my undivided attention, is asking where the fuck my god was tonight. 

ד

I was two hours late to work back at the kibbutz on Sunday morning. I showed up for my duty on Yards and Gardens hung over, un-showered, and looking vacant. My supervisor Mr. Jones saw the blood on my khaki shirt and the terrible look in my eyes. He sent me to go sleep it off. He didn’t ask, nor did I mention. Maybe he knew or maybe he didn’t. I didn’t say anything about the Dolphinarium to anyone. When I woke up the Associated Press had told the world. I crashed out in my cot and slept hard. 

* * *

“Do you still remember the dream?” I ask myself looking into a mirror in the floor of a cave. 

The person I see is older, harder, and more knowledgeable of death.  

The cave has no ceiling that I can make out. I look into a mirror that is a perfect circle on the floor. 

“How did you get here, Zachariah,” I ask myself, “They even took away your true name.”

The cave is an enormous dome with no light or sound. I cannot see much. There is only a feeling of enormity and darkness that surrounds me.

“Death follows you, Zachariah. You whisper hope but are stalked by death.”

I’m talking to myself with a conviction that the person talking back is engaged in a dialogue. Mike Washington is dead and I am stranger because of it. 

“Who is this Zachariah, the warrior and who is really Sebastian the terrified little refugee?”

A whisper emerges from the pool at my feet.

“Zachariah is your noble soul. Sebastian is only a reflection trapped inside a distorted cave.”

***

The next day I climbed Mt. Tabor after Ulpan class as the sun was setting with what seemed like the only person my age on the kibbutz, a young Persian Jew named Hadas Naphtali from the near by village of Ramat Ishai. She claimed to be an anarchist and practitioner of black voodoo magic. We brought a copy of the Tenach from the kibbutz library. We said little as I followed her up the mountain. We watched darkness overtake the valley from the top of the mount. She began to read, her D’s and her tease had me fully under her spell.   

It was an interesting Biblical passage she recounted describing how King Saul consulted with the wizard woman from Ein Dor before his fatal battle on the Gilboa. King Saul had persecuted spiritual people during his Kingdom, so no wonder she was afraid of the King. Although he came to the meeting disguised, the witch recognized him. Saul required her services in order to get a sign about the future he would face in the crucial battle on the next day against the Philistines. King Saul brought back the ghost of the recently dead prophet Samuel, however Samuel did not deliver a positive outcome of the battle. Indeed, King Saul died on the next day.

It was at Ein Dor that King Saul learned of the fate of Israel as well as his own on the next day, which he was powerless to stop. His own lord was silent. In the silence he put fatal trust in the witch of Ein Dor. And now so did I.

Hadas Naphtali, part Persian, part ravishing reads my palm. The valley’s Arab villages and the electric glow of Kibbutz Ein Dor flickered in the twilight. Hadas turns over my hand examining the lines of my palm. Suddenly she bites the thick my right hand below the thumb, bites it hard. I wrench my hand back.

“The spirits watch over you Zachy boy,’ she whispers to me, ‘Take precautions, because nothing for you is totally written. You could be undone on Tisha’bav. They will strike at you on the day you are the most happy.”

My hand still smarts from where she bit me.  

“What’s all that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“That you’re sexy and I like you,” she tells me.

***

I did not mention the bombing to either Hadas or my compatriots of the North American Social Club. But they could see that I had sunken into some kind of depression. I stopped attending Ulpan class and began to drink more heavily. Yuma began to taunt me, or at least that’s how I perceived it. 

Sometime in mid-June a new girl from Ramat Ishai, a small town twenty minutes to the north had moved onto the kibbutz after fighting with her mother about curfew. She hadn’t even unpacked her bags before I took her on a picnic, got drunk in the cornfields, and fucked her in the ass on the floor of her shower. She had black voodoo magic, next thing I knew we were taking nature hikes and she was interpreting dreams.

Danny Callahan and I grew closer. Danny became a sort of older brother to me, following in a long line of slightly older men. After awhile we dropped out of the North American Social Club altogether to spend time with our respectively cute native flings. After a day in the yards we often sat on our own porch watching Debriyiah and sipping from big bottles of frosty cold Coke. I always snared a few liters whenever I ventured off the kibbutz. We’d pontificate about these wonderful desert women. He was set to marry one this time next year. 

Danny was teaching me to free style, to rap off the top of my head. I was always something of a make shift romantic poet and Danny told me this would be yet another tool I might use to communicate my message. I had sense shared with him both my past and my subversive ideals. Back in LA Danny had been a regular at open mikes in various hip clubs. In America I would have laughed at this, but this was the Middle East. You clung to what you were before on some gut level. He gave me my first hip-hop CD by out outfit called LATYRX.

I told Danny more about my revolution. 

He nodded approvingly at most of it and wished me luck as many slightly older men had done before him. He assured me that I’d never be out of work here.  Something was always broken or exploding or burning down. 

We rarely talked about the Palestinians, what they wanted or what should be done about them. Danny told me he thought that they had more right to this land that he or I did. After all, they had nowhere else to go. Their only fallback position was death and defeat. 

Danny wasn’t a Jew at all, but had claimed his grandmother was one to get an immigration VISA. He’d be off to the Army in September once he completed the Ulpan program.  He was 26, which put him at the age for active service. I had neither renewed my soon-to-expire tourist visa nor made any real strides toward official Alleya. Even Johnny Yuma had gotten his Todat Zhoot, which entitled him to some cash and subsidies from the government. 

Danny told me that even though I was a more bonified Jew with my candle lighting rituals and my intermittent prayers, I would be looking at three years service in the Defense forces.  It wasn’t even theoretically legal for a 17-year old to be bopping about Israel with no guide or family, but no one seemed to ever call me on this. My freedom of movement would be further curtailed with registration.

Mr. Jones, my foreman in Yards and Gardens told me to catch the next flight out of here. 

“Go back to Brooklyn, kid. This whole place is sinking in the heat of violence not too long in the future to be swallowed by the sands.” 

I was getting a lot of advice about my future. Through it all Danny remained neutral. In his cool, collected cold stoner way, he said that I should take all the time I needed to make a decision. He urged me to: 

“Flee the shelter of this stupid kibbutz and see more of the country. Better now than when they stick you with a rifle to defend it.”

It was all good advice. Eventually I had to take some of it.              

ה

Hadas Naphtali drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney as such trite clichés go. Her English grew worse the more she drank and she used Farsi curses after every fourth word. She was some cross between a schoolgirl and a punk, a Persian or Jew depending on what she had to do after you took her clothes off. This little badass riot girl had gotten me into trouble before. 

Moaglie a kibbutz brat arse had some long-standing territorial claim on her. I was encroaching. 

He was her ex boyfriend and wanted to beat me senseless when Johnny Yuma informed on me, buddying up to him to get better food and watch HBO with air conditioning. The scum fucker Yuma told him that Hadas was sweet on me. That lip-flapping, eluding bastard sent the jungle boy after me. The little ape threw a brick at my head and chased me with a shovel across the field into the village of Debriyiah. The kid was huge. Some villagers let me hide in their little mosque. 

I took this violent outburst of jealousy and its consequences as a sign to move after somebody turned my whole room inside out. One night I threw a brick through the jungle boy’s window and lit off a Molotov cocktail on his porch. ‘Us bitches are nothing but trouble,’ Hadas told me giggling after the fact. 

Bruriya told me to pack my bags and ‘get gone.’ She refunded a couple hundred sheks from the Ulpan and washed her hands of me. The best way was to keep it internal and banish me before me or the jungle boy tried to kill each other. 

I caught the next bus to Tel Aviv. I hadn’t been there since the bombing. I wasn’t cut out for collective living anyway. I had the phone numbers of my roommate, the wild witch Hadas and Mr. Jones if I ever needed places to crash. 

The mood in Tel Aviv had grown darker. 

The central bus station of Tel Aviv was still a maze of commerce and a madhouse failure in human trafficking. It was Grand Central Station with neither grandeur, elegance nor any discernable organization. It was like the Port Authority with five minutes to live. Increased security and soldiers swarmed the area.  ID and random bag checks were done on everyone coming or going. Arab Israelis and Yemenite or Moroccan Jews may as well have never put the identity cards back in their pockets. It was a kind of muted hysteria, not as edgy as being terrorized, but prepared to jump on anyone who looked suspicious. People were colder than normal. Everyone was more jumpy, more likely to curse out strangers and cut lines. 

Nothing had really changed except me. I kept my eyes peeled for bag bombs and racially profiled out my ass. I took a Sheroort, a mini-van cab, from the bus station to Jerusalem Beach. I always seemed to wind up here. It was open and safe. 

I dropped my black rucksack and set up my art stand from the huge plywood piece near the foot de-sander sprinklers. It air-dried in about five minutes and so did I. The heat was something ridiculous Celsius. I was soaked through and through. I affixed a large white tablecloth that I had expropriated from the kibbutz to the board and then taped my twenty some odd sketches to it. I dropped a handful of new Israeli shekels on my turquoise, bandana-wrapped archive sketchbook. I wedged a sign that some girl had made for me next to it, which said OMANOOT MAQHAR, ‘Resistance Art’ in Hebrew. 

With my makeshift art stand up and running, I sat in the shade and counted out my remaining shekels.  I only had 280 left. I had few options for living free or cheap. The most rundown hostels cost 40-plus a night and we’re talking places you would only bring hookers to. I had to get some money and a roof over my head fast. 

Squatting wasn’t really an option because of the heat and the junkies.  There was not really a squatter movement here in Israel, that is, unless you counted the several million Palestinians as a kind of squatter community, squatting their own homes now deemed illegal. The irony of this was not lost upon me. Only junkies in bombed out shit holes didn’t pay rent. They were constantly evicted. I didn’t want to live in that kind of situation. 

The boardwalk was empty because of the heat. A small girl came up to me with her mother and then ran off quickly. They only buy my sketches at night when they’re drunk. On a Thursday or a Friday, it would get busy and I could do okay. Or at least that was what it was like when I was coming down just for weekends.They can’t seem to get an American selling political art here. They also really can’t get their heads around a New Yorker immigrating here. They spend more time trying to talk me out of moving to Israel than buying art. Only girls and tourists buy anything for more than ten NIS. They buy what hangs on the board sometimes quite inspired my one of my scribbles. I don’t put the time into these that I did in London. A lot of them are photocopies of my archive colored in with pencils and sharpies. 

No wonder they thought I was crazy. Whatever AIPAC and the big US Jew lobby was doing, it worked. Israel was the single largest recipient of US aid on the planet. What it offered in intelligence or just about anything seemed too negligible for the amount of US dollars it received each year. These are the subjects of lofty and opinionated books, but Israel seemed more like an outpost than a colony. Its claims toward both democracy and Westernness were highly exaggerated. Things were neither particularly Western nor Democratic in the Holy Land. 

Arab rhetoricians liked to compare the ‘Zionist entity’ to the crusader state during the Middle Ages. That was weak, too. Israel was clearly quite capable of fighting off joint amalgamations of Arab armies prior to the serious military aid that didn’t get started in earnest until after the war in 1956. The massive evangelical Christian support for Israel was geared to their Bible book of Revelations, based upon wishful thinking that the Jewish return would precede the end of days. The Evangelicals were thrilled about us coming home. The sooner we all returned home and were slaughtered, the sooner Jesus would return. 

This little outpost of 8 million people was also like a large ghetto in the sands. This outpost oasis would always be armed and walled and holding out for reinforcements, which were never coming. The hundreds of millions of dollars in gun money and the immigrant waves of several thousand a year couldn’t outgun or out breed the Palestinian will for their nation. We’d built our ghetto on top of someone else’s. If it had been ours some thousands of years ago, that didn’t matter on the Arab street. They weren’t going anywhere and neither were we.

That an American artist would come here to draw was neither logical nor in line with the Israelite Dream. You did your army time and then moved on to New York via Bali or Europe if your finances allowed. If you got to America you didn’t come back unless you came back rich. The Russians were just biding time. Their Zionist yearnings were in an entirely different language. If things had been shit for Jews in Russia, they were shit here too. Only Brighton Beach was paved in gold. For the Israeli kids it was in Williamsburg or DUMBO where these golden streets were to be found. They all just wanted out of here. They felt the walls beginning to chip. 

Draft dodging wasn’t just on the rise; it was a supported subculture. These Refuseniks, as they were called claimed insanity, or pacifism, or whatever they could. Most went to prison or fled the country. The ones who stayed were ruined. Doors were closed to them not only for vital state monies for healthcare and school, but also for thousands of upper middle class jobs. You were marked as a traitor if you didn’t join the IDF because the whole outpost relied on the strength and violence of its young to hold the fort. 

The religious, or Dosiim as they were called derogatorily by my Russian friends, were exempt from the army and taxes too. Their role was to keep the ‘Jewish character’ together. maintain Jewish identity. They voted as a block and their SHAS party was always needed for any government coalition. This created a tremendous amount of religious baggage that was foisted upon the secular Jewish state. It impacted nearly every aspect of Israeli life. You couldn’t get married if you weren’t Jewish. You had to fly to Cyprus to consummate a marriage that was not halachically approved. 

Things were locked down on Shabos. Not everything, but just about everything outside of Tel Aviv. Russians and Arabs ran their stores and clubs, but the national bus and train lines went down for 24 hours. You couldn’t find too many restaurants with pepperoni pizza. Technically you couldn’t have pigs on the territory of Israel but Russians got around it with elevated sties. There were ways around everything, but the real result was divisions that had been growing in Israel since the mass waves of Sephardic Jews began showing up in the 50’s fleeing pogroms in Arab countries after the first two wars had gone so badly. 

The Mizrahiim, as they were derogatively called by the Ashkenazim, the white European Israelis, looked like Arabs, spoke and thought in Arabic, ate foods like Arabs and to an outsider were indistinguishable culturally from Arabs. The Jews and Muslims had done well enough together for about 1600 years, far better than Jews had done living in Christian Europe. Their status as a “People of the Book” had protected them under the Islamic Shari’ah Law for hundreds of years. There was intermarriage as well as vast cultural exchange as Jews had been integrated throughout the Caliphates. This ended quite abruptly in 1948. Beat enough war drums and shed enough blood and now less than fifty years later, the Jews and Muslims will swear they have been enemies since creation.

The Mizrahiim demographically are quite diverse but the largest contingents are the Jews from Yemen and Morocco. For decades the racial and cultural tensions drove the first schisms within the Jewish state. The constant state of war, however never allowed these differences to be politically dangerous. There had been a Black Panther Party of Israel in the 1970’s, which fought discrimination. Eventually they were arrested or co-opted or forgotten about or ignored. When there’s a war every ten years and the survival of the state always seems to hang in the balance, these internal contradictions are swept under the great wool rug. Then came huge waves of Ethiopian Jews in the 70’s and there was a new other, one more racially pronounced and completely unaccustomed to living in a quasi-developed, industrial country. But better to be a nigger in the outpost than a nigger in a war zone. Ethiopia went up in the flames of civil war and the 20,000 odd Ethiopian Jews were lifted out and naturalized in Israel. They belonged to two great African tribes that had been practicing Judaism for over 2,000 years and were widely believed to be the lost tribe of Dan. My Russian friends called them the Cosiim, which meant Blacks, but might as well have meant niggers. The Russians seemed to never play nice with Ethiopians. There were fights in the ghettos, fights in the schools, fights in the army, and fights in the clubs. I almost got the shit kicked out of me in front of Abulafiah trying to break up a Russian-Ethiopian fisticuff right after I first arrived.

The Russian flood began in 1989 when the wall came down and surged by the early nineties.  Any Russian with even the most flimsy claim to being the grandchild of a Jew came in swarms. All over the former Soviet Union as former party and KGB operators grabbed up turf, men and weapons, the fall of communism meant a mass exodus of a million so-called Russian Jews to Israel. Fleeing poverty, repression and anarchy, these Russians were called Barbarians by just about every other marginalized group as they packed ghettos all over the outpost to capacity right next to Sephardic, Ethiopian, and lower class Ashkenazi groups like the Romanians. The adjustment to this new immigration was still underway. My closest friends here, like the now exploded and dead Roman, were the children of this new wave. They spoke English better than they spoke Hebrew because they tuned into MTV and VH1 everyday having grown up cold-war, capitalist-culture deprived. 

There was another very important demographic in our outpost. They were harder to count because they had so many kids they didn’t always report. They had their own ways and were as insular as they could be. A Tagliit Birth Right Israel guide would call them the Arab Israelis; but that was a fiction for tourists not attuned to demographics or statecraft. There are easily a million Arab Israelis or Palestinians living in Israel proper. They are the ones who never left. Some of them were Christians, like the inhabitants of the town of Nazareth and Acho. Many were not. No one wanted to call them Palestinians, but that’s what they called themselves. I had met a few on the tiyeled. They went out in packs because it was safer that way. They didn’t have to join the army, but they benefited by staying. They were hated by everyone else and suspected as a fifth column in this latest Intifada. 

There were two more subgroups of the Arab-Israelis with whom I had no contact: the Druze and the Bedui. You had to count them separately because even though they were Arab they had always sided with the Israeli state despite any silly claims at ethnic loyalties. The Bedouin were Sunni Muslim like the Palestinians, but their nomadic desert nature put them quite at odds with every Arab regime in the region. They were concentrated largely in settlements all over the Negev and periodically joined the army as trackers. They were very poor and were also well integrated into southern crime and smuggling out of Egypt. I hoped to meet one eventually. I’d never been south of Judea. The Druze were more ambiguous still because they practiced a highly secretive religion something like Hinduism and Islam mixed together. They lived in little village citadels in the north in Lebanon and the Galilee. They were active supporters of the Jewish state and many sent their children to the IDF. I was told that even if I did meet a Druze, they’d never tell me anything about their religion. They kept to the hills and to their own ways clandestino.  

So our little outpost of 8 million souls, 11 if one counted Palestinians in the territories, had quite enough internal fighting simmering to add to the twenty-plus nations in the region that continued to swear to kill us, not to mention the two million Palestinians in the occupied territories.  There were internal contradictions of the inner city and the ghettos. I saw them clearly on the tiyeled. I drew pictures about them and about the need for unity even with the Palestinians at war with us. It was becoming obvious to me that this internal fighting would do in our outpost far sooner than some Arab army could. All this building hatred was exploding around us three or four times a week. A bus here, a bar there. Sometimes it was just a child with a Kalashnikov opening up on people in a market. The suicide bombing campaign was low intensity and high volume. There were never more than twenty fatalities per attack, but it was taking its toll. The Israelis would strike back with ‘smart bombs’ and checkpoints and road closures, but it stopped nothing. This thing was just getting started. 

Anya was the blondinit-streaked, raven-haired Russian girl that I was fooling around with from the town of Pardes Hana. She told me that it all started when Ariel Sharon and a huge armed escort made their way to the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock sits and demanded access to pray. A violent and terrifying fitna erupted within twenty minutes of the Prime Minister’s initial visit. It was this that had started the first Intifada. It must have begun less than a month since I first had visited in 2000. Now, nine months later, the body count was in the thousands with daily retaliations. It was the bomber belt versus the F-15 fighter with their laser-guided rocket smart bombs that always knocked out the terrorists and nine families living near them. It was blood for blood and bullet for bullet, a test of wills as to who possessed the constitution hold the outpost.        

I was working late on a Thursday when I saw something unusually gangster. Two carloads of Palestinians were careening down the highway that runs alongside the tiyeled at over 70 mph. They were each waving four huge red flags with the crescent of Islam upon them. Thirty Israeli police cars were pursuing them with sirens wailing. It was high-speed chase over what might have just been a first amendment question at a high speed, but was getting blown up into something more significant. It was indeed quite gangster so see these Arab bandits tearing down the highway repping their colors. They’d be very lucky if the Israelis didn’t open fire on them. I hoped to not see the end of it. It was really brave, really noble, more of a statement than exploding yourself in a club full of uninvolved high school kids. But that was naïve. Everyone was involved. 

One of the Israeli squad cars pulled off a pit maneuver on the rear vehicle and it spun out of control into a concrete barrier and flipped. The lead car took off out of site heading south toward the Dan Hotel and District Yaffo. A crowd gathered around the vehicle and the police took positions with their pistols drawn. Some fat American tourists with handheld video cameras turned their attention from the three-card Monte stands to ‘the terrorists.’ A group of Russian youth swarmed the site, but not too close in case the people in the overturned car ‘exploded’ themselves. 

A young Arab man crawled out one of the broken windows. He dragged his buddy with him. The police started screaming in Hebrew for him to put his arms in the air. A policeman fired in the air. I think you only fire in the air in third world countries. The young Arab rebel’s hands and shirt were all bloodied up. He hadn’t let go of the flag. 

There were two more guys in the back who were pretty fucked up because they hadn’t been wearing seat belts. The paramedics were arriving on the scene as well as a few more cop cars. A loud speaker was telling everyone in Hebrew and English to get back in case the car was booby-trapped. Maybe it was because the fat Americans were filming. Maybe it was because he hated the sound of Hebrew. Maybe it was because English is the Modern Greek, the bloodied Arab rebel bellowed, 

“FreEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEdom!” 

He did not bellow it very long. Some of the gawking Russian kids overran the security cordon and started kicking his face in. They tore him and his friend in the front seat apart. 

The police beat the Russians back with riot sticks and pepper spray. Peace was eventually restored. Four young Arabs were in cuffs. Only one of them was conscious. The police called some ambulances for the four kids who couldn’t really have been said to have been doing much more than speeding with the pride of nation.

ו 

I had stayed in a number of questionable places while I was a weekend warrior.  I’d slept in the kind of hotel rooms that you pay for by the hour and where small roaches creep up the bathroom walls out cracks in the ceiling and floor. Places where it sounds like someone’s raping then eviscerating a hooker in the next room. Grunts through paper-thin walls, and bed boards banging like a carnal metronome. Sometimes I’d sleep on Jerusalem Beach under one of the many wooden pergolas built on the sands. Occasionally I’d get offered a couch in a female or gay man’s never-seemed-to-be-air-conditioned apartment. I’d always wake up in my own sweat feeling hung over stinking of cheap vodka when I was lucky with a broad whose name ended with an ‘A.’ 

The place I’m at tonight is kind of swank and swingin.’ This happens when my morals are loose. 

The weekend warrior tale had alternative endings. The first was called the missionary. I’d split a bottle of vodka with a client or two and sit on the beach recounting my yarn of exile. We’d palaver on the boardwalk over a twenty-shekel bottle of still water chased with cola or cherry juice about how I came to this place and what was across the sea in that city they all seemed so eager to run toward. That was missionary work. I had worked this tale so many times that it came out like a sermon.  My congregants always spent more to purchase a picture after the homily was delivered than they would have before. They’d often give me a number to get fed or get fucked or have a placed to sleep for the night that was not sand or pavement. 

Far more often than the missionary came the genie in the bottle. The small peace I had seen through observing shabbos with the Golder’s Green Jews was drowned in the even greater peace of drinking, fucking, smoking and fighting. I was back to the lifestyle I led prior to my internment in the series of hospitals and the Family School. The rapes and the robberies were gone, but in all other ways it was come-on-in-and-sin. I smoked opium and hash. I drank vodka alone and with my congregation. 

My Russian compatriots yearned for New York Americana and I delivered it. I was a symbol of the city they hoped every night that they might still get to grow up in. So their girls swallowed my cock and fucked me even when I couldn’t speak a word of their language. Anya spoke a sort of broken half-English. Everything was in the future tense and every sentence included a couple of Russian words, a couple of Hebrew ones and the curse word blat, which means bitch-fuck-shit-cunt. These street Russians use it like a comma. 

Anya doesn’t live in Tel Aviv. She lives in Pardes Hanna on the road to Haifa. She’s down here on the tiyeled more than I am for her work. She never says what kind of work. One of the many Dimitri’s tells me she is a ‘medical agent.’ These Russians roll really deep, like twenty people whose names I’m not expected to keep track of. Mostly they sit on the boardwalk getting drunk all weekend. The Russians post up where I sell across from the Opera Towers so now I’m part of the gang. 

The only time I recall paying for a hotel by the hour was when I banged out Anya in a roach motel with no sheets. We’d drunk so much still water that it was hard to stand. We fucked frantically. I clenched her burgundy blonde hair as I sucked on her C-plus tits thrust after thrust. 

The night she attempted to tell me about how Ariel Sharon started the second Intifada, I realized it would be nice to take her to dinner. Or at least have a picnic with a scenic view. Some figs and cheap white wine. Some crackers and some cheese. I don’t really want these girls to think I’m some dark fuck that has no romance in him. 

I guess everyone likes an artist and I know I am playing a part in all these young girls’ fantasies. I’m that hero in the night who’s gonna whisper it’s all gonna get better one day after I tell them a good story. Never mind my art, it’s all in the epic sincerity of my various yarns. I give these girls something to believe in. I give them some hope that life is like is a mission and not just a journey in the darkness. I mean some girls fuck me just because I’m from New York, but I’d like to think that Anya could understand every fourteenth word I say. Then I can be a kid again and do the cute courtship type stuff, maybe write her a poem or something. It washes over me and recedes just as fast. My emotions would be wasted on her. It would add a sense of development to a relationship that has been taken as far as it can or should be. 

***

I found a free place to live after three days in Tel Aviv.

I was selling art, as I generally do when money and options run out. A lanky and dark- complexioned Ashkenazi and a jacked-up Russian with spiked hair approached me. Their names were Gilead and the Greek respectively. The Russian kid called the Greek understood more than he could communicate so he let Gilead do the talking.  Gilead seemed something of a slimy ass to me. They were both aimless street kids. Gilead told me there was place called Bet Ashanti where I could get three meals and a bed for free just by being homeless and underage. They said it was clean and relatively safe. I was sold. 

I accompanied them all the way down past the Dolphinarium and the drummers of the Tiki Beach beyond the Dan Hotel to the crossroads of Tel Aviv and Yaffo into a neighborhood named Florentine. At least the Bet Ashanti was clean. It looked like an urban kibbutz behind the Dan Hotel across from a rundown parking lot. There were twin wooden bunkhouses and a huge wooden porch cluttered with twenty boys and girls about my age on wooden tables and chairs. The rec room had computers and couches and a pregnant 15-year old Yemeni. There was something about it that was very Mary Poppins, but in reality it was more like Lord of the Flies. The older battle-axe of a woman who was on duty looked like she had punched a few of these kids out. My new housemates were sizing up what I had to steal even before I put my bag down. Most of them introduced themselves, but I can’t ever catch names when I meet more than ten new people at a time. 

It just so happened to be sundown on Friday. We gathered around a huge table in the rec room to eat a Shabbos dinner, light some candles and sing the prayers. There were forty kids in all. The girls had their own apartment up the street. They gave me a locker without a lock and bottom bunk in large room full of kids that stayed in and out of juvee. Greek told me to hold down anything I had of value. I was one of only two or three Ashkenazim in the lot. They told me not to do drugs and to come home by midnight. They said I could stay here until I got on my feet. 

I like ‘food on the free,’ so I was pretty sold.  If it was going to get bad I’d roll with the punches like always.

ז

It was getting about as hot as I’m told it gets. Bet Ashanti was keeping food in my belly and providing me a cot near a fan. If things went missing at least they didn’t go missing with a knife to my throat. My CD player, my belt, and some loose shekels all seemed to disappear down the black hole of the closet. My inner Jewish accountant said the meals and cot were worth it and to ride it out a few more weeks.  It was just so hot.

Those weeks in June of 2001 were killer. There were more bus bombings, more shootings, more reprisals, and more death on public transit. The Europeans were condemning the Israelis because they kept taking out little kids in their smart bomb attacks. Americans condemned the terrorists while doing nothing more than keeping the money spigot flowing. 

I hustled my art seven days a week in front of the Opera Towers, on the tiyeled and on the beaches. I was selling my art faster than I could restock. I was turning out sketches on demand. It was hotter and hotter by day and the Zachariah show going strong.

I made a day trip to Pardes Hanna to bring Anya flowers against my better judgment. She was a dead ringer for Izzy Vitz’s Lithuanian-Japanese ex Jackie Niche back in New York, but with bigger tits. She wasn’t just a ‘leisure agent.’ She was also an emergency medical technician for the Sheroot Leumi, which was a sort of do-community-service-from-home-to-stay-out-of-the-army jump off for females and the patriotic religious. 

This was hardly a leap into monogamy. She didn’t seem to want more of me than I could give. Anya didn’t speak enough English to get deep about it, but she’d bat her eyes and ask me to take her to New York one day soon. This giving her flowers thing was a madhouse idea after a month of dirty drunk mouth-to-ass sex. Some nights we sat on the boardwalk with on the piles of stacked up beach chairs. Whenever I was up her way we promptly fucked all over her ever-absent mommy’s house. Made love rather, if I hadn’t been drinking.

I hadn’t kissed a girl sober in a very long time. Not Daphne Collins or the other one in England, not Hadas and certainly rarely ever Anya.  In less than a week she had fallen for me. So I feigned some lovemaking, some ‘slow fucking’ as Izzy once had called it. I came three times that first night. On her breasts and in her mouth and in a condom. I moaned ‘suck my dick’ and some dirty-talk language getting head in the big steel bathtub. The girl lay with me in the dark at her mother’s small apartment in Pardes Hana and she begged me to take her to New York once her time in the national services was completed. She showed me a pistol and a ton of ammunition her ex had stolen for her. 

She had really great breasts. I must be a titty man because I really need those things huge to get off. I’m socialized like that I suppose. And if I’m the American pretending to be an Israeli, she was certainly doing a bang-up job working to not be from here. She’d come here from Karaganda by way of Taskent in 1990. Often she practiced reducing her accent to nothing with the TV and mail order accent-reduction tapes. She wasn’t Russian but wanted to model there. She was cute enough, but she didn’t have the starvation frame. She’s a curvy little former Soviet. In America you’d call her a ‘Russian.’ Here too, maybe, but in reality she was half Kazakh, half Uzbek. Unlikely any part Jew.   

I told Bet Ashanti’s madam that I was meeting an uncle in Haifa for the weekend. I hitchhiked up to Pardes Hana to get with Anya instead. It seemed she had quite a few boyfriends bopping around to stare me down, but that didn’t stop us from kissing and fucking all night and whispering things about running off country. We filled her ashtray with three packs of butts and I got so caught up in the moment that I failed to see how quick this girly had taken to me.

She was my comfort girl and I was her golden ticket out of Dodge City.         

***

I met people really quickly and developed intense relationships in my line of work. 

You take a reasonably intelligent person and they see this big art stand with pictures filled up with Commie imagery, carnal orgiastic renditions, biblical allegories, and current events. You break into some topic a picture you like alludes to, only to meet a young kid who defies every idea you have about Americans. That sort of explains how I was getting down. 

I took a whole lot more numbers than I called. Numbers to get fed, to get fucked, to ‘finish a good conversation,’ and even offers to take the Zachariah Artstein show on the road to quaint and quieter inner country locals like in Ashdod and Herzaliya. There were also young kids my own age that wanted me to paint murals in their bedrooms and rap for their friends. 

I never did as well selling as when I worked the tiyeled. It was July 4^th and the masses were out in force. Bands played salsa music on small bandstands set up on the boardwalk. Street hustlers worked games of Three Card Monty. Teenage girls looking for a quick summer buck sold all sorts of glowing toys to small children passing by as little boys hustled couples with flowers and Polaroid pictures. There was a whole culture of street hustlers that worked the tiyeled. I was one of them. I had been in Tel Aviv about a month since leaving the Ein Dor kibbutz and moving to Bet Ashanti, home for runaway teens. I sold my art every night. Five shekels here, twenty shekels there. It was just enough to eke out a desperately thin existence on ice cold mayiim, crunchy falafel, Zaatar cakes and Noblisse cigarettes. 

My new business partner, the half Russian boy named Ditri Massaud, would watch the stand as I worked the crowd. I mingled in and out of the great crowds shouting in Hebrew, 

“Bo tista-clu al omanute sha-li!” or “Come look at my art!”

Ditri was twice my size and had lived in the desert town of Be’er Sheva. He had borrowed the equivalent of nearly a thousand dollars from the local Romanian mob to finance and stock his stall in the market. The enterprise had been less than successful and he had fled to Tel Aviv to avoid the consequences of owing dangerous people too much money. It was small country so they’d catch him eventually. He didn’t speak English so that our communication in my garbled Hebrew was limited, to say the least. His English was limited to “Yes,” “No” and “You are friend of Ditri”. 

Ditri owned two pairs of clothing. He slept in the sand under one of the many beach pergolas. He was barred from Bet Ashanti for a reason that was never really explained to me. Greek mentioned that he was violent and crazy. Ditri was a bulky kid with curly blond hair and Mongoloid features. He was very loyal. Whenever someone tried to steal from our collection plate as the gangs of arsim often did, Ditri would chase then down and clobber them something awful. Maybe he is really violent, but it all works to my advantage. 

During the heat of the day we shared a bottle of Coke and watched the waves crash gently on the beach.  We spaced out slightly as a result of the heat exhaustion. I don’t know if I would call Ditri my friend, for I know precious little about him, but he serves nicely in our new symbiotic relationship as street hustlers. 

Our best customers are the American and English tourists vacationing in Israel for the summer. That’s because ‘the ZA show’ works best when your English is good. Most of them stay in Jerusalem, hyped up on some propaganda-induced spiritual experience. Jerusalem is the brainwashing capital of the world as far as I am concerned. I haven’t even stepped foot in it since I’d arrived back in the country. Secular Jews visiting for a week always run into some Dos or Hasid who will give them a crash course in the workings of the Old Testament and get them hooked. 

The religious Jews, the Dosim and Hasidim, are on the national dole.  These two groups are more offensive than the other groups of religious Jews because of their penchant for rock throwing and religious rioting. They neither pay taxes nor serve in the IDF. Most importantly, they never buy art. They don’t even stop to look. It’s good they don’t look because the Tetranomogram, the ‘Yod Hei Vav Hei’ gets incorporated quite bit and they’d flip shit over that.  

Israelis don’t have any true need for a thing like street art. 

It’s not that they don’t like art, but they really need some persuading to buy it from a street vendor. To make a living from a street stand here, one has to know how to work the crowds, create a market, and deliver a desirable product. This country has little time for charity cases, which is what I get perceived as most of the time. 

My best sales pitch is to young girls who are fascinated with the American expatriate who loves a country no one seems to want to live in. Maybe that is a misinterpretation on my part. It just seems that each Israeli I talk to dreams of living in New York. While many people stop to examine our goods, the bulk of our money comes from the tourists and from the regulars. A regular is someone who lives or works by the tiyeled and will drop money anytime they see us out. To survive in this game you need your regulars.

Svetlana Tchaadaev is perfect example of a regular. She’s an American-educated Russian trust-fund baby, which is just a code word for her daddy being a Russian mobster-robber baron. Ms. Tchaadaev carries on romantic flings with the artists and bohemians of the Tel Aviv subculture. Despite the fact that she is independently wealthy, she works as a flyer girl for Mike’s Blues Bar just up the beach. I’d been doing the same thing for Mike’s the night the Pasha club blew up. 

Svetlana normally shares her beers and meals with me and  always buys a picture. We try to steal yellow beach chairs from the lock up on Jerusalem Beach before they are chained together for the night.  She sits with me and helps me in the hustle. She is shady as hell. Ditri never seems to like her. She always tries to get me to sell her my passport.

There are other far less problematic regulars, like curly, blonde-haired Ethiopian Lina, who even though she was born in village without running water or electricity seems more Americanized and hip in fashion and sensibility then most Ashkenazi Israelis. Abby and Rachel are the ‘two birds’ from Golder’s Green, students of Rabbi Akiva Tatz. They bring young men from Jerusalem to meet with me to spar on issues of Talmud and religion. These are the people that keep Ditri and me in water, meal money and smokes. I am the sale-man and he is the strongman. It is like any Russian business except in ours the salesman gets to call the shots.  

Although I consider myself a Resistance Artist, the truth is I am barely making ends meet. On a terrific evening, generally a Friday or Saturday, I might bring in close to 200 shekels, the equivalent of fifty dollars. The money I save is largely earmarked to take my girl Anya out to dinner when she comes into the city to visit me. You might say I am becoming like a normal person. Bit by bit by bit, less like street trash. Anything left over is earmarked toward pens, sketchpads, vodka, ice-cold mayiim and Noblisse cigarettes. 

It is necessary to keep yourself looking presentable when you street hustle. You can’t have the buyers think that you are begging for the money. It is important to communicate that you are a skilled artisan, a poor and hungry skilled artisan, but nonetheless incredibly talented. When I feel humorous I compare my art to Van Gogh and Picasso when they traded paintings for food. I convince my customers they are making a serious investment and that one day these sketches I make will be worth a small fortune on the art market when I cut off my ear for a woman or go out against fascism in a hail of bullets.

My art stock consists of three types: political cartoons, dream-based consignment pieces and commissions. 

My favorite works are the political cartoons surrealistically drawn with black Uniball pens on 8 ½ by 11 paper. Normally they start with a cartoon version of myself blowing away the ‘pigs and capitalist traitors of the Iron heel.’ Then with that image somewhere in the page I drop in any number of red flag hammer and sickles, bare-naked women engaged in carnality or war or both. Then with a slightly finer pen, normally a Uniball Fine Point, I stencil in the message of the day, which could be anything really, but is normally anti-war, anti-state, anti-religious and Israeli issue themed. Finally, I write bold needlessly proactive messages. The phrases are always in English, but sometimes in a, shall we say artistic, rendition of the phrases in Hebrew, Russian, or Arabic. 

There is little color in any of my work and the sketches take on a variety of subjects, but generally they were quite dark and violent in their depictions of Israeli or American social ills. Lots of ‘Join or Die’ type themes with the 14 big Israeli ethnic groups. If color does get used its either black or red Sharpie fill-ins, highlighter color-ins of people’s eyes, or gold etched inlay on edges to simulate shadow.

The lowest I go on these pieces is 20 Shek a pop, although Ditri made a bunch of Photostat copies one day from my archive sketch book, and I loosely colored a few in. These we sell for just 10 Shek, or a comparable offered price, because frankly, a photocopy costs Ditri only 10 Agarot to bang off. 

My dream-based work is all in pencil on thicker matte paper far larger in size. These sketches are from the vivid dreams I used to have about Mike Washington and the Pale City. The gun battles against the screaming Zombie hordes, the underground railroad, the flying machines, the redheaded girl, the Old Man and his game. All of these take at least a day to render. Since traffic is so slow during daylight, I fashion most of these pieces then. 

These sell almost right away for 100 Sheks or more. I can crack out the political stuff on demand, but these take longer as I have to remember them.  Most of the customers fixate on the controversial statements of the political work. It takes awhile, an hour even of conversation before a customer turns their attention to the dream pieces. As long as it was a good conversation and the offer price exceeds 100, I never haggle over their sale. 

I have other artists work too. The twenty odd pieces always on display are generally half mine and half consigned stock. The consigned pieces are from a variety of young Israeli artists who admire my tenacity at salesmanship and are curious to see what prices their work might fetch on the open market in Israel. They were generous enough to let me keep 30% of the sale, for they could see I was destitute. Most of them go to art school in Haifa and my trade inspires them of the future they hope for in Williamsburg and DUMBO once their Sheroot Lummi commitments are finished. Just under half my earnings come from selling the Israeli’s their own children’s art. By the end of June I was representing over twelve Israeli artists, one Ethiopian, three Arabs, two Russians, three Mizrahi, two Ashkenazim, and one dos, the derogatory word for the religious now added to my vernacular.  

The commissions are where my living truly comes from. Most of the times it is a goods-for-services swap situation. I paint a small mural for a haircut or charcoal a portrait for a bath when I am hitchhiking about the Galilee. I am just ‘eeking out a very base existence, but Bet Ashanti put a roof over my head and two meals a day in my belly.

The staff there thinks that I work as an overnight busboy; otherwise, I’d have to be in by midnight. Because the other kids are such freeloaders they appreciate me working and let me slide. My entire cycle has been reversed. It’s too hot to do anything during the day and I can’t stand the sun anyway. 

I sleep on the bottom bunk in one of the two boy’s rooms along with about twelve other kids. Most of them don’t speak too much English. Those that do hold day jobs and I rarely see them.

Bet Ashanti is a place for runaways, misfits and ghetto trash. It has been associated with a series of scandals over the years involving, but not limited to accusations of drug dealing on behalf of the residents, accusations of child molestation on behalf of the residents, high rates of Army desertion on behalf of the residents upon reaching age 18, and it had recently been in the papers when its owner and founder was accused of raping a 17 year-old female resident. That most of the boys are in street gangs, that no one goes to school, and that the mayor of Tel Aviv was under some public pressure to shut the operation down, nothing seemed any worse here than say, sleeping on a street while hungry.     

As far as I can tell there are a lot of rules, but only three that truly matter. The first is no substance abuse, at least not on the premises. No drugs or drinking anywhere near Bet Ashanti. But these kids are all drug addicts and smoke hash all day on the beach. The second rule is no fighting. No one is allowed to fight anywhere near the Shanti House. But that’s also a stupid rule for kids who are members of street gangs and all manner of shady shit. I watched the Greek break some guy’s jaw in a prizefight he took me to a day ago. The last rule is no stealing. People are not allowed to take stuff belonging to Bet Ashanti or the kids that live there. One would think these rules sort of go without saying, but in fact there is seldom a time when these kids aren’t doing drugs, fighting, and stealing. 

By evening I have only seen a few of my regulars. Greek, the Russian kid from Bet Ashanti had dropped by to show me his new girlfriend. Svetlana had passed by on a flyer run. There were other familiar faces, but no regulars. It is very cool for an evening in mid-July. Business has been good and the collection pot is up to about 90 shekels. I had made an additional 100 shekels yesterday that I hadn’t gotten to blow yet on one of my girls and the still water. The colorful paper notes were tucked neatly in my billfold. New Israeli shekels, the good old ‘NIS’ currency looks like Monopoly money to me. 

***

The evening is coming to a close. The bands have stopped playing and the crowd has thinned out to a trickle. Drunken revelers are dancing in the moonlight. There is a fight going on across the street. As it nears 2 am, I begin to consider closing up shop. I have close to 150 shekels in my pocket, a small comparative fortune.

I stand up to stretch. 

My hands are sore from the non-stop drawing I had been doing all evening. I pop my knuckles and light up a Noblisse. This is perhaps my thirtieth stoag of the day. I tend to smoke I great deal when I am on the job. Placing the crumpled green packet into the cargo pocket of my ripped and baggy khakis, I palm Ditri a fifty note for his troubles.

“Thank you Ze-Hariah,” said Ditri, for to him this was a great deal of money.

“You are friend of Ditri.”

“Take it easy, big guy.”

The big oaf gives me a hearty pat on the pack that almost knocks me flat on my face. 

“Ditri now goes sleep,” he says. 

I had to hand it to him. His English was improving, as was my Hebrew. I was starting to understand phrases and bits of conversation, and could get my point across if I had to. Most Israelis learned English in high school and could hold a conversation. It was the Arabs and the Russians who refused to learn English. There were exceptions but few that I encountered could understand what I was saying. Ditri bargained for me in Russian, but Arabic was lost on both of us, which is odd him being half Bedouin. I had recently considered doing the sign in Arabic and Russian to broaden my clientele, but kept forgetting to ask someone to translate it. Ditri was virtually illiterate and could neither read nor write in Hebrew or Russian. 

Svetlana could do it for me in Russian, but she despised anything that revealed her actual and not imagined heritage. She would feign ignorance in order to not speak or write her native tongue. She had invited me for late night drinks at the Blues Bar and I had made enough money to easily cover my expenses for the week, cigarettes, vodka, and more art supplies. 

I am quite proud of myself for making that much money and decide to celebrate at the Blues Bar over a pint of Maccabi, which isn’t as good as the piss water Gold Star and can’t hold a candle to a Stella, but I guess I want to be down with the tribe. It is close to 3 in the morning. Ditri has found some corner to fall asleep in. I am just putting some last touches on a large pencil sketch.

I make a final count of my money and start packing up the pieces into my bag. I start with the 8 ½ by 11’s, peeling the tape off the back that hold them to the enormous tabletop I use as a display board. I have neatly inserted three of the pieces into my binder when I hear a voice behind me.

“So what exactly are you selling?” Her voice sounds like Brooklyn.

“Art,” I respond without looking up, “the finest street art in Tel Aviv if not the entire Western World. Except for maybe Barcelona where the street art is well, pretty fucking good also.”

I turn around to face her and lord, is she beautiful with long flowing brown hair and a smile to disarm any man. I catch her chest like a second later, but that smile caught me off guard for a minute, because I just don’t really look at that in a girl ever.

She is a little shorter than me and looks like a natural hustler. That is to say she looks elegant and she can hold her shit down hard like a killer. Like a stripper putting herself though law school, things aren’t always what you degrade them to be.

“It is pretty good, kiddo. You’re wasting time being in Tel Aviv, but you knew that of course.”

“I was about to close! You’re lucky you caught me. I wouldn’t want a girl like you going home without a piece of Resistance Art.”

“I bet, you say cheesy shit like that to girls all night and they throw their phone numbers at you because the color of your passport is dark blue.”

“Actually I leave for Cairo in the morning and this might be your last chance to buy one.” 

“Right. Cause it’s not like you’re here every single night of the week,” she responds smugly, “and incidentally the Taba border crossing with Egypt is closed at the moment because they found four tunnels across Rafah they were carting rockets in through.”

I laugh with her a sec. At each other and ourselves.

“You’re just really, really charming miss?”

“Maya. Maya Rose.”

“Zachariah Artstein.”

She looks dead at me and smirks.

“I don’t think that’s your real name.”

“I don’t think you really told me yours.”

A pause.

“What’s in name? Buy some fucking art,” I laugh.

“How much for that one?”

She points to a pencil sketch of 40 rebels holding the walls of Jerusalem with swords and rifles and spears against a massive army of the undead. At the center of the drawing stands a bloodied fighter waving a grey banner as he empties his pistol into swine depicted police forces attacking the rebels within the city. 

“That one’s called ‘The Hero’s Last Stand at the Golden Gate’.”

“You made that name up just now on the spot.”

“No, I swear I put a lot of thought into naming them because of how, truly deep they really all are.”

“No, you just made that name up now. I mean its real good. I’ve seen your work before, but I never got a chance to get close enough to look and actually talk to you about it.”

“Yeah, the crowds are getting bigger and bigger these days.”

“Crowds? I was referring to your seemingly constant flirtation with mindless frekhot.”

“Flirtation? I just want them to feed me and fuck me.”

“If you were a little prettier I’d swear I met a long lost brother,” she laughs.

“Quite. It’s a smallish tribe though. I’ll tell you what, you tell me your real name and I’ll give you the piece for any price you declare.”

“My real name eh, for a discount? I thought you were a business man, Zach.”

“I’m in the business of telling people things they only thought they’d get to hear in movies and romantic novels.” 

“Where does the resistance come in?” she says noticing my sign.

“I’m resisting starvation.”

“So what you’re selling is communist-propaganda-meets-an-elaborate-pick-up-line?”

“Yeah, that sums it up if you wish to cheapen and devalue nearly everything I believe into a sound bite.”

“I see you have this speech carefully worked out.”

“Maya, you don’t spy on me do you?”

“Someone as ravishing as me gets spied upon but does not spy herself. I’m just acutely honed at deductive reasoning.” 

“So you’re a psychic detective moonlighting as a stripper, eh?”

“Maybe I’m just a law student moonlighting as psychic detective who likes to take my clothing off.”

“Yeah, so what’s your real name, Maya Rose?”

“A better question is what you’re really doing in Tel Aviv. You know, when you’re not being a hipster.”

“Darling, I’m glad you asked. I think that there is no such thing as the devil, but if there were, and the devil was the head of a large militarized state, his greatest trick would be making people believe they had something other than themselves to blame for the evils of the world. The wool pulled over our eyes and iron heel upon our necks are kept there by our belief that we shouldn’t do anything; that the fault lies with some huge and powerful other and not in our own lack of will.” 

“Spoken like someone with soft, soft hands. I don’t know what any of that means. Give me something more definitive, Zachariah, cause I’ve heard this schpiel before. It’s 3 am and you’ve got only a couple minutes to make this sale.”

“One need not make the masses aware, nor arm them nor give them doctrines on dreams that do not feed their children. The working people who have long been taught to hate and kill each other over skin tones, invisible friends, and flag patterns don’t need to feel unity beyond the communities in which they live. But if these could see such a stand and a story demonstrated for their children’s children to remember and repeat; then they would have that one crucial thing the workers republic will be founded on.”

“Controlling the means of production?”

“No. The new republic is a thing to be founded on hope.”

“I assume this is where you hope to make your little stand.”

“Here’s what I know. Give these Palestinians a little land. Re-absorb the Palestinian Diaspora into a combined Jewish-Arab nation and separate our shul from our state. No Rabbis and Imams allowed in Knesset. Accept that being America’s whore is far worse than failing to retain the ‘Jewish character’ of this nation. Since the Palestinians are a political football the other Arab states use to keep us weak and the other Arab states hate the Palestinians anyway, a Pal-Isra solution makes sense since all Christians basically hate Jews So in a nutshell I’m here ready for the revolution.”

“First off Zachariah, you’re pretty damn divorced from the political reality of the world in which you live. But that I can dig. Israel can barely support those living here now. There isn’t enough land and there isn’t enough water.”

“Lies.”

 “Second, this is the JEWISH homeland. We can’t just turn it into another secular country cause we’d lose the one place Jews can actually turn to escape persecution.”

“Rhetoric.”

“Third, what makes you think these people actually want to share the land in the first place?”

“Because in the end they’ll realize that it’s better to live side by side than to keep killing each other’s children in a turf war no one cares about but your average New York Times reader.”

“It’s been sixty years and no one seems to have learnt that lesson yet.”

“This can’t go on for much longer.”

“I beg to differ. We can kill each other indefinitely. The US will never turn off the gun spigot and the Palestinians can hold their asymmetric war another couple hundred years unless the Israelis do something to make them look like Germans, which they probably won’t.”

“My Kazakhi girlfriend advocates gassing them all at camps in the Negev.”

“Says something about your tastes in women.”

“Listen, I came to Israel to start a new life. I believe that in the end there’s got to be someway to make peace in this land. If I didn’t believe that then I would have to leave.”

“There are other reasons to be here like fast girls, nice beaches and a good hustle. How can you be so naive about the world and live in Israel, the most divided nation on the planet? Not exactly the best place to demonstrate peace and tolerance. If ya hadn’t noticed we live in a state of constant and unending war.”

“Where better for me to be? In America people don’t understand the concept of fighting for an ideal. They’re fat with the glut of their own apathy.”

“Fair enough, but enough people want war in Israel to make this conflict go on for decades more. There’s never been peace in this country. It has been a big non-stop war for the last sixty odd years. We’re sitting on the wall of a war field, a vast experimental powder keg upon which our kind gather half their number.”

“And one day it’ll explode.”

“Explode? Maybe you don’t watch the news, but it explodes nearly everyday.”

“Witty. You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Before there can be peace, there needs to be a conflict big enough to show these people why they shouldn’t fight indefinitely. Most Israeli kids don’t want to dress in a uniform and impose curfews and checkpoints on the Palestinians. I find it real hard to believe that every Palestinian wants to be a brick thrower or a shahiid. Everyone wants peace, but all the leaders can think of is how to get a bigger piece.”

“The Jews never went out and murdered civilians.”

“Except in the cases of Baruch Kappel Goldstein, Sabra and Shatilla. OR Deir Yassin! Suicide bombing is counter-productive to the Palestinian cause, but it’s the only method they feel that works. They have ten thousand rocks for every Merkava Tank we have. For every ten thousand trained soldiers in the Tsvah they have one young person willing to blow themselves up as a martyr.”

“And you want to give in to them. You want to hand then the keys to the temple and expect them to let us live here.”

“I didn’t say give the land away. I said share it because it’s not anymore ours than it is theirs.” 

“Ha. Priceless idealism. I agree with you, Zachariah in my heart and principles, believe me I do. I just don’t see a possibility of hope for these people.”

“We are these people.”

At that moment she looked at me and smiled again like when I first saw her. There was a moment of silence as we stared at each other anticipating each other’s response. She reached into her pocket and took out a purple NIS fifty note.

“I don’t know if you’ve completely sold me, but here’s some props for having the right ideals. The real name’s Emma but don’t call me that in front of other people when and if we hang out again.”

I remove the piece from the display board. I hand it to her and her eyes ran the gamut of its details.

“I know I’m giving you far less than it might be worth.”

“Throw your number in and I’ll pretend I’m not disappointed.”

I roll it up, and hand it to her. She smiles and hands me a business card and writes a cell phone number on the back of it. I look over the card Emma called Maya Rose handed me which looks like a club flyer, laminated small blue and white. It said in English: THE DEEP.

“What’s The Deep?”

“It’s a nightclub, drop by on a Thursday and we’ll make sure to sort it out . 

“Sort what out?”

“If we’re shooting for the same side. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Adon.” 

What a lady.

***

I have this three-day rule when I get a girl’s number. It’s from the movie Swingers. You can’t seem eager. So there went Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I sold every piece I had that weekend. I hung out in a café in Yaffo with Anya all day Tuesday and called Emma that night. She told me she was running around promoting at a ton of parties and couldn’t give me any attention. She said it was best for me just to come to the Deep alone on Thursday about midnight-thirty. Then she could hang out with me all night. 

I had made plans to move out of Bet Ashanti. I wanted to see more of the country, and the terms of the bread and a bed were fairly constraining logistically. And I was tired of the war of attrition going on to keep my property from being stolen. So, I said good-bye to Gilead and the Greek and packed up all my gear and left. I moved into a room at the Mugrabi Hostel on Allenby Street five blocks from the Opera Towers. I rented a cot for 33 NIS sheks a night, which was manageable. 

I closed early that Thursday night so I could make it to the club at some reasonable hour. For me closing early was closing anytime before 11. No one even hits the clubs until around midnight in Israel. In New York you’ve done three bars already by this time. I suppose it’s the heat that keeps the nightlife hard, cool and strictly nocturnal. 

The Deep was located in the heart of Tel Aviv near the monolithic white tower of the Ministry of the Interior. It was an underground hotspot nestled on a dark side street. It was known for its wild queer after hours parties, but was now run and operated by Black Israelites. Emma worked as a promoter and a partner. For every 25 people she brought to the club, her boss Andrew put five hundred shekels in her pocket. Apparently Maya was the top promoter. She was able to bring in roughly 125 people every Thursday. As I arrived at the entrance, a well-dressed Israeli Ashkenazi stood at the door with the guest list. A group of drunken Russian frekhot was trying to get into the club free of charge. They argued in Hebrew, as I waited behind them to get in. The street was empty besides the girls, the gatekeeper and me. A Black male with a diamond earring in his left ear emerged from behind the red curtain. At first I assumed he was Ethiopian, until I heard him talk.

“WHAT the hell are these trifling bitches goin’ on about?” 

It was the first time I had heard a trace of an Ebonics accent in over a year.

“Excuse me,” I interject.

“Can I help you, cracka?” says a young black thug with the enormous diamond earring from the land of Zirconium.

I hadn’t heard that since New York.

“I’m looking for Maya Rose, she said I was on the list.”

Like a fabulous ghetto St. Peter this Middle Eastern gangster looks at his list scornfully. He shakes his head looking tired. And then Maya emerged from behind the curtain.

“Dizzy, this one’s with me,” she says to him and takes my hand. Past the black velvet rope we go down into a catacomb below the streets into a place that was once a blast shelter. The cavernous basement is packed wall to wall with Israelis who are black and brown. This bunker is dimly lit with red lights and strobes flashing to the beat of the music. There are huge black couches against the walls and white swings installed at the edge of the dance floor. The DJ is spinning Old School American Hip-Hop music. 

I take a seat at the bar with Maya. Other than her I’m the only Caucasian in the place.

“What are you drinking?” she asks me.

“Gold Star.”

She waves down and whispers something to the bartender. I try to pass her some NIS shekel ten spot coins but she looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Beers on Andrew,” she says.

“Andrew is the guy who runs this place?”

“Indeed.”

“An American?”

“Israelite. Andrew, and half the other people who work for this club are Black Israelites from a little city in the Negev named Demona where they keep the nuclear weapons.”

“You mean the Ethiopian Jews.”

“No, there’s a huge difference between an Ethiopian and a Black Israelite. One’s humble and from Africa and one will call you a cracker and has a nasty jump shot.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Chicago mostly. That was about forty years ago. There’s maybe a couple thousand of them

living in Israel now. Some like Andrew have neither Israeli nor American citizenship. The state

of Israel still doesn’t believe they’re Jews.’

“State of Israel doesn’t believe a lot of people are Jews.”

 “It deports them whenever it can. Andrew built up the Deep’s rep for the past year or so as

haven for Israeli Blacks who want to rock out. Ethiopians don’t have too many of their own places and I’m sure you’ve seen what happens when a Black guy dances with a White or Russian girl.”

We drink and dance a bit and I call her Maya in front of couple dozen ‘Black Israelites’ I get introduced to. She introduces me to everyone as Zachariah. I was thrilled to see something like this here. I’d seen some pretty racist shit in the past few weeks of Tel Aviv nightlife. 

I finally got introduced to Andrew the Hustler, the man behind this little operation who introduces himself as Avinadav. In a manic little rant about names while rolling up a spliff, he tells me ‘everyone calls him Andrew, but he’s been thinking, dreaming really, that it’s better to use his ‘Hebrew name’ and not his ‘Babylon slave name.’ He is related to a good many people here. He is the big brother who came to the big city and made good for the rest of them. He comes across as generous, maybe to a fault.

It was really after hours now, like 5 am, when Maya and Andrew called Avinadav, and this Jamaican Rasta guy Bradshaw and I are hanging out in the courtyard across from the club as Andrew rolls up another spliff. It was the first time I’d seen weed being smoked in Israel. 

“I mean, I’m not saying that a Black guy can’t go to the GSPOT or the GAT RAMON or any other jump off rave psyche trance party. It happens, it do. BUT, if they wanna kick game to some Ashkenazi or Russia sister then its problems nine of ten. I mean shit, this Eretz isn’t South Africa or Southside bad, I mean it’s not legislated. I’m just sayin’ all my girlfriends not from the community in Demona are Yemeni girls. They know about being Black before the Ethiopians and us got here in the 70’s. Shit, they think of themselves as Black. I think of um like Puerto Rican actually. I mean the Black man will always be everybody’s favorite nigger. But the Palestinians are givin’ us a run. I mean racism ain’t shit next to holy war. I want chu’ to know I’m not fucked up and high and I’m just wired a bit cause I couldn’t sleep last night. I mean I talk, talk, talk but I feel like you got some shit to say kid.”

Both Andrew and Maya call me kid or kiddo, but neither is much older than me. Maya is 18 and Andrew is 26.

“There’s hate based on race and a hate based on religion, but those are just pretexts for political leaders to consolidate powers. Likud and Avodah and the governing coalition can play ball for years by keeping everybody divided. I mean the Russians, Yemenis and Ethiopians all live in the same shit neighborhoods and go to same run down hospitals, but they can’t wait to fight each other over any stupid thing. The Palestinian Christians, Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinians in the West Bank and the so-called ‘Arab Israelis’ are not even different peoples and they can’t even work together on the uprising. Bedouins and Druze are Arabs but have more in common with the coalition government than with each other. For a nation of eight million there’s quite a bit of disunity.”

“We unified over beatin’ back the other Arab states. Even Palestinians hate the other Arabs. The Jordanians butchered um in ’71. The Lebanese butchered um in ’83, and any person with a brain knows they aren’t gonna give the Palestinians a country once the Jews get ‘driven into the sea’. Egypt would take the Negev and the Coast until Ashkelon. Jordan would take the West Bank to the Sea, and Syria would swallow up what was left. Like a football those Palestinians get thrown around to be a thorn in our side. Fools.”

“So you consider yourself an Israeli then?” I ask him.

“Even if they don’t consider me one. I mean I ain’t even got US citizenship. I grew up in Demona. I was born in Demona and I ain’t even got a valid todat zeeoot. I’m a resident alien. Don’t even get me started on our troubles. It was worse before. The state has at least somewhat accepted we ain’t goin back to America.”

The brother with the diamond earring and black suit whose name I didn’t catch joined us. He was one of Andrew’s partners and also a cousin. He’d called me cracka when I arrived. They looked alike, same build and complexion. His name was Disrael, Dizzy for short. Andrew kept with these manic, politico-spiritual rants and his cousin looked tired and wanted to cash out. The Jamaican; Ian Bradshaw and Maya barely said a word. They just listened. I guess she was sizing things up. Andrew was both articulate and wildly knowledgeable about theology and political science. Maya never got drunk even though she never stopped drinking. 

By sunrise Andrew, Maya, the Jamaican and I were having breakfast at dawn in an outdoor café on lower Allenby Street.        

“So, you a change maker then? That’s a damn good thing ‘cause I’m a change maker too. Something has to give or break because it can’t be like this much longer. To fathom one day one of us bringing a kid up in this balagan. Unthinkable. I mean the three of us, we ain’t gonna see change. We’ll see some fight, see a lot of death, but nothin’ we can believe in. But you gotta lay a foundation for the future generations, gotta give your kids something better to reach from if they weren’t born that tall.” 

Andrew chuckles.

“But really now, both of you need to try and call me Avinadav even if the others won’t.”

I nod and light one of Emma’s cigarettes. Did I call her Maya in front of ‘Avinidav’ even when he called her Emma? Like me she responded quickly enough to both.

“So what brought you to Israel, Maya?” I ask her. 

“I’m not sure really. People are obsessed with this notion that God has the power to dole out property rights,” says Maya, “but I’m mostly hear for the beaches.

“Sure as a pillar of salt once was a woman, God willed this land to us,” interjects Avinadav, “If you ask some Israelis, they’ll tell you that God promised us this land. Ask a Muslim they’ll say they’ve always been here and it is Allah’s will that they remain. Christians wanna take the whole planet anyway. Muslims too, but mark my words, God gave us this stretch to be for the Hebrews.”

“Hebrews?” I ask.

“The title of our twelve tribes collectively.”

“You mean the Jews?” questions Maya.

“That’s not the proper way we’re called,” he retorts.

“I don’t get it. It’s semantics. Jews, Israelites, Hebrews. What’s the difference?” she says.

“When the tribes came back from exile in Babylon there were only three tribes left, Judah, Levi and Benjamin. The rest were lost in Babylon, which means they intermarried, got inter-raped, converted or never came back. Judah, which is also the tribe that Yeshua the messiah and King David come from, rose to prominence. Levi was the priestly tribe and Benjamin, they all had red hair and now they look Ethiopian. When the Romans fought the Hebrews around 60 AD in the Bar Kokhba Revolt and wiped out twelve Roman legions, the Romans knew these weren’t a people to fuck around with. Judah was the largest tribe so when Masada and later Betar finally fell and the raping and second temple burning and Diaspora all began, they derogatorily called our proud Hebrew people the ‘Yahuds’ or Jews. It was like nigger, a slur imposed in bondage. Now think about the etymology. ‘ISH,” is kind of like. ChildISH, kind of like a child. JewISH, kind of like a JEW. I’m a Hebrew. You two are Hebrew. Not only is Jewish a watered-down degrading title, it implies that we are all from the tribe of Yehuda. But we could be from Gad, or Manasseh, or Ephraim or Asher or any of ‘um. It’s like the Nigerians. WHERE THE FUCK DID THEY GET THAT NAME I WONDER?”   

“I don’t really care whose land God says it is as long as the violence eventually stops,” cuts in Maya.

“Do you believe in God ,Maya?” Avinadav asks her point blank.

“Every other Friday.”

“Pardon my candor, but what has God done lately for us?” I mutter.

“That’s a loaded question if I ever heard one,” she says.

“Yeah, but let’s answer it anyway,” Avinadav says.

 “Well Zach, I suppose not a whole lot. But if there is actually a God, who are we to interpret Its actions?” Maya puts in.

“Its?” I ask.

“Hey, if you guys wanna rename whole religious ethnic groups, I feel free to de-masculinize the almighty.”

“That’s fine, fuck the dumb shit” smiles Avinadav.

“Look, to me God isn’t like a be-all-end-all safety net. You don’t get blessed by just believing in him, It. You have to trust It works through the actions of good people more than miracles,” Maya responds.

“AND there will be more miracles,” states Avinadav banging on the table.

“I’m not ruling out the existence of God. All I’m saying is that maybe It’s given up on us,” says Maya

“How do you figure?” Avinadav demands again attracting the attention of other people in the café more for being Black and loud than for just being loud.

“What if God decided humanity just wasn’t worth all the grief we cause. What if it looks at us as a failed experiment and stopped devoting time to divine interventions and the like?” Maya says.

“I’m with that opinion,” I say, “I don’t find it so hard to believe.”

“So you think God has bailed on us?” Avinadav asks us.

“Yep,” she smirks.

“Don’t blaspheme and sound ridiculous at the same time,” Avinadav mumbles in a grin.

“Well let’s not hold our breathe on that one. I’m just doing my part working on that miracle in case God holds out.”

“What kind of miracle, kid?” Avinadav asks.

“The miracle of a revolution done right.”

“I like that. The boy’s articulate and totally insane,” Avinadav weighs in.

“I like that about Zach, too,” she says.

“Most people do I bet. Do you ever wonder the purpose of it all, Maya?” Avinadav asks.

“The purpose of what?”

“The purpose of God sending this kid our way?”

“Guys, I’m really not that much younger than either of you.”

“It’s totally random. He just wants to nail me,” she smiles, “There’s no purpose, Andrew.”

“Avinadav.”

“Sorry.”

“Guys, I’m sitting right here.”

“If there is no purpose and there’s no greater meaning to it all, it is pretty pointless to be alive. I mean the things he says are the things this country needs to hear right now,” Avinadav says to Maya.

“He’s just young and you believe in God too strongly. I’m a cynic. I like watching you two talk though.”

“Cynics are fallen idealists frustrated with the failure of their original ideals,” I interject.

“Excuse me?” she utters, “I would like to say I still believe in the potential for a better world, but lately I’ve begun to doubt whether humans would actually tolerate a better world.” 

“Our kind is pretty fucked,” Avinadav reflects openly.

“Only mostly fucked. There’s always a potential for change making,” I say.

“I’m not discounting the fact that there are a few good people out there, but certainly not the majority. And few like less than a dozen in the country that would join what you are talking about. Most people just want to go about their lives and not have to think big thoughts about brave new worlds and the governing factors behind the human nature and if God taps people to participate in history or a higher plan. You’re making demands that never get answered, Zach. Sure people come up with relatively comprehensible concepts explaining certain things about our existence, but even Socrates was working in the shadows of a cave,” Maya responds.

“What’s your point?” I ask.

“It’s hard to keep the attention of the masses. There is something wrong with the world, but the good people, the rebels you hope to find aren’t interested employing the right tactics for change,” Maya continues.

“What tactics would you employ?” Avinadav asks me.

“The most radical ones I could find,” I retort.

“Such as?”

“You know, something that tells the people that the rebels aren’t fucking around. Like kidnapping the representative or majority shareholder of the McDonald’s corporation in Israel and blowing his brains out on national television.”

They stare at me for a second, then at each other and then they go on.

“Spoken like a true zealot,” Avinadav states.

“And what the fuck would that accomplish,” she asks me.

“It would tell Israelis we won’t eat the processed-treif shit America sends us to chow on,” Avinadav chimes in coldly.  

Maya takes off her glasses and gives us both a ‘you’re both talking like terrorists’ look as she lights another cigarette.

“And then for your second little miracle?” she says under her breathe.

“We’d take the old city of Jerusalem with a few hundred fighters then proceed to blow up the Kotel, Dome of the Rock, and Church of the Holy Sepulreche so nobody had any misconceptions about how unholy this war was gonna get,” I say coldly.

“That one I like more,” Maya says, “And for a grand finale Jesus could back with a fleet of gold plated tanks to relieve your hunted and abandoned fighters?”

“We’d retreat into the Negev, then deeper into Sinai to regroup, unite with the million Bedouin in the desert and capture the major southern cities with the aid of Iran. Then via a coordinated general strike and massive defection within the army, we’d take the central districts and cut the country in half before closing in on the capital.”

“Ah, well Mr. Hubert, what would you do about the Palestinians and other Arab states that would love to hit us while we fight amongst ourselves,” she chuckles, “Aided by the Islamic Republic of Iran, of course.”

“Who’s Mr. Hubert? I’m really quite insulated from Western pop cultural references,” says Avinadav glibly.  

“She’s mocking me again. He wrote Dune.”

“Dune?” he shrugs.

“Islamic Star Wars,” she says.

“Oh. Missed that entirely,” he responds, “Go on.”

“Well it wouldn’t work unless Palestinians were involved from the beginning within the rebel leadership. We’d have to smash Fatah and their Al’Aksa Martyrs Brigade because they’re secular, corrupt puppets. We’d have to eliminate Islamic Jihad because they’re too fundamentalist or at least drive them into merging with Hamas.”

They are both staring at me speechless.

“Our obvious ally the socialist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine would help us hem in Hamas. Hamas, who will soon emerge as the premiere representative of the Palestinian Intifada will have to be brought to the bargaining table by pressure from a revitalized Popular Front and their patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hamas, ironically enough, will be our closest ally, the only Palestinian player to fully mobilize their people for this endgame.   

“When we ‘smash’ the IDF, Knesset and American interests, of course,” utters Maya.

“As I said, after the south and the Sinai are in the hands of the rebels, much of the IDF will dessert to the confederated rebels after the general strike. The Knesset and their American supporters will order the IDF to end the strike, which will seal the fate of the Jewish State, America’s 51^st.”

“How the hell could you even dream of allying with Hamas! They want to kill us all.” Maya scoffs.

“Because they’re led by Muslim fundamentalists, which means they won’t be co-opted by the secular Arab dictatorships that are American proxies. They hate the leaders of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and the Emirates more than they hate the Israelis,” Avinadav cuts in.

“And that’s sort of my point. You want to unite a lot of people who are pretty fundamentalist about what they believe,” I say.

“Then like magic, and a lot of miracle magic is involved in your plan, these groups fall in line into a leadership council, then a governing body called Pal’Israel?” Maya scowls in disbelief.

“Well actually it would be ‘Pal’Isra’ if you wanted to be more unified in the national title,” states Avinadav, “but everyone knows that’s just called Zion anyway. That will never fly with the Arabs though, calling it Zion I mean.”

“What’s in a name?” Maya smirks, “When we have such wild imaginations and so much unused magic.”

“Well, anyway whatever you build on the Hebrew side you gotta build in Gaza and the West Bank as well as anywhere with large Palestinian and Jewish Diasporas like New York, Baghdad, Paris, Deerborn and Tehran. When the revolution comes it will begin with direct action, proceed to a general strike, a revolt in the defense forces and then a rapid move to realign the new nation with the Iran, China, and Latin America.”

“So like Beirut in 82?” she says.

“More like Tehran in ‘79, but replace Shi’a fundamentalism with populist nationalism founded in human rights and democracy.”

“I think it’s sexy when he says violent radical shit, don’t you?” Maya says to Avinadav.

“Real sexy,” Avinadav says.

Andrew the Hustler is thinking hard watching a younger whiter version of himself talk dangerously.

Maya has put back on her huge black sunglasses and is sipping on her coffee while smoking a Marlboro menthol cigarette. A waiter brings out a large platter of hardboiled eggs, a pitcher of orange juice, another of Turkish coffee and something sort of like hash browns and Israeli salad, which is diced cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions. We’d all be eating from the same plate.

“What’s the plan then, boys? You’ve fallen in love. I can see it in your eyes,” Maya says to us.

“Well then, Zach. You got some big crazy fucking ideas. God sent you to us. That I know. I got the means. She’s got the will when she’s willing. We can talk all morning but fuck the dumb shit, as I like to say. What you playin’ with here?”

I was smoking deeply from one of Emma’s Marlboros. Just like London, ain’t no Newport pleasure in the Holy Land.

“I’ve been dreaming for along time about making a stand, about a small group of people showing the world that we need not live our lives like slaves lashed to a rolling engine of war. This I know in my heart. If we can rally the wretched of this broken land behind a banner of unity then a land of tears and blood will yield the milk and honey promised.”

“Bottom line. What’s step?” Avinadav asks. 

“I don’t follow.”

“What’s the first course of action that might involve us and what’s your final objective?” she asks.

“I need unrestricted access to the Deep for meetings and maybe storage of equipment. I need multiple safe houses around the country to recruit from. And your help designing and translating a basic manifesto into Hebrew, Russian, and Palestinian Arabic.”

“You can have meetings in the club, just don’t run up the bar. We can get your places to stay in every major city as long as its real short term,” says Andrew.

“But what do you want long-term, Zachariah? What are we conspiring to do? I want you to say it a simple sentence so we three can digest the severity of what we plan to set in motion.”

“Say it once and never again ‘til it’s real,” Andrew says.

I smother my cigarette butt in the cheap grey plastic ash trey.

“Our aim is to violently overthrow the government of Israel.”

“I’m in,” Avinadav says his eyes never blinking.

“Well somebody’s gonna have to make sure women don’t get cut out as usual when the freedom starts getting handed out,” Emma grins darkly, “I hope you got some good magic, kid.”

“Or someone’s on our side that’s good with the miracles,” I say.  

ח

There’s water dripping on my head. How long have I been asleep in such an uncomfortable bed? It’s no bed at all. I’m on the cold, wet floor of some huge cave. My right hand is shackled to something heavy in the pool next to me. Whatever it is, it’s both heavy and beneath the surface. I’ve been in this cave since London. Was it since my escape from the Tower? Or since the Turk with the flying carpet rescued me? My memories come and go and tell me nothing. But my guide is gone. I haven’t seen Mr. Washington and his gold-plated revolvers hammering out death upon those who would assail me. 

I’ve been in this cave such a long time that I can’t clearly remember life before it. There was a Pale City, but how terrible it was is fading. Wasn’t there a redheaded girl I was protecting? Or had she been kidnapped? Or was it the father of her child, maybe? No, I couldn’t remember at all. 

I saw a game store burning and an eviscerated old man being lit on fire on the curb of some street, still part alive while slimy, dead things poured diesel all over him. It’s hard to ignite diesel right away. So they cut more pieces of flesh from him first. It was a war after all, wasn’t it? These things happen in a war. Who was that girl with red hair anyway?

So a lot happened, or maybe nothing at all. Maybe the shadows on the walls of the cave got my mind racing and conjuring big things. Maybe I’m just a creative little fucker. Maybe those shadows are the red head, and old man, and Mike…

Something almost pulls me in the water as it pulls itself out. It’s whatever my right hand is cuffed to in the pool. It crashes out of the pool.

“If I wasn’t so hard to kill it would be easier to forget about me,” says a figure standing above me pulling me to my feet with the chain.

I don’t know what to say. I hope this man isn’t an enemy because we’re connected with less than three feet of thick iron chain. I don’t recognize him at first. He has bandages over eyes that I suppose have been cut out and a huge dressing taped up to where a bullet went through his head. I’m confused and I’ve been in the cave so long I can’t even remember another human face. He can’t see, but he reaches out and feels my face. I’m chained to war-torn version of myself who has a name. 

“They got us good in London. They took her and blew out my brains. The game and its pieces are gone. The old man is dead, his ideas made treasonous and abolished throughout the land. And what can I shoot if I have no eyes. They took my eyes, Sebastian.”

“Who are you?”

“The cave clouds your will. You forget the past therefore you have no good frame of reference for some hope for a brighter future. They can’t kill you. They have to taint you, make you lose all hope.”

“I betrayed everything in London. The only things I remember clearly are helping them rape the girl and murder you.”

“You don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore.”

He’s wet and dripping with the slime in the pool.

“I told them everything. I betrayed the rebellion. I sold out the teachings of the Old Man. They brought me in and the girl was covered in blood and piss and semen and they told me to fuck her again. They tazered us while we fucked. I fucked her like an animal on the floor of some cell in the Tower.” 

My betrayal had come back to me with some clarity. I was crying and dropped to the feet of this mauled man Mr. Washington.

“They made me play marbles with your eyes,” I sobbed beating my own chest.

“Time to hit back then,” he said succinctly, “When you wake up, I’ll be there to teach you how to shoot. We’re going to get the girl back. We’re going to go after the things they love.”

“I can’t anymore,” I cry out.

He drags me on to my feet, and then slaps me across my face with the back of his hand. I stare into the bloody sockets; his face drips; and then he begins to sing:

“As soon as you’re born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.”

He’s no bigger than me, but he’s got so much coal black hate and violence in him he could snap a man in half. He drags me along in the darkness through tight alcoves singing:

“They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool,
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.”

There are broken boards to ascending mine shafts he shatters with his other fist. He’s blind, but always sees better than I do. The manacles that bind us yank me along as I try and beg him to go no further. I’ve been in darkness so long I’m terrified to face myself in the light. It is better to remember nothing than wage a fight against the black future coming upon us. Still he sings. He’s wrong in thinking John Lennon’s song will give me any courage.

“When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see!”

In my head I hear a voice. It is the voice of the original Polish Zachariah Artstein who is also Mike Washington who is also perhaps the Archangel Mikh’hael. We plow together through the darkness.  He’s still singing.

“They took everything from me, Sebastian. Before the fall, before history, before my eighteen lives and time as a seraphim and then back into the trenches as an angel, I was once a young man lost like you. As we are to be so close for the duration of your time on earth for this round, I will tell you something I hope will make you more brave.” 

He was dragging me by the chain at this stage in our ascent as I fought to return to the warm dark, bowels of the cave. 

“A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.”

“They say the voice of God is impossible for your kind to hear without a psychic breakdown or severe mental damage. And when one of us gets born that can hear the voice of God in flashes and gets the dreams, then we have to protect these people because of the epic good and evil they have the potential to unleash. We can’t have anyone kicking off anymore Islams or Christianities.” 

I’m desperately fighting now to cling to the cave wall so he can’t pull me to the surface. He strikes at me whenever I fight to remain.

“You see anybody can theoretically reach out and connect with the higher power, but after the fall, humanity stopped listening, turned upon itself and the slaughter began. I’ll go over a great deal more of this when you reach the wilderness of Tzin.’ 

“There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero, well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero, well just follow me.”

He was digging now as we neared the final passage to the surface. I begged and screamed for him to stop, that the light would kill us. That I just wanted to die in the cave. And then there was light. He tore through the broken tunnel and dragged us both from the cave, me kicking and screaming into the light. This was not the desert of my mind. There were green and rocky hills jutting out the side of a cliff. I could see again. Both of us were covered in dirt and slime from the cave. Behind us was what looked like a subway entrance point we’d dug out of. 

It might have once said the Q Train.

Michael Washington looked like he’d been in the trenches for a very long time. The bandages around his eyes were caked in filth and blood. The dressing on his head had fallen off and I saw the gaping bullet hole where his execution had been carried out. But exposed to the sun we both became a little healthier and cleaner. The dust blew off of us in a fresh wind. The bullet expelled itself from his cranium and dropped to the ground. Scar tissue was forming over the wound. His eyes were gone and not returning. We stood on the edge of this great green precipice feeling the glow of the sun at high noon. The desert was below us, but in the ocean of sand the day was serene. 

We were both wearing black suits, which needed to be traded in. They were caked in filth beyond what the wind and or any dry cleaning could expel. On the ground in front of us were two shrink-wrapped suits in the sand. There were two gold-plated pistols on top of the suit with my name pinned to it. A long cavalry sword had been leaned against the subway tunnel we had emerged from. Zachariah, with great balance for a man with his eyes removed, picked up one of the guns and blew apart the chain connecting us. We began to disrobe and change into the suits that had been left for us. I shouldered the weapons in straps within the suit. Mike picked up the sword and threw it over his shoulder.

Below us was a valley into the wilderness.

“And on the seventh day God found time to leave us leisure suits and hand guns?” I asked.

“For on the eighth day, when the resting was done those weapons were wielded by the righteous. Time to put down the whores and still water bottles and step back onto the line, Mr. Adon.”  

***

It’s odd. I haven’t seen the sun in over a week. I work from 9ish at night until close to 3 in the morning, chill by the beach, and then go back to Mugrabi to sleep. I’d walk past the Opera Towers, about a mile north on the tiyeled until I got to Mike’s Blues Bar. I’d shoot the shit with everyone’s favorite Russian-who-wanted-to-be-American Svetlana, drink a beer, eat a burger, pass out a shit ton of flyers to Americans and trash containers, then go back and have Alex buy me a shot while Canadian Dave the manager told me about being a sniper in the IDF. Turned out he and Maya, whom he also called Emma were old lovers or something for a short time. I really liked the guy. Once he took me on the roof of his building, a great crib on Ben Yehuda Street, and taught me about sniping with a broom. To exhale and then to fire. To always change positions quickly after firing. To wait for hours if you have to get the most bang for your exposure. He told me that sniping is like ancient times when you have to remember the face of each woman or man you kill. I told him I wanted to be a sniper in the army and he just figured the army I meant was the IDF. Lessons were scheduled for once a week, but only happened two more times.

I ghost wrote a short manifesto with Maya and Avinadav and they turned it into Hebrew. I didn’t trust any of my Russians to take a look at it and didn’t know any Arabs to trust either. We set up a timetable for me to set up cells in Haifa, Be’er Sheva, and Jerusalem. I was to spend about three days in each city recruiting. I was to attempt to be back at the Deep on Thursday to check in. Maya would set up a ‘unit’ in Tel Aviv and Avinadav would be the money and logistics man. 

The Organization, as we soon took to calling the thing, was founded in Tel Aviv in late July of 2001. ‘A group without a name was formed to launch a movement without a color’ as our line went. The initial objective of our group was the resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It was believed that through the creation of a united front among the peoples of the region, a solution could be achieved that might serve as a springboard for a worldwide revolution against American hegemony and the cultural mentality it perpetuates. The principle on which this group was founded was that ‘we are in fact not an organization, but rather individuals becoming organized’ another line from our playbook. The Organization was to serve as a network through which very different people could unite under common revolutionary goals. Our goals were to be better defined in a soon-to-be-written 10 Point Program for the Revolution in Israel.

I was taking notes from Che Guevara’s manual on guerilla warfare and Mao’s Little Red Book. I was mixing it with populist Israeli rhetoric and Marxist overtones. We didn’t say proletariat. We just said we fought for the rights of the working class. I was getting my training on the fly. So were Maya and Avinadav. Maya revealed no ideological leanings other than progressive feminism. She came across as pretty left without needing to declare it. She was Spanish by passport and Canadian in upbringing, but she’d been in HaEretz a year and a half. As a club promoter she had half the basic skill set of a revolutionary anyway, the gift of random gab. She took a role of support and advice and begrudgingly accepted a title on our cabinet. She urged me to hammer out a ten-point program before she tried to recruit anyone she knew.

Andrew Mannaseh Butler, aka Andrew the Hustler, whom no one seemed to call Avinadav except for me, not even Maya who quite a few men called Emma, told me one night over dinner that Maya and I could be the activists, but he had ‘keep the focus on the mission.’

Avinadav and I would talk all night. He lived in a sprawling penthouse near the outer highways and skyscraper towers of the Azraeli center at the edge of Ramat Gan. It was real near the Tel Aviv Light Rail Depot so I’d crash with him once and awhile at his ‘House of the Rising Sun’ as Emma called it. There were always people crashing on the couches, on the floors and anywhere they could. There was a White rapper from the American hip-hop group Cyprus Hill who had been drafted to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv and then fucked it up some how. Nice guy, but a huge show boater and big talker. One night he and I picked up these two Ashkianaz cuties and he claimed he was rapping at GSPOT, this huge hip-hop club and could get us all comped. I closed up the stand and the four of us walked our asses all the way north to the Sheraton and beyond only for him to disappear into the club and ditch us outside. 

I talked big too, but I prided myself on delivering what I promised with broads and bullets both. This guy was living on Avinadav’s couch indefinitely. Disrael, the partner at The Deep with the ice in his ear, which he declared ‘It’s a cubit diamond from the land of Zirconium, was the only other rent payer besides Yashara, Avindav’s Yemenite special lady who looked Dominican more than Arab or Jewish. At any given time there could be between four to seven ‘community relatives’ who’d gotten exiled from Demona for this or that and were living with Avinadav until something came along or they got forgiven.

“We were all in ‘back against the wall country,’ some of us more than others. So when the honorable Prophet Ben-Ami led seventy-odd Black brothers and sisters in 1969 from Chi-Town’s Southside across Africa to build the Hebrew Israelite Community in the badlands of Southern Israel and then when your father gets into a fight with the Prophet over annulling a marriage and your whole clan gets tossed out of the community, but you and your brethren don’t have Israeli or American passports, well fuck the dumb shit, where we gonna go?”

“How many of you are there?”

“A couple thousand now. Not one a citizen. Ethiopians, they at least begrudgingly call them Jews. We don’t even get citizenship. If we the field Negroes, then you got some idea why it’s ‘Waleed and the Lethal Leisure Suite’ time for the Palestinians. It never comes down too hard on more than one demographic group at a time. The others make believe it won’t happen to them. Besides you Ashkinaz, everybody’s shut out of something.”  

“Just like in the States.”

“A microcosm of all the stupid suffering that the wretched of the earth are subject to because they refuse to fight back. I want you to dig inside, Zach. I want you to look into your soul and know that our struggle is doomed to fail like the thousands of other risings before ours if you can’t honestly see the soul you have is of the same worth as the one Hashem gave the Arabs and the Christians, the pagans, communists and atheists like Emma Solomon.”

“I thought she was agnostic like everybody else.”

“Nope. She just plays one on TV to get more answers out of you.”

“Ah. Answers about what?”

“To judge if we can trust you, a stranger, with our lives.”

“I’m not asking for that kind of trust. I’m asking for help printing propaganda, obtaining safe houses, and recruiting partners. What do my religious inclinations have to do with the mission?”

“What’s the mission then, Zachariah?”

“Empower the Israeli and Palestinian people to win a class war against the American backed proxy government of this country.”

“Which would take a miracle.”

“You’re not saying…”

“Who’s Mike Washington?”

“How did you….?”

“Emma says you ask him questions in your sleep. Lucky you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“I know it’s not like that. The girl’s a goddess, heavenly just to lie beside. But back to Mr. Washington.”

“I have an imaginary friend who’s a sort of fire walking paramedic with a handgun, something concocted in my head since I was 13 to shoot all the monsters when I sleep.”

“Gets um all doesn’t he? Shoots straight, never misses, reliable? Brotherly maybe?”

“Something like that.”

“You believe in your dreams, Zachariah?”

“I’d say they confuse more than guide me.”

“You don’t have a guide in the waking life to translate for you what It’s telling you.”

“Who? Mike Washington?”

“Mr. Washington is just a messenger. Your name in Hebrew means ‘God Remembers’ incidentally. You ought to toy with the notion of our meeting not being accident but in fact providence. You ought to meditate on why you’re in the land so young and so early.”

“One should be careful in presuming their dreams have anymore meaning than necessary.”

“Be as careful as you want. Emma and I are careful as hell. The road to Zion is paved in shit that can get you killed. And there are so, so many things worse than death in the world today. It makes hell quite superfluous to have a world like this.”

“I agree. Your allusions make me want a cigarette. I think I’m in love with Maya by the way.”

“With Maya or Emma?”

“Same person.”

“Are Sebastian and Zachariah the same person?”

“Emma told you my real name?”

“Yeah, but I learned it again going through your pockets when you slept over last time. We have to make sure everybody is who they say they are. Got me?”

“Zachariah’s me trying to live up to the expectations of Mr. Washington.”

“Complicated. Being that you haven’t fucked her, but you guys have rolled up like kittens and cuddled three times in the past week on some pretext. You are in love with Emma. What’s it to you to hold that girl?”

“It’s to remind myself I’m a good man whenever I’ve been tested. Otherwise she wouldn’t want me near her.”

“That’s part of it. What else you feel?”

“That I remember what love felt like the first and only time I felt it in my life.”

“Whatcha gonna do about it?” 

 “Why so you can tell her?”

“Information only flows one way around here.”

“Nothing at all. I can fall in love and have family in the world to come. I make a better fighter than a lover anyway even though I try and kid myself otherwise. I’ll tell her how I feel before I cross over to the other side.”

“That’s reassuring to hear. It’s not romantic or right, or fair because you very well might give her the love she needs to restore her black heart. But I need two lieutenants who can be objective about what we have to do. You want to seize one of the most important spiritual hot zones of the planet there are some time honored ideas about infrastructure and discipline you would do well to embrace.”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“The bottle makes you play the fool. The smokes make you sick and will kill you before their bullets do, and a revolutionary gets only one love, his people. Regulate your vices as soon as you are able.”

“You want me to quit smoking and drinking?”

“And stop being promiscuous.”

“You and Emma are gonna do that?”

“Of course not. Everyone gets to be a hypocrite except for you.”

“Why the fuck is that?”

“Because you’re gonna be a mouthpiece for something massive. If you’re willing to have a message get you crucified, don’t let some run of the mill garden variety sin degrade your credibility.”

“You keep alluding to me on some God tip, but we don’t know if God wants any of this. You’re saying you think Hashem got me all the way to the Promised Land to help you and Emma form and lead a revolutionary army?”

“If I have to dignify that with a response, it is really gonna take eleven more years.”

“Eleven more years?”

 “People think 2012 is when the world ‘ends’.”

“The world doesn’t end.”

“If the masses were such great political scientists and theologians we probably wouldn’t have left the garden.”

“Why 2012?”

“It’s a Mayan calendar thing. It’s in the collective conscious.”

“You were quick to help me, Avinadav. Why is that?”

“Every community gets a few prophets right before tumultuous times. All the holy books say so.”

“I wouldn’t be so fast to construe dreams with prophesy.”

“I get dreams too. And so does Emma. So does everyone, but only some people get dreams that give um ideas about what Hashem has put them here to do. I believe in the things you say Zachariah; and your soul is eons older than your years of life. Let’s just hope Hashem sends some reinforcements because this plan of ours will not go unnoticed for very long.”

***

So, we built the thing, cobbled it together based on the various books we’d read and life experiences we’d had. The Organization, whom the Israelis called Ha Irgun, was structured to be a constantly evolving effort based upon an ongoing dialogue between Avinadav and me with Emma making corrections. It was the amalgamation of our three quite different viewpoints. Our goal was for the Organization to be composed of autonomous cells throughout the Middle East engaging in political work, community support, business and military operations, and whatever else proved logistically expedient to our ends. We had all done a bit of research on all this before we met. Avinadav made himself Chairman and Minister of Finance. Maya was appointed Defense Minister. I was elected to serve as the Minister of Operations handling logistics and recruiting. We set up a 12-person Cabinet that would command hundreds of 3 to 5-person cells in different communities across the country loosely organized around the Ten Point Program, under the leadership of the Cabinet. Maya and I authored the first statement that we would print on glossy club flyers with a grey fist.

We selected the color grey as our standard because it was no color at all, but many shades of understanding and identity. We called our manifesto-in-progress the Little Grey Book. It began simply: 

“The Organization will not stop fighting until all people on this Earth are free.”

We argued about the name for a whole night then figured what’s in a name? We all had a couple of names, so why not the group?  We were organizing. It was an organization. The word for that in Hebrew was Ha Irgun, which sounded officious enough to me and had been the street name for one of the original Israeli independence groups. So we ran off stacks of these grey cards with the black fist and a little call to arms. 

ט

I was just about ready to take to the roads on my mission in the last week of July. 6,000 of our postcard-sized flyers were stacked up in boxes in a back room of The Deep labeled ‘New Years 2012 Party’. Avinadav had a cousin who was now apparently hip to these happenings. I got nods of approval from lots of young Black Israelites I didn’t know. They might not have known the score, but they knew the big man ‘Andrew’ and I were up to something. I was always around the club, but never drinking, never dancing not really laying game. I went over plans and notes and made suggestions about operations. The general staff of the little Cabinet soon included his cousin Dizrael ‘Dizzy’ as Communication Minister, the Jamaican Claude as Education Minister and Svetlana the Russian debutante, ‘can’t stand being from Russia’ as a financier. Svetlana had only been convinced by Maya because she wasn’t very fond of Blacks and looked at me like I was sort of a loud, radical younger sibling. But one night over drinks Maya convinced her to crack the trust fund as long as she was convinced nothing violent was going on. Svetlana had paid for all ‘New Years’ flyers.   

I was working as a day laborer unloading furniture and textiles from Southeast Asia toiling to raise money for a cell phone, a ‘decent’ suit and a black market handgun near Hertzolia Petoach. I made some sub-slavish wage to haul and sort tons of cheap imports with a handful of Arab workers. Ditri came along with me. We walked away each day with close to 400 sheks. 100 bucks for ten hours of work wasn’t so bad. I got a lot of odd slave work out of the Mugrabi Hostel. I’d post up in the lobby around 6 am and guys would come to collect workers for menial one-day labor jobs usually paying about 400 shekels for the day. It was more lucrative than art selling especially on a weekday. It wasn’t always hauling. Sometimes it was scrubbing stoves or repainting housing projects or odd gardening job. I scrubbed shit and vomit out of party hall bathrooms after the party went on too long. I was doing thankless horrible work that wouldn’t put money in the bank, but could feed me and get me a few nicer things for my time here. I had become a Mexican wetback, but a Pancho Villa kind of fucking Mexican. I had become what I was supposed to be. 

I bought a tough black and grey messenger bag for the road, a black leather planner, a white linen suit, and a grey poncho from a Georgian retail store in the Florentine neighborhood.  

I was always meeting new people. I needed new ears for yarns and new women for carnal company. I also needed new friends and new brothers and new parents. I adopted older brothers because I don’t have one. From time to time someone saw something in me they had to save. Like I’ve lost my way and shouldn’t be selling pictures in foreign boulevards. Normally this took the form of either an older woman or a homosexual.  The homos invited me for sleepovers, but they liked feeding me too, while giving me advice. Gay Avi wants me to be an event planner and the English girls from Golder’s Green tell me to get married and move to Jerusalem to train as a rabbi. The correlation of the two is beyond me. 

I guess Brent Avery wants to save me from the ghetto because he is in Israel converting young boys to Christianity. It wasn’t pervy if it came across like that. Brent wasn’t just saving souls for Evangelical Bible-belters. It was more interesting and subversive than that. 

The night I met him I was hooting and hammering, trying to find people to recruit for the Organization. This group of faggy White dudes comes up to me and asks me about a picture with a guy in a beret crucified with a red hammer and sickle tattoo on his bicep. I tell them Jesus was a communist. They were having one of those very Christian conversations with me full of polite contempt and always ready to drop a fucking gospel passage. But I’m trained to play that game and the whole thing soon turned into a communist versus Christian debate as a crowd gathered. It was like this was Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner on the Mediterranean.  

There were five of them. I know one was named Paul and one was named Che, who I asked if he was an Argentinean. He didn’t get it. There were two other White boys not really talking and a chaperone. The chaperone was named Brent Avery. He listened more than he talked. I argued with his minions for easily an hour. I know the gospel well from being locked up in the Family School. But our debate was for the spectators not each other. 

At 1 am this guy Brent Avery bought me some pizza at Abulafiah and we didn’t talk about religion, but about what I was doing in Israel. 

“Sex, pictures and reckless adventurism,” I told him. “With a bit of drinking and a lot of smoking.” 

For a preacher he wasn’t all that preachy. He didn’t have that really annoying habit of putting each segment of the conversation in the context of the texts of his creed. I think he didn’t even drop the name of the J-man. He asked simple questions attempting to elicit god-only-knew-what. He let me talk a great deal about communism. He had me go into detail about tons of things I hadn’t thought out so well. The phrases didn’t seem to alarm him. I’d say ‘death to bourgeoisie scum and their spies’ and he’d just scratch his beard neither judgmentally nor in any way in agreement. It was like two wild alien creatures asking small questions as if they had never been around each other’s kind before.

To him I was a sort of hardened city-boy radical or just some lost street urchin with a Biblical moniker. He was a shit-kicker preaching gospel talk in the wrong fucking country as far I was concerned. I rambled about class war hoping to jostle him, but the guy just went on asking questions letting me smoke my face off. Over a couple hours at a café, I told him about the Family School, about my lengthy perditions, about exile in London and the struggle unfolding in Tel Aviv. He had this very good sense of punctuation. He knew when he should hold his tongue. He knew I would get up and leave if he started his fucking sentence with, ‘In the second book of Timothy.’ 

When it was all said and done and my long political diatribe expounded, I didn’t feel like I had said anything at all. He had let me go on all night with this tale of tragic misadventure.  As dawn broke I felt my confidence begin to run dry. As the mission yarn wore thinner I saw for the first time the great, great error I had made. He didn’t need to do anything but let me talk to expose myself. 

In that moment I had a realization. There had been no reconciliation between my warring parts. I had in no way reconciled whether or not I could complete this mission without the very intervention of a God. I had an even harder time accepting the use of miracles in a class war. I had the hardest time still believing, as it seemed Avinadav did, that I was some mouthpiece for the dreams of epic, divine things to come.     

The fat man named Brent Avery was remarkably good in his mission because of his commitment to patient tenacity. He, expert recruiter that he was, was not concerned with the quantity of converts but only with the perfect training of more recruiters. If he saw in me a potential convert, a lost soul, a broken sinner, he did not reveal this. As the sun rose he said simply:

“Your eyes betray you, son. You’re not convinced you’ll win.”   

“What then would you have me do? Pray for more answers?”

“It would be in your interest to consult your maker as He will provide the necessary covenant for this battle you’re intent on waging. The things you speak of calmly, many men and women have been slaughtered to avoid the coming of. It is time, Zachariah, to find your God in the wilderness.”

After breakfast we went to a bookstore. My head was spinning in the way it does when I don’t sleep. Before he left me to do the things I am now too aware that I must do, he bought me a hardcover book that it was high time I read. It is many books in one divided between two traditions. I purchased another book to take with me to make sure I had the whole trilogy.

י

The first night.

The city of Be’er Sheva is a way station on the dusty road to hell that runs through the Middle East. It’s the last stop of all the light rail trains southbound into the deep desert. Four hours southbound from Tel Aviv by bus, the place pops out of the wilderness like an electric, neon strip-mine. The first thing you see is a cluster of lights and white brick low cost housing buildings. This place is the inner outpost, a way station on the road from what was once called Palestine to the region of Mitzraim now called Egypt and it had been for nearly 4,000 years. All those centuries and the demographics of the city changed only slightly until the Jews came back. Things change hands and names a lot around here it seems. The dust and sand don’t care if they are considered Muslim dust or Jewish sand.  The city of Be’er Sheva was originally on the Palestinian side when the partition came. It was seized by Haganah fighters during the 1948 war and was eventually annexed into the State of Israel relatively Palestinian free. There is nothing but rocky dunes of sand and dust and, of course the desert people for hundreds of miles.

The desert people have been here long enough to see the borders change ten thousand times. They were here for Israel parts one, two and three. They outlived both Rome and the Ottoman Empire. The only difference now is how porous the borders are. They are no longer quite so easy to cross. It’s hard to say how many desert people there are. They might number in the tens of thousands organized into hundreds of inter-tribal alliances. The governments of the Middle Eastern nations place their numbers far lower. Some of them pretend they don’t exist at all. So they starve them or drive them deeper into the desert. The Israelis tried to make them settle, unsuccessfully, of course. The Ottomans tried to teach them agriculture. The Israelis built factories and tried to make their kids go to schools. The Saudis and Egyptians try to kill them off with bullets and helicopter gun ships. The Hebrew word for these desert people is Bedui.      

The population of Be’er Sheva is made up of some 144,000 souls. Its primary demographics are Russian immigrants, Romanian and Yemenite Jews, as well as over 10,000 Ethiopians. They were lured here during their settlement with subsidized houses in neighborhoods that had just been built. The Russians took over the crime and gang operations from the Romanians and Yemenites within a year of arriving. By 1990 the various Mafias controlled everything. The southern drug port was wide open and the dope flowed north. 

The central bus station didn’t have a roof. It was just dirty orange brick walls with shops in a big L-shape where the buses docked. I arrived near dusk. Everything was going to be shut down and I’d be stranded in this creepy ghost town. The place was awash with beggars and junkies. They eyed everyone looking for a mark. Some wandered about like the living dead. The graffiti on the walls was all in Hebrew except for a large white sign sprayed in white paint ‘D E A T H W I LL FALL   OW’. I saw a bunch of Orthodox women, heads covered, scuttle briskly toward a gender-segregated charter bus. 

It’s the fourth largest city in the country but to most it’s just a way station on the road to Eilat, the Jewish version of Las Vegas on the Dead Sea. It’s also a college town and a place of broken dreams. The sprawling Negev lies between Be’er Sheva and Eilat. The desert is a vast and deadly wasteland uninterrupted by anything but black asphalt highways and an occasional Moshav settlement. Ben Gurion was convinced that the Negev was the key to the future survival of the State of Israel. He spent the last days of his life there and was buried at a kibbutz named Sde Boker.

Be’er Sheva is known to outsiders for a couple things they don’t talk about at the Chamber of Commerce– the wicked heat, which the soldiers all say is the worst in the country. The increasing isolation as no one wants to move and the young never come back after the army. And, of course, crime. An interesting feature of Be’er Sheva is its massive number of abandoned buildings. Derelict Ottoman structures litter the city. Many are now inhabited by what the Israelis call narcomanim or violent drug addicts. All drugs coming into the State of Israel from Egypt first pass through Be’er Sheva. The Syrian and Lebanese border is sealed and so are the Jordanian and Egyptian fronts. It is easier for the drugs to flow where relations are normalized. 

I only knew about Be-er Sheva through hearsay. It is a city on the edge of the desert and a perfect starting point for my trek. I arrived here on the last bus out of Tel Aviv about a half an hour before dusk. I am carrying my box of water bottles outside the central bus station. There are Muslim cab drivers everywhere and there is general disorder as people hurry to get home before the start of the Sabbath. The shops, which line the outer rim of the one-story central bus station are pulling down their shutters. I was hoping to get to the desert before sundown, but no dice. I would have to walk there if I didn’t take a cab, which was a stupid idea for a myriad of reasons.  

“Aifo ata tzarik leHhlectet?” A cab driver is asking me where do I need to go. The cabs are mostly white here, smaller older models of their cousins in the Big Apple.

“I need you to drive me as far into the south desert as you can for 100 shekels.”

“You want go to desert? We are in desert already.”

“I need to go further south to the southern ridge.” 

“Why? Is nothing there. Come. I take you to hotel, to Eilat, to hookers.”

“I need you to drive me deeper into the Negev. I need you to drive me somewhere without people.”

He pauses as if confused, like he wants no business if my business means trouble.

“Get in. I will show you the map,” he says.

He produces a foldout road map of Israel. It is completely worn. He points to where Be’er Sheva is and shrugs his shoulders, confused as the where I want to go. I look at the map for a minute and pick out a stretch of wilderness removed from any signs of civilization.

“Bi’Quat Tzin?” he asks.

“Yeah. Take me there and I’ll give you 100 shekels.”

He looks me over.

“It will cost 200 shekels. This is hour south of here.”

They haggle over everything here, even over 20 shek.

“I don’t have time for this habibi. I’m not gonna sit down and barter with you. You’ll do it for 100 or I’ll find another driver.”

“175.”

“80.”

He gives me a look like I’m crazy.

“170, this is my final price.”

“100, like I said.”

“165.”

“80.”

“That wouldn’t cover the fuel for the trip. 160.”

“I think I’ll flag another cab.”

I jump out of the back seat.

“155!” he yells out the window.

The only rule to bargaining with Arabs is to know what you’re willing to pay and never, ever go higher than their price, which is a 500% mark up anyway. I notice there aren’t many cabs or passengers left in the shuttered terminal, just junkies, trash and electric security lights. I don’t have many options and he doesn’t have prospects except that it’s Friday night and someone always needs to get somewhere. So my bargaining needs to end soon.

There are at least five more taxis all caked in dust and mud. After propositioning a few more drivers I finally found one that will take me into the desert for 80 sheks. I put my small crate of water bottles into the trunk of his white cab. We pulled out of town along the southern highway named Derekh Eilat, the road to Eilat. I had no idea where we are going now except deeper into the darkness. 

There are no other cars on the road. Eventually there are no more streetlights on the road. I can feel the dry heat with that sticky feeling of sweat running down my back. The cab’s AC is broken, my driver claims. In my mind I have a picture of how this little escapade will play out. I have 14 liters of water. I’ll need that in the desert more than anything else. I have a blue lantern, which illuminates my way and won’t take out my night vision. I even got my hands on a white linen poncho for day and a black one for night courtesy of my demented old boss at the import warehouse. 

Move at night. Sleep in the day. Yeah, that sounds right. You see scenes in the movies and read about it and hope that some of it is true and isn’t going to be Hollywood getting you killed. All I’m missing is a mother fuckin’ still suit. But this isn’t Dune and it is questionable if I’ll find what I’m looking for out here.

The driver says nothing. Maybe he doesn’t speak much English. I rummage through my kit and take out a map of Israel. There is a big patch of nothingness between Be’er Sheva and Eilat. I am heading deeper into it with every passing minute. I notice the driver looking at me through the rearview mirror.

“I am wondering what you plan to do when you get to the desert.”

I see no reason not to be honest.

“I plan to walk as far into the wilderness as is needed to hear a message from God.”

“My people say that God will talk directly to no one after the Prophet Muhammad abu aSaalam.”

“He spoke to me already. I’m looking for a more precise revelation.”

“And what did your god tell you, boy?”

“He told me that I needed to suffer so that I might become righteous.”

“So you’ve suffered enough have you?”

“I’m not sure. It’s all rather subjective.”

“What is subjective?”

“It means that that everyone experiences their own degrees of hardship.”

“My first wife died in childbirth. She was not very beautiful. At first I was very angry with God, but being angry with God is a useless rage. You cannot be angry for long with something you cannot control or understand.”

“I’m sorry for you loss.”

“It was the will of God. Now I have a younger wife who is more young and beautiful than the first wife HamduAllah. You say you must suffer to become righteous. I do not believe these two things are connected. You are only righteous when you can submit absolutely to Allah.”

“HaShem and Allah are the same.”

“You pray to “the name.” That is what HaShem means. Your people believe that the name is beyond your comprehension. My people say God has a name. That name is Allah.”

“Where I come from God has many names. In Babylon the McDonalds arches and the Crucifix hold equal spiritual sway.”

“But those are distractions. When things are rounded out and counted, they will distract from Allah like a grain of sand distracts the tidal wave.”

“But for now they hold more sway than your sand grain.” 

“You will also be distracted in a desert by the sand. Your faith being weak, you will wander after distractions chasing answers and then die. You are too white for that desert, Yankee.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll get to see what I need to see.”

“So you think that by coming here and wandering into our desert you will have some answer revealed to you?”

“That’s the idea.” 

“How long do you plan to remain in the desert?”

“Seven days.”

“You do not have the provisions for seven days.”

“Allah will provide what I may lack.”

He pauses and stares at me through the rearview.

“Why do you think this message will be heard more clearly in our desert?”

“It is where our people originally received theirs.”

He looks at me for a while and says nothing.

“Allah’s message is not heard in one place more clearly than another.”

“I know.”

“So why not ask your questions closer to home?”

“I have no true home anymore.”

“The desert is brutal. You will be always thirsty and feel too hot during the day. At night you will shiver and freeze as you lose your trail. When, tell me, will you be able to pray?”

“I will not stop praying.”

“If you get lost, you will certainly die.”

“So be it to hear the word.”

He once again seems deep in thought, continuing to stare at me, only occasionally glancing back at the highway. The stars are so very bright and provide illumination that the broken road markings cannot come close to.

“My people are born from this desert.”

“You are a Bedouin then?”

 “Yes. From the great Tarabiin tribe.”

“Your people can both pray and survive the desert.”

“You are certainly not one of us.”

“I am more like you than you know.”

“In what ways?”

“I always wander. I carry with me all I need to survive. I have no homeland. I have no national allegiance. I have only God and my belief in his will.”

“You are Jewish?”

“I am Hebrew.”

“What is Hebrew?”

“A wandering people of the desert who struggle on the path to do the will of HaShem.”

“I am worried that I am driving you to death.”

“Not unless it’s the will of Allah.”

“Both your people and mine share a saying.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t tempt God.”

***

The Bedouin cab driver dropped me off at the main gate of the Ste Boker kibbutz, the last settlement of its size for hundreds of kilometers and the tomb of the great Ben Gurion. I had been here before but couldn’t remember when. On the previous trip, obviously. The driver rolled down his window and yelled something to the guard at the gate in Hebrew. Right outside the main gate was an army compound guarded by two boys about my own age. They sat by the camp’s entrance, clad in olive drab with M16’s slung over their shoulders. While the camp was covered in green cammo netting, one could see inside and make out the large tents and silhouettes moving inside them. 

I started taking the water bottles out of the cardboard crate and trying to figure out what to do with them. I obviously can’t just carry the box across the desert; however, there is no way I can fit any of these into my bag. Two liters a day was also possibly cutting this too close and dry.

I managed to fit two bottles into each side pocket of my white UFO cargo pants. I tied them against my upper thigh to keep them from banging against my leg. Four. I jammed two into the bag. Six. I took out the black poncho and rolled eight more bottles into a vagabond pouch slinging it over my shoulder. 

The guard at the gate, an olive-skinned Israeli with a revolver strapped to his belt, watches what I am doing and yells for me to come over in Hebrew. I ignore him and look down into the valley planning my descent. The road seems to curve sharply winding down the rocky slope. Ste Boker overlooks a massive ridge of rocky dune that crests over vast badlands below it stretching on as far as I can see in every direction east of the ridge. I see a fire in the base of the valley, but the valley more is a place of darkness and shadows. 

As I’m about to begin the trek, the nervous guard at the gate walks over speaking quickly in Hebrew. It sounds like a question. I think he wants to know where I’m going.

“Bi’Quat Tzin.”

“Lama ata rotseh leleHhet shama?” Why do you want to go there, he asks. 

I ask him if he speaks English and he shakes his head negative. I try to explain why I’m going into the desert. I tell him it’s a nature walk. He stares at me blankly. I can’t remember the word for desert. Mitbar or mitbah? Kitchen and desert are pretty different words. I try to tell him I’m going into the wilderness for a couple days to camp. I am pretty sure that he doesn’t catch most of what I’m telling him. He looks confused and nervous, but he’s the one with the machine gun. 

As I’m speaking to him I realize the water bottles have to be arranged differently. I untie the leg straps and try to readjust them. It’s probably a really good thing I arranged all these bottles after arriving at the kibbutz gate. With bulky undergarments being all the rage these days, they usually shoot first and examine later. I needed a stick to attach to the bundle. As people do when they think they need to communicate important things and don’t speak enough of the language, the young guard got louder and slower with me. I cut him off, laying down both my bag and my bundle to hunt for a stick by the edge of the road. He followed me out of the booth and took out his cell phone. 

Most of the wood is dry and breaks too easily but I finally found a branch that will do the trick. When I got back to the booth, the guard was talking quickly on the phone. He gives me a Dodge City look, but I continue preparing my kit. He probably thinks I’m an insane hobo.

The guard keeps asking me questions in Hebrew. I only get a couple words. I reply to the best of my ability. He tells me that he lives on the kibbutz and has just finished the army. I ask what unit he was in and he drops some name I can’t place. I ask if it was a combat or a jobnik unit. He says jobnick. Something about tank repair. I’m about ready to go when a big white and blue police patrol van pulls up at the gate. The driver rolled down his window and called out to guard. The guard pointed at me. 

Three big guys in dark blue police uniforms got out of the van. They come up to me and one begins to ask me questions with an intense look of concern in his eyes. I tell them ani lo medaber ivrit. I don’t speak Hebrew. The officer who was driving the van tells me to come with them. 

“You…questions…police station.”

“Why? I didn’t do anything!” I reply sharply.

“No…trouble.” 

“You bet your ass I’m not in trouble.”

I try to tell them in Hebrew that I’m going to the desert for seven days to camp, but I don’t know the word for camp so I say it in English with an Israeli accent.

“Please…no trouble,” another one of them says.

They finally convinced me to come with them in the van. I decided that there must be some purpose to all of this. Perhaps it’s all part of a greater design. It also crossed my mind that they might not be cops at all. Either way, I decided to let it play out. They have guns. I have no gun. That’s just how it is. They put all my gear in the trunk and we drove for what seemed like a long time back towards Be’er Sheva. I can’t be sure because the roads all look the same and its pretty dark by this point. I hope they won’t pat me down because I have an illegal knife strapped to the small of my back. They don’t pat me down, because I’m not under arrest. They keep reassuring me that I’m not in trouble.

The police station is a dusty little outpost surrounded with a barbed wire fence somewhere in the vicinity of a large Bedouin settlement and a village named Yeroham. There is a sign in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, which reads: Police. They brought me inside to a little office. The man inside, a sergeant according to his rank, handed me a cup of hot, hot tea and started asking me questions in Hebrew. I told him that I don’t speak the language. He switches over to broken English. He’s a rough, but jovial man who has been in the dessert chasing drug smugglers too may years.

“Why do you want to suicide?” he asks me.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Why you want to die in desert.”

“I’m not trying to die in the desert.”

“Kibbutz guard says you spoke this.”

“That’s because he doesn’t speak any fucking, English.” I annunciate each word.

“What you want in the desert?”

“Camping trip,” I lie.

“Camping trip alone?”

He gazes at me bored and unconvinced. His dusty, unpolished combat boots are up on a desk that is cluttered with auspicious looking piles of files, photos and paperwork. He’s wearing a dark blue uniform that looks more like military than police. He has a small blue yarmulke pinned to his black hair that is speckled with silver on the way to turning gray. 

“You free to go,” he says.

“Just like that?”

“Not want to die. This is good. I have less paperwork that way. No one wants a dead American in our desert. It gives impression country is not safe for tourists.”

“Wouldn’t want tourists thinking that. The country is obviously safe for everybody, tight as a drum. Can I get a ride back to the kibbutz then?”

“Of course,” he smiles.

As they were leading me out of the office, he said something in Hebrew to the officers who brought me in. They both have a good laugh. I laugh too, but am really thinking, why don’t you fucking primitives speak any English? 

It took about a half an hour before we got back to Sde Boker. They stopped at a gas station to fuel up the van and I spent my last seven sheks on a pack of Noblisse cigarettes. 

“Have fun in the desert,” an officer says as they leave me off back at Sde Boker. 

Finally, after repositioning my 14 liters of water, I begin my trek down the narrow winding asphalt road that made a dare devilish descent several thousand meters into the valley below. I made my way to the floor of the valley in darkness. It was a day-night-day-night hike towards reaching a place beyond the watchful eyes of man and civilization. I followed the path that lead to the wilderness, the path to the Bi’Quat Tzin. 

***

The stars are brighter than I had ever remembered them. The horizon appears like an abyss more distant and gargantuan than even the rocky precipice into which I had made my way. I am now a stranger in an even stranger land. While the asphalt road below me indicated that I was still in a place that humans had attempted to conquer, a total darkness swept upon me. The moon itself nearly vanished, waxed out to a sliver. It was as if with each step I took I conjoined the worlds of my dark and violent dreamscape with the realities of my waking life. I did not have a destination other than I knew that if my God was with me, I would be guided to one. The objective was simply the journey. It was not a suicide mission unless that is what it is fated to be. I did not long for death, the long kiss goodnight; I instead felt that I had to obtain a blessing. I had to know what had set me on this road. 

Before a boy can become a man in any culture there is some test. For warlike and primitive peoples a young boy might have to best another in mortal combat to be baptized in the blood of some warrior ethos. Some had to pull sapling trees from the ground to demonstrate sheer strength. For some of the tribes of aboriginal Australia a boy might make his way out into the desert with a gourd of water and brave the wilderness for a period. My tribe, the Hebrews, had asked it’s young to familiarize themselves with the written word, with the law, and then to sing about them. You might say that explained a thing or two about our reoccurring brush with slaughter and extermination. 

I felt the desert rocks and sand-caked embankments crunch under my feet.

After walking for what seems like several hours I saw a small campfire casting dancing silhouettes on the rocky valley walls. The valley is many hundred meters across and the asphalt road suddenly ended at a green metal roadblock divider, an unmanned checkpoint. I am near a large wooden frame upon which a map of the Bi’Quat Tzin is displayed for campers, bikers and all traffickers of the ‘Ein Avdat National Park’ into which I’ve randomly progressed. There is a stack of folding trail maps in an old, rusted tin box. The Jordanian border is 80 km away beyond the trail map. If I were to get that far, I will have long cleared the valley, crossed the wilderness and come to what appeared to be a rail line somewhere in the deep desert. I was unlikely to find another human soul.

Several large dunes obstructed the camp. I heard what sounded like men laughing. I found a group of young men camped out under some desert palm trees by a parked military jeep. They have dirt bikes with them and are cooking something like a quail stew over a low burning fire. 

“Am I intruding?” I ask.

I have startled one of the men and he almost jumps right out of his skin. He points a rifle at me. I realize I’m wrapped in a black sheet and am wearing a kafia. And those 14 liters are all tied off underneath me. I appear to have ambushed a group of soldiers camping on leave. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” one of them says.

“Sorry about that.”

“You look like an Arab dressed like that. What’s the big idea? If I were more drunk I’d have shot you right now,” says the one I startled.

“Sorry, again.” 

I pull off the Kafia and drop my pack on the ground. 

“I’m just getting a late start on a long hike across the reservation.”

“Reservation?” The third one looks up curiously from the stew.

“He means the national park,” said the soldier who had pointed the gun at me.

“The Bi’Quat Tzin,” I say.

“It’s all the same. Lots of ways to talk about the desert, like we have some control over it.”

“What’s your name,” a third one asks still while working on stew, “How’d ya get here Americanski?”

“ZeKhariah.”

“I am called Ofer and these are my friends Alon and David.”

“Good to meet you,” I said as I shake hands with Alon and David. Ofer nods and keeps stirring the stew.

“We’re cooking good dinner. You want eat?” asks the man named David.

“Yeah, sure. Can I add something from my kit?”

“You can if you want, but we have loads to eat. I’m not sure we need anything.”

“Wilko. Thanks guys.”

“So what are you doing out in the desert by yourself,” Ofer asks.

Camping. I’m going camping. Anything else might make them suspicious and not feed me delicious quail stew. 

“Oh, um, I’m going camping.”

“By yourself, you camp?” asks Alon.

“Yeah, my lady in Tel Aviv might not love me, and my lady in Ramat Ishai likes threesomes, and my lady in Pardes Hanna thinks she’s fucking her way to green card. I need to clear my head a bit.”

“Welcome to Israel!” says David, “They smell your green passport from the sound of your American voice.”

“That does not make sense, David,” says Ofer.

“Our passports are dark blue,” I add.

“It does not matter. They smell them no matter what color they are!”

“Or you have a big dick and they want to be in love this summer. Who cares? Like he said, welcome to Israel and welcome to the Negev,” says Alon.

“More sand! Less Palestinians!” yells David.

“Our friend is already drunk,” says Ofer, “We’ve been guarding checkpoints for a month and we are now on leave for three days. This is our vacation.”

“I’d say you guys have a better reason not to be out some desert squandering your free time.”

“Maybe we have girl troubles, too.”

“Little frechot bitches!” shouts David. On the ground next to him is an empty bottle of vodka.

“So, how goes the good fight against Palestinian terror?” I ask popping a squat on top of my pack.

“Oh, we fight the good fight to keep the roads closed with checkpoints and reap terror on the Palestinian economic and transportation infrastructure,” explains Ofer.

“We sit in the sun all fucking day telling an ever growing mob of people they can’t pass without the right papers. As it gets hotter this mob gets bigger and bigger. The tension grows and the situation escalates. Someone throws a rock, or maybe a sniper fires a shot. With how these things go, it always degenerates into madness quickly. We fire in the air and tell them the road is closed. And they always have family in the town one hour away by foot, or valid employment in the neighboring city. But when all is said and done if we let one guy through who’s a bomber and he blows himself up in some club, well what can we do? We have our orders. No one gets through.”

He looks around nervously.

“What’s it like over on their side, the West Bank and Gaza I mean?”

“Who says it’s their side?” mutters David.

“It’s quite bad,” states Alon. “They live in squalor and their leaders rob them blind.”

“They act like niggers,” says David.

“If you think its bad in the cities, it’s much worse in the trenches, checkpoints, and territories. Worse each week, each fucking day.”

“They are like animals trapped in a cage, feral creatures backed into a deadly corner. No one else wants them and, of course, we can give them nothing,” states Ofer.

“What Sharon and our leaders did last September at the al Aqsa mosque was a pointless provocation. But what choice is there? If it had not been over the temple mount, it would have been over something else. Now the blood in the street flows freely.”

“I just had a whole ordeal with the cops and the Sde Boker guards. I got detained for two hours,”  I told them.

“Glad to know that even in the deep desert we have hysteria and overly scrupulous security screenings. They didn’t speak English and you were wearing their headwear. You’re lucky you weren’t shot. David would have shot you.”

“I would have shot you,” David agrees.

“What do the Palestinians say to you at the check points?”

“That’s the funny part. They’re just like us until something sets them off. Their hate and disregard for a queue. Their boisterousness and arrogance. The young men even dress like us. We do so much to create an otherness about them, but they are our cousins after all. How different could they be?” asks Alon.

“But then they became feral. Then the rock throwing begins and it degenerates from there. The world was shocked and horrified when we accidentally shot little Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah. Then everyone watched in more horror on October 12, when the two Israeli reservists who entered Ramallah were arrested by the PA police then slaughtered. This Palestinian mob stormed the police station on live television and beat the two soldiers to death. They threw their mutilated bodies into the street from a second floor window. The killings were captured on video by an Italian TV crew and broadcast in Europe. They just publicly lynched two prisoners in their custody.  The sheer brutality of the killings shocked the Israeli public and were even generally condemned by Palestinian leaders, Our government launched a series of retaliatory air strikes against the Palestinian Authority, which did wonders for their credibility and overall control,” explains Ofer.

“Food’s ready,” says David. 

He parceled out four portions of quail stew over steamed pilaf, thick eastern rice from central Asia. It smells delicious. The small plump chunks of pungent meat have that ‘eat me and grow big’ smell. We hungrily dig in.

“So it began when Sharon went to the temple mount last September and escalated rapidly?” I ask.

“It began fifty years ago when we established a state. This is just another round. It’s no more or less violent. No more or less brutal. There’s the Internet now so everyone can weigh in from the safety of their homes. The suicide bombings will continue and in turn we will strike back at them,” says Alon.

 “Death to Arabs!” says David as he finishes his food. 

Alon, who is a bit better educated it seems, has been doing most of the talking. Alon was a member of the leftist HashGavroche Hatzair before he joined the Army. It is illegal to maintain a political affiliation while enlisted in the IDF. He doesn’t trust Sharon and is sure the Intifada will only escalate as the summer and heat go on. Ofer doesn’t have much of any opinion besides cynicism. 

“If I have to kill an Arab, I’ll kill the Arab who’s shooting at me,” Ofer finally adds.

Only Alon speaks about peace, but doesn’t believe it will really ever come. 

“Death to ALL Arabs,” says David. 

David is in the Mugav, the rough-and-tumble border patrol you get in by having the lowest Kaba scores. Alon and Ofer are infantrymen with a unit I can’t pronounce. They got drafted only a year ago so they have two more before they get out.

“What are you doing here then?” asks Alon as we all enjoy David’s Marlboros after our meal.

“I make and sell art. Sketches mostly. I sell them all over the country.”

“Why did you come to Israel to sell art?” asks Ofer.

“I know. You all hate your country. I should be selling art back in New York.”

“No. I wasn’t gonna tell you that. It’s just that no one buys art in Israel.”

“I’m doing pretty well.”

“You’re dressed like an Arab,” notes David.

“I’m not always dressed like an Arab. I do pretty well on a Thursday night in Tel Aviv.”

“Like how much are we talking about?” asks Alon. 

“Like a hundred skek.”

“That’s peanuts.”

“It’s subjective what a peanut is worth.”

“I’m not trying to be rude, but one hundred shekels is not a lot of money,” says Alon.

“I can live off it.”

“You can survive off it,” interjects Ofer, “We survive on a couple hundred shekels a month, but we have families and other jobs and have three meals and cot and still we think it unbearable.”

“Once you get past survival everything else is superfluous.”

“Once you get past survival everything is comfortable,” states Alon.

“What do you do besides keep Palestinians off the roads?” I ask.

“Ofer and I work for a tech firm in Ashkelon on and off. It’ll be our fulltime job in two years when the Army is finished. Information technology. They’re working on new software systems for cell phones. Our boss wants to turn cell phones into cheap, portable mini-computers. David sells ecstasy at rave parties.”

“You sell art?” scoffs David.

“Yep.”

“Like caricatures?”

“A little bit of this and that.”

“Draw us something. Maybe we’ll buy it if you’re any good,” says Alon who cracks a Gold Star and passes it to me.

“Fer sure.”

David makes some comment in Hebrew and the three of them pause then chuckle about something.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask. 

“It doesn’t translate exactly. He just said its ironic that you’d come to the middle of the East, to the middle of the desert, to make pictures of people who really just want to flee here to where you’re from and engage in superfluous professions like the arts over in New York. He just thinks it’s ironic.”

After dinner we bullshit around and they end up paying me a hundred shekels for a picture of the burning bush Moses saw in the Sinai desert. The stars are even brighter. They light up the valley. There are electric lights still visible from the basis and Ste Boker, but the young soldiers tell me that in one day’s time there will be nothing settled to the east for two hundred miles past the Jordanian border to the small mining city of At Tafilah. They say I should follow the highway out of the valley until I hit a high-elevated bridge that runs across the valley mouth. The rail line along the southern ridge leads out into the wildness then eventually to some phosphate-mining depot. The Northern Ridge line goes north up into Demona. They suggested that I hitch a ride on that rail to get myself out of the desert were I to venture out that far.

The stars are so many and so bright. I quite love it. They try and talk me out of my intended mission like everybody has tried to. We get drunker and drunker and then finally I fall asleep.

The first day.

When I wake up everyone is gone. There’s still a couple smoldering embers left in the fire pit. The soldiers and the bikes and the military jeep are gone and so is the cover of night. I’m sticky with sweat. Before they went to sleep they gave me a topographic map showing me the three main oases of the area as well as a rough outline of the Tzin valley itself. I figure I’ll head to the outermost oasis and take it from there. Once I clear the valley I’ll be in the badlands on the edge of the great endless nothing that is the Bi’Quat Tzin.

After surveying the landscape I begin trekking in the direction of the first oasis. The valley is a geographical formation known as a wadi. During the winter these valleys flash flood and become lush with foliage. In what look like massive trenches below them are vast underground caverns filled with water that sustain the plant life on the wadi floor. An oasis is simply a break where the water is pushed out of this cavern and creates a constantly refilling pool amid the deep desert and plant life pops there. Mainly palms and shrubs. Nothing lush or pretty.  I have this Hollywood image of what an oasis is and I hope the reality lives up to it but I doubt it will. Huge palm trees, camels, Bedouins and large fucking fruits growing everywhere. I can’t wait to meet the Bedouin in their element. I realize that I have already met a couple of them ever since I left Be’er Sheva but it’s not Hollywood if they have a cab instead of a camel. 

The heat is soon ridiculous. I’m walking along this small, nondescript dirt road following the tracks of a vehicle. There doesn’t seem to be a shady spot anywhere close. Around me are towering dunes of sand dust and rock. A few hours later the last vestiges of civilization melt behind me on the top of the valley’s northern ridge. I am wrapped in my white poncho and am using the black one as a bundled pack over my shoulder containing six of the water liters. I have two strapped down in each cargo pocket of my baggy, white UFO pants and two more in my rucksack. The going is slow and tedious. I have to concentrate on not drinking too much water. I keep looking back to make sure Ste Boker is really gone. 

My path winds deeper into this wasteland. I try to drink water only when I feel I need it, but I feel like I need it all the time. By noontime I’ve almost liquidated three liters worth. I keep the empty bottles hoping there will be somewhere to refill them. I aimed to ration off at about two bottles per day, which according to some soldiers I met in the Tel Aviv Central Bus station is far too little anyway. That doesn’t seem very realistic at this point. It feels like I’ve been walking for miles, but then I remember the rest of the world is measured in kilometers. I haven’t seen a person all day and the kibbutz on the ridge is no longer in sight. I am following a path marked largely by vehicle tracks and compressed earth. There is not so much as a breeze to reassure me. Not even four hours into the wilderness and my gait has become a quiet stumble. 

It is hot, hot, and my brain is boiling. [°F] = [°C] × ⁹⁄₅ + 32. Had I made it through Bronx Science I’d perhaps been able to convert the fact that it was apparently now 33 degrees Celsius out here into something high and intimidating in my native Fahrenheit. My constant need to consume water and the sweat tricking into my eyes alerted me that the desert was a killer. 

I’m such a stupid fucking American. Only my Lawrence of Arabia, read too much Dune, could conceive of finding a spiritual connection in this wasteland. How can I think of God when all I can think about is water? More water. Drowning becomes an orgiastic notion.  I guess I thought that by coming out here I’d learn something. I’ve learned that at the rate I’m going in three days or less, all my water will be gone. It pops into my head to turn back. I’m only half a day out anyway. Write it all off as a stupid notion and a funny day trip. Just quit. It’s too fucking hot. 

“It always has to be so damn dramatic doesn’t it?” I say aloud to myself. 

And then. 

“I’d like to think I’m doing it for a good reason.” 

“Hold you’re shit together. It hasn’t even been a whole day out here yet.”

There is sand and death as far as the eye can see. The walls of the valley deceptively appear to offer shade, but to reach them seems like several km to either side. I’m moving into sloping precipices of red and tan rock, of dust long settled and some tiny barren shrubbery called acacia trees or shittim, which the are apparently common in the wilderness areas, particularly near the stream beds.  The durable wood of this tree was used in the construction of the tabernacle and a number of its objects, including the sacrificial altar, table of showbread, and Ark of the Covenant. I know this because the back of the map has a small list of flora and fauna found in the Tzin Valley.  

The map says the oasis is 15 km from the base camp we’d made. The going is slow and hard.  My water is warm like soup. At least it’s wet. I can feel my exposed hands and face first-degree burning. There is a slow bake of my brain in the very cerebrospinal fluid it floats in. The thing about the desert is that you have to always find ways to occupy your mind or it plays tricks on you out of water glut. The parasympathetic nervous system keeps urging you to do the rational thing and get your body off the stove. 

“There isn’t anything out here,” I whisper to myself. 

I spit out something lacking fluid.  It’s just you, the voice in your own head whomever it is you pray to, and a whole lot of time between you and your next sip of water. The desert takes it all away. I squat under a low-lying bush that provides a little cover. Looking at my map it doesn’t look all that far to the Jordanian border. Only about 70 km, but the desert is very deceptive when it comes to distance. My tribe apparently spent forty years wandering this desert. They had just escaped from Egypt and I guess they were wondering what I’m wondering about now. I suppose God was a bit more proactive then with all the smiting of Egyptian armies, burning bushes, and tablets with a plan. I need some tablets with a plan about now. I’m seventeen years old and I’d like to think I have a good idea of I’m doing just no conception of how it is to be done. 

In the distance it looks like I see a small lake. Fuck tablets and give me a kayak. Of course, just like in the movies, there’s no lake at all. Just more barren earth, which twinkles like a stream in the distance, your mad desire to drink more water, and a profound sense of accomplishment that you’ve made your way just a little bit further spells your death by wandering off the road too far for nothing. There might be a real good metaphor waiting for me behind the next set of dunes at that mirage. I’m traveling toward death for an imagined thing; but I’m the kind of cat that ultimately wants to see a burning bush. I just need you to give me something to believe. 

I reach the first oasis by about 4 pm. It’s gotten a little cooler by now, but not much. At least the sunshine isn’t hitting point blank under this grove of rugged palm tress. It blows my mind because it is the first time I’ve ever seen an oasis. It isn’t all that far off from what I had pictured. I guess once in awhile the movies tell the truth. 

The first oasis which the map calls Ein Avdat is nestled in a tight chalk ravine that gets increasingly greener as you enter it with Euphrates poplars known for their various-shaped leaves. As one travels into this jagged cut in the side of the valley’s southern ridge the dust is made lush culminating in a gigantic waterfall raining down in buckets into a bowl sixty meters across under an enormous ledge. The contrast between the wasteland and this place make the jaw drop. I strip naked and dive into the freezing pool. I’m the only one here for my first baptism. The water is fresh. It flows from a vast underground spring collected from the winter’s rains. I swim and drink and dive deep into the bottomless pool. I swim about underwater realizing the bottom eludes each dive. I break the surface and drink myself retarded from this first desert well. I spend the whole day at the pool recovering my strength. 

The second night.

I find a chalk cave that runs twenty meters into a ridge wall situated above the pool after a quick climb. I unpack my kit and decide to make this cave my resting place for the night, which had fallen. It’s getting cold in the valley quickly and the winds have picked up.

During the winter this was a river if that could be believed. I’d never even seen it rain in Israel, but one of the soldiers told me the Wadi fills up from an underground lake and sets off a chain reaction, which renders the valley green for several months of winter. Sure wasn’t very green anywhere but where the water broke the surface at the three watering holes. 

Ein Avdat, where I had been recuperating all evening was nestled in a rocky ravine that broke several hundred meters into the south ridge down and across from Sde Boker Kibbutz. This kibbutz housed not only several thousand residents, but also a desert research division branch of Ben Gurion University in the Negev of Be’er Sheva, as well as a training base for soldiers about to be deployed in desert recon and infantry units. The Negev, which was roughly 60% of the total landmass of Israel, was a barren triangle. It’s northern rim was defined by a great crater where Mitzpah Ramone, the last real recognized town before Eilat, perched atop a great ridge. 

Sometime after dusk I eventually fell sleep. I wrapped myself in both poncho shawls in a small cave near the pool, refreshed and full from eating several tins of pears and nearly half a block of cheese. In my enduring slumber, my greatest four-hour nap ever had been rudely interrupted by a wave of new dreams.

* * *

“Some of these caves carved into the chalky limestone cliffs of Nahal Zin were apparently used in the 6th century A.D. by monks from nearby Avdat. These monks sculpted out closets, shelves, benches, stairs, and water systems. A Greek inscription was found in one of the caves. It is a prayer to St. Theodorus, a monk whose name is also found in a monastery in Avdat. At the top of the canyon are the remains of a Roman fortress. But that’s not where were going.” 

“Five more minutes,” I mumble in Aramaic.

“Sleep tight, kid. When you get up there is quite a bit more ground to cover.” 

Mike Washington is sitting on a rock by a low fire. This is not the deep desert. We are still near the way station, still near the seven springs, which sustain the life of the city and the desert people around it. I’m wrapped in blankets of wool on a bed of pillows of tough and durable sheets of red and black cloth. I hear him, but I’m so exhausted I don’t even open my eyes. It’s a deep and comfortable sleep I’m in, peaceful for the near first time in my life. Clean for the first time in as long as I can remember. 

“You’re getting tougher boy. You’ve been tough, but now comes the test. Tough ain’t enough, as they say.”

I still don’t say anything or try to get up. I’m afraid if I move or even open my eyes this tranquility will be lost forever.

“You have to wake up soon, kid. You’ve got to reach the second watering hole by sun up. This one’s a bit further out. Better to make the trek in the cool of night.”

I grumble something to him, or at him really. It sounds again a bit like ‘five more minutes,’ again in Aramaic.

“You don’t have five minutes. The devil’s gaining on us and you ain’t got a chance at a fiddle made of gold.” 

I hear some foul and evil howl. 

‘Let me start by saying that our God is not a God of tricks and tests and cosmic hoop jumping. It isn’t making any lists and checking them twice. God knows not only what decision you’re about to make out here, but all the ones you might make, or won’t make or can’t make based upon your limited awareness of the things unseen. God knows already that your knife will fail you in battle, that your water will soon be gone and that you will loose your way in the badlands of the deep desert.  It can also see you become a killer like me, deadly with blade and bullets. You might conserve your water. You might be better at topography than you currently appear.  Our God doesn’t get angry, or jealous or worry about what you do with your soul. It can see everything that ever has been, could be and is.” 

I glance over at the voice of my mentor. Then I see him. His head is shaved and a grey rag is wrapped around his empty eye sockets. He’s wearing a dark grey sleeveless, collarless shirt plated in light interlocking armor, a bulletproof vest for someone who has already been shot and doesn’t die. His gold pistols hang from suspender-like straps on his chest. Upon his lap, a fedora hat, also grey. His pants are black with white pin stripes. The suit jacket has been tossed over his shoulder.

“If you are being tested, if that’s what you want to believe, then you are merely testing yourself. There are many realities playing out simultaneously, so you have an equal probability of success or failure out here.”

I’m not moving until I have to. I know that as soon as I get up, the very second, is when the running and shooting and jumping and exploding of enemy heads will begin. I know that even without his eyes Mr. Washington can still kill.    

“Wake up from your waking life and ask yourself, are you ready to face what made you from a single clot?” says Washington. 

“We’ve bled quite a bit to get here,” I mutter.

“We’ve just begun to bleed.”

“You’re reassuring.”

‘Not my job to help you lie to yourself, little Zachariah.”

“Tell me what you are.”

“I’ve told you before.”

“Then tell me what I am.”

He looks at me like I’m deaf and stupid.

“I tell you that every single time I see you.”

“I don’t believe you. I think I’ve gone and caught the madness.”

“You can’t be crazy unless you run around claiming you’re Jesus Christ.”

“I would assure you that there are way more subtle ways to go crazy.”

“But you’re just not a subtle guy, Zachariah.”

“Zachariah’s your name, guy. I’m Sebastian. I don’t ever forget that even if other people are led to.”

“The naming of names and changing of things doesn’t make a mountain less a mountain or a gunslinger anything other than a killer with a cause. We’ve come an awful long way for you and I not to embrace the purpose many have worked to steer you toward.”

‘”I see little purpose to anything I’ve done so far, Mr. Washington.”

“That’s sad. But oh, you’re about to. You’re gonna have to step up the game.”

“We lost already. Don’t you fucking remember? They killed everybody. I betrayed you all.”

“You can’t betray people you don’t know.”

“I can’t trust the people I don’t know either. You’ve jumped about in my mind four years now. The worse I get each time you do, too. I don’t even know when you first came along. When I was young. Back when I needed something to believe.’ 

“You were only 8 when you first started writing and drawing stories about me. About us really, but you weren’t conscious of what I was then. The dreams followed the stories.”

“You’re a product of my sick, fucked up head.”

“You’re the product of God’s. That is if it had a head or emotions of any kind beyond love, admiration and mercy. It created the heavens and earth, the skies and the sea, the night and the day, and then there came a day when little Zachariah was called to deliver the next great salvo of changes to be made among your kind in a long tradition of such noble work.”

“Why don’t you go find a fucking rabbi?”

“Because the ranks of the righteous are always drafted from the fallen, the sick and the broken to make example.”

“What example?”

“That it hasn’t forgotten a single one of its children.”

“Even if that’s true. I can’t do it. I don’t even really believe. I’m not sure I ever did. I prayed to die and I guess it saved me. I begged to be saved in the foxhole and then dug deeper. I tried to be a Jew in London and was driven out of the tribe. The land I was taught was Zion is a bloody circus of fanatics. What reason, what proof have you that I am not so sick, that I’ve wandered so far from reason, that my very mind is split in this chalk cave babbling to an imaginary friend!? I AM UNDONE! You are a figment of my ego, a ghost of things I wish I were! YOU’RE A PRODUCT OF MY SICK FUCKING MIND!!!”

I dashed my head on the wall of the cave. I felt a trickle of blood run down the right side of my head and a dull sting, but he didn’t go anywhere.

He waits for my rant to end and then starts up again, as he was prone to do.

“I am what you were and will soon be again.”

I’m pondering what the hell that means when I hear a spine-chilling howl like the sound of a feral beast and a horse dying. If you mixed those sounds together, you’d kind of gather what that evil fucking sound, sounded like.     

“Just to forewarn you,” he said putting on his gangster hat,”’ you’d better get ready to fight for more than your own lost soul.”  

* * *

I awaken with a start, my index finger pointing at the cave’s entrance like it’s a handgun. I knew this would happen. The nightmarish dream world was beginning to break through again. I had no fuck or bottle to keep them back, no pink pilly-willies to shut them out. Those had been abandoned before London. I’d be facing my demons out here dead on and my imaginary friend, my guardian angel, had had his imaginary or angelic eyes ripped from his head. I’d have to step the game up because I couldn’t definitively say the howl I’d heard was really locked away in my head or out here in the darkness. 

My intention had been to haul out of here tonight, but it had gotten very late while I slumbered. I wasn’t up for anymore rounding about under that brutal sun. All future ambulations would take place under the cover of the cold, cold night. My watch said it was 4:05 am. That wouldn’t give me enough moon cover to get to Ein Boker. According to the map, this third oasis in the Wadi Tzin was the smallest of the three that were connected by the Spice Road on the highway out of the valley and into the wilderness, the Bi’Quat.

I am sitting in the dark of night smoking a cigarette. I remember something my father had taught me a long time ago, how to field strip a cigarette. To extinguish it, to break the casing and scatter the guts. To pocket the paper and the filter for incineration. This was just one of the many interesting things my father showed me. He told me a good soldier doesn’t smoke because it exposes him and makes him a target. It makes him easy to track.

It’s freezing. It crept up on me while I was sleeping. I’m shivering thumb to toe. Neither of the linen ponchos is very thick. The chills swim through me. The chalk cave in the valley hill above the great pool of the spring offers very little sanctuary from the winds through the valley. I dig in, wrapping the poncho sheets about me like a cocoon and ball up in a tight fetal position as cold and thankless as the day I was born.

Something moves out there, scurrying across the sands in the darkness. And then something, which sounds like a terrible scream in the night, echoes off miles away, direction unknown. I clutch my saceen, and I hold out for the daybreak in this little cave, but despite my terror or more because of it, I do not ask for my God to help me.   

The second day.

I manage to awaken a little before dawn, because I never went into a proper deep sleep for more than a solid four hours. I left my gear up in the cave and began climbing the rocks to the mouth of the spring on the south ridge from where the water flows. I only have my canteen and my book, the book that Brent bought me the morning of our first meeting.  

I’ve already got some notions about this desert by day. When you are in the desert your eyes play tricks on you. It is like sensory bombardment resulting from subsistence deprivation. You’re running on a near empty tank at all times. Out there in that desert it’s you, and whatever name you call your god, and the freezing cold nights, and the dead by dusk heat that makes you sweat even when you aren’t building pyramids. 

People have the wrong conception of a mirage. It’s not so much that you think you see a lake or some body of water elusively situated upon the horizon. It’s a twinkle of salvation that stays just as far away each time you move towards it. The mirage represents some supposed place of destination generally always off the path. You could tell yourself it looks like water because water begins to occupy most of your waking consciousness out there. But it’s not water. It’s just another stretch of land, which you halfway died to get to, that yields oh so little in return. If the cold could end life by night then, the heat does you in by day. But the reason you let it do so, the reason you wasted all that water, is to chase some mirage that isn’t on your path at all. 

The Negev is home to thousands of Bedouin, who have been here for roughly 7,000 years. Their tribal alliances stretch from the Maghreb of Northern Africa well across the Middle East into Iraq. These desert people fear their God and know their desert. They were the first converts of the religion of Muhammad and their armies spread Islam from Spain to China within three generations of the revelation. It was the Bedouin that emerged from the desert to carry the third revelation of the Abrahamic line to the people of the world. It was these people who lent their swords to the message of the Prophet Muhammad.  

Throughout most of their history, the Bedouin have engaged primarily in nomadic herding, limited agriculture, guerilla raiding and the occasional fishing. At times various powers have provided them income by contracting them to transport goods and people across the desert. Scarcity of water and of arable lands required them to move constantly so as to not deplete the previous waters of the wadis and wells hidden throughout the great desert. There are no countries or empires the Bedouin are bound to respect, even the Islamic Caliphate they brought to power. When the civil war began after the Umayyad tribe attempted to usurp the reigns of power and murder the prophet’s family, the Bedouin began to understand that a thing fixed and stagnant is thing breeding evil and bound to be corrupt. The Islamic empire soon spanned three continents. Its leaders no longer emerged from the nomadic Arab tries that helped it grow in the early years. 

When it came time for the collapse of the sick man of Europe, nearly thirteen thousand years after the battles in which the Prophet Muhammad and an irregular Bedouin Arab army had taken over the Arabian Peninsula, in the final days of the last caliphate, the Bedouin led by an English intelligence officer helped end the last great Muslim world power. The Ottoman Empire helped Lawrence hammer their supply lines and seize the port of Aqaba. Their alliances shifted like the sands. They carried Islam to glory then handed the region over to the infidel English and French out of contempt for the power of the Turks. The famous Bedouin witticism ‘myself against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the world’ somewhat articulates the ever shifting Bedouin loyalties.

I didn’t see another person all day, Bedouin or otherwise. I took out the two books I carried, which contained three. The Tanakh and the Gospel and the Qur’an. The first I knew from two years of Hebrew School, the second I was drilled with daily in the Family Foundation camp. I had never opened the Qur’an. I knew they did not represent the totality of some revelation. As ambiguous a believer as I am, I am not about to cut out Zen Buddhism, Confucian thinking, Zoroastrianism and 4,000 years of Hinduism just because the three I know are easier to grasp. But it was a path was it not? I had to start with the revelations that were sent to my tribe. There are great linkages, which I cannot, and perhaps will not get to see. That all these religions are one isn’t even something I question anymore. But if I am out here to connect with my God, I need to do so with the traditions established for my kind, those of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Brent had told me not to try to read these books cover to cover or to take their words literally. There was hidden meaning in each message, verses tailored to the individual believer.   

So, I sat most of that first day in the chalk cave rereading the Torah. It is targeted speed-reading really. I don’t know what I am looking for, but I process it quickly. I am spending just one day per book. Two to meditate on them and two more for whatever I am meant to receive from this journey. I immerse myself in the spring regularly as the heat rises. 

The lush oasis in the ravine is some shelter from the inferno out there in the desert and I read on. I read of the beginning, then soon of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Since King James was not living back then and these were desert people, I should say Avram, Yitzhak and Yaakov. One of the earliest stories I had been taught in Hebrew Sunday School was that Abraham, or Avram as he called himself, worked as a seller of great stone idols that his father built somewhere in what is now Iraq and Iran. He helped his father sculpt these intricate stone deities for the market where people might purchase a medium in which to engage in the then accepted polytheistic prayer. 

One day God spoke to Avram. It revealed to Avram that all things were one and that all people were one people, the work of a single higher entity. Avram took a hammer and destroyed every idol in his father’s shop.

My Hebrew school had us make little clay figurines. I spent a great deal of time on mine. I spent a whole Sunday afternoon making a merman. We came back a week later and they told us to break all of our ‘idols’ with little hammers. It was religious indoctrination like a madrassa with coloring books and I flatly refused. I cried and yelled and guarded my idol, or sculpture as I saw it until my father came to withdraw me from Hebrew school. I didn’t go back for seven more years when I began to get ready for my bar mitzvah. By that time they found a Reform Shul with a lesbian, guitar-playing rabbi.

God surely whispered to Avram shortly after that it wasn’t about destroying idols but that it was about creating a new kind of faith. The beginning of the book tells epic stories of ordinary, even sinful people that prove their faith. Adam and Eve and their fall from the Garden of Eden. Men like Noah and the building Arc. Men like Lot attempting to stop the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra. Then a whole book traces the bloodline of the House of Avram. Of his children Yitzhak and the casting out Ishmael, or his grandchildren Yaakov and the cast out Esau. The twelve children of Yaakov renamed Israel, and of Joseph, betrayed by his eleven other brothers over a Technicolor dream coat and Israel’s affliction of being sold as slave in Egypt. Yoseph earns favor with the Pharaoh using his prophetic dreams to save the Egyptians from famine and then humbles himself and saves the families of this eleven other brothers when they come begging for food in Egypt. Genesis ends with the twelve tribes of Israel comfortable and settled as honored guests of the Egyptian state.  

The Tanakh is not filled with saintly, righteous people. The patriarchs are polygamists. Avram attempts to sacrifice his son to prove his love for God. Lot is a drunk and gets his own daughter pregnant. The founding brothers of Israel’s twelve tribes sell their own brother into slavery over a coat. But the House of Adam and the Tribes of Avram persevere and uphold their respective covenants with the Lord. By the beginning of Exodus, the Israelites are slaves in Egypt and I take a brief nap.   

When I wake up, I eat a can of tuna and some black Baltic bread. I read most of Exodus without speed reading or skimming. I read how Moses lead the 144,000 descendants of Israel’s twelve sons out of Egypt into Mt. Sinai and over into the very desert I am now sitting in over a 40-year journey. I spin through Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers chronicling the 613 things Christians are sure they don’t have follow if they show up on Sunday or at least Christmas and Easter. 

Every single Israelite including Moses dies in that great desert before reaching the promised land of Zion. Their betrayal at Mt. Sinai was too great. They waited 40 days and nights at the foot of that mountain for Moses to come down with the Commandments. They had set up a Golden Cow and were engaged in a drunken, wild orgy when their leader made the treacherous descent with the first tablets. Moses got to look out over Zion, but even he died before Yeshau; called Joshua by King James led the children of these desert people over the river Jordan to drive the Canaanites from their traditional land. You can’t say history doesn’t repeat itself. It almost repeats itself verbatim.

I get as far as Canaan and have to stop for while. The Israelites, enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, then after spending 40 years living in the wilderness of Sinai, Negev, and Arabia engage in a wild genocide to take over their promised land. I had only some half-baked notion about this particular incident. In some cases the Israelite armies drew circles around a village in Canaan and their priests declared that everything inside had to be obliterated, every structure, every piece of property, every last man, woman and child. It’s all in the Tanakh, but they sure as hell didn’t teach this stuff in Hebrew school. We had come a log way, suffered quite a great deal to soil our hands and souls first with the Canaanites and now again with Palestinians.  

I wanted to vomit but dove instead again into the deep, blue pool. There was nothing so chosen about my tribe that made us any less capable of base slaughter. 

Over the rest of the afternoon I read through the Judges, Prophets Major and Minor, and found little that justified what the Israelites appeared to have done. In the years to come they created a mighty little kingdom for one hundred years. But failing to fully eradicate the polytheists in their midst, and embracing brutal marshal law, they forgot their religion. They smashed more idols than they internalized faith in God. Their house was divided, the temple was destroyed, and all twelve tribes were carried off into Babylonian exile. Ten of the twelve tribes were completely lost. They sang many songs of return, but did not foresee that even several hundred years later when Cyrus of the Persians let them return to Zion that they’d rebuild their Second Temple, forget the lessons yet again and loose everything for a thousand years, this time when the Romans ground them under the heel. 

  The night has fallen yet again. 

The second night.

I made my way toward Ein Boker oasis under the cover of the darkness and the cold.  I had picked up all my refuse and tied it into a bundle to carry out with me. I refilled my three-liter jugs at the spring and took one more dip. It began to get a bit colder after nightfall. I could feel the chemicals changing inside my body, my mind using new parts. I felt like a hunter. I secured my black and white checkered kafia headdress once again. I clicked on my electric lantern and tied the excess water bottles one by one to a stronger staff I had acquired. I strapped my pack on and left the oasis on a trail called the Spice Road, which I hoped by morning would bring me to the next oasis on the route, Ein Boker. My instincts were honed in the cold night. There had been a howl perhaps, perhaps something evil was out there lurking in ambush. Something worse than warnings of smugglers, an evil that had been with me all along that was finally ready to move in for the kill. Sleep is truly is the cousin of death in the desert. If you do not make use of the night for transit, you will be caught out during the day. This will drain your water considerably. 

I was now 15 km in from Sde Boker, it was apparently 17 more of these so-called kilometers to reach Ein Boker, the third of large springs in Wadi Tzin. The valley before it dropped off into the great Bi’Quat, the expansive wilderness. Were I to not make this second crossing before daybreak, finding the shelter of the wadi and the poplar trees, then there was little hope in maintaining the water needed to get clear of the valley and into the wilderness beyond. 

This break into the deep desert was approximately a 60-kilometer trek. 

The landmark that would tell me I had gotten that far was a train rail bridge that hooked over the ridge of the valley from a phosphate harvesting mine in the deep desert and ran out and up into Demona. The map appeared like a great test of endurance laid out before me. Did I possess the constitution to get deep enough into the flaming mess and then ride out on a train one way or another? As I trekked through the dark following the track bed of long haul rigs along the wide Spice Road, I understood that this was a cakewalk compared to the third stretch between Ein Boker and the high bridge on the map. The valley had an upper and lower access. The upper access was to the south and involved a steep and treacherous climb from Ein Avdat to a parking lot several hundred meters above. I had come in the lower access from the base and university on the Kibbutz of Sde Boker, the tomb of Ben Gurion, Israel’s greatest hero and founder. He had lived the last years of his life in Sde Boker in the desert dreaming. Now I too was in this desert to dream. The map had vast wide spaces, which were neither flat nor inviting. Dunes and boulders and scorched earth, fall out from the smiting of the great Sodom and Gomorra. That old heart of darkness, the quite literally lowest point on Earth was a mere 50 km northeast of my location. It was only death out here. I would prove myself its match or just die out in it.

I made my way in darkness. I heard things moving out there in the night. If they made themselves my enemies I had a double-edged saceen, an Israeli hoodlum weapon acquired for ninety shekels in the Shanti House. It was four-inch blade mounted on a metal handle whose base unscrewed. By unscrewing the base of the saceeen you removed a second blade from inside the handle then re-screwed it into a double-edged, six-inch sword. It’s all about those extra inches they say in American movies. Aim for the right upper quadrant of the abdominal area someone had taught me. The liver contains 40% of body’s red blood cells at any given time. 

My eyes are playing tricks. Something always seems to dart by me several hundred meters into where I couldn’t see. There is no moon and the blackness swallows the whole valley enveloping all. The only way I keep my way is to follow the indents of the large semi-trucks that used the Spice Route toward the railway line.

There are things out here. What scurries by so quickly is quite possibly a rabbit or some kind of small deer. It surely has no monstrous claws and fangs to render me from my bones or to slaughter me after a sickly short chase. I unclip my sacceen and unscrew the dagger’s base. With one hand I hold my water jug staff, four bottles tied to one end with my lantern tied to the other. With my pack strapped to my side, my right hand wields the sacceen should this thing in the darkness make its move. I trudge along leading with my lantern and my leftover food. According to my watch it is 3:30 am. The sun will be up around 7 am and unbearable by 8. There is really no way of knowing how much ground I have covered between Avdat and Boker. I have no geographic indicator other than the sudden appearance of trees to really know. I just keep moving. I just keep seeing things in the darkness. 

I was Dante with no participating Virgil. I was Lewis with no Clarke and no Indian guide. There are things moving in the night around me, but I doubt those things are Indians or the Roman poet of antiquity. Maybe the moving things are in my mind. They are the terror finally taking hold. As I progress I move deeper into the mouth of madness. The desert is a whole new place when the sun is absent. At least by day your nemesis the sun fights you face to face, but by night your creeping enemies are more slimy, sly and elusive. 

I came to a fork in the wide dirt road around midnight.  I read a sign illuminated by my lantern, which was written in Arabic and Hebrew and English. To my left the Spice Route became the Old Spice Route.  It remained broad and swept northeast toward the High Bridge and Sodom. I imagined it in relation to Sde Boker, which I placed behind me. The Spice Route also continued on through what appeared to be a village of corrugated tin roofs and derelict hulls of rusted mining apparatus. The machinery could have been for anything really. It sat dormant like a herd of iron behemoths. I was unable to place them as friend or foe, omnivore or carnivore. I popped a little squat for a pow-wow with one. I lit up a Noblisse after not smoking all day, which didn’t help me pick a route at all by getting off in a head rush. I smoked in the darkness attempting to ascertain which route led to Ein Boker and which to the High Bridge, the tracks over the valley. Since I didn’t have enough water to make it to the bridge, especially since there was no water near the bridge, it was vital that I picked correctly on this one. I smoked away thinking about both my directional predicament and what thing crept behind me somewhere in the dark.    

I can feel something out there in the gloom watching me. Part clown, part insect, part pederast, part Disney, both a giant elephant-spider and some timeless evil is dancing circles out there around me.

I had refilled five of my liter jugs with spring water. I finally gauged that Ein Boker, the third oasis before the deep desert, was straight ahead into the derelict bone yard. According to my little map, I would have to backtrack seven km from the spring to the bone yard and exit out the valley north to the high bridge. Otherwise I’d have to cross some 20 km over rough dune, hill, and brush without a clear path to follow, no fun at all. I began to hike straight through the bone yard. I was not able to fathom attempting such a crossing tonight.

It’s a misconception that everything in the desert is dead. At night you hear rabbits or small dear scurrying across the dunes. There are snakes and birds. Kill the birds and eat them and leave those snakes alone. All manner of the toughest creatures alive thrive out in the wasteland. At night it’s freezing cold and the wind rips dust across the wilderness. I’ve wrapped myself in the white poncho underneath with the black cloak on top. My face is covered, masked in the checkered kafia. The crescent sliver is very bright, bright like I’ve never seen before. It is better to move at night for obvious reasons, but I have to be careful not to lose my path. Things can get quite fatal out here without a grounded sense of direction. I have to cover as much ground as possible in these rough and frigid conditions. I have to calculate my destination carefully so that I will end up in at this spring before daybreak. The freezing cold rips right to the bone and I wonder what is worse, the blazing heat or the frozen nights? But I guess I’m stuck with both. One will never see stars like this in America. There are no city lights or suburban sprawl in a hundred miles to dull their brilliance. I see the first shooting star tear across the horizon and I wonder if it was an Air Force exercise until I see the next shooting star. I don’t know the difference. 

Somewhere far away I see a vehicle making strange circles deep out in the desert, in the direction of the Old Spice Route. It cannot be heard, but I see it out there chasing something, perhaps itself. Is it a Bedouin drug run or a Mugavnik Patrol? Neither would serve my cause. It is too far, too distant to make me out and it doesn’t appear to be closing in. My eyes still haven’t adjusted out here. I swear that in the bone yard I will find danger and make my way out of it quickly. These broken trucks and cranes remind me of the huge, slimy metal sentinels that usher the prisoner convoys into the to deep desert in the Pale City to be destroyed by the gas and the crematoriums. My eyes continue to play tricks. I see the trenches by the roadside filled with hooded bodies bloated from poison gas. I expect the large metal beasts behind me will rise from the sands at any minute to come crashing after me. But this is the real world, where they cannot go. I must fear them only in my dreams. There are no bodies in these trenches, just rocks and dust.  

I reach Ein Boker before dawn. It is nestled in a little crater. Its pools are larger than those at Ein Avdat, but less pristine. It is questionable if the water in them is good to bathe in much less drink. There is a micro forest of Euphrates poplars. Someone has erected a lean-to tent with poplar branches and black sheets tied off. With several hours to dawn I bunk down in this little shelter. The oasis is deserted, but there are signs of a recently smoldered fire pit and several cigarette butts near the campground. I lost the car lights in the distance and have put a few km between the bone yard, and myself but the mounting feeling of being hunted has not past. 

I am traveling deeper into the wilderness with the works of the man Jesus Christ as my next lesson. I still clutch my saceen for all the good it won’t do me if something sets upon me while I slumber. For my internal enemies I have Mr. Washington, but out here it’s just this doubled edged sword.

***

Mike and I have been crossing the dunes for what seems like three days without a pause to even rest. The sea of sand we cross stretches out thousands of miles. And we cross it in a light ship. 

The ship is roughly the width of a two-person sailboat but it is two thousand meters in length. It is named ‘Temptation’ and has sails that are nearly a quarter mile tall and elevated wings in waves about its flanks and is made of a paper-thin metal. Its mast towers far above us and flies a huge grey flag. The sails are of a thin white cloth with grey ropes stitching them to the mast and wings. We are nearly off the desert floor. The strong winds let us sail upon sand. Mike sits on the deck with a cigarette controlling ‘Temptation’ with a complicated network of pullies and levers. I sit, gazing out at the vast and terrible desert we would surely never be able to cross without this terrific vessel.

Our destination is the thing on the other side of the Wilderness, the City of Many, Many Lights in the land of Zion. The Pale City from which we’ve spent over four years fleeing is miles behind us. The desert is measured in kilometers now, smaller in increments of ten, and far more civilized. I haven’t even seen him shoot somebody since we stole the thing three days ago at Port Said. 

We have been living on manna and quail ever since. Manna tastes a good deal like frog’s legs, but perhaps a little like marshmallow lamb. Most of our trip is spent in silence. This vast sea of sand has taken seven days via this strange transport to traverse and now has come the morning of day eight. I put down the book I am reading to scan the horizon for structures, for people, for anything. Only red and yellow sand.   

Our nemesis has taken the red-haired girl hostage and moved just two days ahead of us in a convoy to the City of Lights, that point where one could access God in this world. It is all that is left of a great civilization brought under heel by its own wicked leaders and its own lack of faith. 8 million had been put to death in the camps surrounding the Pale City I had been imprisoned in. Nearly every last man woman and child had their life and hope dashed. The sands swallowed a once green landscape. 

These were the parables of Mr. Washington coming and going throughout our desert cruise and palaver.  

Now nothing but zombies, fiends, demons and certain death.

The girl we are protecting needs to be brought over to the other side, the world of my waking life. She will bear a child of auspicious blood whose life will bring unity to the world of man. This child will carry the message of God across the wide world and humanity will know dignity and peace. 

It is a nice fairytale. 

I asked him why they are bringing her to the same place we had attempted to reach, to Zion and the City of Many Many Lights. 

“Because they wish to crossover, too. The child inside her is a clean slate they hope to write profanities upon. This is a dying world you dream of Zachariah. Its days are few in number,” Mike says to me.

“They must have killed her child when they..,” I couldn’t go on.  

“You can’t kill a baby whose name will be Hope,” he responded.

The vessel careened onward, blown over the endless sand.

* * *

I awaken from sand blowing on my face. Winds have sent a shower of dust upon the oasis. The skies color is different. The dawn will break soon. I have quite a bit more reading to do.

The third day.

After reviewing the Tanakh it is time for the Christian stuff. The New Testament I set out to read is, of course, the Gospel of the man Jesus Christ according to four of his closest companions. But what of the other eight? What of the thirty years in Egypt? It is not that I ever doubted the accuracy of the gospels as it was reported they were written just 90 years after Jesus’ death, it was that I didn’t have the whole story of his life and rebellion.    

I made a small fire in the pit to prepare some tea in case anyone came through this neck of the woods. It is an English tradition, apparently a Bedouin tradition, too. My breakfast consists of a sliced up apple with honey and some black bread with white cheese. I bury most of my water jugs to keep them cool in the mud around the spring. The waters here are red with sediment. 

The Gospels leave out eight other lieutenants of Jesus’ holy war. You have to read between the lines. This was a Roman dominated puppet colony in the backwater of the Empire. The Pharisee priests were pawns of the Roman governor and the territory itself had no vital resources or great strategic importance. Then one day this man begins healing the sick and helping the poor throughout the colony with a message of hope and renewal. He surrounds himself with the wretched, the broken, and the damned, with prostitutes, criminals and thieves. They call him Rabbi. Next thing you know the Roman Garrison is after him, the Jewish Police are after him, and he’s moving about the Galilee giving sermons about freedom, love and unity. Then they capture him, accuse him of treason and nail him to a cross. Everyone sort of knows this story. They teach that the Jews had to choose between executing Jesus and executing some Robin Hood type. They chose to murder Jesus because the miracles were performed in another part of the country and it was a wider world back then. They took him the night of Passover, tortured him and put him on the cross, a punishment for treason not for heresy.  

You read the thing a few times. It isn’t very long. Like the Tanakh, the real meat is in the front of the book. The Hebrew prophets had always laid down quite a few benchmarks the messiah would have to meet to qualify for the role. The first was that he had to be born from the house of King David. His father Yoseph was indeed the thirteenth descendant from Jeconiah who was the last generation born in Babylon. Jeconiah was the fourteenth descendant of King David and fourteen generations before King David was Avram himself according to the Book of Mathew. The second criterion was that he be a ‘Nazarene’ living in the city of Nazareth. This came to be. Another prophetic detail was that he would be pierced, and pierced he was. Jesus was 42 generations in decent from the original patriarch, 28 generations descended from King David, and 14 from the last refugee out of Babylon. But other than these four accounts and some supporting details from the Roman historian Josephus, we don’t have much. That he was rebel was undeniable. He chased the Pharisees out of the Great Temple for their hypocrisy and taught a message of compassion and peace. Was it improbable for him to call for independence from heathen Roman, the vast and decadent empire?    

As I read on I understand that for the Jewish prophesy of the messiah being from the house of David to work, Jesus could not be of a ‘virgin birth.’ Only the union and progeny of Maryim and Yoseph could qualify for the Hebrew benchmark. For Marayim to bear a child who was God himself, this theology ruined everything. Christ as God himself? Christ as the son of the father who is being called God? This theology has no basis in the Gospel. It is the revisionism of the Council of Nicaea, the meeting 90 years after Christ’s death when some Gospels were deemed correct and others suppressed. The classic Greek that was the lingual franca of Rome helped spread his message throughout the Roman Empire within a hundred years of his death and the early church made some strategic decisions about what was marketable. I mean sort of marketable until they started getting fed to lions. Circumcision was out. Kosher eating was out. The commandments were out. Only four of eight gospels were put into circulation.      

Was there a gospel of Marayim his mother? Was there a gospel of Maria Magdaliin whom they called a whore but was perhaps the mother of his child? Did Jesus leave even a single written revelation beyond what was written of him? Moses and Muhammad were quite prolific writers were they not? There was a lot about Christianity that never made sense. There was also the underlying lunacy in that it was the only religion on earth that damned people to hell for simple non-belief. Even Islam sent people into hell to collect the righteous non-believer. Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism didn’t even have a real conception of some permanent hell. Christianity seemed to take a very noble message in the gospel and then its leaders said, “You’re either with us or with Satan,” and then preached that you only had one chance at making God happy. You only had this one singular life to obtain grace. I liked the book though. I liked the way he carried himself, this man Jesus.  

As I read on it seemed that I was only reading part of the larger story. This book didn’t tie together the struggles and journeys of the first book. It is not as if things got substantially more just after the coming of the man Jesus. No, quite to the contrary, things became much worse. The very people that first toiled to build the early church, the converts from the Jews were those most hated in the end because of it. And how many civilizations tasted plague, rape, and sword under the banner of a bloody cross? Islam at least only turned the sword on governments and allowed people generations to follow the faith. Not so much under the Christian kings. It had been the sick and final days of bastard Rome, which co-opted Christianity to buttress the failing Empire. After the teachings were altered, made intolerant and vulgar, they spread through the Germanic barbarian tribes like yet another compact of war. You cannot deny the beauty of the man Jesus’ message and the goodness of his works, but his flag was quite a bloody soiled rag. I’m sure the Christians whisper the same things about the man Muhammad and the religion of Islam, or maybe they don’t even credit his life and message at all. And both Islam and Christianity place prophetic betrayal upon the Jews who, of course, see in both newer faiths a wild plagiarism of their original, untainted prophesy. But the Jews committed genocide against the Canaanites and then corrupted themselves as subjects of various occupying empires. It seems that no one has clean hands. 

I am suddenly no longer alone at Ein Boker. Three young boys, none of them any older than seven, are sitting on the rocky dune near the entrance to the spring. They have on dirty blue jeans and dusty t-shirts. They have been quietly watching me for how long I’m not sure. One of them is much younger than the others. They appear unafraid in any way, and there are likely many more of them I haven’t seen yet. The Bedouin always travel in groups. Suddenly a large number; maybe a hundred camels and twice as many sheep pour over the dune the boys are squatting on driven by two older boys with reed crops and lashes. An arc is being emptied upon the wadi.

I have ridden a camel once before on my first trip to Israel. They are alien looking things neither ugly nor cute, perhaps both rugged and fairly downtrodden. These camels seemed rougher than the tourist mounts I had ridden on a three-hour tour within the Galilee. They have been driven all day, likely before sunrise if these Bedouin followed the migration patterns I had improvised. 

The camels and sheep separate themselves roughly by their species and size. They pick the two largest watering holes to quench their humps. It is a total frenzy. I have never seen animals so thirsty. The sheep’s wool is covered in a fine desert dust. So are the camel’s manes. Five Bedouin boys now palaver quietly never taking their eyes off me. I am a curious site in my white poncho with the Palestinian-checkered kafia wrapped around my head. This surely isn’t all of them.

“AS SALAM ALEKUUM,” the youngest one yells down to me.

“Alekuum Salam,” I shout back.

I take off the headdress to reveal my pasty Ashkinazi face. Didn’t want to catch anyone by surprise even though my garb is still too clean and unorthodox to be mistaken for a desert person. Me being White did not surprise them as they had been watching me for a while. With the animals being quenched all around me the five boys cautiously stroll down the dune to where I sit in the tent. It is their tent and their grazing area even if the Israelis seem to think it is a National Park.  

“KIF HALAK?” the oldest says to me.  

I don’t speak a word of Arabic and remain quiet.

This doesn’t surprise them.

“Ata medaber Aravti,” the smallest one asks. They ask me in Hebrew if I speak Arabic.

“I only know how to speak Anglit.”

“Ente Bedui?” one of the older ones asks pointing to my kafia.

“Ana Bedui Americai.” An American Bedouin, I respond.

The oldest one starts laughing and then they all do. We all begin to try to communicate with whatever English and Hebrew we can muster. It is rough going. The youngest boys were sent off to keep the animals grazing and the older two offer me cigarettes. I prepare black tea for them. The ritual has been engaged. Communication is made easier with my sketchpad. I draw objects and maps and things I am curious about. They look at my pictures with caution and then a sort of curious glee. The younger three are between seven and twelve; the older two are around my age. At least three of them are named Muhammad. I guess it is like all those Latino kids named Jesus, just shouting out to the big guy. But like my first encounter in the desert with the Palestinians about a year ago, this too involves little hostility or meaningful communication. They too are just caught off guard seeing a White boy wandering about the wadi. I draw them a camel and they keep giving me a thumbs up. We are civil and smoke a bunch of cigarettes and drink more hot tea.

After about an hour a pick up truck drove down the road with a Bedouin man with a long dark beard in his forties and olive-skinned woman about half his age. He helped her out of the vehicle only after one of the children made some quiet hand sign indicating that everything is all right. The man has a dark complexion. He has a kafia tied around his neck of a different pattern than mine. The woman is wearing the Muslim hijab and, upon seeing me, covers her face showing nothing but her obsidian eyes. The man is polite, but does not attempt to communicate. He directs all his questions to his oldest son. Finally he yells something to his wife who brings a large metal canteen out from the dirty white pickup truck. He offers me both a cigarette and his cold water. The wife begins to prepare lunch around the fire pit while his boys look after the camels and sheep. The man says almost nothing to me. His wife soon brings us Bedouin tea from a small black pot. It is sweet as hell and piping hot. The man just sits on a rough red mat he has unfurled from the truck. He is sitting with me in the shade of the lean-to tent making sure I never run out of Cleopatra cigarettes or sweet, hot tea.

He waves his hand quietly at the whole dessert. He points to me and shrugs his shoulders as if to ask what I am doing out here. Unlike his children, who delighted in attempting communication, he resorts to simple hand signs.        

I take out my sketchbook map and books of revelation. I point to pictures of me attempting to reach the high bridge then trace my hand out into the deep desert. I point to various sketches I’d made of the coming revolution. I point to the Qur’an and the two Testaments and indicate that I am out here to pray and meditate. He nods looking intently at the drawings perhaps deep in thought. He picks up the Qur’an as if examining it. The only Arabic writing is on the cover. Then he hands everything back but the map of the desert. Reaching into the loose black robe he is wearing, a single piece like a long flowing shirt to his ankles, he takes out his Cleopatra’s, gives one to me and takes one for himself. He gets up and opens the door of his truck and takes out a map. On the ground next to my map he opens a detailed topographic map of the Sinai and the Negev. As his wife grills a huge platter of lamb sausages on the fire and his children chase after wandering sheep, he points to his own eyes then to me and then points to a spot not on my map. It is maybe 30 km east of where my map ends. He indicates the loop the high bridge makes cutting over the ridges closing off the valley. To the north Demona, to the south then hooking back east, the railway track runs 30 km toward the Jordanian border then stops at something unlisted. Taking one of my sketches he points to a train I had drawn that indicates the track going east. Then he grabs another sketch he’d been looking at. It’s a sketch of the Pale City. Its spires, high walls with barbed wire, the Ferris wheel, game shop, and horrid clown. The man looks at me with terror then points to the spot where the train tracks end. 

“Jabal Tzin.”     

He points to the spot on the map.

“I don’t understand.” I had intended to catch the rail from the high bridge and go north to Demona.

“Har Tzin.”

I try to understand. He keeps repeating that this spot is important. He’s pointing to a spot maybe 40 some odd km away and indicating this is where the Pale City is. He keeps pointing back at the picture I’ve drawn.

***

The man’s wife made us quite a feast for late lunch. They all prayed around noon out of site in a clearing they’ve cut in the foliage. The eight of us sat on the rough, red mat around a massive circular tin of lamb sausage, grilled chicken, toasted pita, couscous and five huge and frosty bottles of Coca Cola, which we all drink out of tiny plastic cups. We’re all eating with our hands, watching each other. It’s maybe the first proper meal I’ve eaten three days. It’s a feast.

When it’s all done, when we’re all made fat and sated, the wife, who doesn’t look at me once, removes the platter and brings us more hot tea. The youngest boys are playing in the red waters that the camels and sheep have all but drained. The father and two elder sons return from another round of praying and sit with me in the tent. The son offers me a cigarette, but the father slaps his hand away to give me one of his. I attempted to contribute my two remaining tins of pears, but the father refuses them. I’m in their tent. I’m their guest. For a while all four of us are quiet. We watch the little ones play and the wife washes the cooking utensils and meal platter.  

The sun begins to set, or hints that it will soon. It is no longer too hot to venture far from the lean-to. The man gets up and speaks to me a speech in Arabic that is very intense and sincere. He is aware I understand none of it, but perhaps he is testifying something more for his children than me. The eight of us are around the coals of the low fire, the sky becoming fire red and then icy pink. I never ask his name, but it may be just al-Haj, the journey, because he repeated this phrase throughout his speech in reference to himself. I know from my own studies that Muslims are required as a pillar of their faith to attempt a journey called the Haj to Mecca and Medina once in their lifetimes. Perhaps he is recounting his experiences on that Haj. Perhaps he compares my journey to this Muslim right of passage. His wife speaks for the first time, looks at me, and nods her head perhaps approvingly. For a while there is silence. The woman says something to him. I don’t understand any of it.

Then the man offers me the kafia around his neck. It is dirtier than my own. It’s pattern more of roughly kit black and white checkering than the Palestinian one I wear. He takes mine and puts it into the fire. He then leans over and arranges its folds around my neck. I reach into my bag and offer the man the drawings of the camel, the revolution to come, and the dreams of the Pale City. He refuses the ones of the Pale City and revolution and takes one of the camel. 

Then he palms me his last cigarette. I tuck it under my ear. 

The third night.

Sometime before darkness fell we went our separate ways. The man, el-Haj, as I will forever call him wished me peace as the Muslims do and I returned it. Then with his three youngest in the back, he and his woman drove out of Ein Boker towards wherever their tribe has pitched its tents illegally on the national park declared upon their land. I accompany the two oldest, with their sticks. They herd the camels and sheep back west on the Spice Route. I unearth the jugs buried by the banks of the spring and schlep them along with me. 11 liters, no longer 14. When we reach the junction near the metal bone yard, the boys in turn wish me peace and I them. I bear north to the high bridge and they to whatever clandestine route they enter the valley to graze their herd. It is quite fully night.

I am about two to five hours into my northward journey over a flat and brambled plain, when the whistling of the wind begins. The crescent sliver of the moon hangs high above me. The wind over this vast flat stretch I venture is blowing dust into my eyes and face. The trail, in the darkness and distraction, becomes less easy to interpret. Twice I wander off toward dead ends, the New Spice Route has deviations from off-roading vehicles. It is upon correction of my second mistaken path that I hear a very real howl. Something very of this world.  The double blade of the saceen comes right back out.

The sand storm makes the going slow. Previously I had some covers from dunes, hills, wadis and ravines. Now the cover is gone. The sand is whipped up as the wind races through the valley. My new Bedouin kafia is tightly wrapped over my face, but nothing protects my eyes. I trip on my own feet and go sprawling onto my knees in the rocky red sands. 

It can’t even be past midnight. I can’t have covered even a kilometer or two. I make my way off the road, the winds picking up blowing dust all about me. I hunch down, squatting in a dusty dried up creek by the edge of the road wrapping the black poncho to cover my face from the sands. I will not be able to make a good crossing tonight. I will surely lose the road. It is not amicable, but necessary to move during daylight so that the highway is not swallowed up in the dark. The cold has returned and I shiver, shiver, and shiver. I kick the ground in front of me in frustration. I long for a fire to huddle about for warmth. I toy with the idea of retreating to Ein Boker, but I’m not sure I can find it. The map I carry is of little use when one loses the road. I have no reference out this far, the valley twists and even the lights of Sde Boker cannot be seen. I wrap my two poncho sheets about me for all the good they will do in this cold night. I wonder if my God is watching me, not totally sure yet there is a God. The only escape from the cold is sleep. I smoke the last cigarette I have, after much trouble lighting it. Then I drift off to sleep curled up like a rabbit in a hole.     

* * *

“We might have a little problem,” says Mike Washington navigating still without his eyes from the bow of the sand ship Temptation. 

“With you the problems are never ever that little,” I respond.

“I’d encourage you to scan the dunes to the north of our position.”

I unclip some binoculars from the side of the bow. What looks like little specks over our left side in the skies some many miles away and above are fast moving zeppelins of enormous size, some several thousand of them swooping in like black and ominous locusts.  

“I foresee this being a problem. Normally we have a far faster get away vehicle,” he says.

“You’re slipping, Mr. Washington. At that speed those things will reach us in under an hour.”

“Correct you are, Mr. Artstein. Any suggestions.”

“Run shooting and hide. That seems to have always kept us alive so far.”

“Well those three blue bags are filled with bullets, but all we have are your two pistols and this thing sure isn’t going any faster. It ain’t easy being green.” 

“How far are we from the City of Many, Many Lights?”

“A day, not an hour.”

“The girl, is she up in those blimps? I thought we were chasing them.”

“We overtook their position last night.”

“Then steer in their direction, brother, because there’s no use reaching Zion without the red-haired girl on our arm.”

“I like your chivalrous, albeit suicidal thinking, Mr. Artstein. We’ll make a Quixote out of you yet.’”

“Is there anything between us and that swarm we can land in and make an ambush?”

“You realize our sails are nearly half a mile high? Inconfuckingspicuous this thing is not.”

“I see a small wadi on the maps thirty km from here near an abandoned rail bridge.”

“They’ll be on us before we get there.”

“Jettison the mast sail. Drop the wings. It will triple our speed and crash land us under a half-mile of white canvas sail atop a green little wadi before they get to us. And then we ambush them.”

For the first time he looks at me like I’m crazy. Then he smiles.

He flicks some release clamps and the near mile-high mast swings rear catapulting us forward over the sand. Another few levers and the side sails clamp tighter to the vessel. The Temptation rockets ahead. A tiny green spot appears in my binoculars under an aqueduct-like bridge over two rocky dunes.   

There’s a very loud crash as the Temptation slams into the poplar trees of the wadi. The main sail breaks. The boat, the wadi, the well, Mike Washington and I are covered under this massive central sail as it rests against the high bridge above us. 

Mike unclips his seat belt throws two ammo bags over his shoulder and jumps off the ship. I grab the last bag, the binoculars and follow him over the rail. We are under a great white tent of our mast sail. I follow him past a sign that says Wadi Farin over to a deep well with a thick stone wall about it. Mike rests the blue ammo bags on he edge of the well and pulls a bucket from this well that appears to be 4 meters in diameter. He fills up my canteen then dumps the bucket over his head. He throws his pin stripe suit top on the grassy oasis floor and upholsters a pistol. He passes the other one to me.

“Looks like a last stand at the Wadi Farin,” he says. 

“Have just a little more faith,” I demand.

* * *

The fourth day.

I am totally exposed. The sun wakes me and even in half slumber, I polish off nearly a liter of water before I realize the path is gone. I’ve walked way off the trail. I’m sort of fucked unless I can act like a desert person and not some weak little tourist. But I haven’t ever been a tourist.

I’m a motherfuckin’ desert person by now. I like to wander as long as it’s on a strict timeframe. Because when you’re out in the desert you lose track of how long you’ve been walking and if you don’t budget your water correctly, this can be a serious problem. The desert is a place to go to lose yourself in exile, but it is a better place to be hardened for a future purpose. You move with as little as possible and what you carry is calculated: weight vs. necessity towards your survival. Like a water canteen, like a saceeen, like a blanket or a book of divine law. You grab and go. You move by night, and you think long and hard about the path that got you here in the wasteland. 

The desert is also a place of extremes and it breeds extremists. It’s not just the night’s cold and burning hot days and animals or mirages or bandits and death. It is that when you take away all those creature comforts, those flashing neon signs, those places to buy some so-called happiness, you begin to see. The Misson. The Cause. The Struggle. Call it the idealized purpose of one’s life. They become a little more focused. Your role in it all becomes more defined. And the profit margins, the cost benefit analysis, your sophomoric, university-influenced conception of human nature? None of those things come out here with you. Your family is across an ocean. Your friends don’t know where you are. And the cute Russian girl back in Pardes Hanna can’t send you adorable text message smiles. When that’s all gone, when the water runs out, when you go off path following a mirage, when you’re out there without anyway to reach your destination, when you have been stripped of all distractions, you learn absolutes. You learn extremes, and you universalize the human condition. 

When the water runs out you have to think quickly about what matters. You have to conserve your strength, even conserve your thought process. You have to focus on getting out of the desert alive. But this is secondary to ascertaining what you came into the desert to learn. Desert people quicken their process. Time is never on their side. The absolutes are the lessons we’ve learned that translated into righteous action. The extremes are idealized conceptions of your beliefs brought into focus so one might take a stand. And the final realization of a desert person is that out there in the wasteland, no matter what nation, what religion, what race, or what people; without water everyone in the desert is going to die.  

Desert people are out there for a whole lot of reasons. There are whispers in that desert that might give a person a semblance of a plan. We didn’t go out to that desert to fuck a whore in a casino, build a golden calf, or take ecstasy and watch a fifty-foot, man-shaped idol burn. Desert people do not engage in those activities. Not when they want to be right with whatever they call God. It’s a place to go when you have to make a decision. It’s a beginning point or an end based on what path you follow. It’s not a weekend retreat or a three-hour tour. Out there in that desert when the water runs out, you and whatever you call your God can take the precious time left to calculate what you’ve been doing with your life. 

By midday it’s hot as hell and I still haven’t found the Old Spice Route. I think I see where the two ridgelines are. They’re up ahead after a whole lot more walking, beyond hill and red rock the north and south ridge meet and the valley drops off into a great crater out in the wilderness. Out there is the High Bridge whose rail I can follow all the way to the Pale City.

Hot. Heat. Dripping sweat in my eyes stings like hell. I trudge on. The sun blinds me. I can feel my vital organs bake in my own blood and parts of my skin begin to burn and blister. I’m trudging deeper into an inferno. Jug 11 got consumed last night enroute. Jug 10 was polished off when I got up. Jug 9, sometime in the afternoon. I’m exposed out here completely. There is no real shade for miles. Miles now because I need a unit of measurement based on past exertion to calculate my time along. Three or four miles later Jug 8 is half gone. 

Now I’m moving uphill. Ascending over black and red rock. Rocks and boulders scattered all over the trail. No more wadi, no more bramble grass, no more shade of the Euphrates poplar. I can’t stop because going to sleep out here would be real bad. Real, real bad. I should have done this at night. I have no idea how far it is to the High Bridge. I’m not even sure if I’m going the right way. Fuck.

The road, if you can call it a road, is like an ascending path from one long rocky plain to another. I cross maybe four of these plains before I realize Jug 8 is empty. My water glut is going kill me. I can’t even be certain there’s more water out here. There were no springs on anyone’s map. I now only have 7 liters for the rest of this trek. I stop and sit upon a large rock out in the badlands to consider my lack of options. I must have to admit to myself before long that I’m lost in the desert. One more day like this and the water is going to run out.

I rise slowly in the dry heat. I walk to the side of the road and lay my black poncho in a dried out riverbed. I take the white poncho and lay it over the creek making myself a tiny gully tent. I weight the sides with rocks so it won’t blow. I polish off half a liter from Jug 7. Then I pass out from exhaustion in my artificial shade. It’s not unlike a shallow grave.

* * *

“How soon til they attack?” I ask Mike under our white sail cover. 

We sit on the edge of the well waiting, a gold pistol for each of us.

“When they’re good and ready, thoroughly convinced we’re weak and afraid.”

Above our heads these huge black metal zeppelins circle above the WADI FARIN like oil soaked Leviathans. A swarm of smaller assault craft is deployed out their sides. The skies above the wadi are dark. There are so many of these ships that they block the desert sun. There is a clanox siren blaring announcing their descent. A million howling zombies and their animal feeding frenzy could not shake Mr. Washington. He slew them in the tens of thousands. Whatever comes out of the belly of these zeppelins is something he has not much luck in besting.

For the first time he’s not convinced immortality will save him. He’s not sure these things will let us die or become reborn.  

Thousands of smaller support aircraft and landing ships zip about the larger craft like buzzard crows awaiting the kill. Shock troops are being loaded onto them. They plan to spare no expense in their onslaught. They cannot see us. I can only see them because Mike Washington can see them even without his eyes. 

“Why send so many after just the two of us?”

“Numbers don’t ever matter in a spiritual war.”

“Who do they serve?”

“They serve only themselves.”

The sand around us begins to tremble on the lip of the wall surrounding the well. The siren and roar above us increases in volume. Each of the zeppelins fires several long feeder tubes into the sand. The ground trembles as they impact. The tubes burrow into the sand below us. Then a sickly sucking noise. A terrible slurp for seven minutes and eleven seconds. The grass of the wadi shrivels and dies. I watch the well empty its water.

“They’re draining the wadi from the reservoir below it. They’re cutting the water before they rush our position.”

“Why. Why waste the time?”

“Just to flex their incredible muscles.”

“Pimps don’t need to masturbate,” I suggest.

“Pimps only get off when they masturbate,” he responds.

When all the water below us is gone, the steel tentacles withdraw. We hear the sound of a million soldiers laughing. Then comes the round of a million arrows unquivered. 

In under a second Mike yanks the bags and me over the mouth of the well. It is covered with a corrugated tin roof. We tumble ten feet below the surface onto the soft bottom of the dried up well bed. The well seems to be made of several concentric circles so we might step up two five-foot rungs back to the surface. We get as low to the ground as we can as a million arrows tear into everything above ground rendering apart anything exposed. These arrows fall like a million pin pricks pinning the vast sail over the wadi and the well. 

We hear a vast cacophony of laughter as these shuttles descend with an army upon us. 

* * *

The fourth night.

When night falls again I emerge from my trench and pick up the direction I had been gambling might lead to the high bridge through this wasteland. Having jettisoned or consumed over half my water and food, the going is lighter. I thought of people like Moses and his 40 days and nights on Mt. Sinai and the man Jesus and his 40 days and nights in the wilderness. What sustained these great men? Surely faith, but then where was my quail and manna. Soldiers, a spring, and the Bedouin had brought it so far, but who was out this deep? Although I didn’t want to admit it, I wondered if my foolish insane self was enacting a tragic, Israeli-themed trek into the wild and that the desert would simply swallow me up. At least now it was just after nightfall. No terrible winds of cold, at least not yet. As I walked I paged thorough my Qur’an. I took little breaks every hour to read a Sura at random. I began with the Takwir, Sura 81, the folding up. It was a very different revelation from the Tanakh and the Gospel. It was a powerful poem that sang to me as I sang to God. 

When the sun (with its spacious light) is folded up;

When the stars fall losing their luster.

When the mountains vanish (like a mirage);

When the she-camels, ten months with young

 Are left unattended. 

When wild beasts are herded together (In human habitations);

When the oceans boil over with a swell;

When the souls are sorted out (Being joined, like with like);

When the female (infant),

Buried alive, is questioned for what crime she was killed;

When the scrolls are laid open;

When the sky is unveiled;

When the blazing fire is kindled to a fierce heat;

And when the Garden is brought near;

(Then) shall each soul know what it put forward;

So verily I call to witness the planets, that recede;

Go straight, or hide.

And the night as it dissipates;

And the dawn as it breathes away the darkness.

These ayas from the Takfir gave me strength in the darkness. The richness of the prophet’s words differentiated these words from the Israelite tribulation accounts, or words about the man Jesus that were told secondhand. These were from the hand and mouth of a prophet of God. One had to recognize that the Qur’an was a substantially different document than the twin testaments. As I read on it seemed less a story and more a poem from the one true God. I marched on in the darkness.     

Avram passed his covenant to his children Yitzhak and Ishmael. The first son of Avram to whom the original covenant should have passed was Ishmael not Yitzhak, his second son to whom the Jews trace the origins of the tribes. Because his first wife Sarah would not bear him a child, he fathered a child with his second wife Hagar. God apparently heard Sarah’s prayers and then bore her a child, the second son Yitzhak shortly after. According to the Tanakh at some point Avram took young Yitzhak and offered him up in sacrifice at Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem. According to the Qur’an at some point Avram took young Ishmael off near Mecca and attempted to offer him up but Allah substituted Ishmael with a ram. Same story as the Jews tell about a thousand km southeast from Jerusalem to Mecca. I wasn’t dissuaded by biblical narrative. King David is a descendant of Moses who is a descendant of Joseph son of Yaakov renamed Israel, son of Yitzhak, son of Abraham. A lot less goes on in the Islamic narrative, less inter-scene drama, but the progeny of Hagar and Avram, Avram’s first son Ishmael many years later perhaps close to 1,000 years later in 600-something AD, the descendant of Ishmael, Muhammad reveals the new religion of Islam. That is three religions whose prophets all share the blood of Avram, the original forger of the covenant. That such fratricide occurred is inconceivable no matter how historic and real. The basics of these religions are very similar. The subsequent violence has been largely over the packaging and market competition.       

Moses the prophet said to the Israelites in the Wilderness:

‘For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death? Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to record against them. For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.’ 

The wickedness of humanity turned these revelations into more division and hatred. Our evil allowed us to co-opt words of charity, humility, chastity and virtue warping them into one more instrument of war.  

Something is out here with me that is neither Bedouin, nor devil, nor self. Were it Bedouin I would not hear it. Were it animal, it would make a howl. I do not believe in the devil for man is devilish enough alone. I am beginning to doubt my madness more than ever. If I am mad I share my crazy blood with a host of noble martyrs and heroes, leaders and inventers. The blood in my veins is Hebrew blood that makes me capable of the miracles accomplished by others of my kind. I will not perish in these badlands. I will find my way out to the Pale City and I will slay the monsters there. I will demonstrate to my God that I am a rebel prophet as the angel Michael says I am. 

Again I think I see a grotesque thing slither quickly against the dune besides me. I am so close to a portal to the dark world perhaps they begin to push their way out toward open confrontation. I think of the quiet clown in the Pale City who supervises all the destruction with a smug smile. That thing is not controlling us or directing the evil, it just grows strong basking in our failures and our bloodshed. It cannot ever overtake God. It can only even exist in the darkness where God is rejected. It is apathy, fear and death. It is no mighty other; simply a byproduct that would be washed away had our kind developed real virtue and true faith. It is a clown because we make a mockery of ourselves. A spider because it entraps us. A snake because it makes us poison ourselves. But if we looked at this horrid thing long enough, if we grappled with this so-called devil, so called Satan, Lucifer, prince of darkness and lies, we’d see only ourselves. We’d be grappling with our own emptiness, our own rejection of purpose and light. It is not the ego that slithers out there like a spider or a snake. It is us. It is the monster we make ourselves into. It is nothingness. It is the absence of light.

I swing my finger towards the darkness like a handgun. I can blow great shotgun holes in this thing by pointing and saying BAM. I should not fear it because it only exits when I am afraid.

I venture all night in the dark and cold of the badlands. I pause to read the glorious Qur’an and then return to the path, finger extended should the wicked thing come upon me. When I reach the high bridge, I will be one day’s journey from the Pale City. Here the thing will have nowhere to run or hide. In waking life I position myself at the mouth of madness to undertake a final test before I meet my maker. In dreams Mike Washington and I make a final stand one day out from the City of Many, Many Lights to die trying to free the girl and her child. These battles play out simultaneously day and night. My water is almost gone. Only 5 liter-jugs remain. Dawn begins to break. I think I’m back on the Old Spice Route. I see the archway of the High Bridge just around the orange of the dawn. 

The fifth day.

The valley draws together at this point. The bridge towers above me guiding the light rain out of the wilderness up into Demona made of white stone. I thank God for preventing the need to sleep in another sweltering grave. There is vast shade under the bridge. I climb up the side of the ridge and I am well situated to spend the day’s terrible heat in a cave-like alcove under the main rail. I celebrate with a water glut. Down to 4 liters, 4 jugs. I watch the sun rise and stare out into the wilderness of Tzin, the Bi’quat on the other side of the High Bridge. I look back at how far I have come. I do not see either wadi, nor do I see Sde Boker as if the desert swallowed them up behind me. I will wait for night then I will follow the light rail line southeast over the wilderness until I reach the place el-Haj called JABAL ZIN. Rest comes easily enough. I’ve walked many miles in the night.  

* * *

My eyes aren’t open yet, but I’m breathing very fast, very hard. My ears are ringing. I take a deep breath and open, close, and reopen my eyes. A terrific explosion rains sand upon us from above, rocking the very rock dune we’ve been resting under.  

“They’ve surrounded the oasis completely”, yells Washington as he slaps me awake.

There is an intermittent firing of rifles at our position. We are crouching in a dried-up well, the oasis itself cut off from the main spring a day before. I spring up and peak out a hole in the circular brick wall around the mouth of the well, severely damaged by projectile weaponry.  

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!!” I demand.

“You needed to rest, but they aren’t stopping. Now we’re hiding in a well.”

“Why are WE HIDING IN A WELL?!”

“We’ve been here almost 12 hours inside this well. It is the most cover from their bullets and arrows and cannons available in this little wadi.”

I peak out again. There is volley of non-automatic rifle fire. Stones fly. Dust is sent flying. There are hundreds of thousands of arrows stuck in the ground around us. Tens of thousands of black fatigue-clad fiends have taken firing positions on every hill above and around our location. The bodies of dozens upon dozen of them litter the mouth of the well.

Washington’s eyes are still wrapped in a bloody rag. His pinstripe suit looks as though he went from Lindy Hopping to a weekend of trench warfare. His hat is gone. He is posted up against the stone wall, his gold pistols hot and smoking.

“How did you kill so many of them without any eyes?”

“From all those years of listening to you complain I acquired exceptional hearing.”

In a moment of amnesty I peak out one of the holes. We are completely surrounded. There are thousands of them in columns and hundreds setting up more artillery pieces. Hundreds with swords and long bows. Thousands with antique looking single-shot carbines popping off shots. The oasis is shriveled and cut off from the waters. The foliage is flaming. The grounds of a once-lush wadi are scorched and inlaid with thousands of pockmarks and arrow shafts. The lowest point of the wadi, where we are making our last stand, is a dried up hole of a well surrounded by a small ring of cemented rock, much of which has crumbled under fire. Mike is reloading his pistols from the last blue ruck sac filled with empty magazine clips.

“I thought you never have to reload.”

“Only in Hollywood do people never reload.”

“I’ve seen us shoot hundreds of thousands of rounds before making a dramatic pause to reload a weapon.”

“They say that in real life, you run out of ammunition right before it’s your time to die.”

‘”I know you can’t die. You’re an angel.”

“So you believe that now?”

His question is punctuated by an explosion. A shell must have hit right near the mouth of the well. Dust and rock half bury us.

“We must keep assuring ourselves that there are far worse things than death.”

“Oh. Well as I have sold out the only people I love, abandoned all that believed in me, then preceded to betray my imaginary friends and had to witness their destruction, I’d say death isn’t the worst thing I can imagine at all. You even got executed and your eyes shot. What’s worse than these things? Not death.”

A volley of arrows thud all about the mouth of the well.

“I will tell you something much worse than these or death itself.”

“Go on.”

“Surrender is far worse than death, surrender to anything other than God itself. God said to Moses and Muhammad, ‘There is no god but God.’”

“What are those things out there?”

“They are the horsemen of death. They delight in your suffering and will be only slightly amused when they eventually destroy you.”

“They serve the devil?”

‘”There is no devil. Only people and things that in the darkness reject that which gave them life.”

“These horsemen appear to have given up with the artillery.”

“They don’t have much use for weapons that don’t make us suffer greatly before we die. Even their rifles use a very low caliber bullet. They enjoy the blood that they get on their hands.”

“They control the Pale City we flee from?”

“And they control the world in which you wake to when I am absent from your council. They are the foul and fallen nature of your kind when blinded by religion when you lost your God.”

“Why don’t they charge us then? They must outnumber us 100,000 to 1.”

“Actually they only outnumber us 97,912 to 2. I killed quite a few of them before my ammo began to run out.” 

“Why are they waiting?”

“Perhaps they think there are more of us. Perhaps they think this is but the mouth of a cave, a great-undiscovered rebel bunker. They took the time to cut the water off and burn out all the tree cover. They can wait a few hours more to move in for the kill.”

“You sure fooled them. Little do they know you have only two mags left of bullets and this is just a ten-foot grave. I should have stayed in the fucking cave.”

“OH COME ON. Don’t you want to see this thing to the end!?” he yells at me.

“Oh, it looks pretty clear that the end isn’t very far away. Good thing this is just a dream.”

“Die in a dream and wake up brain dead then. Wake up blissfully, fucking brain dead, Zach!” 

I’ve never seen him upset before. It’s a bad sign when your imaginary friend gets angry with you.

“What do you need me to do?”

He turns his head toward me. He is dirty and tired, broken and bleeding.

“I need you to believe that there is something greater than yourself worth fighting for. I need you to believe that there is no god but God. I need you to understand that all good things in his world come from It. I need you to believe It is able to forgive anything you’ve done as long as you will make the old wrongs right with better future action. I need you be willing to serve our God by bringing a message of hope to our people.”

I realize that I want to be a gever. I want to be a good man. I know that if I accept what this angel is telling me, the struggle will only intensify. If I reject my God then I am no better than those that would kill me for this message of change I am called to deliver.

“I will believe the things you tell me. I will follow the path to Zion and serve our God.”

“‘Better late than never, kid. Our tribe was not chosen to make movies, invent the bagel and control the media. It was bred to produce the most receptive rebel prophets.”

“Why are we called rebel prophets?”

“Because the message you will soon carry is against everything humanity has been tricked into believing for the last 4,000 years. Once you make that message clear they will hunt your kind down in every city, every town, attic and bad place you might hide. They will unleash wrath upon you because you ask them to rebel against the nature, laws, and religions they have been fooled into thinking are the will of some God.”

“Do you smell something,” he asks me.

I look out one of the blast holes.

“Yeah. FUCK!!  Oil!!!  They’re pouring barrels of oil down the sides of the dune.”

I see a stream of tar black slick rolling down towards the mouth of the well. They will send us up monetarily in a plume.

“Now what, Mike Washington?”

“Told you it was a last stand.”

He presses the revolvers into my hands caked in dirt, sweat and blood.

“What do you want me to do?” he says to me.

“I want God to help us.”

The oil begins to fill up the hole we are standing in.

“God helps those who help themselves.”

Over some massive public address system the horde puts out a call for surrender kind of like a siren, a piercing screech that makes our noses and ears bleed transmitting the imagery of our submission right into the cortex. You can’t shut a noise like that out. It was the same voice and language, if it could be called such a thing, that I had heard imprisoned in the Tower of London. It tells us we will be raped and tortured if taken alive. It tells us it will revive our corpses for rape and torture if taken dead. We are warriors and ignore these gruesome taunts.

It tells us it will flay the girl and her unborn child alive if we do not come out of this hole. It asks us if we have ever seen a snuff film with 30 million studs and one redheaded whore. It mocks our resistance and mocks our God. Mike Washington spits blood.

The war siren goes off again. The oil is up to our knees. Out the bullet holes I see landing craft take positions hovering above the ground in perfect centurion phalanxes. Soldiers onboard each craft fire up flamethrowers that appear like crusty black super soakers with single cylinder backpacks. An oil flow smears down upon my face.

“Such a violation will not be visited upon the mother of our prophet,” he says. 

He removes the blindfold shielding his bloody, empty socket, which once had eyes. He beckons for me to stare into them. In them I see his plan. He need not say another word. 

He throws one pistol out of the mouth of the well. It makes a clunk on the oil soaked sand around us. He then hurls out one of the blue ammo bags filled with spent magazines. Out of his leather boot he removes a saceen half the length of his forearm. 

With one hand he clutches my right shoulder, and whispers in my ear,

“BismilAllah al Rahman al Rahim,” this he whispers then plunges the blade into his chest. Blood spurts out his mouth, but he never screams. He cuts a four-inch laceration in his abdomen as I clutch him. He takes the remaining pistol from me and inserts the totality of the weapon inside his own chest cavity. He coughs blood all over me, his whole body drawn over in pain. I take a roll of duct tape from his ammunition bag and seal up his cavity. His blood is everywhere. 

Now, blood is streaming out his mouth, also out the open sockets of his eyes. I help him try to stand. I lean him on the second platform in the well.

‘” Want you to,” a pause to cough up more blood, ‘to, climb, out of this hole and kill our tormenters,” he mutters now as I tie a dirty blue cloth back over where is eyes were.

“I want you to avenge, all the people, who died dragging you toward your God.” 

There is a foul and overpowering smell of petroleum wafting down into the hole we hide in. Enough black petrol fuel begins to drip through the cracks in the wall surrounding our well to fill the well to the second platform.

I help Washington up the third and final tier. For an immortal being he’s looking pretty human and broken. 

“You’ll get one shot at the bastard,’” was the last thing he said to me. 

I waved a dirty white flag of surrender then threw it over the stone wall. I dragged Mike’s quite less then ambulatory body over the wall and the two of us slumped over by the mouth of the well. Above us was the dark armada. Small craft darted about the sky like insects. On the ground tens of thousands of horsemen pointed various sword, arrow, boom sticks and flame igniters at us. I clutched Mike Washington, what was left of him, with one arm and waved the white flag of surrender, which was tattered, dirty and grey. On a telescreen perhaps three miles long on the side of one of the zeppelin, I saw the face of the clown. The huge, hideous thing laughed at us, as we lay there broken on the scorched earth of the WADI FARIN. It laughed and so did its legion of horsemen. All laughing, the same way at the same time. Like chattering, vile insects. The army of the clown snapped to attention. The clown and his army saluted our surrender in unison. 

* * *

The fifth night.

I have been sleeping under the high bridge all day with no sight or sound of a train. My food is now completely gone. Only three-liter jugs of water remain. This water is warm and no longer quite refueling. Now, for all I know I am about to follow an abandoned rail line 20 kilometers into the deep desert, which would mean about 60 kilometers from the starting point at Kibbutz Sde Boker. My water will run out before I reach my destination, the place called JABAL ZIN. I’m not even sure what JABAL ZIN is for I am really only making a leap of faith that the Bedouin man is directing me to the Pale City. What I will do when I reach this place is equally unclear. If the train line is no longer functional, then I am done for. I am too far out here to get back on foot. My few remaining liters would maybe get me far enough back to the kibbutz, or at least to Ein Boker but nothing ventured nothing gained. Out of faith I can only hope that the light rail runs irregularly and that I will be able to hitch a ride from this place up north to Demona. As the object of this mission is endurance and faith, I press on. I climb the south ridge at dusk and begin following the winding tracks out into the wilderness. They make a steady path.

The rail had been built upon a mound that runs for many miles, or kilometers rather. Every several kilometers or so a small concrete tunnel runs under the rail mound, perhaps a drainage tunnel for when a river run out here in the winter, or perhaps shelters from the heat. It is night so I don’t linger in them too long.

The crescent moon had grown much longer and now I see numerous shooting stars. I feel great pride in conquering so much distance. I know that at dawn it will be the sixth day of my pilgrimage and using the rail line as a proper path I will reach this place the desert people indicated. The going is easier. The night is still and cool. I will cover much more ground following the elevated track bed than I did the night before navigating the end of the valley. I can see for many kilometers from up on this rail. This track across the desert exposes the wilderness as a sea of rocky dunes in a great crater. The Old Spice Route below me disappears eventually and I march on out into a vast dead unknown. 

At night these dunes and growing mountains again appear like zeppelins or giant leviathan whales resting on the valley floor. My eyes continue to trick me into seeing things move out in the darkness, but I have no fear. No longer am I slow moving under the weight of my supplies. I follow the track straight to the east.

I arrive at a corrugated steel way station at about 3 am. It sits at a highway junction where a wide unpaved, three-lane road merges into one lane to cross the light rail track. The way station is unoccupied. It has four metal bars holding up a metal roof, but only one wall of thick green plastic on the east side of the little structure. There is a massive ten or fifteen liter drum of cold water. I water glut myself completely. I realize this is a good stopping point. I know the JABAL ZIN will not be much further away. I see no lights. I hear no people. As I sit in the way station I hear the rumbling of a car coming over the hills south of the tracks. I see its lights grind toward the way station in the darkness.

A clean-shaven Bedouin man steps out of the dirt red car. He starts asking me something in Hebrew, and then switches over to a shrug. I point east and make a waving motion with my fingers simply saying, ‘JABAL ZIN.’ He nods cautiously.    

“Mee Ata,” he says curtly.

“Zacharias ArtstenIAH. Bedui Americai.”

He chuckles for a minute lighting a cigarette, an L & M, as well as offering me one. I figure they must give out loosies when they don’t have sweet tea. 

“Ata Tzarik Okhel?” he asks me if I want food.

“Bevakasha haver.”

He goes into his car and takes out a brown paper bag. He tosses it to me without coming over again to the way station.

“Layla tov gever,” he says to me, then gets back in his car and drives over the light rail to the north side of the tracks.

There is a bottle of apple juice, a chicken sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie in the bag. I eat everything then go to sleep in the way station under the stars of the deep desert.

The sixth day.

In the morning I meet a new Muhammad at the way station. He is lively and awakens me with jokes, some breakfast of eggs and potatoes on a tray and a few light jabs of a stick. He seems starved for attention and has apparently been pre-informed that I am an American and am on my way to the JABAL ZIN. His English is as limited as the rest of them but his Hebrew allows him to get a few things across. 

I have reached a mining outpost quite near, less than 5 km to the west in fact, of some landmark called the JABAL ZIN. Massive dump trucks cross the track all day long hauling some mineral out of the ground and loading it upon trains to transport it to a refinery near my intended destination. Muhammad guards the rail line, guards the trucks, counts each driver’s number of daily pick-ups and off-loads. They also place orders with him for their three daily meals that he radios over to the mess hall. It’s quite a lot of responsibility for a 14-year old. Mostly he sits in the way station making note of what run a given trucker is on.   

It’s quite a large operation out here. There are quarry pits in several dozen sites although they appear to be hauling out of only one that is a few dozen kilometers south of the rail line. The truckers and miners are mostly Bedouin, but Muhammad indicates there is a second camp closer to the refinery for Yehudis. There are a few dozen men out here extracting minerals, probably a few dozen more and an administrative skeleton crew over at the base camp.

Muhammad notices I’m reading the Qur’an and takes one of my pens for a two-hour lesson in written Arabic. Eventually another Bedouin trucker jumps off the rig to place an order for lunch and hands little Muhammad a chessboard. As Muhammad scribbles Hebrew letters next to the Arabic letters of the same sound he begins to get up a game of chess. The Bedouin are wild and erratic multi-taskers when allowed some leisure time it seems. He hands me back the Hebrew to Arabic cheat sheet he’s made and I notice only two or three letters don’t quite fit. He’s improvised a sound key.

We drink lots of water and play some chess. The Qur’an that is scribbled in an alien tongue is of little use to him. The only English he knows is the single phrase, “What’s up doc?” He giggles every time he speaks this Bugs Bunny staple. He takes more lunch orders. When lunch comes I’m served a large helping of chickpeas, Israeli salad, a large cutlet of chicken, some brown rice, and a bottle of Pepsi all from a Styrofoam tray.

He talks on and on to me in Arabic as if I understand. We play quite a few games of chess, him black, me white. I get demolished. His knowledge of the board’s terrain and the striking power of the pieces are far more experienced than my own. At first I think that were he not born a Bedouin out in the deep Negev, he could be so many other things. But I realize then that had I been born a Bedouin and not the child of a wealthy Jewish dentist, perhaps my rebellions and perdition would have never happened. Muhammad and I play on. While he may drink Pepsi, he wears a faded red Coca Cola tee as if to say Bedouins are sitting out both geopolitics and the Coke/Pepsi wars. 

I set off when the sun begins to fade in the late of the afternoon. Before I do Muhammad orders me another tray of food in packaging that will outlive us both. I refill my four remaining jugs of water. He also orders me a small loaf of bread. Speaking on to me in Arabic he repeats several times the words, ‘JABAL ZIN, HAR TZIN.’ His hand shoots out over the horizon in a sweeping motion to demonstrate the gravity of this place.

I set off along the rail line east. I still haven’t seen a train all day.

The sixth night.

After much walking before total darkness, I reach what appears to be a giant whale beached upon the crater floor. It is a tan white whale with a pale belly. Its top is quite flat. Its eyes are small but pronounced even in the near total dark. The whale’s head is illuminated by the electric glow of a city directly to its northeast, the place the tracks end. This great creature’s name is JABAL ZIN, it guards the approach to the Pale City. I have reached it the sixth day of my quest.

I know such a whale will arise and devour me if I keep along the tracks so I make my way to the base of the sleeping giant through a chalk white quarry where these Bedouin truckers and Hebrew engineers extract the minerals from the dead earth. The air is dry and still as I make my approach. If this beast awakens, if it hears my approach, I will surely be sucked into the depths of the sands. The only things I have ever seen this big are the towers of my native city.

I carefully follow a trail through the quarry up to the side of the whale. The eerie glow of the Pale City is more felt than actually seen, blocked out in the shadow of this thing. It need not move for me to know it is massive and alive.  

I follow a path up the side of the great white whale, iron rungs cut into its vast white frame. These rungs allow a person to climb slowly out of the desert onto the head and shoulders of this whale.  I would estimate the whale to be over fifty stories tall by the standards of the towers in my own city. I would gauge the whale to be as long as three city blocks, both kilometers and miles are of no use here. I climb the iron rungs. The lights of the Pale City begin to illuminate the head of the whale. Through nooks and crags I climb remembering my youth at the Mohonk Reserve in upstate New York. Such a climb would have intimidated me if I had not climbed a comparable whale once or thrice before. JABAL ZIN was a sleeping giant, a whale mountain upon whose head I would soon make a camp.  

Finally after a clandestine, silent climb whose duration may have been about two hours, I wound my way up to the head of the whale. From this great perch I could gaze down upon the illuminated Pale City. I could see its barbed fences, its watchtowers, the slow and steady grind of the wheel. The haunting of my mind for the last four years was truly not madness. For in the twilight of my waking life I had journeyed to it in a real and physical state.

The whale remained asleep. I sat on its flat head facing east, the city glowing like hell below me. Stars flew by overhead. I would ride this whale against the city and snuff out this foul blight upon the world. Mike Washington and I were trapped and dying in the world of my dreams, but here in waking life I had surmounted both the desert and the whale and stood ready for a final assault on the damned citadel. 

I gathered many rocks about me, which littered the pediment of the great thing’s shoulders. To take control of this massive golem I had to erect a temple upon it, a temple for my Lord. As a mere man, I could not move something so massive against my enemies below. With God represented, all things were possible. I gathered up stones and carried them to the west of the whale near the arch of its spine and tale. The head made a forward, higher plateau from which the Pale City was visible. The back and tail made a second lower acropolis that on the rear portion of which I built a low walled circle of stones perhaps three meters across atop the white poncho sheet. Mecca was to my southeast, Jerusalem to my north. I thought of my own city, my own land of which I was an exile, made so by my reprehensible actions, my quest to be righteous, my political war and of course my God. Hashem, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, the Muslims claimed It had 99 names, the Hebrews 72 letters in the name of greatest glory. Here I was. I would build my little temple facing the city of towers, the city of New York with its many, many lights. Upon a stone like a red brick the size of my forearm I placed three smooth stones. The whale’s back contained a geological cornucopia. I drew a crescent on one rock with a black Sharpie. It and a single drawing Uniball were all I had left of my supplies.  I had given the rest as a gift to Muhammad being the only Arab I encountered who liked to draw in defiance of his religious edicts. My drawing was plain in comparison to the real moon above me. On the north end of this red brick positioned facing the direction of New York, I dropped a white stone with a crescent and a star. In the middle of the altar and to the left of this stone for Islam, I drew a fish upon a second white smooth rock. I had read that the fish was the symbol of the man Jesus Christ who ought to be represented at such a ritual. A final third white stone was placed to the left of the fish symbol. I drew the ‘Yod-Hay-Vav-Hay’ upon it, the sacred four-letter word in the Tanakh pronounced Hashem or Adonoi that religious Jews cannot write, touch or utter. Upon this sacred name on the left side of the red brick I placed the pinky ring Zoe had given me with the Star of David on top of the holy name of God. I position the two volumes of the three holy books inside this shrine.

I sat outside the temple and consumed my final meal before stepping into the circle on the whale, my rough temple outpost that I have built at midnight on the sixth day.  I put the refuse into my nearly empty rucksack. I stripped naked and poured two jugs of water over myself in a makeshift do-it-yourself baptism. I took a third jug just to wash my hair. Then, I took sand and rubbed it on my hands, feet and face. I took the last of the water and washed out my mouth. My supplies are gone. The refuse is stowed in my sac.   

I draw a symbol that once appeared in a dream, tattooed upon the forehead of the red headed girl on a final smooth white stone. I had never seen it on her when we traveled with her and Mr. Washington toward Zion in the last year of my dreamings. I had seen it painted upon her right hand and brow in red henna only in a photograph she carried. It looked half like a rune, half like a Persian ideogram. Hadas, the 15-year old rude girl who I had fooled around with on Kibbutz Ein Dor had given me these references. The girl had familiarity with Farsi and with witchcraft, so she seemed a candidate for revealing its origins. One night after fuck I had drawn the thing, the image for her who proclaimed knowledge of such things. I had never seen Hadas again to consult her if she had discovered something of its nature, but now caught in spiritual ecstasy atop the whale I knew it for what it was. It was the Ezekiel mark, the mark bound upon the right hand and forehead of the soldiers of YEHAVAH. Those destined in the coming dark times to make a great demonstration to humanity of the justice of the one true God.                

I drew this symbol from my dreams upon the fourth stone and placed it above the fish for the man Jesus Christ, making it the representation of all other denominations, creeds, beliefs and ideas both divine and temporal. It was not just another symbol of a creed; it was the spiraling change of future things to come, of hope itself. I had been brought to God via the teachings of my tribe the Israelites, but this was only half my blood. The actions of the man Jesus Christ and the deeds and song of the Prophet Muhammad had led me across this perilous terrain.   

I removed my talis, the prayer shawl from my Bar Mitzvah, which besides some parchment, my clothing, the two pens, the lantern and the saceen are my only belongings left. I am clean and naked besides my black poncho tied around me like a toga. I am tuning out the cold winds. My head is covered in the Bedouin kafia, my bag left outside the temple. I take the saceen and step into the circle facing west toward New York. With the blade drawn I slit open a quick cut on my left bicep. I plunge the knife into the back of the whale, my right hand dripping with blood I drip some on all four stones. I whisper out to the heavens.

“As great men bled in the way of the Lord, so now shall I. On JABAL ZIN I make my covenant.”

From the book of Deuteronomy in the Tanakh I read:

“Give ear, O you heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass. Because I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are justice; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” 

I prostrate myself like I have seen the Muslims do in submission to my god YEHAVAH, and call out his name taught by the Jews forbidden.

From the Sermon on the Mount I then whispered aloud the words of the man Jesus Christ:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your God which is in heaven.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one title shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

And then again I prostrated myself like I had scene the Muslims do in prayer.

Finally I open the Qur’an to the first of the two suras I had selected for this offering:

From the Faatihah, the Opening and first Sura: 

“In the name of Allah, the Most beneficent and most merciful,

The cherisher and sustainer of the worlds;

Most beneficent, most merciful;

Master of the Day of Judgment;

Thee do we worship, and thine aid we seek;

Show us the straight way,

The way of those on whom,

Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace,

Those whose (portion) is not wrath,

And who go not astray.”

I prostrate myself before turning to my fourth and final selected reading. I reopen the Qur’an now to Sura Balad; the ninetieth Sura in the book. Somehow I feel like a wizard with a spell book about to open a vast and ethereal world of power. I brace my already bleeding mind for the coming break with reality. I chant something certainly not English and in no way close to Arabic. I chant in tongues phrases perhaps not on the page in front of me;

“In the name of YEHAVAH’Allah, the Most beneficent and most merciful,

“Nay I do swear by my city,

And thow art an inhabitant of my city,

And the beginning and the end at once.

Verily you created humanity not into toil and struggle.

Think we, that Allah’s power has run out over us and other things?

Does man think Allah cannot see him?

Have we not made for him a pair of eyes?

And a tongue, And a pair of lips?

And shown him the two highways?

But he hath made not haste on the path that is steep.

And what will explain to thee the path that is steep?

It is: freeing the bondman;

Or the giving of food in a day of privation.

To provide for the orphan, with no claims or relationship,

Or the indigent down in the dust.

Then will he be of those who believe.

And enjoin patience, constancy and self-restraint. 

And enjoin deeds of kindness and compassion.

Such are the companions of the right hand.

But those who reject Our signs, 

they are the unhappy companions of the left hand.

On them will be fire vaulted over, all around.”

In my crude temple, my left bicep still bleeding, I prostrate myself again and this time, like when drugged with chemicals in the hospitals, like when forced into my grave in the Family Foundation, like in London when badly beaten, the reality falls away. The great whale sails off with a rumble out of the wilderness flying over the moon.  

* * *

The last phrase I hear was selected for me:

“Leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

I am on my knees not far from the mouth of the well. The scorched earth of a once lush oasis, the WADI FARIN, is a battle torn hell awash with pock marks from artillery, countless arrows protruding from the ground, and, of course, drenched in oil. Mike Washington lays next to me breathing, face down in a puddle of his own blood. 

The army of the clown does not draw much closer. The face of the clown still flickers on a several mile high screen. The horsemen have black bags on their faces or what looks like masks of flesh with nothing underneath but TV static flickering from their eyes, souls long departed. They stand at attention moving not even a dull twitch. 

In this silence I watch Mike bleed to death. The arterial red pool collects underneath him soaking through his duct taped grey bandages. The pistol hidden in his gut must cause him incredible agony. He bellowed in pain when I dragged him out of our foxhole.

The horsemen stand over us less than fifty meters away. Their legions surround us and the well in a great enveloping circle of the thousands of zeppelins and assorted craft. The deliberate lax and lazy apprehension is perhaps just a part of its game.

We are in a dead place. Only one day from the end of a four-year journey, we are beaten. Like in a good Western or tale of knights, they had the girl and we were surrounded. No reinforcements were coming. 

I remember something Mike once told me about the early days of his rebel career, when he received his first paramilitary training in a cave complex deep in the hills of Judea. A reincarnated soul possessed with the ghost of the Chinese general of Sun Tzu was instructing the fighters of Bar Giora in the ancient arts of spear craft and asymmetrical war.

The oracle had enchanted a young boy whose blood made him able to receive the spirits of the dead. The oracle put Sun Tzu within the boy and the boy honed the irregular Hebrew forces of several thousand untrained farmers into the guerrilla army Simon Bar Giora used to smash Roman legions. Michael had served throughout the three Hebrew Revolts following the death of the man Jesus Christ.

He told me he was only 17 when the war against Rome began. The death of the man Yeshau Ben Yoseph was taken by many to be the sign of the end. The man Jesus Christ, born Yeshua Ben Yoseph became a symbol to many throughout the Roman Empire that the iron heel of Caesar could be cast off. The Province of Judea in 60 AD was the first to try. Michael served as an officer until the very end, through 57 years of grisly desert war. In the third round of Hebrew-Roman fighting an entire legion, the XXII Deiotariana, was completely wiped out. The Second Temple of Jerusalem was razed and every last Hebrew man, woman and child were deported as slaves into exile. 

“The ghost of the Chinese general told us ‘Death to traitors and spies.’ The first we slew were those in our midst who were pawns of Rome. The tavern owners, our corrupted class of priests, our foremen and merchants doing business with the empire, the harem proprietors, the spies and turncoats. The ghost of Sun Tzu taught us that many of our people never thought for themselves, had forgotten their people to fill their bellies and pockets and were more our enemies than even the hated Roman occupiers. He called them the living dead, soulless animals that consume but are no longer human. He taught us to cut off the heads of these zombies, to wash the streets with their blood. He taught us these zombies were the enemy within, that which consumes its own kind.”

Mike continued his story.

“I was there surrounded at the fortress of Masada in the first revolt, one of seven to survive the ordeal. They cut off our water, then forced our own people to build the ramp up the mountain. We slew those zombies by the thousands. When we ran out of arrows we threw rocks upon them,” he told me.

“The thing about zombies, or even these horsemen without their own heads, they take their orders not from a god but just one man. Kill a million horsemen they just keep charging. Killing a zombie just removes an immediate threat to your survival. But if you ever get to fire at Caesar, you’ll only get one shot. But if you hit Caesar, hit him right between the eyes and you’ll bring an empire to its knees. Few men think for themselves. They mostly just follow some tyrant.”

As I sat there on the ground, on my knees watching my companion die I remembered these words. The old, fat clown was Caesar. To him all human suffering was a joke we brought upon ourselves. A grinding of gears and spiraling of machinery from the grandest zeppelin above let me know the clown was coming. A great catwalk of warped metal and tubing was twisting down at me like snakes, descending to the dune directly in front of me out of these Babylonian Airistrocities. The screeching of the metal ramp did more damage than the air raid sirens above us. The ramp hit the oil soaked sand with a mighty thud. I still couldn’t see it. The ramp towered into the bowels of a great blimp above us. It seemed as if the other craft had begun extending docking mechanisms intertwining them all into a great aerial city. They intended to dock with Zion, to put out the many, many lights and send something foul and wicked to my world.  

Mike was dying. He squirmed on his side bleeding heavily from his gut. He spasms in pain but does not cry out.

As the dark thing approached a quiet death took hold. Slowly and deliberately it moved down towards us. It had gotten fat feeding on pain. It held a gold chain in its hand with a green tube attached to something behind it we could not see. It wore a regal white gown, a crown of thorns and white golf shirt. Its red face was circle with a leering smile painted in red. Its eyes were blackened orbs. Its massive spider limbs crept out down the plank. Its body pulsated under the gown rising and falling like a serpent. As it got closer the dark horsemen all fell upon one knee. 

‘You’ll only get one shot,” Mike had said to me. 

I knew that as soon as it got within firing distance. As it swooned over us to mock us, maybe shit on our head or piss on our wounds, I’d tear the golden pistol from my companions dying chest and shoot Caesar between the eyes. The rest of the things would crumble. The horsemen would fall one by one like dominoes. The zeppelins would fall and be rendered apart like Hindenburgs. 

In theory.      

But the best-laid plans and theories of angelic gunslingers and mentally ill young men . . .  you know how the saying goes. Mike coughs more blood out on the sand when he sees it. A yank of the chain and she steps out in front of him. She is dressed in white, a burka nikab and a miniskirt, a miniburka. Her slender fleshy legs are exposed and nothing else. You could bend over to fuck her in the ass without ever seeing her face. I see her green eyes. She’s wearing makeup under the veil. The shirt is high like a burlesque show whore. The gold chain is around her neck. The green tube descends into her swollen pregnant belly. My nemesis is as cunning as we.

Mike’s sockets show no anguish, but his face is clenched in fury. But he’s too far gone to have to make the decision I’m about to. I see the redheaded girl tremble, a nervous flinch. She traveled with us too long to not suspect that we have some plan. ‘Knock around rebels for god’ like us cannot be brought to heel. But what makes her shudder is the look upon our faces seeing her like that, seeing her tied to him and knowing we can’t do a damn thing. The best laid plans. The tube goes out the clown’s beating exposed black heart winding down into her belly through a port and likely into the child. 

When the creature addresses us it sounds like nails dragged across a chalkboard. It speaks in images.

“W,H,E,R,E,. IS,,, Y,,,O,U,,R; G,,O,D,, N,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,O,,,W?”

As it speaks I see buildings burning shortly in the City of Many Many lights. I see blood in the streets. I see its towers falling in flames.

“KIL,,L me wil’ yo,,,,,,,,,,,,u? You could try.”

Its voice makes me cry blood. Mike has no more eyes with which to cry.

“I am the gr,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,eat wooooooooorrrm. I aaaaaaaaaaa,,m the rot. In the darkness I feast on things which learn to kill each other.”

“WHA,,,,,,,,,T you do h;e,,,,re in the de;sert has had no meaning. We distracted you and ma,,,,,,,,,,,,de you si,,,ick like us.”

“WHERE IS YOUR GOD. IT HA,S ABANDONED YOU ALL TO EACH OTHER. I am the w,,orm ,th,a,t, ,f,eeds on the dying; YOUR KIND is a flower of death. EAT OF MY TREE.”

The thing grows twice as big, its torso expanding out of the arachnid frame of limbs, a worm, a tree of death. The red-haired girl cries from behind her veil. I know Mike Washington says to kill Caesar. He ended his life and broke his wings for me to kill the clown. But what use is killing Caesar when it is Caesar’s happiness to die. It sits leering, its black heart exposed. I could kill the beast but not save the babe. The babe will be polluted with the foul things dying breath. If this world is a dead world then I am death too. In the place of the whale there is hope. I’m going have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Fidel Castro once said history would absolve him. I just hope God will absolve me.    

It thought us callous, but perhaps not hard. I tear the hand weapon out of my dying friend’s chest. I splatter open his abdomen into the sand. The gold pistol barks three times in my hand. The red-haired girl receives a bullet in her head, in her heart and in the heart of the babe. The babe with the power.

The thing screams its wretched screech. It’s bellows blow down its legion. The horsemen spasm reality shudders then stand suddenly still. 

All around me is the scene of a great war put on standstill. I see the clown king reeling on its tentacles and limbs screaming, now frozen. I see Mike quite dead, splattered open, frozen. I see the red-haired girl who for a whole year we protected, whose baby was named Hope. We were close to helping her cross over. The white miniburka is stained in blood. I have just killed her and her unborn child. Frozen too is the fleet of zeppelins merging above us and the army we held off from a well for half a day the now scorched WADI FARIN.

I am SCUD the disposable assassin. I am God’s Knock around Rebel.

But from the hills above the wadi I see two small things move. In addition to me they are the only pieces of this desert Guernica that remain unfrozen and ambulatory. I recognize them at once and am glad. These are my two friends who have been missing for eight years. They stand less than one foot tall and move about on furry, weathered limbs like plush beanbag animals. They have the appearance somewhere between bears and klansmen. One is furry and whitish, the other is one furry and grayish. They have black marbles for eyes. I had thought them long vacationing in Mexico.

‘Black Bear and White Bear?” I ask amid the carnage, still on my knees still clutching a golden handgun.

White Bear has a voice like a smurf filled with glee.

This glee-filled voice says to me, “Looks like you found the golden ticket.”

Black Bear, called such even though he has a grey coat has a voice like a Negro Dick Tracy. 

“Pedro thanks you for your going away present. He and his family are living in Los Angles now. White Bear and I joined a South Central Chicano street gang. Pedro’s girlfriend thinks I’m cute, but Whitey could use some new fur.’

“Such talk is fucking ridiculous Black Ass. Good to see you, old buddy. Looks like you’re still pretty loose with the personal possessions. That girl is dead as a doornail.”  His little voice is sickly cute.

“I didn’t teach you guys to curse.”

“The mother of the little Mexican boy did. We can’t fucking stop now,” explains Black Bear.

The two bears waddle up to me and I pick them up. They’re a little heavier than before. They also move, talk, and appear a little alive. I remember that the first time in my life when I sincerely cried and felt down and out and over-powered with sorrow was when I left these two bears in Mexico at the age of eight. Nine years later they walk about and spill foul language like milk and cheese.

“How now, Brown cow?” White Bear says to me. “I know you liked that girl, but you did what had to be done.”

“You did what needed doing,” says Black Bear.

“I mean, you can’t kill the devil in you,” states White Bear matter of factly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I almost sob.

From out of nowhere White Bear produces a remote control. With a click he turns off everything. One click and its just Black Bear, White Bear, me and the universe like back when I was a little boy. 

Were lying again in the strawberry field. Black Bear hands me a cigarette. The bears grew up rougher in Mexico.

Where did you guys go”’ I asked a little more calmly now that the battle has receded in the distance.

“You were growing up. You needed a role model, not playthings for reckless adventurism,” says Black Bear smoking a fag.

“Good adventures went on though,” I say reminiscing. For the first time I can remember a lot of my childhood. It glows like a warm memory off the two little bears.

“Remember the Mohegan Dunes near Montauk?’ asks White Bear. “Do you remember when I showed you the rocket landing point, where the spaceship emergency docked and dropped off your coding?”

I remember a hastily constructed spaceport in the sand dunes of Eastern long Island. I remember playing a vast game of capture the flag brought there by the Pathfinder’s Day camp. White Bear and I went off to hide and unearthed a spaceship buried in the sands. 

“Almost,” I say.

“Remember when you took me to that Art Barge one summer and in the sub basements of the sullied ship we found the endless maze of coffins, the great leaders of the world cloned and frozen for the coming showdown between man and his nature? The Art Barge was the mouth of a bunker, which contained part of salvation within it. It contained a frozen pantheon of leadership for when the world turns finally and fatally upon itself.”

“I remember the Barge, at least,” I mutter. “It was near a long string of metal radio towers on a sandy bay.

“There are so many adventures left for you, Sebastian.  I’m halfway jealous you’ve grown too old for imaginary friends,” says White Bear.

“Is Mike Washington dead finally?’ I ask.

“He taught you everything you needed to know. And you gotta realize nothing is ever created or destroyed. It just changes form,” states White Bear.

“Physics?”

“Common sense, change, movement, birth and even death are only upsetting to you creatures lacking a fourth dimensional perspective,” says Black Bear.

“Huh?”

“You might be like, ‘Fuck! I failed. The Old Man is dead. The game is lost. Mike Washington is gone. Who’s gonna lead me to Zion? I just shot the girl and her unborn savior baby (who might just be your own child). The Clown ain’t dead. I still haven’t faced god and I’m stuck in a dream field talking to my two long lost teddy bears.’ You might be like, ‘FUCK, FUCK and fuck. I’m a victim and worse, a failure,’ “ rants White Bear.

I have no words to respond.

“But you’d be dead wrong,” says Black Bear suddenly breaking the awkward pause in the soliloquy.

“We, being fourth dimensional creatures can tell you definitively there is so much more going on than even the best human can gather in their mind’s eye. There is an infinity of worlds existing parallel to the one’s you inhabit. You, as of just right now exhibit limited control in two,” continues White Bear.

“Just two,” states Black Bear. “Two, out of infinity.”

“There are world’s where Hitler killed all the Jews and you were never born. There are worlds where you were raised Christian and athletic. There are worlds where the darkness reigns and worlds where the forces of Allah are triumphant. There are worlds where art is the sole and universal means of communication. There are worlds where humanity has wiped itself off the face of the planet in a thermo nuclear exchange. There are worlds. . .” 

As White Bear continues his talk, Black Bear clicks his controller again and reality unfolds about us like a vast speedy filing cabinet replacing the strawberry field with countless snapshots, playing around us like grainy, silent films of the worlds the little bear talks of.

“Just because you can’t see a thing doesn’t mean the thing is gone,” says Black Bear. We step through one of the picture screens around us into a flat and grassy plain. It’s the Midwest before there were Midwesterners to terror-form and colonize it. 

“Hold onto your slippers, were back in Kansas,” says Black Bear.

“Where are you taking me now,” I ask.

Around me is a vast green prairie emptying off into a small electric city. I see a skeletal rail and river town in the distance that by size could only house and hold several thousand souls. A massive arch that makes me think ‘Saint Louis” anachronistically, somehow already constructed. 

“Welcome to the grassy fields of Zion,” says Black Bear.

“Guess the Mormons had to be right about something,” I respond.

“You gotta be less judgmental. You gotta realize everybody sees little bits of the great truth,” says Black Bear.

I pick up the two Bears and put them on my shoulders. The plains are massive and I see this outpost in front of me on a river running north to south, maybe the Mississippi, or perhaps the Jordan. I see a rail line, which runs ten thousand miles into the east. This is the last stop as far as western expansion, as far as people needed to take it. We approach the outpost walls. A large green stone sign in Hebrew reads, 

WELCOME TO ZION

‘City of Many, Many Lights’

Founded 2012

By the Rebel Saints Judas, Catherine, Maria, Nicholas, Nina, Michael, Jai, and Hugh

Population 144,001

“Doesn’t look nearly big enough to have that many people,” I say.

“Not everything takes place on the surface,” says White Bear.

It’s nearly dusk, but the city is bright as day on the other side of its massive stone walls. Its architecture is Victorian, wild western, but its fortifications are all red stone like the Alhambra. The tallest structure is the archway many stories above us, a giant gateway towering above the walls of the outpost.

“Everything is stone,” I mutter.

“Can’t burn a stone wall. Can’t break stone will,” mutters Black Bear.

We close in on the huge sealed gates of Zion. The red, impenetrable fortifications loom above us, the archway of the City of Many, Many Lights illuminates everything.  

“We’ll wait here,” says White Bear, the two little things jumping off my back. They sit their furry selves upon a small and grassy mound perhaps 40 meters before the first checkpoint established on the ascending approach to the gates.

“This place is not for Angels and Djinn; it is a sanctuary for lost women and wary men. You will find us when you get the answers you are looking for,” says White Bear.

“Try not to leave us behind again. Things are moving quickly now. Everything with a beginning…”  

“Has an end?” I interject.

“Nope,” says Black Bear, his little Teddy face pulling off a smirk.

“Everything with a beginning knows not yet of God,” finishes White Bear looking like a cherub. The Bears seated behind me seem to glow with their own halos. But only Black Bear has a Halo. White Bear is a Djinn.

I make my final approach on Zion.

The city outpost stands on a great mound. The vibrant green of the prairie at dusk is lit up not just by the towering arch, but also by watchtowers along the red walls. The walls are Spanish in character, massive maybe sixteen stories tall. Geometric and ornate, ZION stands like a great citadel. 

The Old Man and his great game were swallowed by the darkness. Mike was slaughtered bringing me here safely. It took four years to make our crossing. What struck me most heavily, what weighted down my stride were the Bears’ suggestions that the baby I had killed when I shot down the red-haired girl was my own. It was terrible enough to have fired upon her anyway. Three shots it took to keep the clown out of Zion and out of my own world of the whale. But how was it my baby and the clown’s baby at the same time? The redhead was pregnant when we first abducted her off the flying omnibus. Her name she said was….how come I couldn’t remember her name? I’d palavered with her many times in our journey, almost a year, about ten months that the three of us were together. The bears were babbling. What was I fucking saying?  I was amid a vivid, lucid dream conversing with long lost childhood toys in a metaphor. 

What color was her red hair, really? Orange-red like Jessica Rabbit? Crimson red like some Eastern European bombshell. She was Russian after all. Red like an Irish girl named Alice from outside Boston. Red like Rosy the working girl or Alana the Leisure Agent from Pardes Hana. I suppose if I crossed between the two worlds so could she. I suppose the only evidence of her original pregnancy was the word of the devil clown.

 But I killed that little beauty because it had to be done. 

Either the clown or I had made her with child. If she reached this place invested by it I’d be committing a vast inescapable evil. I put those bullets in the girl and her baby to save this city and my world from becoming like the land of the Pale City.

I was about to cross the threshold of a seemingly unguarded check point stacked in sand bags when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Well two things really.

Flashing through my head was the fourth dimensional truth that I was many things at many times and at the same time that these tribulations were so terrible because my condition allowed me live in two of these worlds at once, one dead, one dying. I realized I could be the scared little boy, the delinquent prodigal son, or even the romantic artiste.  I could be the rebel prophet gunslinger, but if I wasn’t the black messiah and husband to this girl (which surely I was not); then I was the rapist, devil clown too. The bears were right. The child was mine. I had forgotten what an evil thing I once was (am).

This hit me in the exact moment two men camouflaged perfectly with the ground emerged with lightning speed to bring the butts of their shotguns down upon my head. WHOOSH.

* * *

You can dream and still be awake. I know that now. You can struggle in the name of God and be confronted that you have been quite a devil, shrug and do nothing. The whale keeps sailing upward towards the moon to make a roundabout approach upon the Pale City. Soon I will get my palaver with the One most high. I feel like a hanging man.

* * *

When I return to consciousness, I find myself chained to the sturdy, outstretched limb of some great tree. It is not so inhumane. My hands are bolted in manacles above my head to the large branch but I am seated in a wooden chair with a red pillow. It is very bright out in this garden in which I am a prisoner. There is a welt on my head from the stock blow and there’s blood in my eyes.  But I’m back in the garden at least. At least they let me cross to the other side.

I can’t see so well because of the bright synthetic sunlight and the blood in my eye, but there are two chairs next to me at the base of this tree, both empty. One with a black pillow, one with a green pillow. I squint and see a young man across from me seated on a stool. I squint again. It’s Nicholas Rosetree, my dear best friend.

“Rosetree?”

“Actually here on the other side, it’s Rosetree, but yeah, buddy, it’s me.”

“What happened to me? Am I in Zion?”

‘Well you’ve been down and out in heaven and hell.’

“I guess these are the trials of a prophet.”

“So you know what you are now, buddy? Long scary ride to a simple truth if you ask me,” he smirks. 

He takes a wet cloth, warm like at a Japanese restaurant and starts cleaning up my face. 

“We weren’t expecting you so soon. You caught the sentinels off guard up top and security around here is tight as a drum.”

“It’s fine,” I mutter.

“They fucked you up good, brother. You’re still my best wingman since Flannigan went faggot on me. You’ll heal up in no time. The women around here are something else. They got character like a Stacy Epstein, blazing beauty, super coy like Zoe or Sophie’s cousin whatsername.”

“Whatsername?”

“The one with the great tits you fooled with.”

“I can’t remember.”

“It’s been that many?”

“I guess it has.”

“Well you’re a rock star. So, that’s what you get.”

“Am I dead, Nick? Did I run out of water in the deep desert and hallucinate my way to Zion through death.”

“Oh, you’re out of water in the deep desert back in the dying the world. That’s true enough. You ain’t dead yet though. You’re lights out on top of the JABAL ZIN riding the great whale.”

“So what happens next? Can you take the chains off me?”

“What happens next is you get to meet the management. Those chains too tight?”

“No, not really, the chair is comfortable as hell.”

“On some nights we get to sit on pillows.”

“Management?”

“If you have to ask at this stage.”

“I don’t have to ask. Why the chains?”

“When Pericles yearned to hear the sirens, he had his men bind him to the mast. Such rapture was the result of this sirens’ song that countless sailors had dashed their ships upon the rocks to get closer to the source. Being your best friend and an obvious player in this great game, I cannot allow you to burst afire when management bestows you with your answers and guidance. We’ve chained you to the tree of life, bound you to it so that you know that when your meeting is adorned you must return to the dying world with the gift of your life. Get it? You’re a man and you are to soon meet your maker. We don’t want a lawsuit. Clear enough?”

“Crystal.”

“I’ll see you back in the Upper West of York.”

He gives me a hug.

“Keep repeating to yourself, ‘it won’t be like in the movies,’” he says.

Nick hugs me again then blindfolds me with a cool, damp veil over my head. I see grey then darkness and warmth.

In the darkness I hear violin music playing. I am boy again of only 11 years in my grandfather’s home in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The violin turns to a crescendo of Afro-beat, classical jazz. I’m in the wine cellar on a metal-framed bunk bed. There are four bunks that used to sleep my mother Briana, her sister Annie, and her brothers Bruce and Andrew. The house my grandfather built is on a homestead several hours outside St. Louis on a highway through the prairie called Beautiful Downtown Dutchtown. The music fills the big, warm wooden home Gordon Wallace, my maternal grandfather designed and erected. His children are all grown up. Just him and my grandma now. He was an emergency room surgeon for 46 years then retired to the Cloister as he calls this farm to harvest and press wine, tailor 1940’s style men’s suits, cook elaborate meals and read a good many epic books. 

I’m very small and very, very far away from New York City half a continent away. The music is beautiful and now I smell delicious food being cooked upstairs. I climb the steps into the living room with its red brick archways and big glass windows that overlook the valley, lake, vineyards and farm. My grandmother is putting the finishing touches on an apple pie. My grandfather has retired to an easy chair with a volume of some great book. He beckons me to come to on his lap. My grandmother turns down the music and says dinner will be ready in five minutes. My grandpa has a weathered grey suit on with a golden pocket watch tucked in his breast pocket. It’s a grey suit with white pinstripes he tailored himself. The man can make just about everything, but not without my grandma’s adjustments and contributions. He’s very old, older than anyone I know. My mom said he founded the Unitarian church of Cape Girardeau, Missouri because they wouldn’t let Blacks in the Protestant one. He is an old fashioned man, my grandfather, but the traditions he upholds are the universal ones that you don’t improve on much. 

My first childhood memory is being with my mother in the strawberry fields near Montauk. 

The second farthest back is what I’m experiencing now, sitting on my grandpa’s lap, my grandma just about to feed us. He’s reading from a huge blue volume called ‘THE MISERABLE ONES’.  

“We only have five minutes, Sebastian,” he says to me as I sit on his lap like a child.

“Let’s finish the story, Grandpa,” I say.

From the kitchen my grandma laughs, “That story you’re reading has no ending, and even if you finish all the pages, Gordon will just invent future exploits.”

“Well, that might be right, but I’ll give the boy some momentary closure.”

“We’ve been reading this book for years, Grandpa,” I say.

“You don’t like the book anymore?” he asks.

“It’s sad. Everybody is poor and no one cares about each other. The man Valjean was imprisoned nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread. The women had to sell her own hair and prostitute herself then dies of sickness before she ever gets to be with the daughter she tries to provide for. Her daughter is adopted and then forced into slavery. Then most of the other characters die needlessly on the barricades of a revolution their people never rise to join. It’s a terribly sad book this old French tale.”

“These miserable ones are not just some characters in an old French story. These wretched are among us. They starve in the streets and bleed in thankless trenches.”

“We’ve been reading this book for nearly four years, Grandpa. How does it end? Do they throw the man in prison after all this time? Does the young rebel bleed to death or get to run off with the girl? Why did they shoot the little boy helping to pick up the bullets? What song are the people singing? You keep jumping around the book. I’m so confused.”

“Slowly, slowly, little Sebastian. Life is no linear story.”

“Please tell me how it ends. Please?”

The young men take the barricades with their rebel group because they want liberty and justice for the workers. The National Guard that supports the dictator of France kills all but one of them. Thousands of young idealistic, men and women die because the masses don’t stand behind their rebellion. The barricades come down three days after. They kill the little boy trying to take ammunition from dead National Guard troops. They kill the rebel leader as he waves his flag rallying the students to keep fighting. They shoot down the girl because she loves the rebel leader and is on the barricades because of this love.”

“But one rebel survives. Marius, right? How?”

“Valjean carries him out through the sewers during the fighting.”

“Why?”

“Because Cosette is in love with Marius and Marius with her and Valjean realizes that their love is more important than Marius becoming another dead martyr.”

‘”What’s a martyr, Grandpa?”

“A person who sacrifices himself so that others can realize some freedom and some truth.”

“What truth did the students die for?”

“That working people must resist the iron heel trampling upon their liberty.”

“Isn’t that a good thing to die for?”

“Better to live and let a young man know what is the thing called love. In the case of young Marius, there were many, many others who fell that day in his place. He would have died had no Valjean risked everything to save him.”

“Because Valjean loves his adopted daughter, Cosette?”

“Exactly.”

“How does it end though, Grandpa?”

“With the revolutionaries soundly defeated and a thief stealing silver from the wedding of Marius and Cosette.”

“That’s boring. Wasn’t Valjean stealing silver from the priest in the beginning of the book and gets caught? Then the priest lets him keep it rather than send him back to prison.”

“This is the original act of mercy that rehabilitates him and puts him on the path to God.”

“What about the thief in the end of the book? Does Marius pardon him?”

“No, they have him arrested and imprisoned, I think.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“But he’s the villain, Thernardiers who worked Cosette as a child and then betrayed the rebels in the rising.”

“I don’t get the point of this book. Is it about rebels, about love? Is it about God or about forgiveness? We’ve spent so much time reading these people’s stories, but I don’t get the ending at all.”

“Time for dinner, boys,” announces my Grandmother.

I climb off my Grandpa’s lap and he set the book about the Miserable people down on the nightstand.

“The only greater human purpose than martyrdom is true love and the only thing that catches God’s attention more than a person in love is an act of true redemption.”

“Is that the song the people sing?”

“The real story in this book is of Jean Valjean. It is not enough to change the way you live your life. This does not fully please YEHAVAH. Your God is most impressed when not only do you change your past wicked ways, but that you take action and deeds to help the broken and the damned.”

“Why did you pick this story, Grandpa. It’s different from Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.”

“Only because it is epic and further from home.”

I join my Grandmother at the table.

‘Are you ready, Sebastian?’ she asks me.

A great flood of white light. Everything is illuminated.

The reason I would suppose I have been chained to the tree of life is because experiencing the management, that is to say to stand in the presence of YEHAVAH’AllahAdonoiElohanuHashem, and that’s only a 32-letter name, is comparable to how a caterpillar perched atop a pebble stone of grass might feel having a cup of tea with a supernova. Like measuring a dimple on one’s cheek then using this length to gauge the distance to the end of the universe. Like the government of Grenada in the Caribbean being asked to represent the solar system at some intercosmic clearinghouse. The feeling of something very small juxtaposed with something great of which your cloth is cut. 

A great flood of grey light in the intricacies of existence is revealed as a thing of precision and clockwork. I’m floating up and up. For a minute I see fourth dimensionally. I see the existence of a great X/ Y axis of possibility and coinciding pasts and presents and futures. It’s like a cosmic factory, a storyboard picture show for all things that ever were and could ever be.  Along my sides spanning out in an endless corridor are all possible realities playing at once. Up and down are past lives of the souls inhabiting each possible world and rising toward the lives they will live. And then a golden flicker wraps about all these lives and images spiraling this X / Y nexus into a great unified sphere. It’s not the ‘holy spirit’ generating dimension three of this perfect, endless orb as much as it is this beautiful flame interlinking these countless human journeys like a shapeless, perfect fire. I see it. This is God. The interconnectivity of the dimensions of time, possibility and space. It asks me in the form of rose petals fluttering in the wind that I do not grovel, or beg. Can’t I see it’s been with me all along and could never bear to leave my side. I can.

Around me in vast, amazing linear order I can see the great game the old man sought to render on that board. I see stories unfolding about me. I glance for a second at the same story retold in infinitely different ways. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but every single time we get to choose. And even the stories with gruesome endings, whose beginnings seemed weighted for failure, these souls get round after round to bring themselves back to where they began in some beautiful place with a gentle breeze at their back. Allah is all about them whispering possibility.

At the side of such power and union, you cry out to the Lord.

“What use have you for me?”

And It needs no words to answer you. Though the gaze you feel upon has no eyes, what you can see feels like the first time you were in love and the feeling you got on the holidays giving your mother a hug. It loves me. Now I know that I can bear some other worse emotions because I have felt good things enough times to justify the fighting in the trenches down below. 

A billion blue birds whisk up from the viewing post I stand upon. Up and up.  Still up. 

“Am I righteous yet? Am I good enough?”

The birds launch me through the pool on the ceiling on the sphere. Through the window in the ceiling underground. There’s a sound like when a thermo nuclear weapon goes off and then the smell of lilac. 

Drink deep from the waters of existence. I love you and have never left your side.

I am now seeing fourth dimensionally. I am connecting dots. I am living far more than two lives at once. I am not a Buddhist monk. I am not enlightened. 

As Tyler Durden once said, “Putting feathers in your ass doesn’t make you a chicken.” 

Being invited to drink from the water of existence does not prevent you from drowning in it. 

They say the hardest part about seeing things in the fourth dimension is returning from such a state. You’ve become one with God. You see all that has been, all that will be, and all that could be. You are peace. You are mercy. You realize that the greatest power there is wraps around you. True and total love. You worked so hard to fight your way back to this place. You may be catatonic, stumbling through the desert water bankrupt at the foot of JABAL ZIN, but that is only one time, one place. Oh how far you’ve come. In the fourth dimension you’re shed of your humanity, of the human myopic egotism that your one silly life is the center of a vast cosmic circus in which you star. I’m floating now. At any moment now, lift off is achieved.  I am as pure as a baby in the womb. I am not my race, not my deeds past nor my future. I have no religion thrust upon me. I am for a short time without any sin. 

“Don’t make me leave your side again. I see the terrific folly of our ways. I see what we do to ourselves when left in the darkness too long.”  

The waters of existence can be anything. Man can mold them into a thing like a furnace and a hell. I will always send prophets to each world, to every man woman and child from behind those foul enemy lines. Your war is always waged with yourself in trying to believe that you have been forged in the waters of creation. In the furnace of your sweltering ignorance, in the dark of the mind’s cave, I said, ‘Let there be light.’ Who will be my torchbearers? Who will be my dawn breakers, my beloved rebel prophets? I said help was coming to your dying world, Sebastian called Zachariah. You are some help. You drank of me and grew humble. Now drink again of me and cast your fists in iron like a hero soon to be.  

Someone’s holding me as every atom of my body attempts to reject reintegration. 

Shake. Shiver. 

I want to refuse this torch. I want to lie in the water of eternity just five minutes more. But I can’t. It’s not what was intended for this round. I plummet free falling back towards reality. 

Memories, sweet memories return.

“Roxanne I did all this for you to see the good in me.”

There was another battle, once again a giant and inconclusive atrocious draw.

The whale dashed itself against the gates of the Pale City walls. On a giant wave it washed this blight from the dying world. The whale launched back up to the heavens, toward the moon. In the morning it rested again in the place called Biqu’at Tzin. The Pale horsemen were but dust. The Pale rider was only a delirious boy clutching ripped up holy books, babbling like a mad man hidden in his satchel parchments and plans.

The Pale City lay obliterated. Its gate to this world closed, it lies like a metal bone yard. Only its guts are exposed like a refinery and a phosphate strip mine. A threat is gone. 

I remember chasing the clown, firing at it with Mike’s pistols and putting hollow tip explosive holes in its hide. I chased that thing across the JABAL ZIN over into Jordan and into a pit of sharp spears. I rendered off its head; but it can never really die. 

* * *

The seventh day and the seventh night.

An engineer working at a crane near the mine noticed a young man chasing himself about the summit of Har Tzin. He sent a couple security guards to investigate.

At around 3 pm in the deadly heat, they found a half-mad teenager suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion wandering near the base camp. He collapsed slightly before contact. The foreman ordered a Bedouin trucker named Muhammad to take him back to Sde Boker for medical treatment; but a sandstorm shut down communications. They waited for nightfall to move the boy. A couple of the workers at the Bedouin camp near the way station sat with him while he yelled out deliriously in a language they didn’t understand. Two of them had seen him before he went up the JABAL ZIN. When he revived around dusk they swore he was possessed by Djinn. 

The Jewish foremen intended to hand him over the Mugav as he was technically trespassing in a closed industrial zone. But the Bedouin took him to an illegal settlement south of Yeroham to feed him, then back to the outskirts of Sde Boker to hand him over to a chubby white American man he asked for.

Brent Avery. 

Being a Messianic Christian and as it was Friday, technically he shouldn’t have been driving. But an Arab had called him just before sundown and said they’d picked up the nearly dead boy out of the deep desert. Brent broke Sabbath to save a life. The boy was asleep when he finally reached Zachariah well past midnight at a Bedouin encampment around the area of Sde Boker. The boy was wrapped up in blankets. Brent guessed that the two Bedouins were the ones who found him. One was young; one was old. They helped the boy up into Brent’s car.

The kid didn’t say anything on the drive back to Jerusalem. He just curled up in the back seat of the car clutching his black rucksack to his chest. The sun was on its way up by the time they reached the King David Hotel. 

He stayed in Jerusalem recovering from his wilderness trek for what felt like two more days but was very likely less. He and the Minister Brent Avery took Sunday evening to discuss the solitary contents of boy’s rucksack. There were two parchment pages filled to the margin on all four sides with diagrams, dates and small, tight unintelligible characters.

Other than his dagger, nothing else had come out of the desert.  

The Minister said he’d expected something like these pages to come out of the desert. They spent Sunday night interpreting, or more accurately weighing the details of the dig. The boy did not remember writing the two parchment pages. 

Brent Avery, a plump and very descent man who had rescued the boy from the wilderness, instructed him how to deal with these pages. Avery flew back to America the next day.

כ

Maya

That crazy kid. He’s wearing a plantation suit. He calls me Maya in front of other people, Emma when we’re alone, and both when we are with Andrew. He’s been gone a week without calling. I miss him already. It’s just plan after insane crazy plan. The madness of hope flies out his mouth thought Maya. 

He was totally sure of himself.  He was only a year younger than Maya, but he talked like he was twice her age. She’d never met a boy like Zachariah Artstein. Sebastian Adon was just a slightly younger, male version of her, a doppelganger in exile. Svetlana, the Russian debutante, said lost souls find each other. 

“People say we look like siblings,” he said to her at the Deep one night.

“Cause if you’re my brother, you’re not my man,” she laughed back at him. 

He got it. She couldn’t fuck him for obvious reasons.  Why that was on her mind was after some smart comment Andrew’s cousin Dizzy spat out. Disrael was real into her. His eyes didn’t lie at all. He half said as much at the club each week. He made some smart shit fly out about Zach’s stuff at her flat. She didn’t react, didn’t read too deep until later. 

Do they think I’m fucking him?

Zach was in Tel Aviv two or three days a week. He had a key to her flat. When he was in the city they nearly always shared the bed.

There had been one night they almost kissed while sleeping. They sometimes snuggled. He’d come in around 4 am, the last of night. She shared the flat with two other people. It was sort of three, self-contained apartments in one. She shared it with a young corporate guy and a ‘dancer’ who was never, ever there.

Maya Rose was a name she invented sometime before Canada. It was a stripper name, the kind of name you tell a John. Emma Solomon was from a quasi-wealthy European family, the last Jews left in Spain. She had long flowing brown hair. Her eyes changed color all the time, but were usually hazel.  

Sebastian Adon picked Zachariah Artstein as a nom de guerre. Zachariah Artstein sounded like the name of someone from a quasi-wealthy European family, the last Jew out of Warsaw. 

Maya spoke Hebrew and English, both with a slight Canadian accent. Emma was also fluent in German and, of course, Spanish. 

When Zach, finally got back to Tel Aviv, she figured she was the first one he’d call. But he called her from Andrew’s house phone, so she guesses that’s how it is going to be. Two boys playing revolutionary generals. The girl just standing by looking pretty. She knew it wasn’t like that but  could tell already the desert had changed him. Before she was his confidant, his best friend of one month, his lover without kissing. Now he had things to tell Andrew. He had to tell Andrew before he told her. 

Fine.

I met him on the beach near the Hilton Hotel. He was sitting by himself in one of the beach cafes sipping red wine and smoking a Marlboro red cigarette, not the Noblisse that was so much his steez. He was wearing dark sunglasses even though it was late in the night. That had been my steez for a while. My Dad used to tell me that you could never trust a person who wears sunglasses at night. “Only rapists and criminals do that,” my Dad had said. 

Dizzy asked if I fucked him and I laughed at him. I can’t tabulate the kind of emotion the kid brings out in me. I’m just happy he didn’t die in the desert. He looks hard and tan.

There are huge red glowing orbs set up to illuminate the beach. I sit and order a large plate of fruit and a watermelon martini.

“Learn anything interesting out there?” I ask him.

Before he can respond I hug him and kiss his cheek and then withdraw quickly not knowing how he’ll react. He doesn’t.

“I missed you,” is all he says to me. 

“Feelings mutual kiddo. So, what did you do in that desert?”

“The trip took a lot out of me. I had to rest halfway in Jerusalem for a few days.”

“I was worried, Andrew less so. He said you’d need a rest and that it would take more than a week for you to get back up country. Andrew has nothing but faith in and admiration for you.”

We lean back into the yellow plastic beach chairs. The waiter brings out a platter of melons and my fancy cocktail.

“How far out did you get?”

“Roughly sixty kilometers into the deep desert east toward Jordan.”

“Quite a ways to wander.”

“It was a good little mission.”

“You’re a pretty crazy kid. I realize that now. That takes some wild mix of madness, balls and faith to wander out into the deep desert for as long as you did.”

“It was what it was. Needed to get some perspective.”

“You had a vision did you?”

“A vision and a series of dreams. It was strangely complete. I don’t know if vision is the right word. It was as if I was dreaming the whole time, but reality and my dreams were meshed together so much intertwined that it was impossible to tell what was real and what was not. It was quite a fire walk.”

“You were out there in your own crazy head looking for an answer inside you. What did you see then?”

“I saw everything at once, the whole of what we’re meant to do. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to tell the whole of it. It’s etched itself upon me, simmering.”

He continues on, “I know it was all in my mind out there. By the fourth day, I lost the trail and began using too much water. By the sixth day all my water and food were gone. I blacked out sometime on the sixth day and woke up in small Bedouin settlement near the Kibbutz where I entered the desert.”

“The Bedouin saved your ass then.”

“They found me wandering out there and carried me back to the kibbutz. When I came out of the desert I had no clothes. I was wrapped in a black linen sheet with a Bedouin scarf around my neck. My provisions, lantern, ID cards, my books were all missing. My passport, my wallet, my little red address book, my sketches; gone.”

“Someone stripped you after you lost consciousness, probably the Bedui. A passport and a hundred bucks for your life ain’t a bad trade kiddo all things considered.” 

“Except they left my shiv. My dagger and two pieces of parchment upon which I had written extensively while in my altered state were all that remained when I was awakened back in Sde Boker by the man Brent Avery.”

I pause to sip the watermelon poison.

“Well what’s on the parchment?” I whisper to him, “And don’t promise things you know you can’t deliver.”

“I’ve been known for several years to be excellent with a claim to follow-through. The only things that are truly impossible are the things a person lacks the will to do.”

“You have my undivided attention kiddo.”

“The problem with most political or religious movements is that they attempt to attack a problem from one side using one demographic. Nothing can be as simple as that and no solution can come from only one affected party.”

“So your parchment says what exactly?”

“The creation of a nationalist organization that takes no name or demographic should proceed as planned along the lines we’ve established. An association with a constantly evolving decentralized structure that seeks a one state solution by means of armed struggle here in Israel. When the world comes to an end such an association will stand as the water, bridge and wall to the city of Zion.”

“But you believed all that before you went fire walking.”

“Yeah, but now I gather we have the endorsement of the management.”

“So you presume. This is beyond crazy.”

“What is?”

“Everything you say. This entire conversation.”

“It’s only crazy until we pull it off.”

“This organization we’ve been building, what the hell does religion have to do with it?”

“Not religion, Emma, faith in the unseen. It preserves the good in us through the storm of war, through much worse coming times.”

“So, this thing is now to be an insurrectionary group led by a self declared prophet?”

“Not the right word either. Prophet. Presumes singularity of voice. It presumes religion, presumes gloom, doom, and apocalypse, fire and brimstone. I’d like to think of us as more highly evolved, as receivers, if you will.”

“And what exactly are we receiving, Zach?

“Instructions on how to make change. It’s in our blood.”

“What if you’re wrong about all this?”

“I’m not asking anything from you I wouldn’t have asked in the three weeks before the desert. We have power, Emma. We have a power to change the future of this nation.”

“Don’t put this on me, Zach. Don’t come to me and say my blood and bones make me chosen for some fight I never signed up for.” 

“We’ve got chosen in our bones, Emma; that itch to do something when we know we are capable.”

“Says you and Andrew.  I joined this otriad for peaceful settlement and human rights.”

“These things are connected like day and night. Why did such a powerful thing as our God allow us to degenerate into wretched, evil suffering monkeys?”

“I never asked that question. I just accepted God hated us. Stopped believing we were worth It’s time.”

I stare off toward the sea. I hear the waves crash on the beach. I look up at the stars and know I don’t have the strength to read what’s wrapped up in his satchel. I don’t want to read gibberish and believe he’s just mad. I don’t want to read how the world ends and what I’m going to have to do. The crazy part is I met this boy less than a month ago. 

“I’ll help you with whatever you need. You know that already,” I tell him.

“But you’re doing it for your people and don’t believe in things you can’t see?”

“Correcto. I’m not gonna read what’s on those papers, Zach. I’m not helping you because I think God wants me to. I’m doing it because I believe the things you fight for are right. Keep that God shit between you and Andrew. I’m a soldier, but not for any battles over the soul. I don’t need a religion to tell me to act right.” 

“I didn’t come here to teach you your religion. I came here to remind you of the weight of your blood. This struggle was yours at birth.”

For a while I say nothing. We sit together and watch the city by the sea.

“What will happen when the struggle is over and there are no more battles for a person like you to fight?” I ask him.

“Surely I won’t be alive to worry about such a thing.”

“Tell me why you do this? Why do you bring people into such a war? Most would never know your war existed had you not persuaded them to play detective with conscious and soul. Tell me without any divine reference why you’ve closed your door on New York, crossed an ocean and wedded yourself to a bleeding, thankless desert quagmire.”

“I do it out of love.”

“Ha. More like you believe in the struggle as if it were love.” 

“Perhaps, it was a whole string of events that began with my birth and won’t conclude until my death. The unifying theme other than a colorful protagonist has always been tragedy and needless suffering averted by a few moments of genuine love. I needed just three weeks of true, good love to illuminate the darkness shrouding the nearly 17 years of my life.”

“Who was this love of yours that made you so selfless?”

“Her name escapes me. It’s the idea of her that sustains me. She made me, if for but only briefly, believe my own human worth and goodness.”

“Sounds like love quite divorced from that of common people. Sounds a bit idealized and lonely. And so your beds get filled with bright eyed young women who admire you even if you can’t love them as much as you love your struggle?”

“Sometimes. Have no fear. You’ll never be one of those women.”

“I know I’ll never be one of those women. I share the bed with you because you’re warm.”

“And you’ll help me in this revolt for the same reason?”

“I’ll help you because I once dreamed a young, handsome man would sweep me off my feet and carry me to a far and exotic land. He’d give me beautiful children and we’d build a happy home. So, I escaped the gilded life I lived in Spain to have a chance encounter such a young man. I crossed the ocean in the other direction to Montreal, Canada and became a prostitute at the age of 17. There was a great big, unlucky bang, kiddo. A flash of thunder and then some lying bloody in a long hard rain before lying even longer in a bright white ER. I certainly lost my God in the confusion of that calamity. The young, handsome man was just a brutal exploitive pimp who did great violence to a bright-eyed young girl. The exotic land upon which I landed is just a desert thick with fools, blood and black smoke. You are warm.” 

I know all his war stories, but he knows few of mine. I tell him these things to show him that I, too, am hard.  

“But your warmth is less interesting to me than your mission.”

He removes the grey corduroy beret running his finger through his brown hair looking at me earnestly. He still looks half like a newsy, a 1930’s street urchin hustler, in that cap. The other half is cut from the Cuban revolution. Maybe it’s his new clothes. The white linen suit he’s wearing with that Bedouin scarf tucked around his neck. Maybe it’s those red sunglasses, rose-colored like his vision. I want him to know I’m solid like he is, that I’m proud to know him and to let him know me. I want him to know that I’ll die by his side if I have to, to get this thing of ours accomplished, but I won’t do it for some God or some religion. I’ll do it for my fellow man. I want to tell him too many things at one time, so I just blurt out,

“Good luck to us.”

He smiles with satisfaction.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him smile like that with that look in his eyes that’s a cross between temperament and treason. But I guess it’s only treason if you’re a native.

ל

My logic was something along the lines of “fuck it then, the southland’s calling him and who am I to argue.” While Andrew set about organizing his club and familial contacts into our new little shadow army, I was still unclear of what role to play. Zach asked me to assist him in setting up other cells outside Tel Aviv Command. It was only logical that I should get conscripted in establishing a beachhead in another major Israeli city. I was willing to help and was up for road trips. Southern Israel wasn’t my first pick.

Andrew and Zach said we needed to establish four regional commands: one in Tel Aviv for central Israel; one in Haifa for the Galilee region; one in Be’er Sheva for the Negev and south; and, of course, one in the capital Jerusalem. It would have been logical just to start where we all lived, but Zach and Andrew said we should go south first. I took a day off from promoting for the Deep to go with Zach south to Be’er Sheva more out of curiosity than to participate. I wasn’t even sure what he planned to do. Set up his table, sell pictures, and win souls. Who knew? I told him I’d give him a day. Be’er Sheva was four hours away. I had been there once or twice going to and from Eilat like other normal people. I never stayed there long. The place was a mess. A ‘southland desert slum park’ as Svetlana had ranted about it when I told her I was going.

Zach had just come from the Galilee so a southern powerbase was the next logical step. Andrew had him running up and down the country between the Golan town Qiyrat Shemona, the coastal cities of Acco, as well as the Galilee outpost of Tiberius. He hadn’t been to Haifa yet. I found the whole thing pretty anarchic. I felt like Andrew’s zeal and Zachariah’s newfound mania were a bad combination. The boy was tramping all about the north getting out our message and drumming up support. I hadn’t done much so far. I’d handed out flyers with him on the tiyeled. I’d gone with him and Svetlana over to Jerusalem to meet with a cluster of new people. Most of them were young as hell, not young like us. Young like 14. It was relative I figured, but I saw who the kid attracted: the young, the poor, and the messed up street urchins like himself. I think Andrew offered him a job promoting for us but he turned it down for whatever crazy reason.

I know he has a girl in the north because he comes back glowing. He never talks about that kind of thing with me. We sleep together less. Only once a week when he comes back from recruiting in time for Andrew’s Thursday party. Nothing comes of it. No heavy petting. No attempts to kiss me. If I don’t initiate holding him, he won’t even put his arms about me. But once I do he’ll hold me tight. It never goes anywhere. I don’t think I’d let it anyway.

We had been in the Tel Aviv central bus station for what seemed like most of the day waiting for shabos to end so we could jump on a bus. Zach kept selling pictures and handing out the postcards we’d created for the Organization. I backed him up by wandering up to jump in on his pitch. Whenever I did this with girls they seemed annoyed; whenever I did it with guys, they wanted my number. As we walked around the central bus station I paid attention to every detail of what he was doing trying to get a pitch together. He never really used a pitch other than his art shtick. If the drawings and conversations led to politics, he’d let people take the lead. Mostly they’d share some detail of their lives with him. If he could relate it to our struggle, he would. We were here for four hours. He took a ten-minute break to drink some orange soda.

I was a little anxious being here in light of recent events. Why was a person wearing a coat? Did someone look nervous? Why was that guy lingering so long? I spent longer looking at the faces of the Arabs because it wasn’t going to come from anybody else. The authorities came on television and told us we had to ask ourselves these questions to stay alive. Every time I stepped into that bus station I constantly expected an attack. There hadn’t been a big once since the Dolphinarium, but there had been tons of shootouts and tons of failed attempts the security forces had caught. Hysteria was catching. They said another big attack was coming any day now. With the way Arab heads were getting smashed in the territories in the last couple days in Tulkarem, Jenin and Nablus, you figured it was coming. 

I knew Zach crossed into the West Bank several times while he was in the north. I knew he’d almost been shot in Jenin when some Palestinian motorists left him there one night as he tried to reach Afula from Hadera. I know he never went anywhere without the Bedouin kafia now. He figured he’d gotten out of Jenin alive only because the gunmen searched his bag before they tried to shoot him. Apparently they’d fired in the air and he ran out of Jenin with the kafia tied across his face. I was nervous about stories like this. I knew he’d keep going deeper. He’d try to reach Ramala or Hebron eventually. I worried his luck might run out. The situation was getting much worse. I had no idea what these border runs were good for. No Palestinian was going to join the organization during the current crisis. He thought differently, but focused mostly on the wretched of Israel. 

He reported back to Andrew, Disrael, Svetlana and me. The four of us are the core of the command in Tel Aviv now that we have cells getting ready to set up operating groups in Pardes Hanna, Acco, Afula, Bet She’ an, Rehovet and Netanya. He said with a few more good conversations and a sit-down we could bring in an Nazareth-based Arab Christian street gang of approximately several dozen in one clean shot. He said he’d recruited an Arab Christian named Deeb who supplied toiletries, medication, and home appliances to numerous Arab, Jewish and Druze village pharmacies throughout the north. Zach was getting around using the guy’s truck routes. This guy Deeb was willing to be a captain out of the Arab slums in Haifa where he lived. 

I thought that all these accomplishments in the north meant that we should firm them up with a day trip up north. Andrew continued to insist that we go south. He said if the accomplishments were solid they would still be ready to move in two weeks. 

He had a lightweight metal bar stool with him. It had been a good idea to take it. Rather than set up a stand, Zach wandered the bus station “picturing” people while they waited for their bus. He was getting better at his hustle. He would invite a person to sit in the chair and look through his art portfolio, which increasingly had the work of several other young Israelis artists selling through him on consignment. I guess he had about thirty of his own pieces and about twenty consigned works, mostly of fairies and forest creatures. Real girly-girl stuff. After looking through the portfolio, people could then decide to either buy one of his pieces or have one commissioned why they waited. Most opted for what he had. I sat on the stool when my feet got tired. I imagined him sitting on that stool on the edge of the highway hitching back to us. 

I had long come to the conclusion that Israelis are quite self-obsessed. Of the hundred or so pictures I’ve seen him move, nearly 70% were caricatures. He wasn’t getting good at them though, not realistic in the slightest. All his portraits of people look about the same. While hardly a photo realist, his unique style was getting a good response. If he drew the girl’s tits big and made her man look strong, no one would complain. But his ten shek a drawing commission deal was where he was making most of his money. He could really bang those out in around five minutes. It was cool to watch.

He was wearing his white wife beater with the hammer and sickle that his arrogant, motorcycle riding, journalist friend Danny from the Mareev had given him and some white UFO’s. He’d left quite a lot of clothing up north with his buddy Danny Callahan from the kibbutz. Eventually the sun went down and the buses started running. 

***

I slept through most of the bus ride, my head on his shoulder. It was dark when we arrived in Be’er Sheva around 9 o’clock. The central bus station was much smaller than the one in Tel Aviv. It was all outdoors and was only one level high with red mesh caging with shops on a dirty promenade. Right down the street was the railroad line of the southernmost stop on Israel’s light rail system. The Ramon Crater makes engineering a train line to Eilat too costly for now. The white cabs were everywhere. The Sheroot minibuses were lined up for heading to Eilat. They were going at the rate of sixty skeks a person, which I imagine is a little higher than the bus fare and a good deal more cramped. Every time I’ve been to Eilat there were athletes, rappers, escalades and a good amount of coke involved. No Sheroots though. As our business will likely not be concluded until some inappropriate hour, these will be my best way back to Tel Aviv. Zach will probably end up sleeping here if past excursions are any indicator.

I knew he only had what he made in the bus station. I bought him a shwarma from a stand at the station. We deliberated setting up in the central bus station, but decided it might be more fruitful to check out the Old City, which according to a guide had recently been renovated and was not too far of a walk. There is an enormous Mall next to the Central Bus Station. It’s got a white and tan rock foundation, blue glass, and a tower on one end that is maybe thirty or forty stories high. It is the biggest tower in the city where the elite have homes and offices. It’s not a big mall really, at least not by American standards, but certainly for Israel. It looks like every other mall I’ve ever seen around the country. What stands out is the tall glass cylinder attached to the side of it giving it something of an aesthetic appeal. It’s getting dark, but the mall shines bright. There are junkies all over the streets begging near the bus station, but armed guards keep them out of the mall.

There is a highway that runs parallel to the Central Station. We follow it past a row of palm trees heading in the direction towards the Old City. The dry heat lingers but it is getting cooler as the sun goes down. You forget briefly that you’re in the middle of the desert with this electric strip mine of a city paved over the dunes.

When we get there, the Old City doesn’t look all that old. There is a well lit up stone plaza where skaters are doing rail grinds and jumps. There is a restored aqueduct, probably not authentic, that runs along the outside of the square made of white stone into a fountain that I guess they put on in the winter when the valley greens up and the river flows through. This fountain sits on the main connecting street and right up the block is a well-fortified police station next to a rowdy bar filled with Russians. There aren’t too many people out. At least not compared to the Tel Aviv Merkaz or Ben Yahuda Street in Jerusalem, but this seems like the best place for now. I forgot what it was like in the provinces. A massive yellow billboard on the top of one of the adjacent buildings is advertising for supporting the Lubaviture Rabbi. Some one has spray painted “Heroin is God” in Hebrew over it. Welcome to Be’er Sheva.

The whole square is made of red or white brick and laid out in a circle with descending tiers. There are a few bars and a few places to buy more Gold Star or falafel. But the Old City is a ghost town at dusk. I help Zach put out his green drop mat over a bench and then drape it in a sheet. He starts taping down the pictures. I put down his wrapped sketchbook and drop a few coins on it. No agaroat, shekels as coin attracts coin. We lay out his statements of purpose that arty broad Dana wrote for him and at last the sign reading Resistance Art in Hebrew.  Time to go to work. I look at the time on my cell and tell him he gets until midnight and then he’s walking me back to the bus station.

***

We’d been sitting there for an hour when he eventually got somebody to really stop. He had made only one sale and traffic was nil to non-existent. Some arse told us everybody was at some wild party at a mega club called the Forum. Finally after a whole lot of nothing gets done these two girls show up on the square. One is dressed in all black like a slutty Goth, the other is a tomboy with blue coveralls and curly black hair. They wandered past and stopped. Both of them look very young. 

“Why in the hell would you leave America to come here,” says the larger girl without any trace of an accent after reading his banner sign.

“Political reasons” he responds.

I look at him and don’t say anything. It’s all a little too many cards on the table all at once to people who probably don’t get what he’s talking about.

“What kind of politics?” asks the tomboy with the curly hair in thick Israeli accent.

“Communist minded,” I smirk.

“What does that mean?” the slutty looking Goth says. She has no accent at all.

“Politics is just a dirty word for the recovery and protection of people’s rights,” Zach tells them matter of factly, “Rights you were tricked into thinking you had all along.”

“And what is there to do in Be’er Sheva?” the little Tomboy asks.

“Southern recruiting,” I say while firing up a Marlborough Menthol smoke.

“Recruiting for what?” asks the Goth.

“Change making, sweetheart,” Zach continues.

“Wrong country, bad choice. Nothing changes here and nothing ever will” the slutty Goth states.

“Says people who don’t like to dirty their hands getting what’s theirs by right,” I respond. 

“But what’s a revolution ever good for?” asks the slutty Goth who sounds Canadian.

“To end the violence in the land,” the little tomboy cuts in.

“Which side’s violence?” the Goth sort of snarls at her for taking the side of strangers.

“Both side’s so-called leaders are equally to blame. Both side’s people have little say in perpetuating the bloodletting,” Zach says.

“So let me sort this out. You guys want to make revolution in Israel?” the Goth asks.

“That’s his plan,” I nod.

She smiles at me with fakery. I don’t smile back. I think this slutty Goth just wants Zach’s balls on her chin. The tomboy is a more interesting a candidate.

“There’s a guy you ought to meet,” the little tomboy says. 

I’ve determined she’s probably a little girl who likes big boy things. She can’t be older than 14. 

“He’s a local rocker. Plays in band with some guys we also know. I say this because I think you have a lot to talk about. He very political,” the Tomboy says.

“When could we meet him?” asks Zach.

“Right now if you want. He’s probably over drinking at this rundown park and band shell near the edge of the city in the district Noat Loan,” the Goth tells us.

“I’d like that, but I need to sell a couple more pictures before I close up. If you got an orange I’ll call you in a couple hours,” Zach says. 

“I’ll buy one for thirty NIS if you come with us to meet this kid,” the little Tomboy replies. She seems adamant.

“Which one you want then?” I say so Zach can’t object.

“I’ll take the one with devil versus Che,” the Tomboy responds sharp as a tack.

I notice she is wearing a small silver, rebel star pendant around her neck.

“What are your names?” Zachariah asks.

“I’m Ester. This is Sahar,” says the slutty Goth who sounds Canadian.

“A pleasure. I’m Zachariah Artstein. This is my partner Maya Rose.” 

He’s real into the ‘remember my first and last name thing.’ It’s formal. I’m his partner, eh? Partner in crime.

Sahar hands him a crumpled twenty and a ten-shek coin, which is small fortune for him. He pockets them and starts breaking down the stand. 

“So, when you guys say revolution, what political camp are you coming from?” asks the tomboy Sahar.

“That’s a big question for an Israeli school girl,” I say.

“Everybody is always more than they appear to be right, Zach” the girl Ester says.

“Indeed. Personally, I’m a communist. Ms. Rose doesn’t entertain such labels. The organization we are members of however is quite deliberately non-partisan. We want civil rights and demilitarization.”

“What’s the name of your little organization?” asks Sahar.

“Ha Irgun.”  

“The Organization? What kind of fucking name is ‘the Organization’,” she smirks. Sort of the way I first reacted to the name Zach came up with. Who do you think you are, Tyler Durden, I’d said to him once.

“It’s the name of original fighting units of the Jacobin Club in the French Revolution, the name of original combat units that drove the British out of Palestine and blew up the King David, the name of a wide range of Russian proto-anarchist formations, as well as the title for a group without a name launching a movement without a color.”

“That is an ominous little fucking title. You forgot Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. They were called the Organization in the beginning too,” interjects Ester impressing me for the first time.

“It’s an ominous fucking line of work,” I say.

“What does your group do?” Sahar asks, ever the precocious little fucker.

“Right now we are setting up units around the country to engage in political education, propaganda work and training lieutenants to command flying columns.”

“What’s a flying column?” asks the girl Sahar.

“Irregular paramilitary forces that resist fixed unit combat for asymmetrical strike and go attacks. The Irish came up with it,” Ester tells her companion. 

These young rebels gravitate to Zach, don’t they? Or to the flags he flies with his pictures. You wouldn’t stop unless you knew the references he made in the art or thought he was cute and wanted to screw the artist.

“Exactly,” he says impressed now, “And three weeks ago we established ourselves on this front.”

“And your bottom line?” Ester asks us.

“It’s the People’s Republic of the Middle East, the united nations of the desert we are fighting for,” I say remembering the kid’s rhetoric from Jerusalem.

“Why should we give the Arabs anything?” Asks Ester, “Why fight our own government, which is crazy enough, to put Arabs in charge of their own countries as well as ours. Try selling that to anybody around here.”

Zach starts to respond but I cut him off. 

“Well, we just figured since you guys are willing to slaughter each other for a two-hour by eight-hour strip of turf that neither you nor the Palestinians can actually wrest from each other without the business of all out genocide; we just figured on a long enough time line you’d turn your guns on the leaders who keep this all gong and not on each other,” I say.

“That’s as wild an idea as it is optimistic about a large number of factors. How many people have you actually convinced to enlist in your little shadow army?”

“A few dozen.” Actually quite shy of a true dozen actually committed beyond rhetoric, I think to myself.

“How many of them are Army age and older?” Ester retorts.

“Less than two,” Zach shoots back. “If we don’t recruit people before the Army and the war gets um and then it’s too late. You’re country is one big armed military-politico indoctrination camp.”

“You said front. Where are the other fronts?” asks Sahar.

Now there’s a question that I, too, was curious about, because I thought Andrew and I invented this thing with him.

“There are quite a few. I cannot gauge the numbers of the full international movement, but the man who brought me in said this body was active across the globe in hundreds of countries, operating under thousands of different names with one objective.”

“Which is?” asks Ester.

“To smash the international state system and replace it with a system that upholds human rights,” I respond. 

I know his all his lines by now.

“How many other members, other than the ones you’ve recruited, have you met?” asks Sahar.

“I only know the man who brought me onboard,” Zach says. 

All news to me.

“God, this sounds a lot like a terrorist group,” smirks Ester.

“We believe strictly in non-violence to non combatants.”

“Small favor as everyone in Israel is on their way to the Army; or is in the Army or is on Reserve in the Army until the age of 45. That doesn’t rule too many of us out.”

“Violence upon civilians is a tactic we will not reciprocate. But turning the other cheek will get you killed,” he says.

He folds everything up into its case and sticks the case into his black satchel bag.

“I don’t think non-violent revolution is possible,” Sahar responds, “Force is our method with everything. If you try to set up group here, they will dismantle it the second they perceive threat.”

“Not if we gain the right network of support and tread carefully,” Zach retorts.

“Explain to me how propositioning random strangers on a city street about a revolutionary organization is acting careful. We could be in Shebac for all you know,” exclaims Ester.

“But something tells me you’re not,” he says to her, “You’re too young. You’re too educated and we haven’t truly revealed more than rhetoric.”

“You’re right. I’m not in Shebac. I’m not even old enough to be in the Army yet, but never forget we have one of the best intelligence gathering forces in the world. If you are serious about setting up this organization, you are going to have to be a lot more subtle in how you recruit,” says Ester. 

“Zach has a good way to read the people he brings on. And we’ll keep it tight as a drum when it comes to the things that get people in trouble. And they are too busy fighting Islamists to spot leftist radicals like us.” 

Zach and little Sahar look at each other each sizing the other up.

“Let’s talk more about this in district Noat Loan,” Sahar finally says.

***

Ester is on the phone with that guy Gavroche and it’s two hours to midnight. He agrees to meet us and Zach says after he’ll find me a Sheroot to get back to Tel Aviv. Zach and the girls promise to walk me back to the central bus station. There are quite a lot of junkies and abandoned buildings that I’m not getting yanked into.

We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes along one of the city’s main north-south thoroughfares toward a neighborhood called Shkonah Dalet. Most of the city housing blocs are named after letters. I infer that only the good areas get real names. There are abandoned buildings right next to new high-rise developments everywhere. Ester says the city is trying to drive out the junky-squatter community by knocking down all the old buildings from pre-Allenby Be’er Sheva; but a ton of them are old enough to be historic landmarks. Many of them are considered historic treasures and the city has been ordered not to tear down anything without loads of paperwork and bureaucracy from the National Archeological Society in Jerusalem. 

“Gavroche will meet us in fifteen minutes,” Ester reports.

“Aight,” says Zach posting up on a concrete barrier on the side of the central highway. 

“Do you have somewhere to stay in Be’er Sheva?” Sahar asks him.

“I was gonna squat out in one of the abandoned buildings I saw on my way over here.”

“That isn’t smart idea,” warns Sahar.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Stay in those buildings if you want be raped or robbed. They filled with drug addicts. They’ll murder you and steal your stuff when you go sleep. They’re also littered with dirty needles and garbage and bird shit,” Sahar adds.

“We will find a place for you to sleep,” Ester promises him.

***

Near midnight we make our way to a park in the Dalet neighborhood of northern Be’er Sheva with a gang of some twenty odd kids. There was a bunch of kids smoking and drinking in the lot behind the row of apartment complexes on the main strip. They looked like Israel’s version of punk rock. The air was dry and dead, but cold enough at night for leather jackets. It was dark. The only lights came from the electric white light grid on the housing projects as most of the street lamps were shot out. There was a string of beat up old shoes laced up over a wire above the street. Sahar said it was dope-dealing spot. We were introduced to the other kids. Their names mostly escaped me. We were waiting for Gavroche.

He eventually rolled up wearing green coveralls. His nose was pierced and he had a small Jewphro that hadn’t been washed in awhile. He arrived with a skinny little girl that looked black Russian. She was petite, dressed all in beige Air Force khakis with a thin black overcoat. Her hair was pulled up and held in place with a thin metal hairpin. Her eyes were painted like a predator, like an actress out of Faster Pussy Cat; KILL! KILL!

There was some base line chit of chat and introduction. Their names were Gavroche and Katusha. His family was once Moroccan, hers was once Ukrainian, but they were Israelis now.

“Why are you here?” Katusha asks firmly and finally.

“Because I’m at war with my America,” Zach responds.

“Why take that upon yourself? And what makes you think the people here will support that notion and course,” she continues

“Because the chosen people don’t like building pyramids and sacrificing first born sons.”

“But we do like Levy jeans, punk rock our MTV,” responds Gavroche. 

Katusha watches my every movement saying nothing else. Zach spins his yarn, makes his sales pitch. Then Gavroche asks the question of the rebel.

“So what is the real purpose of all this?”

“The great lie is that there is no purpose. It’s the world’s oldest lie. Ignore what you see now because one day you’ll be rewarded, one day you’ll get yours. All that Dos messiah and world to come horseshit keeps us from improving our lot. We plan to make a stand here in Ertez Yisrael. We need to level the playing field so that more people have access to the basic good things of life. That’s the great fear of Babylon. That people might come to think they have some right to things not being nasty, brutish and short.”

“Babylon?” Katusha smirks.

She says something to Gavroche in Hebrew.

“And how does one burn Babylon?” Gavroche asks with murder in his eyes.

“Anything can be done when a people becomes well organized,” I say to him.

“This otriad you have called us here to join, what would you have us do?” asks Gavroche, 

Katusha jumps back into the discourse, 

“There will be a lot of blood,” she says, “you’re both much crazier than our friend said. You speak of these things like one might describe a chess game. You are matter of factly stating that we take on the most highly militarized state in existence other than maybe your country of origin. You do realize that this country is armed to the teeth and adamantly pro-American across the board? And that the Pan-Arab street wants to drive us into the sea not unite with our people against their local governments?”

 “In my mind this makes it the most logical place to start. We attack at a point of improbable victory, so improbable it is left unguarded to such an internal threat,” Zach retorts.

“It is a plan for pure and utter suicide you speak of,” Katusha tells us quietly.

Gavroche just grins and wipes his brow. It looks like he’s thinking hard about what Zach is saying or maybe he just still thinks we’re crazy.

“Well let’s hear the particulars of your plan,” Gavroche says. 

Zach breaks it down over a Noblisse cigarette.

“First, we will group the settlements, farms, villages, towns, kibbutzim, moshaviim, and cities into fourteen regions each named for the 12 tribes of Israel and the 2 Arab tribes of Ishmael and Esau. Each tribe or division will establish a command city. One unit, in each command city will coordinate the logistics for a network of cells within a given division. One Captain from each region will sit on a Cabinet of the leadership, which will command the 14 divisions, bound by our program and operating guide. No big moves until we’ve got soldiers organized in all 14 regions into viable flying columns. What we have is a rough outline for a structure and a one page written preamble on why we fight. Everything else that Ha Irgun becomes will be up to those that take over as captains and lieutenants. The day you join you will have an equal say on what will be the master plan for your division, Be’er Sheva, of course, being a command city.”

“The tribe of Judah of Shimon?” asks Katusha.

“Judah. Shimon is Eilat, and Esau is the Bedouin triangle and national Parks,” I say.

“The overlap with the crutch of Hebrew religion makes me wince,” Gavroche says. 

“There won’t be orders coming down from a high command. You’ll get no resources, no support, and no reinforcements for the first year. Cells will work to circulate our program among the various areas of the country and train their own men and women under the leadership of their regional command without directives from the Cabinet. No one will move against the government until we’ve put infrastructure in place for the long, hard fight.”

“Until then you plan to keep everyone in the dark about each others identities?” asks Katusha.

“Only key people in each Division’s command will know the identities of a few other Division captains. We need to minimize a compromised Unit or Cells ability to neutralize other commands if captured.”

“And this organization will be open only to Jews?” Gavroche asks.

“That would give us less than half the people of this country,” Zach explains.

“We need the Bedouins as much as the Dosiim. We need Egyptians in the Sinai and Jordanians across the river. We need Filipino and Southeast Asian migrant workers, the Romanians, the Russians, the Indian Jews, both tribes of Ethiopian Jews and the Black Israelites, too. We need the Arab Christians and the Muslim Arab Israelis as well as the Druze, Jewish Iraqis, and not mention the Yemenites and Moroccan Mizrahiim,” I tell them.

“And fags and Palestinians, too, no doubt,” sputters Gavroche.

“That is correct. Fags and Palestinians also can pull triggers and field a general strike,” Zachariah tells him.

“To even speak of doing this with Palestinian involvement is heresy,” he continues.

He stares at us. Then smirks again insanely. 

“I guess I’m very amused. You’re creative for so-called communists. I’ll give you that. With this little plan of yours, you have to do a great deal of cutting and pasting to just survive.”

“Will you join us then, my brother?” Zach asks.

“Why such battle, for a piece of desert?” asks Katusha. Unlike Gavroche she has no accent at all, but slow pauses between every few words.

“The deep desert of the Negev and Sinai is to be our shield. Great empires have dashed themselves attempting to uproot an entrenched desert people from the mountains of the deep. The Sinai alone can shelter over one million Bedouin from the wrath of the Egyptian state. The IDF has set up fortifications and bunkers all over the desert that we can take over and use as a great fortress. The ones in the Sinai are already under Bedouin control.”

“Like Masada?” Gavroche snorts. “You’re asking us to join an organization that doesn’t have an established name or program. You’re asking us to partake in what sounds like a terrorist plot that seeks to wreak havoc in my country for the purpose of undermining yours.”

“I’m asking you to join an association of women and men that will bring together an irregular force composed of every race, religion, and creed of this land. I am asking you to help me make this organization a reality and to set your people on a path to get free.”

“How many are you?” Sahar asks. She’s been listening in on the sidelines.

“Right here in Israel? I’d say a dozen solid, four dozen more briefed and deciding,” I say before Zach can aggrandize anything.

“It appears we caught you during the early stages of this plot,” Gavroche mutters.

“Like he said, if you become involved, your command will be what you make of it. Ha Irgun will become what you decide to shape it into.”

Gavroche looks on calculating the costs of any future benefits. He and Katusha lock eyes and she shrugs then fires up an L&M.

“Ester will find you a place to sleep. In the morning we will tell you whether we become involved. By morning you will either have Katusha and I as comrades or you will not. I want your promise though on something though first.”

“Go on,” says Zach.

“We would demand true and absolute autonomy. Not gonna tolerate some agitated refugees dictating how I should make revolution in my own damn country”

“But of course.”

The two men clasp hands. We women nod to each other. 

A friend of Gavroche’s named Big Guy, a massive wall of punk rock muscle, drove us in silence back to the Central Bus Station. I was exhausted, but it felt like Zach was getting somewhere. If Gavroche gave him an okay, then he could stand to bring a massive circle of punk rockers and street toughs into this Be’er Sheva Regional Command Unit. I realized more and more that Zach said very different things to different people. That might get us in trouble one day. 

Big Guy waits engine running and Zach walks over to an empty Sheroot and gives the guy a five hundred NIS to drive me all the way back to my house on Hayorkon and Allenby. I try and stop him, but he’s easy come, easy go with his money. Where he’d suddenly become so flush with cash I had no idea. We have a tight and lingering embrace.

“I’ll see you at the Deep,” he says to me.

“Stay out of the sun neshama,” I say kissing him on the cheek.

***

I wake up alone in my bed in Tel Aviv a block from the sea about 20 hours later. The Sheroot brought me home around 6 am. I’ve slept like I was drugged. 

The apartment is empty and I help myself to a glass of orange juice from the fridge. A note on the bedroom door says that Veronica my stripper roommate had to go meet someone in Eilat for two weeks and that the rent is stuffed in her leather jacket pocket in her room. The note also mentions that Zach called and he left a number I can reach him in Ashdod. I pack up my gear and let myself out. What a weird evening. Lots of desert at dusk. 

I’m out of minutes on my Talkman so I throw on some clothes and head out to the store. Sweat drips down my brow and it won’t be long before my t-shirt is drenched. It’s humid even at night in this city. I buy a carton of Marlboro Menthol Lights, a huge bottle of cold mineral water and a talkman card then take a brief walk on the Boardwalk. I call the Ashdod number a little after 8.

“What did they decide?” I ask him on the orange.

“They want in. Gavroche, Katusha, Sahar, Ester, Big Guy and a handful of others right away.”

“Nice job, kiddo.”

“To both of us. Gavroche and I tramped over to this underground Punk venue in Ashdod for a concert. Gavroche wants me to spend the week in the south so he can take me around a few towns and I can help explain Ha Irgun to lots of local kids.”

“Try and find some members older than eighteen, sweetheart.”

“If I do they’ll all be foreigners or Bedui.”

“Don’t be gone too long, brother of mine,” I say to him.

“Don’t miss me too much,” he responds.

“I stopped missing you yesterday.”

“Ashdod is quiet and serene.”

“You’ll put an end to that, kid.”

מ

“No nonsense motherfuckers. The Hebrew people were chosen to produce the most receptive of the prophets. God’s word is unintelligible to most and corrupted and distorted by nearly all those who hear it. The Hebrew tradition allows its nation to bear messengers with a larger tolerance for the word. The Hebrew religion is a spiritual and intellectual discipline. Consider yourself chosen only in that you have to bear the hardest message ever heard,” said my no nonsense boss, partner and friend, Andrew the Hustler.

We sat in his large living room of the penthouse he shared with a few too many freeloading people. I didn’t come by so often because of how far away I lived. He was supposedly having a dinner party, but it was just a huge bowl of spaghetti, several loaves of bread and some white wine. 

I am not a quiet broad, not at all, but it’s getting really stuffy in here. The boys were laying on the God talk, passing a mike between them preaching someone’s good word about the battles we were soon to face. Andrew opened up his house to a great flood of people whom Zach had collected on the street corners and squares of greater Tel Aviv. The boys were having a lot of fun. They were like MCs in free style battle. They raised the ante each time they passed the buck. There were close to forty strangers in that house listening to the Avinadav and Zachariah show go down. 

The two leaders stood. Zach in his white linen suit, Andrew in a black one at the head of the room near the route to the door. 

“Now, my chosen sisters and brothers,” interludes Mr. Artstein, “We want to talk to you about why we fight. We want to lay down for you why you should make the sacrifices the Organization says are necessary. Why it is time to tear the wool from off your eyes and storm the gates of the temple-palace. Not for money, not for power but because the things inside that palace defile us all and oppress our kind.”

I’d only seen this show once before on a street corner in London as a child. I had a feeling they had practiced and memorized this speech. In their own ways Andrew and Zach were both salesmen as well as performers. I see Gavroche and Katusha from Be’er Sheva in the back the room. At least I think it’s them.

“Brothers and sisters, we welcome you home, back to the front lines of the longest, battle our kind has ever known. I welcome you home even if you’ve lived here your whole life because you’re going see this thing with some new eyes,” Andrew begins. 

“We are here to tell you why the Organization chooses to fight, and why we want to you to join us shoulder to shoulder.”

The little street artist appears to be channeling the ghost of one of the dead black revolutionaries he admires. He pauses and passes, Andrew takes the cadence over. 

“We cross the line between apathy and action when we decide that it is not only our aim but also our duty and our right to question the integrity of a system that embraces wealth as a status symbol, a system that breeds self-indulgence, rewards greed, and has repeatedly taught us that the meek shall not inherit the Earth.”

“Those in power want you believe the battle is against the Palestinians and other Arab states. But the battle is at home. In our schools. In our churches and synagogues and mosques. And in our streets. But the eye of the storm, the devil you must grapple with if you have any hope of victory, is the devil in you. You must fight with your own conditioning to make yourself believe our kind is good. Our victory is inevitable if we fight generation to generation with freedom dreams lodged in our minds, bodies, and souls.”

 “Despite this call to you women and men assembled, the internal or domestic crises have been made to appear insignificant in the light of mounting international conflict. The Knesset has always required a negative external force to distract the people from their domestic plights. Our government would have us believe that the front line is somewhere in the Gaza Strip or West Bank, perhaps plotted in Damascus, Beirut and Tehran. That the fight for freedom is being fought and won in the settlements of Hebron and Ariel. The front line is here.” Zach points to his own head. 

“What of the political prisoners in the camp complexes? What of the disappeared? What of the oligarchies in Latin America and Central Asia we protect and arm to support our security and economic interests? What of the suffering in the ghettos and the collective poverty of the Ashkinazi conscience?”

Back to Andrew. 

“This government spends obscenely more on defense than on social programs. We can wage a sixty-year war, but can’t get more than half the kids in the country to finish high school. We trumpet our first world trapping but our people live and act like those of a developing nation, each ethnic ghetto for itself. We are a pawn of a massive overseas empire and a forward command for that empire’s interests in the region. Our nation has a basic law, but no constitution. We throw people in camps without a trial of their peers and we don’t even directly elect our own prime minister. Does this uphold the promise of freedom and democracy? Is this the nation we envisioned? I say, fuck the dumb shit. It’s time for revolution, brothers and sisters. Time to pick up the gun in revolt.”

Zach chimes back in. 

“The Israeli State is neither a democracy nor even a republic. One must differentiate between a democracy and a republic, and furthermore between a republic and a corporate oligarchy, a governing body of the ruthless corporate elite who dominate the crumbling institutions of our supposed democracy, including the Army, media, big business as well as control the gross and superfluous aid from the one Israeli political party with two faces. This Sharon Government was stacked with the third party crazy’s that enforce shabos, prevent interfaith marriage, and advocate deporting the remainder of Israel’s hardworking and surprisingly loyal Arab population.”   

Andrew now picks up.

“We do not discount the power of our independent community leaders. Yet the real political power remains in the hands of this corporate oligarchy. Our people have become too complacent, all too willing to let others decide our fate. It is in the name of security that we are asked to conform and submit. Israelis have been reduced to stagnant apathy and fail to comprehend the origin of this paralysis. We are an incredibly unique society in the sense that we are a nation of brutalized refugees who have overrun a colony, subjugated its continuously subjugated local people, then turned to further brutality not just among these people we have transplanted but among our own vast non-white populations. This false promise of security has been given to the people as a substitute for political empowerment and true social mobility We, brothers and sisters live in a modern Apartheid State, bank rolled by the only super power left standing.”

I see them all. A few of them squint to follow the English. Clusters have formed so that lost details can be translated into Russian and Arabic. All the Ashkinazis speak pretty descent English. We brought them here for shwarma and wine to tell them to enlist in our otriad, Ha Irgun, the only show playing like this in the entire nation. Zach allows a reflective silence before he takes the money shot.

“This country was not founded on the principle that when the government or ruling authority ceases to insure the natural rights of the individual, it is the duty of the people to rebel. That rhetoric is of my own land’s broken freedom songs. Israel was founded after the slaughter of the Shoah to safeguard what was left of our beleaguered tribe. Sitting across from me tonight I see people who might not consider themselves members of this tribe. I see Black Israelites who were led here by the Prophet Ben-Ami and nearly twenty-five years later haven’t been recognized as Jews, given citizenship and face deportation at the whim of the state. Next, I see Russians who don’t even consider yourselves Jewish who fled the former Soviet Union as the last stop to Brighton harbor. I see a couple Bedouin and Arab Israelis that certainly consider themselves Muslims but are called traitors by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza because they stayed to make a life in Israel where they had always lived. There are more tribes gathered in this country than stars in the sky. If we cannot agree we are Jews, then we should agree we are all children of the tribe of Avram. If not that, then we can all say we are a nation of refugees one way or another.”  

“What we must strive for is a true democracy, a rule by the people, not by those who falsely represent us, wolves in sheep’s clothing. A pluralistic society, not just one dominated by Ashkinazi Jews. Our slogan is all power to the people and this is our objective. Burning inside every person is the desire for a better world. We fight because if we do not, our government will carry out genocide and exploitation in our name. We fight because as Israelis we are held accountable for what our government does. It is not only our right, but also our duty to fight. If we do nothing, we enable the American iron heel to break our backs and stand upon our collective neck. We enable our own government to be but a pawn to the new Roman Empire.” 

 “My brothers and sisters, this is your call to arms,” Zach concludes.

The clapping began in the back of the room, and then caught on. These people had never heard words like these uttered about their own nation. A couple of fists went up from the brothers. Gavroche salutes Andrew. Men of many confessions and colors pat each other on the back. The women and men assembled begin banging their fists on the tabletops. The forty gathered here lost themselves in erupted applause.

Andrew drops a big grey bucket on the table.

“Thank you everyone for your time. We need Kesef for gas, need Kesef for bus and rail tickets. We need Kesef for printing a newspaper, distributing propaganda. We need Kesef to buy some arms. We know you all feel what was said. There are envelopes and index cards on the table. Leave your name, city, number and email if you wanna enlist. Fill them envelopes with NIS if you can contribute. Just don’t walk out the door and put yourself on the side of our enemies by doing nothing. Battle lines are being drawn and we need you all by our side, shoulder to shoulder, ready to take back the nation.”

I slipped out the door for a smoke while the two rock stars took questions, money and membership cards. I felt a bit of resentment, mostly at myself for not asserting more of a role in there. They wouldn’t have stopped me. I just wasn’t sure yet. I could play along, but it was a scary bottom line. I was looking the sketch Zach gave me that night we met and saw an enormous picture of one of his dreams. It was all of us at the Jerusalem city walls holding back a vast army. I was bleeding. Zach and Andrew had been shot a couple times. The picture was nearly the same as a reoccurring dream I’d been having of us all getting killed over this organization.

I sat outside having my smoke wishing Zach would come outside and let me know I was part of the leadership or at least part of team. I’d been plotting with them since the beginning and now I had to pry out what the next move was. 

I wanted Zach to come downstairs, put his arm around me and sweetly say, 

“How did we do up there?”

I imagined I’d respond, “Playing cards with you two is like washing your feet with your socks on.” 

It was an old line from a B movie. But he never came down. He was organizing.

נ

I went on another day trip to Be’er Sheva in the very beginning of August. The young, tough Gavroche went right to work enlisting the local, disaffected youth of the urban Be’er Sheva sprawl. He was not a great thinker. He was a young man of action. What he seemed to like was that there wasn’t too much of a preset plan. He didn’t have to read anything to join. That was the beauty of it that made so many people just plug in and fight. For years people had said things like this are only in the movies or in Russian literature. 

None of that was important anymore though because we were a machine. You came by. You plugged in, or maybe enlisted was a better word because by then we had written our own kaaba, an internal proficiency and placement exam. You got told about it because a friend had signed up. You saw a group of kids learning how to take a soldier’s weapon, saw them practicing martial arts in a park, and then one night it hit you. That fucking heroin dealer that used to be in that park was gone. So were the junkies posted up on the playground. You noticed the gang graffiti on the bombed out buildings had been painted over. Sometimes just grey paint. Sometimes a small mural. Sometimes an odd black pictograph you’d never seen in your life. A food basket ended up in front of your house. Just a little bundle, but if you’re hard up enough any bit helps. It came again a few days later courtesy of Ha Irgun. You picked up someone hitchhiking and they put you on to our righteous revolution. That someone was almost always the young Zachariah Artstein making rounds with his old buddy Hadas. 

Zach got in trouble anytime we went up the hill to Jerusalem. 

The Mugavnkiim arrested him and held him 48 hours when he tried crossing from East Jerusalem into Nablus’ Balata Refugee Camp. He had lost his passport sometime ago and it was really lucky they didn’t hand him over to the American embassy or deport him. On a trip before this one, we got caught up in some Arab quarter unrest and had to hide for a few hours in a metal shuttered market stall with a couple identical twin Palestinian brothers and their father as the Mugav storm troopers flooded the market with tear gas and shots rang out all afternoon.

But by the second week of August we’re solid in Tel Aviv. Mostly Black Israelites and European émigrés. The base of the Cabinet and flagship chapter was called the Manasseh Command. Our network was based out of the Deep Leisure Club and Avinadav’s loft on the edge of town. We’d secured a printing facility and were working on secure lines of online communication.  

We were also solid in Be’er Sheva led by Gavroche, Katusha, Sahar and a small army of punk rock kids and working class hooligans. This formation we called the Judah Command. Out in the desert these young fighters were training on M1 rifles and learning Krav Maga. Expansion was being focused on christening cells in Ashdod, Arad and among the Bedouin settlements.

We were solid in Haifa too, a large cluster of Arab Christian youth led by the young preacher Deeb al Hadid and a some Ashkinazi art students at the university on the top of Mt. Carmel who were led by a girl named Hadas, some one time lover of Zach’s from the kibbutz days. The fighters up in the Galilee we called the Asher Command. 

There were several three to five person cells recently established in Pardes Hanna among Zach’s Russian immigrant friends. In Akko there were a couple of Arab Israeli girls who owned a tattoo parlor. Afula never seemed that solid. Bet She’ an consisted of a kibbutz hippy and his boyfriend. There were a couple of paramedics in Rehovet.  In Sheroot Lummi and in Netanya, it was more Russian street kid friends of Zach’s. 

In Jerusalem we were entirely without representation.

There was just one single mission. We would drive the U.S. influence out of Israel and we would make a stand for a government that upheld human rights. I had spent a good many nights wondering if Zach’s communism would set us free or just get us killed for nothing.  

For many years as a young girl I just hoped I’d go to heaven. I pictured heaven as this endless beach with tall white castles and all the people I’d ever loved were waiting for me to get there, waiting for me to come home. I wondered if God valued the work we were doing even if I wasn’t sure about there being a God. But I could never make myself truly believe. And now I knew that the only heaven I might ever live to see was the one I was ready to fight for. The heaven we’d create right here, right now, our Zion in the wilderness. 

This Romanian Jewish girl Noaah was making the rounds to collect donations for our relief baskets. Gavroche’s ladylove Katusha was editing the articles that would go into the first edition of our mini-newspaper. The little ones they called Sahar and ‘Molly the Fairy’ were sweeping up this massive abandoned building called the Bedouin School House where Zach and Molly lived in a room under the great stairs. She had become his little protégé. She followed him everywhere. The little Russian half pint street urchin had been made homeless because of an insane mother and an abusive father who was a self professed ‘anarchist.’ She was just 13. Enormous glasses, bright outlandish clothing, little braids died different shades of pink. She adored Zach and believed in the ideas of Ha Irgun completely. Tribe Judah had a wide range of child soldiers, but it was the only command with predominantly Jewish members. Asher was largely Christian Arabs and Manasseh was mostly foreign expats and Black Israelites.

 Three weeks ago the Bedouin School House was overrun with junkies until Gavroche, Big Guy, Zachariah and few others from the Be’er Sheva Unit’s paramilitary arm EGROPH flooded the building with diverted sprinkler lines and then drove them out. The junkies moved into the abandoned military base on the other side of the electric neon Old City.  Ha Irgun took over the enormous two-story Ottoman structure destined for many years to be a science center. The boys padlocked the doors shut, dragged in meeting tables, bricked up some windows and called it the KDAA, some made up word surely of Zach’s creation.

You couldn’t teach what we were preaching because we were making it up as we went along. And there was no one to compete with. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades kept everyone, for lack of a better phrase, pretty fucking terrorized.  And all the while as both the second Intifada and our revolution unfolded around us so out of control, I never stopped to think which among us would be the victims of either of these little wars. The Palestinian war ever punctuated with a bullet or a bang. Ours new and in the shadows, but we’d have our bangs and bullets too before long.

***

On August 9^th, Zach and I left Be’er Sheva bound for a third try at organizing the Capital city into a regional command to be dubbed Ephraim. We got there around noon and got lunch at Mike’s Place Jerusalem, a sister joint to the one managed by my close friend Canadian Dave. We took our time eating. I think the kid was a little burnt out. He’d been busy and never seemed to like coming to the holiest of holies. We were both more Tel Aviv kind of people. We made our way down to King George Street, one of the huge thoroughfares. Zach looked in his bag.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“What is it?”

“I’m all out of art.” 

Then three blocks ahead of us we heard a BANG and I nearly jumped in the air. We froze for a second and then watched the smoke and dust settle. The Palestinians had blown up a pizza place up the street. People were screaming. The place was a hectic mess. Zach slumped in to a green bench on the road and took off his hat, as he sometimes did when he got impassioned or upset. The cloud of dust and the screams of wounded people didn’t stop until he flagged a cab and told the driver to take us back to Tel Aviv.

The Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing took place on around 2pm. The blast killed 15 people, including 7 small children and wounded around 130. Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad immediately claimed joint responsibility. 

The only thing he said on the way back to Tel Aviv, with soldiers and emergency medical personnel swarming to seal off the city were, 

“I ain’t gonna be caught dead in that city again.”

ס

Always read into shout outs. I know that from working in an underground hip hop club like the Deep. I know it better for my three months of work for the rolling rebel party ball, The Organization.

The thing about most of what Zachariah writes is that any collaboration he ascribes to the document is greatly overstated. According to the mythology he perpetrated about the land, the Ten Point Program was the joint product of many representatives from the many ‘tribes’ of the country. 

A Sephardic Israeli, Gavroche from the City of Beer Sheva; a Russian Israeli, Katusha, Gavroche’s lover from the city of Beer Sheva via Kiev; a Mizrahi Israeli named Hadas from the town of Ramat Ishai; an Ethiopian with a parent from each of the two tribes named Lina from Bat Yam near Tel Aviv; a young Haredi Dos named Aa’ron from a Yeshiva in Jerusalem; a Bedouin named Ditri who was born in Tel Sheva, but lived in exile in Tel Aviv; the son of an Arab Christian preacher named Deeb al Hadid born in the city of Haifa; a queer from Tel Aviv named Gay Avi. Probably involved also were a little Russian street urchin that followed Zach around country named Molly the Fairy; the wealthy, cynical Russian debutante Svetlana from Moscow, residing for whatever reason in Tel Aviv. There were the well educated albeit very young Ashkinazi students Sahar; Ester who had a Canadian father; and their more working class Romanian friends Noah and Big Guy. It is logical to presume that Zach ran everything by his defacto older brother for the season, Daniel Callahan, an Irishman pretending to be a Jew. But certainly few Southeast Asians, Indian Jews, or Palestinians ever saw the document simply because Zach really only spoke English. Stories he told me about him and Deeb in the north led me to believe a few Druze were examining the document but not getting organized with us.

There were many signatories on the draft copy. But realistically Zach, Andrew and I came up with the list of demands almost the second time that we met. Zachariah wrote the whole thing on the home computer of a non-affiliated friend of his named David Levy, the founder of Israel’s greatest, first, and only Ska band ‘the Beer 7’s’, whose nickname was ‘the original rude boy’. And sure he asked the opinions of all those people who’s name appeared on the ‘secret and official’ first draft, but what I’m getting at is he liked to share credit for work he mostly did alone.

For the past week Zach had been collecting signatures, not for official distribution, on something we called the TEN POINT PROGRAM FOR THE REVOLTION IN ISRAEL. It read something like this, but god knows how many changes took place between what I signed and what someone might read now.

It read:

“To every one of us the revolution in Israel means something different. To some, it is the creation of a society founded on economic justice and mutual aid. To others it means an end to endless war and grinding poverty. To others still it is a means to an end to halt the cycling ethnic and religious violence. To the women and men living in our streets it means a vocational training and a living wage. 

The Ten Point Program is our list of demands delivered to the government of Israel and a foundation to the future society we seek to create. They are what we fight for and what we believe; they are the fundamentals of our revolution; and the first of many rights we seek to restore to the peoples of this land.

1. An end to war and illegal settlement.

We believe that any use of force that has the purpose of acquiring territory, expanding hegemony, making economic gains, or the imposition of culture upon another region or people is against the ideal of freedom. Not only do we stand against military conflict, we are equally devoted to the right of any and all people to practice their religion, culture, or creed without fear of forced submission by another power.

2. A universal free and equal health care system.

We believe that every person is entitled to free healthcare and that healthcare is a human right. We believe that access to medicine, sanitary hospitals, and capable medical professionals must be available to any person who is in need. It must be ensured that every person can seek reliable medical attention without exception.

3. A universal free and equal educational system.

We believe that a solid education is the solution to many of the nation’s problems. Education is an essential tool to abolish poverty, end discrimination, and promote general equality through equal opportunity. Through the establishment of a free educational system, everyone is set on an even footing, which creates opportunity for all, regardless of their economic or social background.

4. The establishment of a community-controlled justice system based on international human rights.

We believe it is the right of every community to build consensus on how to deal with deviant behavior. Our communities should strive not to punish, but to address root causes of crime. Each community must participate in its own enforcement of the laws in regard to civil and religious laws particular to the community and all communities must be equal in regard to the international declaration of human rights established by the UN. 

5. The establishment democratic governance.

We believe that participatory democracy can only be achieved when everyone actively takes steps to decide the terms on which they wish to live to those who claim to rule them. People must have the right to communicate dissent and struggle collectively to improve the system in which they live and assert themselves upon the political apparatus. We must uphold a system of one person, one vote with political leaders directly nominated by the population of the nation.

6. Abolition of labor exploitation regardless of industry.

We believe that an economic system motivated by the constant pursuit of profit can only result in exploitation. We believe that it is completely unacceptable for any industry or business to exploit their workers within our nation or abroad. We define exploitation as any economic arrangement where workers do not enjoy adequate benefits or just compensation for their labor.

7. Adequate and sanitary housing, water and food for all people living in Israel proper and the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sheeba Farms.

We believe that the means to live comfortably are natural human rights for any and all people. In today’s society, these items are commodities that are only available to those who are able to pay for them. We have adequate means of producing and providing these necessities for all people. These three things are indispensable to the very existence of life and any just political regime must secure them for the 12 million denizens of this land; regardless of confession or creed.

8. An end to discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, and country of origin so as to work toward the ultimate goal of equality before the law.

We believe that society should grant equal opportunity to individuals regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ideology, ethnicity, personal belief, place of origin or any other aspect of their person. We believe our society should reward diversity not simply protect and privilege Jewishness.  

9. The pursuit of sustainable environmental practices and lifestyles.

We believe that to adequately coexist with our environment, we must be invest in sustainable solutions to be employed through the use of renewable resources and healthy long-term environmental planning. We must work to ensure that no further damage is done to our land and to improve the health of our nation by eliminating a dependence on the petroleum controlled by neighboring hostile regimes. 

10. The end of the Arab-Israeli wars.

The wars between the Arabs and the Jews have caused a great deal of suffering and have done nothing to address the root causes of this religious-nationalist violence. We believe that all foreign powers must remove support and cease exporting weapons to either side in order for the Israeli and Palestinian people conduct meaningful negotiations on issues resulting in a treaty, which will be implemented via a bilateral national referendum. Until human rights and rule of law is brought to the region we must opt for separation and economic development, not vague road maps to a false peace.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AND PALESTINE! 

THE ORGANIZATION FIGHTS FOR YOU!

* * *

I didn’t see everything because I was caught up in the zeitgeist of the boy himself. I didn’t see how Andrew submerged the kid in a cold water baptism one night and then carefully wrote what the half delirious boy was spitting out. I had to half beat that story out of Disrael. I also hadn’t been invited to Andrew and Zach’s late night decoding sessions using the books of the Tanakh for making battle plan. Zach slept at Andrew’s more than my place, even though he kept all his stuff in a large black frame pack tucked in my closet. But there was more unsettling shit I heard from people like Svetlana, Canadian Dave and other sources on the Tel Aviv wire.

Svetlana walked in on, and got chased out of a meeting where it seemed Zach and a new guy Gilead she didn’t know were supervising ten other recruits as they practiced ambushing and subduing soldiers from behind. Reviewing the movements of creep and attack using high-powered tasers to knock them out and take their weapons and uniforms.

Svetlana quit soon after she saw that, but assured Zach and I that she wasn’t telling anyone anything. Zach hinted to me this was a major breach in security and that we should consider. . .I cut him right off. What was he gonna consider doing to the girl that gave him his first job in the country. He dropped it.

But then more things happened throughout late August. I heard Ditri, Zach and some of the EGROPH fighters from Bat Yam had lobbed phosphorous smoke grenades into a whorehouse and then brutalized some young pimp. Ditri, Zach’s big violent bodyguard demolished the young pimp’s face. Shit like this was big trouble based on who everybody knew controlled the whorehouses in Tel Aviv.

The McDonalds on Kikar Diezenkoff got their windows smashed in the same night as a McDonalds on the Haifa Carmel did too. More broken windows and phosphorous smoke bombs.

A couple minor pusher’s got beaten with bats in Be’er Sheva. The cops found a second drug dealer hung naked upside down, doped up from a tree soaked in kerosene.

There were rumors that began to circulate throughout the southland of the country about an underground political party named The Organization also known as the Ha Irgun ShelShivtay Avra; or simply as Ha Irgun. There was blood in the streets and writing on the walls of collective imagination. 

It read, ‘HA HaLoan Sheli, LeKhioat HofShee!’ (OUR DREAM IS TO BE FREE).

ע

One night in early September, Zachariah got what was coming to him. Blood. I’d been out of the city a week before and heard the whole story on the wire mostly from Svetlana and Andrew who’d been with him in the emergency room. Everybody knows you can’t run around beating up pimps and pushers until somebody gets wise in a county this small. Thankfully, by luck the crew Zach and the EGROPH fighters had manhandled or knocked around were Romanian not Russian because the reaction would have been very different. Suffice it to say, they would have just shot him. But had the Romanians known Zach was a rebel ringleader, not just resisting the shake down, they’d have shot him too. 

One Thursday night some time after I split with the kid over who loved who and how he had set up his stand on the tiyeled like he had so many times before, he went out with a big group of his Russians from Pardes Hanna and Netanya right across from the Opera Towers like usual. 

Rumor had it that this brawl was over the shakedowns. A second more reliable rumor said a young pusher arse named Ze’ev just wanted to kill Zach because Zach stole the pusher’s girl, a young hooker named Anya. The feud in all likelihood didn’t have anything to do with Zach’s rebel moonlighting. It didn’t matter. They nearly got him.

Four guys ran at him with knives while he gave a speech to a crowd of twenty or so. It was quite a mêlée.  First he used his left forearm as a shield. The blade entered seven inches distal to his elbow and remained lodged in him the rest of the fight. He kicked the first attacker as hard as he could then pulled the big wooden board with the art between him and three of the others as a shield. Blood got all over his white pants and white wife beater with the hammer and sickle. His little Russian comrades rushed to defend him and two of them Dima and Ditri, I think, grappled with two of the attackers on the ground. Zach took out his knife at this point and a little Romanian thug named Ze’ev who everybody knew as a pusher around the clubs lunged at Zach. The fourth attacker fled in the crowd. The two of them toppled clean over the boardwalk onto the sand. Zach’s dagger ripped across Zee’s shirt and right hand drawing blood. The two of them wrestled on the ground a bit bashing away at each other. Ze’ev ended up on the bottom. Zach and Ze’ev were locked in combat with only Zee’s knife between them. Then the fourth thug reappeared to give Zach a steel-toed kick in the side of the head. Romanians fight in packs. 

Zach was bleeding from three stab wounds in his left arm and from his mouth and head. He was staggering from an arterial bleed. The fight wound its way back onto the tiyeled as sirens were heard bringing cops and paramedics. The Russian friends of Zach well out-numbered the Romanians. Those Russian street kids surely saved his life getting him out from under Ze’ev and the one with steel boots. The mêlée attracted a huge crowd of arsiim and frekhot bystanders cheering not for one side or another, only caught in the blood lust and thrill. Breaking apart, or pulled apart Ze’ev and Zach stared at each other on the boardwalk less than ten meters apart. Zach bled out his arm, face and head and was panting, heaving it seemed, forcing himself to stand. Ze’ev looked down at his right hand. In the topple over the boardwalk there had been inflicted deep, gushing laceration across the palm his right hand. 

Blood was all over the boardwalk. Roman blood and Hebrew blood mixed. Both staggered ready to run at each other again. Their compatriots kicked the shit out of each other. The crowd cheered for no one in particular. The Russians were winning, if only through strength in numbers.

Audible sirens and flashing lights swooped down upon the battle close by.

When the cops got there they arrested Ditri who was pummeling one Romanian that didn’t flee. They arrested three Russians as they beat another Romanian half to death. Ze’ev the instigator and his last standing companion took off. Zach’s little strawberry blonde Kazak girl who he always had thought was Russian, Anya was holding him when the paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher and took him to the nearest trauma center. 

They put fluids in him and stitched up the three wounds. He got discharged around midnight in the care of his good friend Avinadav and his ex-comrade but still friend and confident Svetlana the debutante. Anya spirited him out of the city to Pardes Hana and nursed him back to health.

There was still more blood to flow.

פ

My first thought that was that it was a movie. My second inclination told me that their government did it. Everyone in both Israel and America remembers what they were doing on September 11^th. I hate telling my story. It was a day just like any other day. It was a day when America felt what we’d been feeling for years. I believe political science professors call it the American exceptionalism.  We had lived with violence and terror all summer so the words on most Israelis lips when there wasn’t a camera thrust into their faces, were, ‘how does it taste.’

Zach and I had been at a nature party rave on the Sea of Galilee the night before with his friend and comrade, the precocious high school dropout and anarchist Hadas. It had gone on all night. We danced until around five in the morning on a beach. I was on ecstasy and he was on God. Prior to that September morning I had slept only in winks. We’d been partying and recruiting all over Galilee, trying to build up a Naphtali Command. I was enforcing a vacation on the kid who never slept. I liked his friend Hadas completely. We both took Ecstasy.

Three hours here on a bus. Two hours on a couch at some house on a kibbutz we stayed at passing north of Afula. Five or six in the Druze village watched over by the most omniscient seeming children I had ever met. Lots of cuddling, heavy petting, and time spent nursing his wounds. He’s still all bandaged up from his little brawl in Tel Aviv. The stitches came out too early. He drank a fifth a bottle of vodka, doused the three wounds and had me stitch him back up. He flinched but never whimpered, the little machismo son of a bitch.

We turned on the TV that September morning to what I thought looked a whole lot like a Bruce Willis movie. It went off just as quick. We tuned in later to discover it was no cinema, but international relations we had witnessed. The second tower had just been hit. There were rumors coming over the TV screaming repeatedly with pure hysteria that eight planes had been taken, that tens of thousand were dead. 

“I’m not sure what to say to you,” said the girl Hadas to Zach. 

“I’m not sure I would know how to respond,” he says back.

He says the smoke rolling around the street on the TV is his parent’s street. Something in me wanted to assure him that they were fine. But, it wouldn’t have made him feel any different.

“Do you want to try and call your relatives?” Hadas asks handing him a phone.

“I know they’re alive.”

“How do you know?” I ask. “Why don’t you call.”

“I have a feeling they are not in their home.”

Hadas gives me a puzzled look to which I shrug.

“I’d make the call,” she says, “to be sure.”

He picks up her rotary house phone and dials the number to his house in the states on Nassau Street in New York.

THIS CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED was the response we heard. He tried again this time with Hadas’ mother’s cell phone. He got a busy signal. His third call was to Avinadav. It rang only once.

“Avinadav, its Zach.”

“You’re watching this right!” he says clearly excited.

“Yeah.”

“You in Tel Aviv?”

“Ramat Ishai.”

“Can you get back to Tel Aviv by tonight?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I got something you need to hear and that we can’t talk about over the phone. You get your ass back to my place, all right? You with Emma?”

“Yeah.”

“I need the two of you need to be back at my house by nightfall.”

“Then we’ll see you soon brother.” 

Hadas rolls across the bed and lights a cigarette. She’s like a pampered, anarchist cat. 

“Worried?” she asks him.

“I told you I’m not.”

“I bet you think this is a sign,” she says curtly.

“I don’t know what else it could be.”

“We have to get back to Tel Aviv,” I say to Zach.

“I want to see my sister in Rehovet. We can hitchhike out of here whenever you’re ready,” says Hadas.

We say goodbye to her kind French mother who likes Zach quite a lot and is concerned about his family and countrymen perhaps more than he is. We walk up to the main road to hitchhike southwest toward Hadera and the coast. We have Zach hang back in one of the cement bus shelters.  Hadas looks quite a bit like the actress Rose McGowan and it gets us a ride quickly even though three’s a crowd in tramping. We get picked up in five minutes flat. 

***

Andrew’s apartment is packed with relatives. Most I knew. Some I didn’t. He was dressed in a black suit and his head was covered in a black Kufee. When Zach and I enter the apartment he took Zach’s bag and offered me a frosted glass filled with water kissing my cheek. We left the main living room congested as it is with Israelites and went back to the small library study where we had most of previous conspiratorial conversations.

“I had a dream last night. In it a great army took over Israel. They conquered us and we became corrupted slaves. The community in Demona was deported back to Babylon wholesale and a McDonald’s arch went up in place of the Temple in Jerusalem. These are the last days my brother. Look at Babylon burn.” He points to the TV. 

I had not realized the Pentagon was also hit with a third 747 and a fourth had been “brought down” in a field in Pennsylvania enroute presumably to the White House.

“It is frightening that we talked about this for so long and now it’s here. We are both going to be tested. We are both going to have to act. Did you dream anything last night?”

“As of late I rarely sleep.”

“They say sleep is the cousin of death. Are you getting more visions?”

“Each day a few, but nothing clear or decisive since the time in the wilderness. The instructions transmitted on the parchment pointed in this direction to be sure.”

It was from these conversations I had been excluded from until now.

“And what is it that you now see,” I ask him asserting myself.

“I see a mark upon the people that I love, but the mark is not the mark of the Chosen 144,000 or the Mark of the Beast. It is the mark of those that bring deliverance, a mark for Rebel Prophets 14 in number.”

“Don’t the Chosen bring deliverance to themselves?” I ask, throwing back his rhetoric at him.

“There are those that walk a fine line between heaven and hell. The man I described that visited me when I was locked up was one of those marked in my dreams. In the dreams I see the beast’s mark everywhere. It is the Nike Swoosh on the sneakers of the youth. It is the American Flag emblazoned on T-shirts. It is the McDonalds arch erected on every city block. The beast has marked nearly everyone. The dreams I have are symbolic. Those that prosper and choose to do nothing, these are the ones marked by the beast. There are those that are marked as chosen, the mark of Ezekiel. This can only be seen in the end times and finally comes my mark, the mark of the prophets, those that will organize their people to resist Babylon. In my dreams I am marked and so are the two of you.”

“They say beware false prophecy,” I say to them both folding my arms in disbelief.

“He is no false prophet,” Avinadav scowls at me. 

Andrew the Hustler never had a visible rage.

“What frightens me is the vivid way your visions and dreams coincide with my own,” Andrew admits rubbing his head.

 “It was our fate to meet, to conjoin the lost houses in exile as Babylon goes up in smoke,” Zach cryptically utters.

“But what happens after your Babylon burns?” I slowly ask.

“The Babylonians retaliate,” says Andrew, “And we are all drawn deeper into a land of smoke, twisted metal and broken glass.”

“I have no dreams at all,” I lie. “I didn’t help found the Organization to play Jonestown.” 

I have dreams similar to those of my two compatriots Avinadav and Zachariah, but I do not have the courage to make them as public.

“Everyone dreams, but few remember. You have to force yourself to have one foot in each world,” Zach says to me.

Avinadav places his hand on Zach’s shoulder.

“I have a notion you will reject at first, but later understand the necessity of. You have to return to Babylon. The days of your exile are drawing to a rapid close,” Avinadav suddenly tells him.

Zach looks like he wants to spit on the ground or strangle Andrew, curse at him. But, he has enough restraint just to shudder. The thing suggested has not even crossed his mind. 

“Don’t ask me to do a thing that I’m not able,” Zach mutters.

“You were brought to the land of Israel up out of a Babylon to bear witness to your destiny. I would say as surely as those Towers crumble, your time in exile is coming to an end.”

He looks pale upon the suggestion.

“I cannot return to that hateful place.”

“You must remember your whole House, the people you love and nurtured. You are all trapped behind those lines.”

“I am not ready. I’m not strong enough to go back.”

“Of course you are. You’re one of the strongest brothers I’ve ever known. The things you saw in the deep desert. This Organization you were meant to build was written on the four sides of two parchments. It is an organization that must now be planted in the belly of the beast.”

I don’t say anything, but I take his hand because he looks real upset.

“Emma and I care about you, Zachariah. The grey banner you wave will go up both sides of the ocean, but when Babylon is done burning, it will strike back. It will send its gunships and flying fortresses first against Afghanistan and then beyond. Emma and I will continue our work here. You must return to your land to ready your House for a stand and then an exodus.”

Was it madness that one had caught from the other? Or had each of them simply exacerbated each other’s latent madness. I was glad I could not dream so vividly and even gladder I never read the kid’s desert scribbling. I couldn’t make myself believe.

“Go try and call your family again and make sure they are all right,” I say finally to him.

The most troubling thing about Avinadav was that he believed that Zach had the powers of prophesy. He truly thought some God spoke to the boy. Had I been religious, any type of religious, or even a genuine leftist, these things I was hearing would have been written off as heresy, delusion or certainly mental illness. Both Zach and I were diagnosed with the condition bipolar disorder. I tried to forget that both he and I have a serious mental condition, that it is likely very responsible for both our tumultuous lives. I tried to forget that he hadn’t taken his pills for close to nine months. I hadn’t taken mine for two years, the salts of lithium carbonate. 

We were either hearing the voice of God or going crazy or a little of both. The kid certainly was now on the edge of the abyss. He probably denied his so-called mission until Andrew started helping him put it into the context of that pan-religious potpourri called The Hebrew Black Israelite Society of Demona. I knew all the boy’s so called revelations and epic dreams. He had shared everything with me and was well inclined to put ink on paper.  

The first was a call up on the seventh floor of a Hell’s Kitchen balcony back in New York not to take his life and that coming was trial, suffering and then righteousness. The second was a call and vision in the deep desert to get ready to fight, to create the Organization of the Tribes of Abraham to ready the people of the land for epoch struggle. And now his trusted friend and mentor Avinadav, who until we met the boy in mid June was just Andrew the Hustler, was now instructing Zach to abandon his promised land and return to the place which brought the boy real dread. He made his way through the mob scene that formed a large half moon in the living room around Andrew’s massive digital television tuned into CNN. Planes, towers, BANG, smoke, people jumping, people running, BANG, tower falling, people screaming, ash and dust, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists. It played on constant loop. 

Four planes, two into the Towers, one into the Pentagon, and one that crashed when the passengers resisted, or was shot down with a cruise missile in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

They said as many as 6,000 people were dead. The Pentagon and Ground Zero were still smoking on the morning of the second day. Zach watched the 9/11 loop play over and over again. The commentators weren’t saying anything new. They didn’t even know who was responsible yet. But September 11^th has been quite a historically auspicious day in the annals of warfare and aviation. 

There were short clips of street celebrations happening around the Muslim world. Clips of Palestinians handing out candy and dancing in the street. The Israeli press stated that Hezbollah had condemned the attack on the Towers, but declared the Pentagon a valid military target, even if they had used a 747 worth of civilians to hit it. American pundits, everybody’s pundits went crazy with the blame game. But soon it was clear enough who was responsible. 

There were 19 men responsible who in one cell of four and three cells of five had captured 4- 747 Jet airlines with the intention of flying them into major symbols of U.S. hegemony. Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt, and one from Lebanon. A man named Mohamed Atta had been the key organizer, the lieutenant and leader of the 19 hijackers. He was a lieutenant of an organization called Al Qaeda, or, ‘the foundation’, or ‘the base’ in Arabic. This network was composed of thousands of hardcore, militarily capable underground fighters and was now presumed responsible for a range of terrorist attacks in the decade since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Including, but not limited to the African Embassy bombings in ‘98, the destruction of the U.S. Cole, and the original attack in 1993 against the World Trade Center. 

In sharp contrast to the standard profile of suicide bombers, the hijackers were well-educated, mature adults, whose belief systems were fully formed. They were not only wealthy and college educated, most of them had grown up in Europe.

Volunteers arrived by the train and truckload to aid a besieged and burning New York. Everyone was trying to help pull bodies out of that flaming hole in lower Manhattan they now were calling Ground Zero. 343 Firemen. That was quite a lot of dead fire fighters. 341 Firefighters actually and two paramedics. We got all these authoritative reports, which were all white lies or half-truths or patriotic jingoisms. Everyone was terrified.

And everybody knew this thing that happened wouldn’t be over for years. 

***

Rosetree/ Adon Interlude 1

Everyone seems caught half between sympathy, ‘call your family’, and now ‘they know what we’ve been going through.’ The thing was huge. I didn’t have my head around it yet. I just kept seeing the smoke debris roll down my parent’s block. 140 Nassau Street is about two avenue blocks from the Trade Center, the Towers, the wreckage and smoking crater now called ‘Ground Zero.’ I knew they weren’t there when it happened. My father would be at his dental office on Staten Island, my mother up in SoHo at the Scholastic building and Benjamin would be in La Guardia High School locked inside somewhere on the West Side in the fifties. Since work and school necessitated all of them arriving at those places by eight at the latest, the attacks that also took place at eight and change would have put them way clear. 

I dipped my card in the orange phone booth across the street from the penthouse. I called Nick Rosetree on his cell. I hadn’t spoken with him since February when the exile began.

The first thing I hear when he picks up are sirens in the background. Screams and sirens.

“Hello?” he yells.

“What’s up, Nick? It’s Sebastian. Is everybody okay!?”

“Holy shit! It’s been awhile. You’re over in the Middle East, right?!”

“Yeah. I’m in Tel Aviv!”

“Things are pretty fubar back in New York. I’m sure you’ve seen the TV.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Listen. I can’t reach my family. Can you confirm they’re all right?!”

“No problem, buddy. I got Benjamin and your Mom’s numbers. I’ll hit um up in a few minutes. The cell phone networks are better than the landlines, which are all down. The city’s a mess. The National Guard’s is trying to seal off the island at Canal Street! There’s lots of chaos going on. Sebastian…”

“Yeah?”

“Things are about to get bad here in America. It’s good you’re not here.”

“Should I come home?!”

“That’s on you.”

“Where are you?! How bad is the damage?”

“I’m bicycling into the ruins to take pictures. I snuck through the checkpoints near Chinatown with Brickman and Micky O’Lyons. We’re gonna get some footage and pictures of what’s really happening! ”

What he’s saying starts getting drowned out by sirens.

“Can you check at my house to see if my parents are okay?”

“Sure thing, brother. Be safe out there ‘Live in the Middle East’! Good luck with what you’re up to.” 

“Thanks, I always need all the luck I can get. What’s it like back home?”

“The skies burning and it looks like hell.”

צ

Avinadav

 “I want to make something abundantly clear. America is our enemy. It is Babylon. It is Rome. It is the absolute incarnate of what we as free people stand against. We can make no compromise. We cannot buy its products and we cannot adopt its means of governance. We must never forget the ways in which the American hegemony, the ability of our enemy to exert its power, has brought so much violence upon our land. It provides the weapons in which the Palestinians are kept oppressed. It corrupts our young people with its deification of wealth and luxury. It makes us its 51^st state and promotes the violation of religious and cultural standards. America is a beast. It is always hungry for more power, resources, and profit. Pal-Israel is one of many states beholden to its will.” 

Those words come out my mouth, but I know these were not my words three months ago. These are the words of Zachariah Artstien to whom I am a student, but also a teacher.

After the Romanian gang went after him a second time I figured he would be safer in Be’er Sheva or the north. He recuperated for a week with his Russian girl in Pardes Hanna and then he began what he called the loop. He’d stay Sunday to Tuesday in Haifa, take the light rail down country to the last stop in Be’er Sheva, stay there Tuesday night to sometime Thursday and then join me at the Deep Thursday night. Parts of the weekend he still spent in Tel Aviv, the Russians keeping him safish, I guess. 

Zach and Emma. They got a fucked up relationship, which hopefully doesn’t involve sex. I don’t give my two cents. I don’t know if they’ve gotten nasty. Don’t care. I didn’t know they were in love ‘til recently. I could have guessed it. Zach told me he missed her too often in passing. She never shut up about him. I told him to leave that shit alone, but what could a kid like that leave alone. Emma is a fine and beautiful girl and he’s got all that panache. But mostly, it didn’t complicate anything.

It’s not a woman’s role to lead these things. Not a woman’s role at all. They think about it far too sentimental. They don’t get that to win this war we have kill. They just want peace without using a piece. Zach is brilliant, but he also a young dude. Emma also very talented but she relies on not having to feel. He brings feelings out in her. That’s for sure. So much that when they are separated they pine for each other in round about ways, mostly via calling me and asking about the other. The week before the Romanians cut him up, Zach told me he ‘could be old with her, if he lived to be old.’ May have told her he loved her. What a fuckin’ mess. Now I’m the middle man ‘cause things are awkward. No way to run an army, to make it plain.   

He spent a whole week not working after the melee on the tiyeled. I knew he hadn’t kept the Sabbath more than twice in his lifetime, so the down time should do him some good. Took up with his cute little central Asian thing up north. Anya’s her name if I recall. But he’s the kind of man that doesn’t know what a vacation means. He’s got no use for rest because he’s fighting for his redemption and can’t pause a minute.

I’m up here hostin’ one of the so-called Shabbat Salon’s we encourage throughout the Organization’s network. I’m giving my two-man speech with Disrael tonight cause God only knows where Zachariah is. I figure he might be here later because the rail line runs near enough to my penthouse. 

People come and go. Show love, show support. My Yemenite ladylove Scheherazade, who I just call Sherri helps tidy up. Finally I get a phone call. He’s still in the north. Doesn’t know when he’s coming back to Tel Aviv. He called to report what he had been up to in Haifa. He talked until his phone card died then called me back from another pay phone. We made chit chat. First about the Club. Not about Emma. And then onto the business at hand. 

“The folks Deeb leads in District Hadar are all Arab Christians. Hadas and her people up on the Carmel at the university are all different shades of anarchist, syndicalist or bohemian radicals. It’s hard to get that mix to coalesce.”

“Just be sure them radicals get on that religious tip.”

“I’m working on it. Hadas is politically bipolar. We might have to let her keep her Unit’s autonomy.”

“No.”

“No what?” he demands.

“Look. I know Emma is on the activist trip. I know she goes about saying go out and get um organized, but shit man, the unity is in the praise of God.”

“There’s a different catalyst for everyone.”

“Okay, but there’s what we say to get people organized and there’s the righteousness that we built this on. You let in all the longhaired, anarchist freaks, Bedouins, Muslim fundamentalists, whatever. You know I won’t jive too far or long about who wants to pick up the gun. Just make sure when they take aim they know at what and for whom. You go to Demona yet? ”

“I’m a little hesitant. It seemed premature.”

“Don’t be so fucking naïve,” I tell him.

“What the hell do you mean!?”

“Don’t sweat the race thing. Shit. Just working at the club and I’m sure you know a few people.”

“It’s not a race thing. Trust me. I just don’t want to stroll into the Israelite community, unannounced and uninvited and ask Ben-Ami to take on the spiritual leadership of this organization.”

“Oh. You want him to ask you?”

“Always with the fucking sardonic wit.”

“You think you can throw me off with those big words, but I know your jive, Zachariah.”

“Alright. Fine. Just tell me what I have to do to get an audience.”

“I’ll make a call or two.”

“I thought you were banned.”

“I am. That don’t mean I don’t know every fucking Israelite in the whole the damn country.”

“Look. We really need to meet in person you and me.”

“I sure as shit ain’t comin’ down to Be’er Sheva.”

“I’ll be at the club next Thursday, then.”

“Now we’re talking.’ You can be around Emma with no bullshit, right?”

“What’s she say?”

“She just mad at you fo’ loving her. She love you too and she don’t want any of that bringing her back toward feeling. The girl is lost, lonely and lethal. Put a city in between you two for now.”

“So Friday we’ll do breakfast after the club?” he asks changing the subject. 

 “Yeah, that works.”

***

After unleashing his opening salvo of anarchy about the three major cities, it seemed the experience with the Romanians, but more so the experience with Emma, had changed his approach. All his time was spent now in the environs of Haifa and Be’er Sheva. He left me and Disrael in charge of printing a newspaper in Tel Aviv and was gone all of August and early September riding the rail back and forth from Haifa to Be’er Sheva getting our people organized.

To my knowledge I was the only person who had read the four pages on the two parchments he carried out of the dessert. They were a chilling testimony of things to come, of our role, of wheres and when’s I could believe in. He had brought those papers out of the desert and to me. They confirmed his prophetic calling. The papers were a certain badge that if the boy survived the trials ahead of him, he might truly lead us to into Zion.

I say I was a student of his because even though he was only 17 years of age, his old soul communicated great knowledge to the people of my land. But he was unable to fully control his powers, unable to fully direct his revelation. So much so that even as I helped him there was only one other who might be able to help him harness his gift of prophecy. That man was surely the prophet Ben-Ami who had led my people here up and out of Chi-Town many decades ago. Prophets can spot their own after all. The kid was using the black-white racial tension shit because I think he was a little afraid Ben Ami wouldn’t give him a seal. The approval of another prophet. So I suppose he was building his rep of miracles before the encounter that never came.

The parchments were rolled up in a single metal pipe. I kept them at my home often studying them. The diagrams upon them, the pictographic swirls and drawings, which accompanied the simple truths the papers, revealed. Although Be’er Sheva was close enough to Demona for him to easily make a visit to the Israelite Community, he procrastinated. I had not been in the community for many years myself and when he suggested I return with him, I, too, found excuses. As much as I was raised a person of faith, there is always some doubt when it is thrust upon you to be the mentor and protector of what might be God’s latest prophet or might be a lost boy with terrible mental illness.

But the changes in the boy were as vast as they were subtle. He had turned his heart away for awhile from the sweeping business of the great revolution, turned his soul, perhaps, to the doing of good works with his hands outstretched to God.

In the weeks before the Towers fell he was occupied mostly with the cruel life of Avi Vodka and the saving Molly Viseman. These two short stories best illustrate the character of the boy Sebastian Adon who we all mostly knew as Zachariah Artstien. He encountered both during the month of August as he attempted to set the country on its head and was bested easily by the ever-escalating war being waged by the Palestinians.

Molly Viseman also known as Molly the Fairy, was a drug addicted thirteen-year old street urchin when she joined the Organization’s Be’er Sheva Unit. She met Zach thorough Sahar, Ester, Katusha and Gavroche and quickly joined Ha Irgun. She helped Zach hustle in the central bus station and was inseparable from him when he was in town taking up residency with him at the Bedouin School House, that massive Ottoman thing they squatted. Their relationship together was that of siblings. It must be argued that he brought great things out in the girl by giving her an older brother and giving her something to believe. He mentored her, taught her political science and religion. He got her taking two showers a day and eating three meals. In truth it was not Gavroche’s strong talk and campaign against heroin that firmed up Be’er Sheva so tightly, although this war on the traffickers got some good results for a while. People were stunned to see Molly the Fairy start going back to school, start reading, stop taking ecstasy pills, acid, and smoking opium. They were happy about the little girl having a big brother. Sahar Rosenfeld’s mother had spent many years reaching out to help the girl with disappointing results. Molly looked up to young Zachariah and changed herself because of him. Everyone whispered if these changes would continue once he went away, which is what the kids’ parents in Be’er Sheva, those with parents, warned them would happen. She even moved back in with her father on Zach’s suggestion a couple nights of the week.

Zach focused his zeal into the lands of the Desert people, the sun soon made his blood boil.

It hadn’t been all his influence. I just wanted to put our logo out there, plant our flag. I had never made Be’er Sheva a priority like he seemed to. I sent a cousin of mine in for meeting on a Wednesday night in early October. He recounted the comings and goings to me in shocking detail.

My cousin Disrael reported back to me a day later.

Katusha, in one of her few verbal contributions to the general meeting, had said it was about time we cleaned the heroin out of the old city. She explained, her painted eyes full of fire, that we could give our Egroph fighters some hands-on experience and strike at one of Be’er Sheva’s worst problems. One of the kids had lost a brother to a heroin overdose and it kind of went from there. Next thing I knew Gavroche had taken a Sharpie and outlined on the map in the command center the area that we should try to take and the four main buildings we ought to occupy. We already controlled one and had it locked down. The KDAA, which they had already established in the Bedouin School House, still needed a lot of work, but five of them had already moved in. It was at least partially swept out on the first floor. 

The next step was obvious. David Levy that they all called ‘The Original Rudeboy’, had told them about it and Zach had already scouted and proposed it at least once. The abandoned movie theatre was ideal because it had a stage in the theatre, as well as at least twenty other adjoining chambers and rooms. Problem was, as I had found out, it was fucking infested with Narcomanim. Molly figured that at least three lived in it and god only knew how many others used it as a place to shoot up. 

The other two locations were equally ambitious. The Ottoman Mosque and the Baasis. The abandoned Ottoman mosque because it was literally a block from the Afoock a la Foock youth center they were doing their recruiting out of. That was bad fucking news altogether because it was a serious dealing spot. I didn’t even want to fuck with it. That would take a war. They had no idea about the Baasis. It was an abandoned Army post with ten or eleven separate buildings. There was running water and doors that locked. It, too, was supposed to be infested. In three months they had gone from feed the poor to drive out the dealers. Zach saw no reason not to do both. As crazy as it all sounded, I couldn’t help but think of all those people I had known in Demona whose lives had been ruined by drugs. And every time Zach hustled the Be’er Sheva bus terminal he had to see junkies like Avi begging for agarot so they could forget for another day that they had wives, maybe a few kids, and ruined lungs from cleaning out chemical vats. Tons of the junkies were former employees of the chemical mines and extraction companies all over the area that employed Bedouin. Not that most junkies were Bedouin, just enough.  Something needed to be done.

So it came together over a five-hour meeting. Noaah and Big Guy made their votes conditional on the fact that we would provide support for the addicts that weren’t dealers. Their idea, Noaah’s really, was that we take the Baasis first and use it as a detox clinic for the junkies that wanted to get clean. Sidra this Arab girl worked for three years for Maagan David Adom and could use her training at the drug clinic to provide rehab for the patients. 

It was crazy and it was complete. First they would clean out three rooms at the Baasis and turn them into detox chambers. I didn’t know anything about that, but apparently the medical cadre did. They started talking in Hebrew and no one bothered to translate. I trusted Sidra and the three other girls that said they had dealt with junkies at the clinic. They assigned six people to scout the Baasis and report back how we could secure it. Once we had a means to rehabilitate the junkies, Stage Two would be to clean it out and take over the theatre. It couldn’t really be secured. Molly and Zach had tried, and on top of that, the smut store near the entrance was apparently a dealing spot and a place where junkie girls turned tricks in the back rooms. 

Gavroche started talking crazy at that point, at least to the ears of my cousin Dizzy. He and some of the other Egroph fighters wanted to keep upping the ante. He wanted to fire bomb the smut store, use it as a warning, and then clear the junkies out room by room like we had been training to do in the KDAA. He got real excited and for a minute the room broke out into a bedlam babble of Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian as the translators scrambled to explain to those who didn’t speak English how fucking crazy the plan really was. But, Zach liked it. He liked it a lot. The girls led by Katusha refused to sanction any outright bombings until we had built a stable mass base. The fighters reluctantly settled on clearing the theatre, posting a sign, and then periodically enforcing it with a daily sweep. Then everything went into Hebrew and Dizzy didn’t understand shit.

Little Sahar, in faulty English, tried to keep Dizzy, who’s Hebrew is very questionable in the loop. The fight going on between Gavroche and Noaah was about the old hard fact that odds are they weren’t going to stop these junkies from using with force. Gavroche wouldn’t listen. A few girls had gotten raped over the years in these derelict buildings and I knew he hated the narcomanim almost as much as he hated the police and mugavnikiim. In his head he couldn’t differentiate between user and dealer and outright deviant rapist. Sahar said that Gavroche wanted to go after the source of the heroin first. At this point, Sidra started laughing. Be’er Sheva was the source for all of Israel she said in English. Who the fuck were we to think that we could stop the heroin flow. Then everyone stopped talking. 

“We can do it because we’re bad ass fucking revolutionaries. We’ll stop the drug flow one city block at a time,” Zach said in English. 

And because he was their real leader, the plan went through by a close vote. Stage One would begin after the reconnaissance. They’d physically mark off Gavroche’s territory with spray paint. And then they’d start clearing the buildings. Like everything about Ha Irgun, a few leaders in a cell, unit or command knew what was going on and went ahead without consulting any of the other commands.

***

Back in Haifa on the top of the Carmel, Zach had ridden Israelis best and only subway up the hill from Hadar to Carmel Center to bridge an ethnic/religious divide between another vital Asher Command of our organization. The meeting took place in a bombed out restaurant in the park atop the hill near the north entrance to the sprawling Baha’i gardens. All the windows had been kicked in. It had become a northern home to junkies. Zachariah reached out to an alcoholic named Avi Vodka living in the rubble. The man was the worst kind of drunk. He had come to Israel at some point to find God and found the bottle. Zach set about getting him off alcohol. Working with one of his Russians, a well-dressed brutal tough named Alon, he cleaned out a room for Avi Vodka in the upstairs of this restaurant and for a few days Alon and Zach worked in shifts to keep Avi from drinking. Zach did it because he was good and Alon did it because he was cruel. They smashed bottles. They chased him about being encouraging, reading from AA’ s big blue book. Finally, he disappeared for a day to remerge clean-shaven and sober.

Zach took the train back to Tel Aviv to tell me both stories. He was so fucking happy with himself for once. I tried to tell him that he needed to sleep. He said he hadn’t slept in four days. He was manic as hell telling tales a mile a minute. He said he was seeing a great interconnectedness of things. I told him to rest. I told him that what all prophets had to do was reveal and record a message. I told him no one expected miracles from him.

I think he didn’t have a good handle on his powers. That kind of thing can kill a man. He tried long and hard to humanize that wild little girl, get her out of the Bedouin School House and back with her father in Shauna Dalet even as ghetto as that shit is. Tried to get her going to school on time, doing homework, eating right. And a lot of local people helped and supported him.

He tried long and hard to get the drunken, crack-headed, possibly schizophrenic madman Avi Vodka, the best-known alcoholic mess in Haifa, to clean himself up. He and violent Brighton-born Kazak Alon hunted and hounded him, tortured him really.  They even locked him in a shed when he got the frenzy in him. They fed him and supported him until they thought he was ready to get his AA on and be clean. And a lot of local people helped and supported him.

There were tipping points at each operation when Zach made the local people in Be’er Sheva and Haifa believe the boy was working some magic to save these two lost and broken souls. Like a chain reaction they saw little Zachariah a stranger in a strange land, an American no less breaking his back to help a young lost girl and a sick old man. And those that watched him work loved him for the impossible things he sought to do.

When the girl Molly was domiciled and in school and the man Avi was off the vodka one week, he reported back to me that these two cases were proof God was with us. The Organization grew each week adding a few members. I warned the kid not to play God. I warned him that even if God was with us he should be in the business of giving great speeches and making fine art not saving souls, as he was a prophet, not the man Jesus Christ. I think he only half-listened. He reported the stories of Molly and Avi to me. He helped heal her mind and his liver. He was also still trying to mend the broken faith and heart of Emma Solomon called Maya Rose, whom he now professed to dearly love. 

A few days later he called me quite broken. Said he’d bloodied his hands. 

He had returned to Be’er Sheva to find Molly had been beaten up by her father, dropped school again, and laid herself out on junk in the very KDAA he’d build to teach these kids revolution and religion and that she had been molested by some junkies. He turned her over to Katusha and Sahar then led an EGROPH fighter unit of eight guys and Gavroche into the den of junkies that was the abandoned Baasis. He told me they lost control that night. The fighters all had some relationship to Molly, a street sibling thing from Afoock a la Foock center and living on the street. They beat junkies with bats, slashed up a few; dragged um into one big building on the base and covered him in gasoline. These weren’t even the same junkies probably, just six random junkies laid out in the near by abandoned basis. Beaten, cut-up junkies begging for their lives, offering shit Gavroche’s fighters didn’t want and made um sick covered in petrol. Gavroche threatened to burn um alive if they didn’t say where the guys who molested Molly were. 

The fighters crept one by one into an abandoned movie theatre in the Old City above a 24/7 peep show operation down a dark ally off the main square. The nine of them slipped though the narrow entrance way thinly barricaded by the narcomanim. The nine of them caught the two junkies that had molested Molly and tore them apart.

ק

You have to copy edit the stuff Zachariah writes because he never edits it himself. He’d print a manifesto with spelling errors and poor grammar and feel fine signing it. That isn’t to say he’s lazy but his end of the labor is the creation of a thing, not its perfection, refinement, or continuation. He’s a resistance artist, pure and simple. Not a résistance curator or the Minister of Information. He’s down in the wilderness again drafting his ‘Little Grey Book.’

There was this guy Daavid, his friends called him ‘the original rude boy.’ Played Guitar in a band ‘the Beer 7’s’ and spoke English like an American with no accent at all.  He was skateboarding, guitar playing, hash-smoking, womanizing drunk of a rude boy. He reminded Zach certainly a great deal of his New York buddy Mickey Lyons, the Rude boy he went with to hear Stand Pipe Siamese shows back in New York. The two of them could have been brothers. What Zach and Micky shared that Zach and Daavid shared also, was that they were almost two of a kind in their respective scenes. American youth fazed out Ska after the Third Wave for Punk and Emo and even Hip-Hop and Jungle. Ska hadn’t really been popular since 1998 and in Israel it hadn’t ever really caught on. Daavid, found it exciting that Zachariah was establishing Israel’s first serious multi-confessional, multi-ethnic revolutionary group. He happened to be the Rude boy and was setting up Israel’s first Ska band. He liked the ideas of revolution as much as the music of Jamaica.

I don’t think this guy Daavid ever joined Ha Irgun. However, most of our core documents got written on his computer before they got edited on mine for printing. Zach told me they were like brothers, like meeting your other half, or a clone of yourself an entire continent away in a park. Daavid was close to getting his band ‘the Beer 7’s’ ready to play their first show. Zach heard their music. It wasn’t amazing Ska, but you gotta give a pioneer credit when credit is due. I didn’t even know what Ska was. Reggae with horns apparently. Zach loved that shit. Daavid encouraged and supported Zach with the revolution. Zach encouraged David to run with his Ska band. In between guitar riffs Daavid did some copyediting.

Two week after the events of September 11^th, The Tel Aviv Manessah Command Unit distributed the first version of the ‘Grey Book’ with an appendix on something that the Haifa Anarchists called Security Culture and map of greater Israel with a 14 regional ‘tribal allotment.’ Zach ran it out to all three Regional Commands in Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva, Hadar/Carmel in Haifa and about two dozen cells and support clusters, our term for people who wouldn’t do work but kept harboring recruiters like Zach, Emma and Hadas. 

It was given out on floppy disks. I think Zach was trying to make sure people didn’t make stupid mistakes like the one that launched him into exile. Those Haifa anarchists were itching for, well for lack of a better word, anarchy.

Brutality, insanity, and terror marked the month of September. Rosh Hashanah our Hebrew New Year was coming and I was gonna have a huge party at the Deep. The mood was getting worse and worse in both countries. America seemed pretty convinced that the people responsible for the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks were holed up in bunkers in Afghanistan.
There was a lot of saber rattling going on at some ridiculous ‘Axis of Evil’ composed of North Korea, Iran and Iraq who, as far as I could tell, had nothing in common other than all hating the United States. 

Everyone knew the US was going invade somebody. It was the kind of country they were. Some Islamic Fundamentalists known as the Taliban ran Afghanistan. They still hadn’t agreed on giving up this Osama guy who everybody said was responsible. In the meantime the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was getting renewed attention. CNN was blowing our crisis up as the half-time show. 

To most Americans, fuck the dumb shit, I’d say the Israeli situation is as troubling as it is obscure. Most of them probably didn’t know what Hamas was until after 9/11. Hell, most of um could only find our country on an unmarked map because America teaches the Crusades like it was a relevant world event in high school world history and because we’re on the sea. While I sympathize with the plight of the Palestinian people, I would say that this, like most situations, lacks a clear definition of right and wrong. Everybody knows more Palestinians have died in our reprisals than the Israelis who have been killed in suicide bombings, rocket attacks and shootings. It is hard for an educated person to take a side without understanding the suffering on both sides of the green line. In the end you just take your own people’s side because ultimately, the other side just wants to kill you. 

While much has been written on the subject I shall attempt brevity and merely report what Zach and I saw on both sides of the green line.  He spent a total of seven months in Pali-Isra and I have never left Israel once in my 26 years of life. Pal’Isra, in case you hadn’t caught it, was his term for our war-torn, multi-ethnic nation converted to a land controlled by neither Jew nor by a free and well-educated populace. 

To understand Pal’Isra you must attempt to look beyond the world painted by the media. One cannot know a situation through op-ed pieces and shock tactic journalism. To your typical Pal’Israelian every thought is not of this conflict. I run a club. Zach sells art and runs around chasing young girls. Emma is looking at various international law schools and sees a shrink. There are men and women with explosives strapped to them lighting off bars, clubs and buses. But those men and women had jobs and families and a country taken away from them before they became willing to blow themselves up. 

Zach said it well. 

“We are a whole nation of refugees that escaped persecution and slaughter only to take our turn perpetuating it.”

This is our wild ghetto outpost by the sea. Eight hours by two hours driving time in size.  The West loves how democratic and Western we appear but this is an illusion. There are mines and walls and war to keep our neighbors out. There are more fences to keep the Palestinians penned in. The struggle becomes a daily part of one’s existence. The bombings are a weekly phenomenon. To us terrorism isn’t this unseen specter haunting our every move; it is quite present and real. We terrorize the Palestinians and they, in turn, terrorize us. We are both of the same blood and possess the same iron will and constitution. 

The way a baby looks ripped apart by ball bearings and nails lying mutilated in its Jewish mother’s half broken arms is the same way an Arab mother’s dead baby looks when laser guided smart bombs rip through the apartment next-door. I am Black. I am an Israelite. I might even say I’m a Jew; but I would light myself up like a Chinese candle in the middle of nursery school–wouldn’t care who’s in the nursery school, like a mother-fuckin Chechnyan– if some government’s Army killed my family, took my land from me, and killed my baby.    

Zach and I watched Israeli bulldozers flatten Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. We watched the Mugav beat men and women with rifles at the checkpoints. We’ve seen the squalor of Gaza City through binoculars on a hillside near the high fence. I know this war will go on a very long time. No American President will tell me any differently. Like the Chi-Town ghetto my father fled from with the Prophet Ben-Ami, we have nowhere to go. We’ve been beaten bloody for so long that we are part animal ourselves. Now that we’re locked in this ghetto, this armed outpost by the sea; we begin to turn on each other. Ashkinazi on Sephardic. Russian on Ethiopian. Bedouin on Arab Israeli. Arab Christian on Arab Muslim. Romanian on Russian. Palestinian on Druze. Moroccan on Yemenite. Indian Jew on SE Asian immigrant. Black Israelite on the nation at large. Straight on gay. Woman on man. 

They tell us on State Television that the Palestinians are our enemy and that the existence of the state always lies in the balance. Now more than ever. I think after all I’ve seen in the past several months that we are just like the Palestinians. Just like um. We act the same, fight the same, and bleed the same blood. I’d say this war will go on for quite sometime. Unless something like The Organization takes control, my kids will have to fight this war. They say the greatest threat to Israel is the Palestinians. I say the greatest threat to the State of Israel is the disunity and self-hatred of the Israelis.

Oh Revolutionary, change thyself! Now it was clear to me. If the boy stays here he will surely be arrested or killed; or worse, his hope will die. Little Zachariah, you love your people so much. I cannot force you to do anything, but I pray you return to New York where you can hone your powers and your message. You’ve tasted some blood, some hate and failure now, but I’m not sure how you react to it. They’ve thrown stones upon you in Meer Shariim because you write God’s name in your pictures. They’ve tried to kill you twice with fists and daggers. The Palestinians almost blew you apart June 1^st. And again on the 9^th of August. Did you see enough yet? Did you? 

I have. I am a believer that with a few brave men one changes history. With 144,000, with just 64, with a dozen; or even with just two.

When I met the boy Zachariah I was known to most as Andrew the Hustler. I let it slip to the boy that Avinadav was my Hebrew name. After that he called me nothing else. Now I know that even if the whole revolution is a betrayed and is a colossal failure, I will try to be called Avinadav from now on, or at least, Andrew the Saint. I said once to this boy I was both a student and a teacher. I helped teach him his religion, but I am a student of his hope.

ר

Emma

I’m drunk as Hell coming back from a Sunday night party at the GAT RAMON when I see him sitting, puffing away a Noblisse on my stoop. It’s not early enough for the gleam of morning light, but the darkness is almost on its last legs. It had have been three weeks since I saw him last at the Cabinet meeting on Rosh Hashanah. I gave him a bottle or Red Label Whiskey as a present. Then he was gone. Not even Andrew had heard from him.

I hadn’t even gotten a call. I just found him in front of my house one early, early morning, which was odd because he had a pair of keys. He looked a bit like death, skinnier than I remembered him, bags under his eyes. We got upstairs and went out onto the small balcony facing the sea. He looked like he hadn’t eaten for a while so I started making him a tuna fish sandwich on pita with Zataar spice. He didn’t say anything to me, but he had a black eye and some new cuts and bruises. The wounds from the knife fight had been re-bandaged. I knew I didn’t have to ask, that he’d tell me eventually. While he ate I took a rag and cleaned him up a bit. 

Finally I worked out my first salvo of words to him.

“You’re an inconsiderate fuck. I haven’t heard from you since New Years.”

“Good to see you too, Emma.”

“I’m Emma now?”

“You’re always Emma except when you don’t want to be.”

He’s finishes his sandwich and takes out another smoke. 

“I know what you’re doing.” 

“I’m trying to fight a revolution.”

“Against anyone in particular? I could swear you were just lashing out at everything around you until someone makes a useless martyr out of you.”

“What’s this really about Emma?”

“Svetlana said. . . “ 

He cuts me off. 

“What, did that turncoat Russian bourgeois whore say?”

“She said you were getting ready to ambush off duty soldiers and take their guns.”

He gives me a wild look like a killer or a crazy person.

“You believe her!? After we threw her out?”

“She quit.”

“Whatever. You think she’d know something like that even if it were true!?”

“Is it true?”

First he looks away ready to lie to me then stops.

“Yes.”

“What?! Why do I have to beat that out of you! WHY ARE YOU DOING STUPID IRRESPOSNIBLE THINGS THAT ARE GONNA GET US KILLED?!!!!”

“It won’t happen for 6 more months. The only reason she knows is she’s still helping because she’s fucking our guy Gilead.”

“All her money’s tied up in the mob. She’s a little Russian Mafia brat. What makes you think she wouldn’t turn you over on a whim? What FUCKIN’ THEN? ZACH, I CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOU DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO CONSULT ME WITH THIS SHIT ANYMORE!”  

I am yelling at him. I can’t believe I’m yelling at him.

I hit him a few times. He barely tries to stop me.

“I’m sorry, Emma.”

“It’s not good enough to say sorry. You and Andrew. . .”

“Avinadav.”

“You and Andrew make all these wild decisions. Then I have to do all this detective shit to find out what’s going on when I go on recruiting trips. WHY are you all escalating this shit before we’re ready and without telling me!?”

“You never asked. You never even took a real rank or declared even what you planned to do.”

“I helped you fucking recruit people. I was the Minister of Defense, whatever the Hell that means!”

“Whatever that means? Ha! You admit to abdicating all responsibility to us. Don’t play like a half soldier then expect to go to the General’s meeting!?”

“THE GENERAL’S MEETING!!! Isn’t this place a little far away to fight America from, Sebastian Adon?”

“You wanna use real names? We’ll use real names then. Pick a fucking side, Emma!”

“WHY did YOU COME HERE?

“This is by far the best place I can think of to fight from. Every empire needs hubs around the world. It is a simple task to militarily conquer a group of people and establish a political hub. It is quite another thing, a more sophisticated form of control, to get other nations to adopt the lifestyle, mentality, and culture of the empire voluntarily.”

“Israel doesn’t want to be like the US.”

“Au motherfuckin’ contraire. This country isn’t the second largest recipient of U.S. aid for nothing. It has been culturally colonized. The decadence and materialism of American society are evident here. The American dream is being sold in Tel Aviv. It is being purchased both in the temples of Jerusalem and the brothels of Eilat.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?”

“A cultural colony believes that it is independent. Politically, it is separate, but borders mean so little these days. What America exports more than anything else is its mentality. The greed, the hedonism, the lust for power. Israel has been bought. HaShem isn’t as important as the beast anymore. We may go through the motions of being a Jewish state, but we’re just state #51 when it comes to who controls our lives.”

“I still don’t get it. You’re running around the country vandalizing McDonalds, harassing sex trade operations and beating up drug dealers! What the Hell does that have to do with American hegemony?!”

“We will be like fingers bound into a tight and disciplined fist. This fist will strike with deadly precision upon our opponents throughout the land. We will make examples of those who sell their people to the Americans for profit. Our fist will come down hard and fast upon traitors, pimps, pushers and spies,” he fired back still with that look in his eyes I’ve never seen before. 

“Radicals want to tell us that everything is about class and economics. They want us unified under class lines not nationalism. As if there ever was an international working class mentality. The problem is that no one thinks about class anymore because everyone thinks it’s only a matter of time before they get rich. It’s hard to put this kind of oppression into words. I’m only just now starting to grasp it. It’s like a spiritualized capitalist mentality. It is the deification of currency with the salvation being profit,” he rambles on in a rage.

“You are such a fucking confused communist.”

“That’s the thing. I’m really not. I think I was guided here to participate in something much bigger than religion or ideology.”

“You speak of revolution as if it were God.”

“Believe in a power greater than yourself is what they used to say in AA. The revolution just had to be internalized and then finally spiritualized.”

“What does that even mean?”

“We’re not fighting for political power anymore. Not for control of resources, lands, or the means of production. The battle isn’t for control of physical territory. It’s for control of our souls and our lives. It is the reclamation of purpose.”

“Communists don’t believe in God or in souls, Sebastian.”

“I’m not a good communist then. I just think our salvation is obtainable in this life and that we’re only going to get one shot at freedom. If we miss, if we refuse to fight for it, then when we die our lives will have been for nothing.”

“What are you fighting for, Sebastian called Zachariah? Please tell me. If I believe you then I’ll follow you forever, but don’t make me wait in the hall as you and Andrew plot your own destruction.”

I watch him look at me again with that burning passion that I love him for.

“I’m fighting to restore some meaning to this life I lead. I’m fighting to make there be a reason to believe that our species deserves its existence. I want to wake up every morning like today is the last day of my life. I’m going out with a big fuckin Kool-Aid smile knowing I fought as hard as I could for what I believed in.”

“And what do you believe in?”

“I believe that human nature is the pursuit of subjective purpose. No more chasing the dollar. No more needless praying, begging even for entrance into the world to come. I have come a long way and made myself a refugee. But beyond that I have learned nothing. What I finally realize is that everything I hate about America, I hate first about myself. And I believe that if I change myself, make myself a demonstration of a new sort of human nature that I will get one shot to make this happen. After that I’ll die, but I believe I am finally able to say that I want for a stranger, what I want for myself.”

“So you’re going to start a suicide cult?!!”

He looks at me quite pained. Then it turns to rage.

“Where did you get cult from all that?”

“You want to lead people to their freedom. To do that you are going to have to start a cult. You can make people believe in you, but you’ll never make people believe in themselves. You Americans have quite a messiah complex going on.”

“I think you missed my point.”

“No I got it. You are going to start a cult and lead our revolution. You keep mixing up words, but I know exactly what you’re saying.”

“You don’t get it at all, Emma. I’m not trying to be the messiah. I’m just trying to convince your everyday person to get free.”

“You underestimate how attractive this system is.”

“I underestimate nothing.”

“I want to clue you into something. For a person to be viewed as important there needs to be a basis for comparison. If you don’t have loads of poor people, the rich wouldn’t be all that special. I see what you’re saying about spiritualized capitalism, but you don’t get how hard it’s going to be to make people change. Everyone wants to be happy, not content, just happy. They want lots of fleeting orgasms, hopefully one a day, but if not, one a week. Power makes people happy and to have power you have to have followers. There would be no use in having a leader that people didn’t follow. The everyday Joe doesn’t want equality. He just wants to be on top like everybody else. As long as a random few keep making it, the rest will keep playing the game hoping that their lucky number is going to come up. It’s the living lottery and you better believe you’re not going to convince anyone but a few dozen angry street kids that change is actually gonna happen.”

“What the hell made you so suddenly cold??!!”

“I’m just a product of my society.”

“That’s quite sad, Emma,” he says breathing smoke.

“So are you going to try to save me, Sebastian? Are you going make me believe in my salvation!? You going play Jesus with me!?”

He slaps me across my face like a man who’d hit a woman before.

“Don’t fucking call me that,” he says coldly.

I’m shocked he hit me. I realize I’m a bit drunk from the open bar at the Gat Ramon.

“All you revolutionists talk a big game, but you never have much of a plan.”

“All you useless cynics can knock anything that tries to make this world a better place and your plan is just to keep things as they are,” he coldly retorts.

“No more politics, Zachariah. I’m going to bed and I want to be cuddled. You are either going to cuddle with me or you’re going sleep on the street.”

I figure he’ll just run off and sleep on the beach out of righteous indignation, but he just keeps sitting there.

“I didn’t think you were the cuddling type tonight,” he says.

My bedroom walls are painted a dull yellow like the dunes. I look out the window at the sea and coast skyline. The streetlights cast a glow over the roof top water purifiers on every house. The walls of my room are bare except for a hanging HAMSA symbol, the hand of God and two sketches. There’s the sketch he made me once of the two of us. My boobs look huge. There’s the larger sketch with pencil that he made the day I met him. It’s of the day he’s going to die.

“Forgive me then?” he asks.

“Yeah. I’m sorry I was cruel. I just feel like you guys shut me out. Don’t hit me ever again, ok?”

I sit on the bed and he sits down next to me.

“You tired?” I ask.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

We sit in silence for a while. He gets up and kills the lights. I pull back the thin blanket covers and we lie down together. The sheets are cotton. I know it feels really good for him to sleep in a bed after more than two weeks on the road. I wonder if in the dark I remind him of Roxanne. But then I remember Roxanne was a flat, scrawny, half-Latin blonde and I’m a busty brunette, a full Hebrew. I take a little pride in that. I realize, however, that he’ll always need to find her in one form or another. 

We both lie on my bed parallel to each other but not touching.

“Sebastian, hold me please,” I say.

He puts his arms around me. I’m only a little smaller than he is.  I cuddle up in his arms pressing my breasts against his chest. 

I turn around and whisper in his ear, 

“I want you to hurt me.”

He knows what I’m talking about.

“I’m not going to hurt you again.”

“Kissing doesn’t do anything for me so I don’t want you to kiss me. I don’t fuck boys either. Never really cared for it after the rape. But, I want you to get me off and the only way to do that is to hurt me.”

“Hurt you like how?”

“Twist my arm. Bite me. Just cause me some pain.”

“I think I’ll sleep on the beach tonight.”

As he’s getting up I hit him in the head with my fist. It’s more of an annoyance than a pain, but it smarts me as much as him.  I try to strike again at his face and he pins me down to the bed and twists my arm behind my back. I cry out in a groan in glee. 

“You’re fuckin crazy, Emma, you know that right?”

“Do it harder.”

He lets go. He doesn’t want to give me another sick thrill.

“Do it again. You like it. All men like it. Force me to submit.”

He looks at me in the dark and I think about Roxanne his only love. 

“I want you to stop, Emma,” he says.

“Look how helpless I am. Alone in this apartment you could do anything you want to me.”

“Yeah. You’re drunk. I’ll be down on the beach if you need me for anything that doesn’t involve your sick little games.”

I grab his hand and bite it has hard as I can.

“Owww!” he yelps.  

He shoves me back against the wall and tries to yank his hand away from me as I clamp into the calloused flesh of his palm. I hold onto him biting harder and harder. He slaps me harder with his other hand. I let go, slink to the floor, and sit there holding my cheek grinning.

“It felt good didn’t it?” 

“What? Hitting you? Hardly.”

“Zach. I want you to hurt me. I like it.”

“You play these games with everyone or am I somehow deserving tonight of this special affection?”

“Look. I don’t like kissing and I don’t like fucking. It does nothing for me. You want me and I want you too in a different way. So play along.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Come back to bed.”

He thinks this over. The religious part of him, his spiritual conscious, is probably telling him it’s against God to give a girl sexual satisfaction by hurting her. The artist freak in him probably thinks differently. He’s torn, but not that torn because when it comes down to it, he’s a seventeen-year old boy. I’m an eighteen-year old girl. We’re both a little lost, lonely and lethal. He sits back down on the bed. He takes my wrist and twists it hard. I groan quietly with my eyes closed.

“More Zach,” I groan. 

I feel his hand squeeze my right tit. On certain level this shit turns him on too.

I lie on my stomach with his cock pressed against ass and he twists my arm back until I almost scream. And so I don’t end up falling into too much pulp fiction porn diction, this shit goes on until the sun comes up several hours later. No kisses, no fuck, just bound wrists and dripping wax. 

“Sebastian?” I whisper curled up in his arms.

“Yeah?”

 “Do, you think I’m fucked up?”

“Who am I to play the judge?”

“I used to be a nice girl once.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t nice, you’re just into the rough shit apparently.”

Out of nowhere I tell him. 

“The first guy who raped me was my own father. I was twelve.”

He holds me closer thinking that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone says some awful shit like that. Heartfelt empathy was always hard for me to display. What does one even say to that I wondered?

“You’re right about one thing, Sebastian.”

“What’s that?”

“This is a cruel world and someone needs to change it.”

He doesn’t respond to that, he just says quietly before he passes off to sleep,

“I’ll find you one day in fifteen years when this is over. When I’m better able to love you the way you should be loved.”

Did I hear him say that correctly?

“When we can both remember to kiss softly. Know that I will always love you in one form or another, Emma Solomon. Good night.” 

When I woke up he was gone and so was his stuff.

All I had left of Zachariah was a picture he drew of me on my wall. He’d colored in the small Rosh Hashanah sketch of the two of us together. One picture of Zach with a rifle, and another of Sebastian and me, young and happy on a clear day in Galilee. 

ש

Rosetree/ Adon Interlude 2

I left her beautiful and sleeping. I realized that I acutely miss New York. 

My best friend Nick Rosetree sent me an email, which I then printed and was turning over and over in my hands. 

He said things were getting a little scary stateside. People not thinking clearly. Lots of rallying around the red, white and blue. Lots of pledging allegiance and beating the war drums. I hadn’t spoken with him since he confirmed that my family was safe on September 11. He sent the email to a secure hotmail account, ZOBagent@hotmail.com, that I only used to receive messages from a handful of people stateside like Sorieya Levy, Micky Lyons and Nina Yoh with whom I kept an irregular correspondence. 

Nick uncharacteristically told me he was scared about what was going on back in Babylon. He said he knew I was happy, but now would be a real good time for the revolutionaries to come home.

In the Light Rail depot I used a rag to clean the dried blood off my black boots. I was wearing the blue pin stripe suit from Golder’s Green. I had spent my last money to have it dry cleaned. My possessions were only occupying half the space in the large black rucksack. I had left the little one with my bowler hat and a portfolio worth of sketches at the home of Danny Callahan in Atilt who had since moved off the kibbutz and into the home of his girlfriend’s parents. He was working as a baker until her got called up to the draft in January. I had a few changes of clothing, a pair of sneakers I never ever seemed to wear, three volumes of photos and sketches in my archives, and a few odd things like the Bedouin Kafia from the Tarabiin tribe. I found out later the Tarabiin was the notorious gunrunning tribe on either side of the Egyptian border supplying the Palestinians with small arms. It was members of their tribe who had saved me. The gunrunners.

I had some maps. I had a compass. I had a new lantern. I had assorted art supplies. I had about nine Polaroid pictures my little hustler buddy had taken over time. Several of me preaching, several of me with cute girls, some of my art stand, and even one of me all bloodied and hypovolemic during the knife fight. There was one of Emma that I threw away.

After events played out as they did in Be’er Sheva, I was running out of cities that brought me peace. I only had one left, in fact: Haifa. I had arrived in this port city as the last of all the major cities where recruiting for the IrGun would take me. I had for whatever reason never reached the Las Vegas of Israel called Eilat on the Red Sea, but I’d damn near been everywhere else. Although I could have stayed in the home of our Captain Deeb, I didn’t make any calls as I arrived that evening. Not to the gangster Alon. Not to Hadas, the busty anarchist. I hadn’t even visited strawberry blonde Anya who loved me for nothing. 

My head hurt. It was like something was bleeding inside. If I slept anymore it was on the bus. A couple of hours here, an hour there. I had toured all our positions in a week and had asked myself if they were ready. They weren’t. Most of them weren’t even in regular contact with Avinadav and Disrael who theoretically were in charge. In reality nobody was in charge. No one consulted the Executive Committee for anything; but then, we’d been telling them all along they didn’t really have to. As a result there were a dozen mini-organizations that operated as affinity groups without any real hierarchy or chain of command. I had no idea that they had torched the two McDonalds until I heard it after the fact. Gavroche and his brutal war on junkies was just totally apolitical. My tour of the country revealed that everybody still acted like the army of the great unwashed. No steps had been taken to regiment the movement like I kept asking. The cells either wanted action and went and found it, or they wanted discussion and that’s all they did. Our written documents were a cluster-fuck of languages and messages. There was no unified cry to arms. Avinadav was right. I was no miracle worker. I was only a half-descent organizer. As many as three times I’d go to a place, get a salon together and then emerge with nothing. Then the junkies molested Molly while she was all strung out. Two steps forward and sixty-two steps back. That shit just means that I’m losing.  

I found Avi Vodka in the basement of the bombed out restaurant blitzed out of his mind. He was screaming about the Knights Templar and smashing the basement mirrors with a stolen fire axe. His white beard had grown back all crazy. I was told he was in his forties but he looked much, much older.

“FOURTEEEN planes flew out north to Beirut. The SECret WAR! Only three came BACK.”

“Avi.” He turns suddenly holding up the fire axe like he’s going to swing it on me. I try not to flinch.

“Zachy, Zach, Zach! Welcome back!”

And just like that my victories are back to none.

“Can you put down the ax, Avi? You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

He has already. His face is peppered with minor lacerations from the exploding glass. He’s done in all the mirrors in basement of the abandoned restaurant.

“You know, THEY can’t kill me Zach. THEY can’t kill OLD ABRAHAM.”

“I know they can’t, Avi.”

“I CAME HERE WITH THE BEST O’INTENTIONS,” he’s singing now.

At least he’s stopped breaking things.

“I GUARD THIS place. I KEEP the DARK FROM COMING THORUGH THE GATES. The Templar’s had to SECURE The Portals. If they GOT A LITTLE KILL HAPPY, It was probably the heat.”

“How bout we go outside and have a cigarette, Avi.”

“DON’T you TRY and take away MY BOTTLE! You have no right.”

“I won’t. You ran us ragged for a whole week and still didn’t quit. They were right about you, you’ll never ever quit.”

He looks at me with a moment of half sobriety. 

“THEY SAY you can’t QUIT either. BottLE won’t kill me half as quick as WHAT you’re addicted to boy.”

I say nothing. I light my last cigarette. I toss the crumbled green pack on the ground. 

“I know about game,” he blurts out.

“What did you just say?”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You said. . . “

“Nothing. I CAME ERE WITH THE BEST O’INTENTIONS!” he starts singing again.

My watch says midnight. There ain’t nothing more I can do.

He makes a wild-faced sneer at me and spits on the ground.

“Dead bury the dead.”

“What?”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

He presses his head against the broken mirrors. He starts drawing with his finger on the wall. He makes low guttural chants. I take the opportunity to steal his fire axe. It isn’t huge or heavy. It looks like he stole it out of the hotel.

“YOU can keep the axe, George,” he says still pressed about the wall examining nothing with inherent precision. 

My head hurts a lot more now. I want to sleep, but doubt I can.

“I know about game,” he blurts out.

“I know about game,” he blurts out again.

“What do you know about game, Avi?”

“Never gonna have the right pieces.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m driving a race car. I’m EXPIREIn’ my first kiss. I grew up in Persia, but lived most my life in Egypt. If you don’t see it yet, boy, you never will. CHECK your blood pressure BOY. Your head can explode once the door in your mind swings OPEN. Did you come here to eat from the tree of life or just prove you’ll kill for your God on the slopes of Mt. Moriah?”

He pauses and then continues.

“WITH THE BEST O’INTENTIONS!”

He staggers and then falls to the ground.

I move to help him, but he flails his arms and shits and screams to get away threatening me with a broken shard of glass.

He twitches and spits and then vomits on himself, a vile yellow sputum.

“I can help you, Avi. I’m sitting here in this bombed out building on the hill on a Friday night. I’ll take care of you, Avi. I’ll take you to a hospital.”

The old man everyone calls Avi Vodka suddenly with some last great strength clutches my wrist. He yanks me toward him and whispers in my ear something that chills me to the bones. Then he bellows at the top of his lungs.

“Yo, BOY. JUST LEAVE ME TO MY DRINKIN’!!!!” 

These words ended my brief relationship with Avi Vodka who had been named Abraham once. It had happened quite quickly. Once again he was drunk. I’d attempted for a week to help him and it had been meaningless. The break up was as unofficial and as sudden as it had begun. 

I was sleeping in Carmel Park for the second time in two weeks. I had been right in expecting very little. Down the hill near the huge Russian bar Beer House, once again, the cops had routed the local punks drinking in the park. Their retreat had directed them to a broken down lot right where Avi slept. They’d give him more drink. His dismissal of me had sent me storming off angry, leaving quickly without saying good-bye. He had been going on about something. I was a little too drunk to be dealing with a mad man’s rantings.

I made my way down to the walkway that overlooks the water. The broken derelicts of several dozen tanker ships protruded out of the current. Haifa is built on a great hill and now I look out from the top. I can see the lights in Akko. I keep walking down the road. There is an elevated park on a white stone terrace above me with palm trees. There are hotels there with the best views in Haifa. And then I see it or the first the light of it. The most distinctive site in the entire city, which few ask who built it or why. It is the Gardens of the Baha’i. Stretching from the port to the top of Mount Carmel are 18 terraced gardens and an illuminated golden shrine. Its architecture is taken from many ages. There is a copper-gold tiled dome on a multi-tiered white stone foundation. It was all a thing of such beauty. From my vantage point I could see the vast garden complex. I didn’t even know what a Baha’i was. Was it a pagan rich person goddess culture or the Scientology of the Middle East? It wasn’t Jewish, though. To me it looked like a spiritual casino, a real life golden cow. It’s elegant and astounding, but so are Eilat and Vegas. It’s like these Baha’i are rubbing it in all of our faces how messed up this country is. I can hate them without knowing a thing about them.

I forgot to drink enough water today. I haven’t eaten in awhile. My sleeping is irregular. I’m glimpsing at something. Things being what they are, I wonder. Am I too weak a messenger for the message being sent? The vessel has begun to crack. 

The fire axe is wrapped in a black sheet. My bag isn’t heavy anymore. I have few things. This afternoon I looked at my reflection in the bathroom of a trucker way station. I didn’t recognize who I was anymore. 

A FLASH in my mind, the dull crack of my fists breaking some junkies face. 

Wet sloppy cracks. I stumbled along the promenade overlooking the massive garden below me overlooking Haifa and the sea. I haven’t had a drink in four days but I’m drunk on something. 

A FLASH out the corner or my eye. Junkies huddled under the highway bridge on the ridge above me. Then they’re gone. I slap myself twice real hard. 

“Get a grip on yourself, Sebastian.”

Stumbling again. Why am I carrying this fucking axe. I should call someone. I should sleep. More FLASHES. 

Dead hookers with their throats slit for fun.  I saw that once. 

FLASHES. 

The red-haired girl cradling her African child hidden in the garden below. She smiles for the first time ever. I see Mike Washington off somewhere in green and fertile hill practicing quitting smoking, learning to garden and not blow people away with guns. I saw him with his eyes back smiling from retirement. 

I heard the air raid siren blow far off in the west. 

FLASHES. 

The dull pain in my head getting worse.  Feels like my eyes are bleeding, but they aren’t. We’ve done a whole lot of shooting to get here. I mean that in every possible sense. 

FLASHES of some ambulance driven by paramedic Nick Barker bringing my mother to Mt. Sinai but having to stop at NYU instead. 

I stumble and I fall. I sit stupidly on the pavement knowing no one is going to come and pick me up. Somewhere up in the tree line I think I see a man hanging from a tree. I get up. I hop the low stone wall and drop down into the upper terrace of the vast illuminated gardens. There’s no security. No cameras. Just a cobblestone path that leads from the place I jumped the wall down into the garden. I carry an ax to grind. I’m going to destroy something beautiful in this hateful garden. 

I need to sleep. I need to rest my weary eyes. I need to eat something, remember what a warm meal used to taste like. 

I think about New York. How I miss Union Square and Murphy Park and my friends from Hunter and Bronx Science. I miss my brother and Mom and Dad. I feel like a sham, like a failure to return so soon. Just ten months of having learned nothing, done nothing, helped no one. 

As I wander down into the vast garden, I smell the fresh harbor dew. I walk further and further down the hill.  I’m going to find some idol to smash. I am going to chop down one of their fruit trees. I’m going to turn the ax on myself.

I have journeyed so far. I’m so tired. I’m sick. I’m going to take this ax and chop off my right hand. I’m going to bleed to death out in this garden. I’ll sacrifice myself on Mt. Carmel if Abraham is too drunk to do it himself. There won’t be a lamb. No one will stop me. 

I got her here didn’t I? I got the red-haired girl and her savior baby back here. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? Didn’t I do something worthy of sleep? Worthy of death?

There are cuts and bandages all over me from fighting. My head hurts. I need to rest. I drop the ax and sit on small white stone bench about halfway down to the main temple with is beautiful copper dome. I’ve touched a lot of lives since I became a refugee. At least I’d like to think so. I’ve made quite a lot of art. 

This condition I have has gotten the best of me again.

Am I bleeding out of my eyes? No, it’s all in my head. All in my head.

How much of what’s been happening is real at all? Some? None? Any? 

I fumble with the straps of my black rucksack and produce the two parchment pages rolled up and tied with grey string. I open them up and read them. Brent has read them and told me I should destroy them. 

“The devil has gotten in you,” he said. 

Avinadav read them and told me,

“They’ll kill you for writing this and me for believing it.”

He said he’d follow me anyway.

I crumple the pages in my trembling hands. This is the mandate for things to come that I cannot control and that I cannot possibly live up to. I rip up the two parchments pages with their drawings and symbols and plans. I chew them up and eat them. I swallow them before they can do me any more harm.

There was a spiral pictogram that I started seeing in my dreams. I showed it once to Hadas. She said it looked like the Farsi word for change, the Hebrew name for God and the Rune meaning death all interlocked. 

I showed it to Emma on the beach one day, she just said, 

“You’ve got quite a mind, Mr. Artstein.”

I take a black sharpie out of the bag and draw that symbol on a flat smooth rock. I finally reach a building called the Universal House of Justice in the gardens on one side of their beautiful temple. I haven’t yet found the place to mutilate myself. This will do. I left my bag in the upper garden. All I have is an ax and the marked stone. I take a couple of deep breaths readying the ax to chop off my right hand. There will be no words to imaginary friends big or small. Just do the deed. No use cutting down trees, smashing idols, being angry or showing rage. I have to sacrifice myself. This is the only devil left to deal with. 

A good hard chop might take the thing right off. If I don’t scream like a little kid, I will bleed out all over the plaza of the Universal House of Justice.

Just then, I hear a voice. 

“Don’t be a coward, my brother. Hold out for the dawn just a little bit longer.”

It is no voice of God, just the voice of a little half-Indian, half-Persian gardener named Du’uv D’Avon, a 26-year old volunteering time to the Baha’i World Service. I look up at this little Bah’ai gardener in his simple grey uniform with black lapels. The Baha’i nine-sided star is pinned to his collar. I let the ax clatter to the plaza floor. I am just not any good at making myself die. I tell the gardener as much. 

“A Bah’ai from New York told me to give this to you,” I say and hand him the polished stone with the strange symbol from my dreams. The young gardener accepts this offering then leads me back to the upper terrace to retrieve my rucksack.

He tells me nothing of his religion. He says it is against the rules of his faith to proselytize, especially on holy land. He tells me that I don’t need temples or a great pilgrimage to find God. He says that my God has been with me every step of the journey. That He was with me at my birth and would be waiting any night, but tonight to take me to the sweet hereafter. 

He says that I need to sleep. He walked me down the hill and let me out the front gate at the base of the mountain. I slept the night on the roof of building under construction in the shadow of Mt. Carmel and the shrine of the Baha’u’llah. 

In the morning some construction workers woke me up and kicked me out. I called Brent Avery with my last two shekels. I knew he was back in the country looking for me.   

ת

I’m sitting in that Haifa café with Brent Avery. 

I’m wondering if there is any spiritual significance to any of this. Have I been wiling out for ten months with a serious mental condition or is there a real political mission that I am a part of? I’m leaning toward mental condition but the Jerusalem syndrome has me all hyped up hoping that there has been a purpose. That’s the main selling point of these religions and revolutions anyway. They give us a purpose. 

I reflect upon the last four years. After I throw some God and struggle into it, it seems to justify itself. All the crazy shit I’ve gotten into.  All the lives I’ve made myself a part of. All the people I’ve hurt or helped or disappointed or inspired. It all looks so much more significant if the Big Guy has been involved. That’s what turns seventeen-year old, bipolar, rich American kids into a prophet, right? The inspiration changes the perception. 

But right now, I’m not fooling anyone.  

We drive back to Tel Aviv in silence. I wonder why this guy is helping me.  I wonder if this means I actually have to go back to Babylon. I’m pretty sure that’s the impression that he has. Everything is pretty blurry to me. There is this uncertainty that is plaguing my last days in the land. I feel like I have been deceived. After that entire struggle all I have to show for it is a couple of scrapbooks of pictures and some neat battle scars. 

Brent thinks I am ready to accept Jesus Christ as a lord and savior and to return to my family back in New York. Odds are I am over simplifying what boils down to some damn good intentions on the part of this Christian soldier. It has been a long time since I have gotten to know anyone well enough for them to tell me that I need to go home. Avinadav and Brent are the only two in the whole journey. Brent is convinced. I’m not. Many people I meet think my perspective changes radically ever couple weeks. I appear fickle. It’s not that my perspective changes, it’s just that my personality, my politics and my relationship to my higher power does. Nothing huge. Sometimes ever couple weeks or sometimes every five minutes. It’s a condition. 

 And hope sustains me. 

***

I told Brent that I had some unfinished business in Be’er Sheva. I got on the bus and took the trip down. I have to let those kids know that I am going back home. Brent has secured a temporary passport from the U.S. Consulate and booked a flight back to Newark, New Jersey.

When I got back to the KDAA, Molly was still sleeping. She had been up all night with Sahar spray-painting our logo around the area we mapped out that would be Tribe Judah territory. The regional commands had been renamed Tribes at some point in October. It was the first step toward our goal at reclamation. It had been a nice little dream.

As I tucked little fairy Molly under her blanket I thought about the month of October and how we cut those two guys up. I try to wake up Molly and she tries to punch me. 

“Ze-hariah, you fuck. Where have you been?” she says half asleep, in her thick Russian accent. 

“It’s like three in the afternoon.”

“You just got back from Tel Aviv? I no have idea. It’s dark in KDAA. Under stairs, no idea.”

She slowly climbs out of bed and puts on her purple hat. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes.

“Let’s go get some food.”

“Food good,” she smiles. 

***

We walked through the old city to the shwarma stand where we always got our lunch. The vendor Arif always gives us free food. A part of me thinks that it was because of Molly. Another part thinks his boss told him to do it after the sheik had approved our food basket program. A day later half the Bedouin vendors were turning over their throw-aways wrapped up in bags to be picked up by Noaah at the end of the day.

I assembled all the Be’er Sheva Command at the KDAA. I tell them that besides from them and a cluster of individuals in Tel Aviv and Haifa, there is no The Organization. They tell me that they knew that all along. I am glad. I tell them there was no real international fellowship of resistance, that nothing tied together the world’s revolutionaries much besides belief in revolution. They know that too. I tell them that my real name is Sebastian Adon and that I am seventeen-years old and that I grew up in New York City. 

The nineteen young fighters gathered in the KDAA accepted these truths in different ways. All but one accepted that I needed to leave. Gavroche raged at me in Hebrew. He over turned a table. He called me a coward and stormed off. Katusha, his girl with painted eyes apologized for Gavroche. She thanked me for what I had given them and left quietly repeating that I was a coward. One by one the most loyal members of the Organization left the KDAA. Their reactions were very different. They walked out until only Sahar and Molly remained. 

The three of us walk in silence to a going-away-to-the-army party Daavid Levy is throwing for his brother. He takes my repatriation the hardest as I have been the only real rude boy he has ever known.

***

Daavid Levy let Molly shower and sleep at his house. He tucked her into bed and she wrapped blankets about herself. Daavid was soon making out with some girl in his shower. Sahar took a cab home.

“So you’re just gonna leave?” asks Molly.

“Yeah.”

“You’re real name is Sebastian?”

“Yep.”

“So what was point of The Organization?”

“We were sort of making it up as we went along.”

“So it was never as big as you said?”

“Are there people everywhere that hate the way things are and want to be free? Yes. Are they organized? Not at all.”

“You could stay and organize us.”

“This isn’t my country. And at this point I don’t know if I have it in me.”

“Why are you being this weak?”

“Because I’ve lost a lot of my faith.”

“Stupid God. You shouldn’t count on Him to help you through this. I never believed in God and still I’m fine. You, you go back and forth. It’s not healthy at all. Make up your mind. Either you crazy or there is God. Can’t be both. I think you crazy.”

She gives me a hug.

“Better I just to remember you a crazy. If you’re not  a crazy, you’re a traitor and a coward.”

It was tough talk from a thirteen-year old. 

***

Brent Avery baptized me in the sea north of Tel Aviv on a cool, clear afternoon. I figured since I was no good at moving miracles or saving souls, I should just accept a final surrender. I was long an admirer of the man called Jesus Christ. Brent Avery who is a Messianic Christian evangelist accepts Christianity as the fulfillment of Judaism and practices a perfect mix of both. I figure that is a good thing. Brent Avery is paying for my plane ticket back to America not because he is a Christian or messianic Jew. It is because he figures a 17-year old is better off at home with his family in school than running around the streets of a war-torn foreign country dangerously preaching revolution.

The guy moves slowly and talks with a drawl. He is from Oklahoma City and had lost a very close friend when Timothy McVeigh truck-bombed the Federal Building and killed all those little kids back in the 90’s. I think he found Jewish Jesus or Yeshua Ben Yoseph as Brent calls him soon after. 

I was baptized the day we flew home on a public beach in front of several hundred Israelis who probably felt quite hateful about an American evangelical converting young Jewish men. I tell myself that it isn’t a conversion, just an upgrade. Nothing changed when Brent dipped me under the water three times. For a father, a son and a holy spirit. Nothing changed at all. 

That night I burned the personal effects of Mr. Artstein. I made a little fire on the Jerusalem Beach and sent the last of my clothing up in flames. The sneakers I never wore, my white linen suit, my numerous pre-tied ties, the khaki pants with the Moon Ska emblem, the yellow baggy UFOs, my now-dirty wife beater with the communist hammer and sickle, Emma’s Gold’s Gym muscle shirt, Avinadav’s slick black button-down. All of it was fairly dirty and worn from being out in this desert too long. I dropped in what was left of The Organization’s literature. I dropped in the conspicuously diagramed maps of Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva. It all went up in flames.

The baptism in the name of the man Jesus Christ is a symbolic rebirth in the sea on the desert’s edge before I experience the re-taint of Babylon. This was a baptism by fire putting Zachariah to sleep for a while.    

I remember Avinadav speaking one night about slavery in the language of Job.

“Naked I came from the womb of that ship, but so help me God, naked shall I not depart.”

All my things except the blue pinstripe suit that the Jews of the Green gave me in London burned in that fire. Everything except the three books of my archives and this pinstripe suit. 

Long past midnight two wandering strangers, a young woman and old man joined me. They came from different directions. The man from the north and the woman from the south. 

The old man told me, “You can’t change what you are.”

The girl responded, “But you can change where you come from.”

Finally, I tossed my grey corduroy beret that has covered my head nearly throughout my exile into the fire. I cast Zachariah Artstein into the fire.  But hope not only floats, it is inflammable. For my last act of this ritual I pick up a large ember of coal from my fire with the metal tongs people use to arrange the coals of the Nagillah and press the burning ember to the flat of my right forearm. Flesh sears for several minutes as the last of my effects go up in smoke. I take away the glowing coal and look at the seared red circle on my right arm just below the wrist. It is my mark, my promise that I will return again when I was stronger. It is a forbidden tattoo in the form of another battle scar.

Baptized in water, Brent Avery purified me before I made myself the prodigal son. Baptized in fire, I hardened myself lest I forget in the plush lap of Babylon, in the steel towers between River Hudson and River Euphrates, where I came from. 

The days of exile are over.

Epilogue 1

There’s a smoldering crater a block from where my parents live. It’s a house of ash. It is the dust of asbestos and bone and the smell of jet fuel and death. On the flight back I conceptualized walking about down there with Nick like two astronauts on the moon. 

But the moon and every other thing was now a terrorist target and south of Houston Street was sealed up tight as a drum. There are flags everywhere. Everybody rallies around them. We’re going to invade Iraq, or maybe Afghanistan people say. Saddam Hussein did it. Bin Laden did it. Surely North Korea and Iran were involved somehow. Screams and whispers on the television.  

“We’ll get um!”

“Make um pay for 9/11!” 

“We’ll KILL THEIR CHILDREN, RAPE ALL THEIR WOMEN. WE’LL WIPE THOSE SAND NIGGERS OFF THE FUCKING MAP!” 

No, they just think the last part.     

The drums of war are beating like a Trini steel band. 

Epilogue 2

The nurse from Scarbourough, Tobago is giving the night guard Kareem a briefing on the newest patient who they’ve had in restraints since he got admitted. The night nurse is frantic and annoyed because she has to commute all the way back from Connecticut to Flatbush, but return by 9 am. She’s a slave to the overtime. Kareem is saving money for a bigger apartment, a sound system for his car, and maybe one day, PA school. A violent little seventeen-year old, just back from the Middle East and cycling out of control with unmedicated Bi-polar 2 was admitted this morning. Been giving security a run for their money. 

“There are a few things you need to know about him before you go in there.”

“Lay it on me.”

“He is completely insane. He lies about everything pathologically and he’s very convincing about it. He’ll keep telling you stories to distract you from figuring out what’s wrong with him. Nothing he will tell you is true. He creates reality for himself and attempts to fool others that acting as if it’s real.”

“What, like everyone else in America?”

“Don’t be smart with me. He’s been chemically restrained on a lot of Haldol and Thorazine so he should be pretty tame. Just don’t underestimate his ability to manipulate you.”

“You act as if he’s some kind of monster.”

“Have you looked at his file yet?”

“I glanced over it, why?”

“Like I said, he’s pathological and he needs to be in here a long time.”

“I ain’t gonna read that whole thing. What’d he do?”

“Ran away to Europe and Middle East for ten months, got all mixed with ‘the extremists,’ got arrested left and right, ended up in the East Bank of Gaza in Palestine. Some preacher brought him back. Then he tried to burn down his parent’s house in the Hamptons. A fucking psychotic stupid rich kid. Just what the world needs more of.”

“I’ll be fine. He’s sleeping like a baby,” says Kareem, who’s name was Mike before he converted to Islam.

I lie there bound and sedated. It fees like I’m drunk and uncoordinated. The security in this ward is tight, but the security in the youth ward is just screen windows, which can be cut and a wooden fence, which can be climbed.

The After Party

Up onto the window and over the wall and through the woods to the Norfolk MTA light rail we go. I lock myself in a bathroom stall and don’t come out until we reach Madison Square Garden.  A payphone call from 96^th and West End later and I am reunited with my best friend Nicolas Rosetree.

He meets me on the corner of 96^th and West End in front of a deli and we exchange a pound and a tough guy hug and then buy a shit ton of 40’s. 

Sitting on Nick’s rooftop I tell him the story of events, of women, places, things, friends and comrades made along the rocky road from New York to the desert and back. I tell him of the whores and radicals, of Milan, too, and Italian Genoa.  Of the cliffs and deep blue sea of Nice. The Paris of Pigalle and of urinating off their great tower. Of the train from Paris to London. Of London’s mean South Bank and of the Riots of May. Of my realizations in Spain. Of the tranquil interlude that came to be in Madrid, Seville, Cordoba and the red fortress of the Alhambra. I tell him of the Holy Land.  Of the kibbutz where no one seemed to like working. Of the Dolphinarium bombing. Of the desert. Of my battles, adventures and love affair with Andrew called Avinadav, Emma called Maya Rose and the battle horse of our invention: Ha Irgun, The Organization. 

There’s a quiet look of understanding in my best friend’s eyes. He gives he a hard pat on the back then gets up for another 40. We light up a few more Newports looking out on the Hudson River from his parent’s roof balcony 15 stories up. He looks like he’s about to say something, but instead just keeps smoking away.

Nick the cocaine fiend, child actor, womanizer and also a master of the art of storytelling. Nick who always put me up when ran from home. Nick Rosetree who founded YUFE and walked away. Nickolas Taylor Rosetree born only half a Jew on his father’s side, just like me. Hard drinker, hard smoker, first person I knew with a business card and a cell phone. Nick who always knows where the party is. My quiet second gunman. This gun for hire now that Mike Washington is in retirement on his ‘grapemint farm.’ I was always his wingman when it came to girls, but now I need a wingman for a different reason. I need him to offer his gun to the struggle.

“We could use a group like The Organization in New York right about now,” Rosetree says to me through the cigarette smoke. 

“I feel that we should recognize that as far as we know, we are the last two sane people in the whole damn country.” 

Nick laughs at that.

“Things might get real bad soon,” I say.

“Repatriate a refugee and get a rebel, eh?”

“If you remember nothing of my story throughout the long night with no sleep, remember this Rosetree. If there are but two people sitting in a dimly lit room, their minds bent on hatching conspiracy and composing freedom songs, then no one can turn and say humanity is sick, humanity is evil, selfish and cruel. If no one can see it, God can. IT sees everything at once. Look there! Humanity has not made itself a total cowardly, traitorous whore. There are two. And two who love knowledge, love freedom and would offer themselves in sacrifice for a broken junkie, an orphan, the poor and the enslaved. These two can light a fire. These two can organize a million to teach, to heal, to fight. We will make our stand right here in the city of our birth. For those who love freedom, even two can beat their drums and use their words like artillery.”

A quiet puffing of Newport and Marlboro cigarettes. No light out but the many lights of the City.

“Just you and me against the world then?” he says quietly.

“Like usual.”

‘We’re going to need a lot of reinforcements.”

PART TWO

Para-State Strategies in Israel Palestine 

An Intervention Blueprint

By: Walter Sebastian Adler & Yousef Bashir

Heller School for Social Policy and Management

21 April 2014

Para-State Strategies in Israel Palestine

Walter Sebastian Adler & Yousef Bashir

21 April 2014

Abstract

Conflicts around the world today are fully shaped by the lasting machinations & legacies of the former colonial powers. Denial of that is revisionist and irrational. National interests and the economic dependencies fostered in that period have paved the way for the inhabitants of those former colonies to remain entrenched in deep ethnic conflict and lasting hatreds fueled by the ongoing proxy conflicts of the great powers, or economic considerations. US-Russian Cold War calculations repeatedly fueled the major Arab-Israeli Wars. Iranian-Israeli relations repeatedly utilize Palestinians, Kurds and Lebanese in their proxy engagements. Arab Spring uprisings will continuously bring to power regimes that are increasingly anti-West and anti-Israel.

Peoples marginalized and displaced by the process of colonization hold lasting grievances that in new wars will continue to trigger violent engagements. The ongoing tensions and currently intractable low grade violence between the Jewish and Palestinian communities is certainly more complex than colonialism yet far more immediate than distant wars and expulsions with ancient Babylon or Rome. Moving forward it is less vital that root cause be debated conclusively, but instead that the proximate causes are understood and acted upon to secure a lasting settlement. The mechanisms of which we believe are outside the normative nation state framework.

This analysis will propose the rationale and series of interlinked tactical interventions to be carried out in Israel Palestine that will break the intractable deadlock of the failed peace negotiations. It will highlight the combination of renewed multi-track diplomatic efforts that will in harmonization produce three viable confederated states; coexistence; as well as peace and economic development between various peoples involved. Most importantly it will showcase a new intervention theory called Parallel State; the Para-State approach to seemingly endless inter-ethnic conflicts.

Section One

1. An analysis of the problem

Historic Grievances & Immediate Threats

The seemingly innumerous problems with the so-called peace process are founded in the complete lack of agreement on how and when the conflict began; who allowed this process to occur and ultimately who currently supports its continuation. This rhetoric and historic revisionism contributes to the lack of meaningful dialogue and subsequent action. Via a MSTC rapid historical phase analysis we observe highly divergent reference points and alignments of modern grievance.

Jewish/Israeli Perception:

a) Slavery in Egypt b) Canaanite Conquest, c) First Hebrew Commonwealth, d) Babylonian Exile, e) Second Hebrew Commonwealth, f) Roman Occupation, g) Judeo-Roman Wars, h) Diaspora, i) Zionist Congressional Organizing, j) Shoah, k) Independence War, l) Sinai War 1956,  m) 1967 Six Day War,  n) 1973 Yom Kippur War o) 1982 Lebanon War, p) Intifada One, q) Oslo Process, r) Intifada Two, s) post 2005 Separation Barrier, t) 2008 Hezbollah War, u) Gaza War 2010, v) Post 2010 Intractability.

Palestinian Perception:  

1. Caliphate b) Ottoman Rule, c)Revolt of 1843 c) British Rule, d) 1948 Catastrophe, e) 1967 Occupation of West Bank and Gaza, f) Formation of PLO 1964 g)1967 Catastrophe h) Post-1967 Resistance Period, i) 1970 Black September Massacres in Jordan, j) 1982 Israeli-Lebanon War, k) Sabra-Shatilla Massacres, l) First Intifada One, m) Oslo, n) Second Intifada o) 2005 Hudna/ Apartheid Wall p) 2006 Hamas Electoral Victory/ Hamas/Fatah Civil Conflict q) 2010 Gaza War, r) post 2010 Intractability.

The contradictions of these clustered collective perspectives are virtually irreconcilable. But that is not as important as you may believe. We do not have to agree to a narrative only aims and indicators.

From the Palestinian historic narrative there occurred a series of grave injustices and failures of leadership that took place throughout Ottoman and British occupations. Working against their rightful existence in the state of Palestine; Arab, Turkish and English collaborators enabled a Jewish colonial presence which by the end of the Second World War; facilitated by Euro-American guilt over German atrocities allowed mass Jewish immigration to occur into historic Palestine which had not had any substantial Jewish population since 73 CE (Laqueur, 1972). Between 1936 and 1939 the Palestinians organized a large revolt against the British commission’s recommendations to divide Palestine. Deborah J. Gerner in Encyclopedia of 20th Century Ethnic Conflict stated that;

“Initially the rebellion was nonviolent; however after a British commission recommended splitting Palestine the revolt flared again in a much more violent form”. 

Following a series of provocations, ethnic cleansing and the military defeats of Arab armies; by January 1949 Palestine was literally wiped off the map in order to give birth to the State of Israel. For many Palestinians the source of the conflict goes back to the end of the First World War when Palestine was conquered from the dissolving Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France which via the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Arab world to ensure there spheres of interest.  During the same time period the Balfour Declaration was issued in Britain which promoted the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Zionist political manipulations in the United States fueled by the calculations of the Cold War enabled the State of Israel to expand rapidly past the boundaries established by the United Nations in 1948. Following the event called “the Catastrophe” (Nakba); Israel enraged in rapid annexation of all of historic Palestine in 1967. A series of wars with its neighbors; a series of atrocities inside Israel and other nations; and a continuous brutal occupation is now further compounded by daily expansions of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and a state of total siege and blockade in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip.

A commonly held perception is that the Europeans and Americans helped the Jews build a Zionist colony on their historic homeland (Hroub, p.37). In many cases they fled to Arab nations that reduced them to permanent internal refugees and others that massacred and expelled them. After being betrayed by the other Arab leaderships they were forced into an extended exile that continues to this day. The Americans, controlled by the Zionist Lobby will arm and support the Israelis no matter what human rights violations are committed (Hroub, p. 110). Currently, not only has every Arab nation for the most part failed to help them or defeat Israel; the Americans have invaded Iraq and removed their primary ally Saddam Hussein, their political leadership has been completely divided between Hamas (Gaza Strip) and Fatah (West Bank); and Israeli settlement expansions in the West Banks are proceeding; displacing Palestinians from whatever bi-national settlement potentially is achieved (over 9% of West Bank has been settled). 

The Jewish-Israeli historic narrative is around two thousand years longer in collective formation; reinforced by the annual retelling of the narrative within the religion itself. To Jews this is their historic homeland, given to them by their god after slavery in Egypt; from which they were exiled after three violent wars with the Roman Empire (66-135 CE). In the collective memory of the Jewish people they then lived in a series ghettos within Muslim and European countries that ended regularly with pogroms, rape, robbery, deportation and eventually the genocide of the Shoah (Holocaust) between 1939-1945.  Inspired and motivated by the global Zionist movement and its founder Theodor Herzl; Jewish gradual colonization of Palestine had begun in the 1840’s but rapidly accelerated following the first world war in 1919. From the Jewish Zionist prospective Palestine was the only viable homeland for the Jewish people though settlements were offered and discussed in Sinai, Dominican Republic, Cyprus, Uganda and Argentina. The Zionist Movement had succeed by 1943 in purchasing nearly 400,000 acres, amounting to around 6% of the land for an estimated $560,000,000 paid to corrupt Ottoman officials, absentee Palestinian landlords living abroad and peasant Fellahin (Laquer/Rubenberg). This provoked a massive Palestinian Uprising in 1936-1939 which was crushed by the British Colonial Authority shattering prematurely any nascent resistance to the Zionist program. Jews entered the Allied forces en masse during both WW1 & 2 and gained military training throughout the war while virtually all Palestinians abstained from military service and some of Palestinian leadership openly collaborated with the Nazis (Khalidi, p.115).

It was of course vitally important to these planners that Zionism and later Israeli forces first overcome Palestinian resistance and then clear as much of the country as they could of its Palestinian population. They understood perfectly that otherwise the Jewish State called for by the partition plan would not have control of its internal lines of communication. Most importantly, they understood the well-established demographic calculus of Palestine, which meant that without ethnic cleansing, the new state would have nearly as many Arabs as Jews. But least as important as this objective was the driving forward and establishing of strategic lines on which the Arab armies could be confronted should they enter Palestine as they did on May 15^th, 1948 (Khalidi, p.127). 

In 1948 United Nations Resolution 181 divided Palestine into two new, highly unreasonable states; one Jewish and the other Palestinian Arab but this was rejected completely by the surrounding Arab countries who quickly decided to go to war with Israel which defeated them easily despite the mythology of six Arab armies v. Jewish partisans and holocaust survivors; it was militarily comparable match (Morris, 2009).  For the Jewish people this was a historic victory and the beginning of modern Israel while for most Arabs and Palestinians this was an unjustified post-colonial war; an illegal partition of the land and a humanitarian catastrophe. Subsequent Arab-Israeli wars in 56, 67, 73, 82 and 08 only made the Palestinian political question less likely to be answered and expanded the size of the Zionist state. Egypt and Jordan pressured Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip not to challenge the status quo or engage in acts of resistance against Israel (Gerner). Palestinians were massacred by Arab armies in Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1982).  Palestinians lacked any unifying, effective leadership for decades and lacked any formal political representation until the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964. In addition to this all most of the Palestinian leaders were expelled, assassinated or exiled once the Israeli 1967 occupation of Gaza and West Bank began. 

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) nearly 5,000,000 Palestinians are still refugees while the State of Israel has been fully recognized by all of the Global North and most non-Muslim nations. To the Palestinians this created a lasting hatred and feeling of betrayal by the international community but most importantly created a feeling of hostility towards the new citizens of Israel who were celebrating their victory and freedom at the expense of another nation. 

The widespread Israeli belief is that without US military support and a strong military-industrial complex they will be annihilated by their Muslim neighbors. The Palestinians have never been an existential threat to Israel as compared to Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, but they remain the most serious catalyst of organized political violence against Israel. Ultimately whatever political color Israelis hold three deep resentments will shape any peace process: A) there are dozens of Muslim States and this is the only Jewish State; their historic persecution necessitates a national home. B) Whatever they have done to the Palestinians is pale in comparison of what other groups have done in the same situation and continue to do. C) If this is nothing resolved in the next forty years the “Arab-Israeli” population (of 1.6 million) will grow inside pre-1967 Israel to point where ensuring a “Jewish State” will become impossible to maintain.

Critiques of UNRWA state that it fosters dependency, lacks fiscal transparency and is unusual as the UN’s only ethno-specific refugee organization (Berkowitz, 2008). 

Romirowsky and Spyer in How UNRWA creates dependency state,

“As it stands, the self-perpetuating bureaucracy of UNRWA is one of the central factors offering day jobs to members of terror groups, propping up Palestinian dependency and perpetuating the myths and falsehoods about Israel which help prevent a solution to the conflict.”

To many Palestinians UNRWA is their only reliable existing para-state (Kimmerling/Migdal, p. 160). War failed, Intifada 1 & 2, Oslo failed; Track 1 & 2 has also failed. The result is a de facto one-state (or three-state) solution which is an incubator for a wider longer violence. Multi-track diplomacy is about all levels of engagement working on conjunction as a system, but due to the unfeasible nature of the previous engagements; we are proposing a more radical intervention package without necessitating recognition of anyone’s states.

“This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.

These figures mean that deaths in Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.

Adding the 11,00g0 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.

In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.” (Pipes, 2007)

After tallying the extent of specific civilian casualty inter-communal violence between Palestinians and Israelis since hostilities began in 1948 a total combined loss of life has been estimated at wide range between 14,000 to 21,500 civilians.

Objective Proximate Causes

Objective proximate causes are existential problems for both states and both peoples. As in for every square meter of West Bank territory absorbed into a settlement any future Palestinian state slowly ceases to lose ground. For every Arab-Israeli (Palestinian) born inside Israel; the reality of the Jewish State begins to crumble. As revolutions break out all over the region the overall security situation is deteriorating. Peace has always take a back seat to security and has always been punctuated with a new round of violent engagement. The following causes are understood on both sides as the primary provocations which trigger violence in the conflict. 

Primary Root: Physical integrity of bi-national territory.

This is clearly understood on both sides in relation to the highly limited size of territory both peoples lay their claim to. Pre-1967 Israel has a population of over 1.6 million Palestinian Arabs. East Jerusalem and the West Bank have been settled by over 650,150 Jews which hold an estimated 9% of West Bank territory. The issues most difficult to negotiate include not only Jerusalem; the capital claimed by both; or the ever expanding settlements or the separation/apartheid barriers; but by where to draw borders so that a viable Palestine can exist alongside a secure Israel.

Primary Proximate Causes: 

Each side holds a seemingly intractable bottom line perspective making their distrust grow even deeper as their leaders fail to deliver peace, security or economic development. These core provocation issues and the policies taken on them most harm the ability to hold any meaningful negotiations for peace. What follows are the ten primary proximate causes which require corresponding Benefit Harm indicators we advocate for in the fourth section to monitor their resolution or disruption. Symmetric Indicators as explained in more detail later are the agreed to measurement systems for a specific proximate causes where belligerent sides in a conflict lay out specific provocation parameters.

According to a report by B’TSELEM (Sep, 2008), Access Denied, Israeli Measures to deny Palestinians access to land around settlements: 

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation by discrimination, in which it runs separate legal systems, one for Israelis and the other for Palestinians, and under which the scope and nature of human-rights violations vary based on nationality. This system has led to the theft of hundreds of thousands of dunams of land to benefit the settlements and their residents”. 

1. Structural Apartheid:  Israelis are very loathe to be equated with South Africa and deeply fear the long term ramifications of the nascent boycott, divestment and sanction movement. Apartheid which is a crime against humanity is also the basis of the Israeli-Arab conflict; structural attempts in Israel and the occupied territories to maintain Jewish privilege, especially Ashkenazi Jewish privilege over all other ethnic groups. Apartheid is measured and understood as explicit and implicit structural division for the purpose of fortifying ethnic privilege. The most obvious extensions of this Apartheid are the checkpoints, ethnic identity cards and the Security Barrier Walls.

2. Jerusalem/ Holy Sites: Both Israelis and Palestinians view Jerusalem/Al Quds as their capital. The Old City holds the most holy site to Judaism (Ha Kotel/ Western Wall of destroyed second temple) and the Dome of the Rock; the third holiest site in Islam. A periodic flashpoint for violence, Jerusalem/ Al Quds highlights a major issue between both sides. The Palestinians want full control of East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Jordan prior to the Six Day War in 1967. Israel has actively worked to expand the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem and environs in order to make its division impossible. All West Bank Palestinian Muslims under age 35 are restricted from entering the Dome of the Rock except on major holidays with permits. All Palestinian-Israeli Jerusalem residents have access. All attempts to expand Jewish presence represent an explicit arena of contention. As do Arab or Jewish desecration and neglect 

3. Settlement Expansion: Israeli settlements in the West Bank according to Israeli NGO B’Tselem occupy on 1% of West Bank territory but via security barriers and jurisdiction extend to a full 42% of administrative control (Yesha Council disputes this and states that the settlements take up 9.2 %, arguably on some of the best lands). This issue is one of the most glaring issues on the table as the majority of international human rights bodies have repeatedly ruled that the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have no legal basis and must be removed in order to pave the way for a viable Palestinian state to emerge. Despite such obvious refusal of the settlements Israel has ignored all UN resolutions and recommendations and planned for more settlements to be built on Palestinian lands. Israel unilaterally dissolved and destroyed its Gaza Strip settlements in 2005.

 4. Access to Water: As of today Israel has access to all the major water resources in the area some of which are located in the Palestinian Territories. Most of the natural resources that go into the Palestinian areas are only allowed to go in under Israeli control and monitoring and this would be essential to be removed in order to allow the state of Palestine to grow and enjoy full and real sovereignty.

5. Refugees/Right to Return: in 1948 over 711,000 Palestinian refugees decided to flee their homes thinking that they could return in a matter of weeks or months after Israel’s defeat by the Arab armies. Others were forced out of their homes by the advancing Israeli army which forcibly evacuated of 500 villages (Pappe, 2006). By leaving their homes they paved the way for the actual establishment of the state of Israel and paved the way for almost never returning to their homes. A good number of Palestinians did not flee and became the so-called “Arab-Israelis” and today they are part of the Israeli society albeit as fourth class citizens. Today the Refugees issue is being used for political use only as most of the Arab countries to refuse to give Palestinian refugees and rights or citizenships in order to support “the right of return” and Israel will never allow Palestinian to return as this would mean that the Jewish people would become a minority in their own Jewish land that they have fought so much in order to have. On the Jewish side, persons with one Jewish grandparent are covered under the existing right to return and are given an extensive benefit basket.   

6. The Borders/ Palestinian State Recognition: The Israeli government has repeatedly stood against any idea of a true sovereign Palestinian state due to proclaimed existential security risks. According to Israel any Palestinian state will not be connected in terms of geography with limited air space and sea freedom making the idea of a state kind of hopeless in the eyes of many Palestinians. In addition, there many Israeli restrictions relating to any future state for the Palestinian people such as any state would need to be without any army and even the polices forces would need to fully report its use of weapons. The state would also be forced to rely on Israeli utility companies, water works and be economically dependent for some time.

7. US Military Aid: Israel was the recipient $2.775 billion in 2010, $3 billion in 2011, $3.07 billion in 2012 (and $3.15 billion per year from 2013-2018) while Israel’s defense budget is around $15 billion. The United States and Israel engage in extensive intelligence sharing and defense research. The US also has the largest community of Jews outside of Israel. AIPAC, the Israel lobby in the United States has a disproportionate amount of influence over U.S. policy and the notion of the U.S. an independent outside arbiter is naive.  

8. Demographic Changes: Israelis are acutely worried about demographic changes inside of Israel that will affect the state’s “Jewish Character” in the long run. 1.6 million Israeli citizens of Arab, Bedouin, Druze and Palestinian descent make up currently over 20 % of the population. Equally worrying is that out of an estimated 12 million people in greater Israel (Israel, Judea & Samaria/ West Bank), under Israeli jurisdiction (excluding 1.7 million in Gaza) only 5.6 million are classified as being Jewish.

9. Regional Instability: As various Arab governments erupt in civil strife and internal conflict Israel continues to worry about its own security in an environment rife with revolution, civil war and arms proliferation. Egypt’s 2011 revolution and subsequent coup brought Muslim Brotherhood in and then out of power; Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Muslim Brotherhood. Jordan which is over 70% Palestinian is Israel’s only remaining regional ally besides Turkey which is growing also increasingly hostile.

10. Bi-Partisan Palestine: Since the Palestinian civil war in 2006 Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas and the West Bank Palestinian Authority by Fatah. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and Fatah is viewed as corrupted. This in essence has created two Palestines only one of which is willing to negotiate anything with the State of Israel and neither of which can enforce policy on the other.    

These are the major issue is the grievance that both sides hold against one another. This is a major point that can be far more important than Jerusalem, water, or even refugees. The hatred that both sides have for one another and the pain that each side caused the other are so deep that they cannot simply make any future agreements because of a true lack any sense of trust or sincerity. There has to be a true healing process to be formed that involves both sides with the focus on those who suffered because of the Israeli existence or the Palestinian presence in the Territories. 

Section Two

2. An analysis and justification of an intervention(s) to address the problem(s), including theories of change to use.

Our underlying analysis is that Western imposed peace negotiations have completely failed, Palestinian statehood is inevitable; and demographic realities inside of Israel make the continuation of a Jewish state impossible if the status quo is maintained. This intervention package to be coordinated by the Palestinian & Jewish diaspora. It is geared to reinvigorate meaningful dialogue, foster functional reliance and allow three viable administrative division within a Palestinian-Israeli Confederation based on violence cessation, recognition of each other’s territorial claims and freedom of movement & rights attainment within the three territories (Gaza, Pre-1967 Israel, and the West Bank).  

The four underlying theories of change are: 

“Parastate Infrastructure”; the development of capacity via civil services, trade unions and social enterprises interlinking diaspora financing to community based organizations. Operating in a given nation wracked by failed state policies; a parallel state is built in the shadow of a failing one. This economic leverage is first utilized in the building the capability through Civil Society organizations to provide services to populations; then coordinating their functionality to mirror those attributed to best practices of developed countries. The Para State is build piecemeal out of CBS, SMO, NGOs and small businesses with a unified vision of human rights attainment for the communal identity they share. Successful demonstrations of Parallel State Development are the American Nation of Islam, the Kurdish national movement, the Irish Republican movement, the Bangladeshi mega “NGO” BRAC, Iranian built Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and of course the Zionist Movement’s formation of the State of Israel. 

“Trilateral cooperation” assumes triumvirate confidence building with full inclusion of Hamas, Fatah, and the Israeli Coalition government functioning as three cooperative administrative units assuming separate but coordinate jurisdiction over their zones of control. All confidence measures revolve on acceptance of Eight Core Agreements; 1) Israel’s’ right to exist in historic Palestine, 2) Palestine’s right to exist in modern Israel, 3) Agreement to a thirty year Hudna (ceasefire) that rewards security and development cooperation with a roll back of Israeli military presence to 1967 borders 4) Right to return of all foreign nationals with one Jewish or Palestinian grandparent to areas under respective tri-national control, 5) Palestinian (“Arab-Israeli”) populations centers inside pre-1967 Israel fall administratively under Palestinian Authority if 67% are Arab 6) Israeli settlement expansion freeze and 1 m3/ for 1m3 reciprocity of pre-1967 Israel in exchange for West Bank territory settled, 7) Bi-nationalization of Jerusalem  8) All political offices will be held based on democratic election; the peace process is to be governed by human rights indicators & tri-state administration of Gaza, Israel & West Bank.  

“Multinationalization”; is economic and human rights centered development coupled with civil disobedience; utilizing battalions of foreign volunteers. Multi-nationalization is deliberate and strategic diversification of a project’s field team to recruit and include a composition of staff whereby harm directed against this staff is mitigated by their groupings of foreign nationals. This strategy plays directly to racist/ nationalist media tendencies and multiplies the “outsider Impact” of the field teams effort. Multi-nationalization is however completely subordinated to leadership directives of the CBOs the effort helps facilitate the impact of.  

“Functional Reliance”: formation of strategic and economic partnerships that involve multi-ethnic enterprises to build solidarity via functionally relying on the other ethnic group to co-lead, manage and serve in programs. It also involves mass inclusion of belligerent populations within ethno-heterogeneous civil services functionally relying on peace to ensure development. 

Our intervention recommendations involve measured, scalable responses in the following categories based on threat levels corresponding to rights violations in the 3 categories of Symmetric Indicators to be outlined in the fourth section. For the sake of vast simplification of the algorithm findings matrix here are the primary intervention recommendations by category:

Interventions to be taken by Non-State Actors

1. Multi-nationalizing the conflict decreases impunity of violent reprisals. Increasing overall levels of Developed-nation volunteers serving in territories as well as Arabs serving in Israel is ideal especially during escalations of conflict.
2. Gaza blockade naval flotillas should be launched periodically but attempt to enter Gaza from international waters only in response to symmetric indicator based events. .  
3. Boycott, Divestment, Sanction campaigns directed against Israeli economic, educational and cultural sectors should be strengthened. 
4. Refusals to serve in occupied territories and diversions to National Service should be encouraged. Mass Israeli dissident infiltration of National Service should mirror mass Palestinian infiltration of the UNRWA agencies.
5. Person-to-person correspondence campaigns increased. Social media ought to broadly utilized in order to increase the awareness of the other side’s perspectives and lives through a mass facilitation program.  
6. “Seeds of Peace” style camps and activities should be rapidly stepped up and further established in Cyprus, Egypt and Jordan. These camps should be seen as vital organizational training grounds for this effort.
7. Joint Palestinian-Israeli economic ventures should be encouraged especially activities that link asset ownership and management. Palestinians should switch to their own currency pegged to the Jordanian Dinar.
8. Palestinian populations in diaspora should be organized into Parastate administrative units. Politically and industrially organized and administered by either Hamas, Fatah or an emergent Party. All States that have since 1948 not recognized benefits of citizenship of Palestinian diaspora ought to be viewed as hostile to peace. Factions are urged to pursue annexation efforts of territory into a Greater Palestine.   
9. Mobilization of a Palestinian Lobby to harness Palestinian-American remittances and votes. This lobby like AIPAC must focus on all areas capable of social agency. It must mirror AIPAC’s tactics and organizational structure in every possible regard. It must also focus on reducing AIPAC monopoly of agency in regards to the Near East within the United States.
10. Occupational Annexes should never be excluded as they are based on precedent. Sykes Picot was the first precedent arbitrarily drawing up the borders of the region. Israel itself is of course the second occupying and annexing far beyond the 1948 agreed borders. Russia is the th third taking territory, basing soldiers there and annexing it via referendum. Valid occupational annexes include any territory bordering any of the three administrative zones Gaza, Israel, and West Bank containing a 67% majority population of Palestinians or Jews. 

Interventions as Policy recommendations to State Actors

1. Recognition of Bi-partisan Palestinian State in exchange for recognition of Israeli Administrative control of pre-1967 borders excluding population centers with 67% Palestinian Arab majority. Further equalizing administrative land disputes proceed to equalize land holdings to 1m3/1m3, a 50/50 land and resource split involving trading taxation/ administration of Arab-Israeli population centers for Jewish Settlement in West Bank.
2. Settlement freezes/ and scheduled settlement turn-overs.
3. Prisoner amnesty for quarterly periods of violence cessation.
4. Israeli Development assistance in exchange for periods of violence cessation.
5. Institute full draft in Israel with enlargement of National Service to channel Arab-Israeli intuitional exclusion into capacity building via service in Gaza and West Bank. 
6. Piecemeal, scheduled administrative turnovers proceed for periods of violence cessation.
7. Targeted kidnappings of soldiers are only to be traded one for one.
8. Scholarships for Palestinian students at Israeli universities.
9. Extension of Joint-Palestinian Israeli Civil Service inclusion.
10. Mashav will develop modules to teach Palestinians cooperative economic and organizational frameworks necessary for state capacity. 
11.  Mashav and UNRWA will fund the creation of joint Palestinian-Israeli peacekeeping and emergency relief brigades and deploy them under the UN peacekeeping architecture.
12.  Joint Palestinian-Israeli kibbutzim and Moshaviim for collective living, industry and agriculture will be established in Gaza, West Bank, Israel proper and Sinai subsidized by American Jewish community, USAID, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. 

Long Term Conflict Intervention Recommendations:

Political/Diplomatic tools

• Outsider Mediation for implementation of localized programs.

• Coexistence-Coordination Offices established in each village, town and city.  

• Political Capacity and Aid assistance to all factions espousing peace and recognition.

• Hudna/Recognition/Normalization especially between Israel-Hamas; Israel-Iran, and Israel-Hezbollah. 

• Human Rights Defense Missions increased inside of Syria along with continued non-military support for any Syrian factions that might recognize Israel.

• Dispute resolution mechanisms further established.

• Crisis Management Systems better implemented.

• Public Diplomacy/Pressure: U.S.A. must reduce military aid to Israel.

• Threat/Use of diplomatic sanctions: A regional arms embargo must be put in place to curtail weapons flow into a region that will be plagued by increasing civil unrest.

Legal/Constitutional tools

• Constitutional Reforms in place in both Israel & Palestine to better reflect Human Rights obligations.

• Formal power sharing mechanisms set in place to create a functional bi-partisan Palestinian State alongside an Israeli one.

• Human Rights monitoring must be carried out by outside multinationals.

• Police, judiciary, corrections capacity assistance must increase in Palestine.

Economic/Social tools

• Conflict-sensitive Israeli led Development Assistance via Mashav.

• Intergroup dialogue interactions stepped up on all four tracks.

• Restrictions on US financial flows.

• Conditional incentives/inducements: (debt relief, trade preferences, investment)

• Threat/Use of targeted economic sanctions (BDS): Although this has been viewed with controversy among countries like Israel and the USA but has received wide and major official and non-official support from many countries around the world such as England, Norway, Denmark, and others who imposed sanctions on Israeli banks that fund and have ties with the Israeli illegal settlements. We think that this is indeed an effective tool that can add more pressure on the Israeli refusal to accept and respect International Law but we also think that it can generate more awareness and more understanding among the public in Israel for example and not explaining the problems with an angry tone. 

Military/Security tools

• Security guarantees including “Arab-Israeli” units of the IDF to help in security of West Bank and Gaza. Joint defense training between Israeli, Hamas, and Fatah fighters.

• Systematic Confidence-building measures

• Security Sector Reform: All Israelis and Palestinians to be drafted into either IDF or PDF (Palestinian Defense Force) regardless of ethnicity. Only way out universal draft will be enrolment in a revised National Service Corps to be radically expanded in scope to all civil services. 

• Joint Israeli-Palestinian Military Observer/ Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Missions will be enhanced via the United Nations.

• Arms Embargoes will be encouraged between Russia and America to cut arms flow into the Middle East generally.

• Preventive Military/Police deployment will cease except by combined units. All Israeli security-intelligence forces will be pulled out of post-1967 borders except to facilitate settlement turn over.

• Threat of Force/Deterrence

Primary Resource Agreements:

1. Joint PA/Israeli control of Galilee water resource
2. Joint Administration of Hospitals and Universities
3. Doubling Israeli-Palestinian land mass via purchase/ annexation of Sinai and Transjordan
4. Palestinian control of Dead Sea
5. Security Parity (Demilitarization/ Arms transfers)
6. Israeli non-proliferation for Iranian non-proliferation
7. Demilitarized Golan (to be included in the Palestinian State)
8. Demilitarized Gaza Strip (to be connected to West Bank via a security corridor and train tunnel)
9. Demilitarization South of Litany River and North of Kishon River
10. Return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon
11. Golan Heights transfer to PA control
12. Implementation of a 2 Child maximum per family 
13. Extension of West Bank PA down to Gulf of Aqaba
14. Triple Seacoast of PA (Akko, Gaza City, and a third site build between Aqaba and Eilat)
15. 4 Separate Courts, Civil and Religious; 2 per polity
16. Separate Knesset/ Palestinian Congress both based in East and West Jerusalem respectively.
17. Release of all Palestinian political prisoners
18. Right of Return respective and regulated, parity in returning numbers negotiated to return to respective zones of control.
19. EU to aid Palestine (infrastructure only)
20. US to aid Israel (infrastructure only)
21. Bedouin autonomous region in Sinai or population transfer to Palestinian zone.
22. Structural dual citizenship benefits (tax credits, work visas, health care, educational)
23. Dismantling the barrier walls
24. Reduction of Israeli arsenal in exchange for greater aid, (Aid for decommissioned weapons program).
25. Structural reform from Knesset Parliamentary system to tri-territory Representative Democracy. 

Section Three 

3. Suggested partnerships that are required to develop the intervention(s) and how these might be obtained.

The concept of a Para-State is an intermediate tactic of development coupled with resistance to human rights violation meant to forge realities on the ground leading up to the changing of borders and setting of policies of governments the Parallel State exists beside. To achieve any of of our “unrealistic” demands and programs we of course accept that one cannot ignore the hard line of either side which is holding power. Fatah is awash with collaborators, opportunists and corrupt officials. Hamas is led by Islamist fundamentalists. Likud, Kadima and even Avodah have entrenched elite interests to serve.

Ceasefire and Separation

There comes a time beyond outsider pontification, and insider political imagination when the forces on the ground most come to the realistic calculus that the end game for this conflict must be in separation before there can be meaningful coexistence. As we have outlined, militarily neither side’s strategy proves effective at eliminating the other, and certainly hardens the resolve of both confessions. Historically, each has a vague (and at the same time existentially immediate) claim to this land. Religious zeal aside there is overwhelming archeological proof of this being the historical Hebrew homeland, and suffice to say the Dome of the Rock occupies its place as Islam’s third holiest site. From a human rights perspective the Palestinian people, cognizant of a nationalist identity or not, were living on this land for at least the last 1,930 years.

The mindset and values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of bi-national statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds (Morris, p.187).

Surely Israeli society is an incredibly diverse one in both ethnicity and political perspective. It has vast potential to be an exporter of development, medicine and technology to the developing world once it can divest itself from this ongoing war. Surely Palestinian fundamentalisms and Hebrew fundamentalisms are not the desired ends of either peoples, but a part and parcel result of this war.

To end the war we must separate the combatants, but this task must fall upon the shoulders of the hardliners; the Revisionists and Hamas who can at present muster the political will to take this bold step. To cantonize and ghettoized the Gaza Strip and West Bank into non-viable micro-states will not end this conflict. The separation must be implemented and development must follow.

Hamas has in recent years undergone an incremental process of political integration, a process mostly ignored by the movement’s foes and detractors. It has displayed political and tactical moderation, including keeping unilateral ceasefires until June 2006, abandoning the claim to mandatory Palestine and accepting a two-state solution comprising the 1967 territories. Hamas has not, however, complied with external pressures to abandon armed resistance, disarm and recognize Israel. The main reason for doing so is not only ideological, but strategic: complying with the demands would leave Hamas without any credible sanctions in the final-status negotiations that until now have been the only scenario for a lasting peace (Knudsen & Ezbidi, p. 204).

We are at the brink. The demographic reality is that within twenty years there will be an equal number of Arabs and Jews occupying the territorial space of Palestine, this will not broad well for either Israel’s commitment to democracy or the Palestinians already diminished human rights. The willingness of Iran to fuel violence by proxy as well as the total lack of dialogue and cultural exchange within the Middle East between the Muslim nations and the third Hebrew commonwealth leaves no lasting avenues for human exchange. Vultures swoop over Palestine and both the Christian and Muslim world have explicitly demonstrated their zeal to use both Jew and Palestinian as pawns in a game.  If Hamas will not put down its guns (and who could rationally expect them to) or acknowledge the right of the Jews to occupy their land, then let us work with what they have offered for some time. The premise of Hudna: long term truce.

Hamas is silent about what happens when a notional long term Hudna signed with the Israelis comes to its appointed end. While Hamas’ leaders have left open the length of the term of the proposed Hudna, regarding this as subject of negotiation with the Israelis once they have accepted the principle, their general philosophy is that the future should be left up to future generations. It is usually assumed that a long term Hudna will probably last for a quarter of a century or more. That is viewed as too long a time for anyone now to predict what may happen afterward. There will always be a possibility that the Hudna will come to a premature end because of a breach. If that were to occur, it would be unlikely that the breach would come from the Hamas side. This is for the simple reason that it is a religious obligation on the Islamic side to honor such an agreement until the end, once made, unless violated by another party. Should the Hudna last until the prescribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiate a renewal (Azzam, p.168).

Were some emerging, strong Israeli leaders able to the muster the will of their divided society to accept their sworn enemy Hamas as a partner in Hudna it might have lasting impacts that would shake the region to the core. The signing of such a truce need not happen on the Lawn of the White House or need be rewarded with some Nobel Prize. The proof of its worth would be in its results. The objective would be simple to grasp. The House of Israel and the House of Palestine have been for around one hundred years locked in bloody combat. To stop the war one need not peace, but instead the structural pursuit of lasting ceasefire coupled with a program to build two economically healthy nations with intertwined need.

Surely the Jewish radicals of the Kach underground and Gush Emunim would prefer a Jewish civil war to a lasting partition, surely no one on either side wishes to give an inch. But this program is an inch by inch reclamation coupled with one more territorial reality. Other than Egypt, Israel and Iran what county in the region has any claim to historical borders other than those imposed by Sykes-Picot. That is to say that the Palestinian Diaspora must surely be aware the extent to which the Arab regional powers owe them, have failed them and have despised them. 

A Hudna, signed by a Zionist government and Hamas would be an act of covenant not international relations. To Hamas it would be a holy act and an existential necessity to prove the validity of Islamism in Palestine. To Memshala Israel it would mean a settlement of a prolonged drain on its nation’s coffers and moral and an opening of its society to the developing world. As per the Blueprint, not the Road Map: Jerusalem would be bi-nationally controlled (the Palestinians would maintain control over the Temple Mount, Christian and Muslim Quarters and the East of the City as AL Quds). The West Bank and Gaza Strip would be supplemented by additional territories in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Sinai; settlements would be exchanged for Arab towns and land would be purchased (or simply seized) from neighboring countries unwilling to endorse this lasting truce. Refugees abroad would have the right to return to newly constituted Palestine and those with specific claims to land and property inside Israel proper would be bought out and compensated. Hamas would have free reign to Islamize Palestine in so far as it did so within a Democratic sphere and allowed secular space in its new society. But, even if it refused to moderate its zeal for religion, it would be empowered by Israel to dismantle the armed forces of all other factions and be the sole army on the ground.

         The messy business of a population transfer must begin immediately at the offset of implementation. It goes without saying that Israel’s Arab Israeli population will seek and lobby to have their Palestinian cake and eat it too as it were. That is to say some will find it far easier to live as second class citizens in a multi-ethnic Hebrew dominated commonwealth, then as forced participants in a newly independent, Shari’ah dominated Palestinian nascent state. Suffice to say these are the painful realities of survival. Israel cannot maintain even a minute percentage of 20% Arab population within its borders; so-called Arab Israelis, Bedouin, and any Druze unwilling to serve in the armed forces will find themselves on the other side of the line.

         This process must proceed in staged evacuations one for one; one settlement block for one Arab Israeli town, there will be misery, separation anxiety, and great soul searching as to moral justification and long term finality of peace. There will be obvious Palestinian anxiety on absorbing a largely secular, more affluent Arab-Israeli middle class, and finalizing the loss of of their historic territory to the Zionists. The Israeli public will surely grieve the infighting of evacuating 600,000 plus settlers from the West Bank and ceding any claim to East Jerusalem, “Judea” and “Samaria”. But it is the very homes of the settlers, their infrastructure, their roads, their settlements into which the larger Arab Israeli evacuees must be placed.

         We reiterate that this process will not be easy, nor will it be quickly accomplished. There will be resistance on the part of the settlers, anticipatively armed resistance; and there will be obvious international objection to the forced deportation of the Arab-Israeli into the newly created Gaza-West Bank Palestine.

         The vital stage must be to insure the Israeli coalition government and Hamas dominated PA work together to implement this transfer and maintain Hudna with the realization that territorial integrity of their respective nations is vital.

         It is irrelevant as to whether Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, or if the final treaty implementing the separation plan is one of ‘peace’ or instead ‘Hudna’. It is irrelevant if the two sides agree to a 10 year truce, a 60 year truce, or a 100 year truce. Phase 1 is separation in its most utter form, the sealing of each side behind their lines. As the Jew and Arab are separated from each other’s forced and hateful embrace the iron wall must be strengthened. The separation barrier must be built taller and its gates must be locked on both sides until the time is correct. For in the period of Hudna there must arise a new generation who does not remember the war or the blood spilled in repetition.

         The common media adage suggests that the Arab world is particularly hostile to democracy. In virtually all but a single regional state a cruel military oligarchy rules with a junta and an iron fist. Surely, second to Israel the greatest acknowledged enemy of the Arab masses are their own governments. However, in both Israel and occupied Palestine the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly demonstrated a zeal for both democratic process and a commitment to civic society. Although the election of the Hamas government was a seemingly critical blow to the trampled peace process, it has not been argued that this was not a supervised and legitimate expression of Palestinian democracy. Within Israel itself the Arab parties and the 1.3 million Arab-Israeli Palestinians participate in the regions only democracy, within the Jewish State.

         We are not dealing with howling mullah unfamiliar with Western ideas of statecraft. The BluePrint as a plan is flexible and staged in its intricate redrafting of the Middle Eastern Map, its specifics are for another treatise at another time. Paramount to the survival of both people’s is a rational acknowledgment that they have failed for nearly 100 years at both peace and war. Surely some of the responsibility for rebuilding the Palestinian nation falls on the oil oligarchies and the European Union, just as surely does America have a long term relationship with Israel. But, before any realistic mobilization of these respective mini-states can be used to demonstrate Democratic Islamism and Zionist Universalism respectively; they must stop the war.

         It has been found that social movements like those which are responsible for the modern concepts of Israel and Palestine thrive on ‘imagined community’, strictly defined identity, and symbols of some historical Golden Age. When coupled with religion a social movement has the ability to draw from a deep well of support and sustain a struggle indefinitely.

         The acronym for Hamas translates to the word Zeal. There was once a group of Hebrew revolutionaries in the year 66 CE that carried the same name in their war with an occupying power the Roman Empire. Their faction, the Zealots and Sicarii carried out merciless acts of terrorism against their own people and the Roman occupiers. The Hebrew people are ‘stiff necked’ the Torah says, prone to stubborn arrogance as well as religious fervor.  I am not a man of peace, but a man of pragmatism. If on this wide earth the Hebrew and Palestinian people have found no meaningful source of shelter and security for their respective kind; if locked in bloody struggle the sins of Europe and the sins of Arab oligarchy are channeling both out houses to cosmic, unending war; then we must separate and do so quickly.

         If in a simple ten year Hudna both Houses can be made relatively politically homogeneous and their peoples can, uninterrupted by siege and war build two nations, side by side. Then one day, as each subsequent Hudna is renewed the fundamentalists on both sides will find their grasp weakened, they will find blue jeans and art museums are more to the mass appeal than puritanical embrace of religion. The time to act is now. The leaderships of both houses are old men who know nothing but war. But old men die. Younger more visionary leaders who forge their respective nations in the prism of human rights not theological canon can from inside their war torn land and from its vast Diaspora bring both peoples apart and then raise them up side by side together.

What factions influence the ongoing conflict? 

Israeli/ Jewish:

Sabra Ashkenazi Elite in Avodah/ Likud/ Kadima

American Jewish Diaspora via AIPAC umbrella

Sephardic Elite

Ultra-Orthodox Parties/ Sects

Russian-Israeli leadership/ Israel Betanyahu

Mizrahi Jews

Ladino Jews

Druse

Ethiopians 

Bedouins

Non-Jewish Migrant workers

Non-Jewish African refugees

Palestinian/Arab/Iranian

Fatah (West Bank Palestinian Elites)

Hamas (Gaza leadership) 

Palestinian Left Wing

“Arab-Israeli” Palestinians

Palestinian Euro-American Diaspora

Jordanian Palestinians

Palestinians in Syria/ Lebanon/ Iraq /Egypt

Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Hezbollah

The Core Track 1 Parties are obviously the State of Israel (Likud & Avodah), the Palestinian parties Fatah (discluding still Hamas); the United States, Russia, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. The core parties to implement Parastate Strategies however are the dissident and opposition parties that make up the adversarial political culture on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side in country and diaspora, the political construction on both sides have shown to add more complications and challenges in the face of finding any peaceful resolutions to the conflicts over the years via Track 1 & 2 because they revolve around intractable elite actors. On the Israeli side Israel is widely considered as one of the few democracies that exist in the Middle East region if not the only one. The political system in Israel is based on a multi-party participation in the Knesset which has 120 seats. The politics of Israel is full mix of right wing, left wing, center, and religious parties; but the current Likud government led by Netanyahu is the most conservative in Israeli history. There are a number of parties that represent the Arab population of Israel but such parties and other minority parties such Meretz, Balad, United Arab List, Hadash have limited seats in the Knesset. 

There is more however to the Israeli politics as there groups who play a major role in the Israeli politics and it influences it a great deal such as the Israeli lobby in the United States AIPAC and other groups that help and promote to finance and help build the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip before 2005. The politics in Israel can be quite complicated and hard as the Prime Minister  cannot act alone without the support and consent of the parties that are part of any political coalition. For example right now Prime Minister Netanyahu has been under heavy pressure from his religious allies in the Knesset and who played a major role in his win of 31 win seats in the parliament making it difficult for him to go ahead and make and deals with the Palestinians for example that could enable and help the “peace process” move right ahead. 

For the Palestinians on the other hand it is quite different, since the removal of the Palestinian people and the UN mandated “State of Palestine” in 1948, politics among the Palestinians did not see the light until 1964 when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was established. Yasser Arafat who was born in the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis was elected chairman later that year making himself a lifelong representative on behalf of the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian cause. The PLO also engaged in military operations against Israel and other Arab regimes.

An important faction of the Palestinian politics is Hamas, a party that is enjoys a wide support from many Palestinian factions especially those among Palestinian who reside in refugee camps which make up the majority of the population in Gaza Strip for example. The party was founded by Sheik Ahmed Yassin who was viewed by Israel as fully peaceful and in fact Hamas was allowed and supported by Israel as Israel saw that the sole enemy of Israel was the secular nationalist party of Fatah. There are more parties that emerged throughout the Palestinian territories like the Third Way, The Future, Palestine Democratic Union, and Palestine Forum launched by Palestinian businessman Munib al-Masri. Much of the Palestinian political system only came through to the scene in the last 10 years while before it was the PLO and essentially the 1980’s were Hamas began to become Fatah’s main rival. 

It is important to highlight that most of the parties involved receive support from outside parties. Hamas was supported by Israel at first then as its political agenda became to be more threatening to Israel it found support from countries that are considered enemies by Israel such as Iran and even countries like Saudi Arabia and most recently Qatar, one of the biggest donors and supporters of Hamas today. The same applies to Fatah, the primary party emerging from PLO that struggled ever since its creation by the Arab League to find a home as the organization had been forced to relocate from a number of countries either by international pressure promoted by Israel or by hosting Arab countries. 

Many positive and negative changes happened since the beginning of the conflict in 1948. A major and notable change is the rise of Israeli human right groups that promote justice and peace for the Palestinian people as such groups did not appear when Israel was established for example and at the same time many Palestinian organizations that promote peace and co-existence have emerged recently as they also did not appear during war times with Israel and emerged increasingly after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords which is so far the biggest positive change that took place between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Before 1993 Israel has always defined the PLO as one that is responsible for “terrorist attacks” against Israeli targets in Israel and outside of Israel. And for the PLO and the Palestinian the idea of signing peace agreements with Israel was never an idea to be taken with much seriousness. This is a big positive change that added many positive points to the Palestinians and the Israelis at the same time as it increased and made a new kind of hope that perhaps and despite all the complications the Palestinians and the Israelis can still find a way to make true peace and live side by side in co-existence and respect. Also relevant are the New Historians; Israeli academics challenging long held beliefs about events within the context of the conflict.

The first Palestinian elections that took place in 2005 was also a major change as it showed a strong sign of the Palestinian readiness to run state and civil institutions sending a strong and powerful message to the world that it was time to help the Palestinian gain their right of a state. Unfortunately this message was negatively received by the International community and Israel as the major winner of such elections was the organization of Hamas and eventually leading to a full isolation of the organization and any decisions made by its government. In fact many of its democratically elected officials were simply arrested by the Israeli army. This lead to a major division among the Palestinians making it more difficult for any unity that can run a state if any and more sanction imposed by Israel especially on the Gaza Strip. Also after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the assassination the of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin by Jewish extremists was a major blow to the peace process as it set the Oslo agreements in another direction that eventually lead to its collapse and the Palestinians uprising once against the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. The unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 also played a major role in the politics among the Palestinians as the Fatah militias gradually began to lose control over the strip allowing the Hamas forces to eventually force them out of the strip and take over the governance of the Strip leaving the Palestinians under two governments one in the West Bank and one in the Gaza Strip leaving Israel as a clear winner of such division as it became easy for the Israeli propaganda to argue that Palestinian lack for ability to manage and run a state on their own. 

Effect of Third Parties

Third parties have played a big role in the conflict but unfortunately so far without much effectiveness because of client-patron relationship between American and Israeli. The uncanny relationship between Israel and the United States has hampered the US’s ability to serve as a so-called neutral mediator.

The United States has mixed interest with its efforts to make peace in the Middle East making it lose credibility not only among the Palestinians but also among the Israelis. For example, the US quickly condemned the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait while ignoring the obvious occupation of the Palestinian territories by the Israeli army. The United States played a major role in the birth of the Oslo Accords and the peace between Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. Russia and recently the European Union have played an important role in the management of the conflict but unfortunately with not much success due to the Israeli refusal of obeying international resolutions carried out by organizations such as the United Nations. Or the Russian support for the Syrian government in the vile Civil War no ongoing.

The role of mediation is essential to resolve this situation and to implement the broad package of interventions we are recommending. The superpowers have taken the role of the mediator over the years and since the 1948 war between Israel and the Arab States. It is important to understand that at least one side of the fighting groups would still find many reasons to think that the parties playing the role of mediation may have a highly biased, being biased can jeopardize any creation of an honest peace talk that aims to a lasting peace between Arabs and Jews.

To successful bring peace is not ever a matter of negotiations, but instead of the collective of the communities at war. Since elite interests in both Israel and Palestine so color this discourse we resolve that the Para-State will draw its operational strength from a variety of factions in Israel, Palestine and the Diaspora which do not feel bound to entrenched interests of the old rules of the game. They need not share ideology or end game view; instead three things hold this alliance of partnered organizations together: 1) understanding that the survival of both peoples relies on immediate resolution; 2) that state failure will be rectified with para-state tactics, and 3) to obtain the 8 core agreements and meaningful coexistence violence cessation via a Hudna and separation communities into functional administrative units is more relevant than high minded notions of peace.  

Primary Organizational Partners:

As was demonstrated in the First 1987 Intifada and the Israeli Social Justice Demonstrations of 2011 there is a great deal of internal dissent within both communities that can be mobilized outside of the major power blocs and parties. These are the groups that we would involve in the early coalition to form the terms of the network applying Para-State strategies.

Peace Now (Shalom Achshav):  is the largest Israeli SMO with the goal of promoting a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict utilizing mass mobilization and policy  advocacy. They believe in Jerusalem as “two-capitals for two States”, the viability of land swaps, dismantling settlements which it views the key existential long term threat to state of Israel and Palestine.

Seeds of Peace: The group was founded in 1993 and was in presence of the signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House. The main idea of Seeds of Peace is to allow the future leaders of Palestine, Israel, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cyprus, and other countries that experience conflict and ethnic disputes. It’s main program comes through the Seeds of Peace International Camp in the state of Maine, USA. Where teenagers from almost 27 countries are given a life changing experience in which they are able to interact with one another away from the conflict zone in order to provide them with a unique chance to see the world together from a coexistence point of view. 

Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality); is a Jewish and Arab socialist political party in Israel with four seats in Knesset.

Meretz is the largest of the left-wing, Zionist, social-democratic political parties with the greatest degree of electoral success (with 12 seats held b/t 1992-1996 and 6 seats currently). It was the result of 1992 merger of leftist Ratz, Mapam, and Shinui. The party emphasizes a two-state solution, social justice, human rights, freedom of religion. 

Al-Haq: is an independent Palestinian human-rights organization founded in 1979 and based in Ramallah. Its main purpose and mission is to monitor and document human-rights violations by all parties involved in the conflict, it also provides regular reports on human right violations as well as research and studies the are related to the conflict.

B’Tselem: It was founded in 1989 and its main purpose is to monitor all the human rights violations that take place within the Palestinian Territories by multi-nationalizing the conflict with foreign volunteers. It also promotes for more peace efforts within the state of Israel. They have been very effective in developing a model for development coupled with non-violent resistance inside of Palestine. 

International Solidarity Movement (ISM): is a Pro-Palestinian Rights organization founded by Israelis and Palestinians that works to resist the occupation peacefully and what they view as the long and unjustified oppression of the Palestinian people by what they view as the apartheid state of Israel. It was founded in 2001 and it’s main aim is to strengthen the Palestinian non-violent resistance by utilization of multi-national volunteers for development programs and non-violent resistance. 

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is a U.S.-based non-profit organization established in 1979 which describes its aim as social justice and equality for all Israelis. It is credited with seed-funding “almost every significant cause-related progressive NGO in Israel”. Since its inception the fund has provided over US $250 million to more than 900 organizations. NIF states that while its position is that “Israel is and must be a Jewish and democratic state” it says it was “among the first organizations to see that civil, human and economic rights for Israeli Arabs is an issue crucial to the long-term survival of the state. Its “activist arm” Israeli NGO Shatil will be vital to this effort.

This list does not even begin to scratch the surface of the opposition movements in both communities, merely to provide a departure point from the Hamas/Fatah & Likud/Avodah leadership “consensus”.

Section Four

4. A process for Monitoring and Evaluating the success of the intervention.

We will plan to utilize an advanced hybrid conflict monitoring tool to track our work in Israel Palestine. Via the cumulative work of three coordinated, multi-nationalized teams; a “FAST” monitoring team, a “Harm/Benefit” intervention team advising interventions on the ground, and a “MSTC” research team in a secure location removed from conflict directing policy advocacy toward outside stakeholders and manipulating the public via the media; we will apply M&E to our interventions.

All three sections of this team are vital to comprehensive and meaningful analysis guiding targeted intervention. M&E operatives are to be non-politically aligned, human rights oriented coordinating directly with local staffs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Cyprus. There will not be a centralized base of country operations except in Greece. A policy advocacy office will be established in Washington D.C. 

Swiss “FAST” will be used for predictive trending, CARE “Benefits/Harm Handbook” to rationalize intervention and “Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts” (MSTC) for long term contextual planning.  Rather than identify one and invalidate others for approach we seek to make a base line conflict analysis using a fusion of three. None of them are complete enough for field level practitioners to comprehensively offer meaningful intervention solutions. But each offers possibility in hybrid for definitive action to interdict mass violence.

All Interventions supported with Information & Intelligence. That means that all participating partner organizations are incentivized via transparent data sharing and mutual aid based resource sharing agreements. It means that hundreds of small CBO, SMO, NGO, trade unions, religious groups and parties are cooperating and coordinating action on the same network. Events are interpreted using FAST and interventions are recommended via BHH. All interventions are monitored using universal human rights and supported with hard data.

Tool: FAST

“Rapid Interpretation of Meaningful Data”

Application purpose of FAST: An office staff is set up in Greece to monitor the following communications data coming out of the region. Their objective is to acquire qualitative data to determine “root, proximate, and intervening factors that can lead to the outbreak of a violent conflict or shape an existing conflict” and acquire quantitative data based on daily event indicators. 

The tool allows a trained bi-national data collection team to selectively analyze big data trending from a) internet reports from factional monitoring groups, b) news/social media content from institutions of influence by faction c) monitor civilian radio communications in zones, d) collate incoming first hand field reports to flag indicators based on conflict variables.

  Qualitative data methods: Arabic/Hebrew/Farsi language news/social media; reports from leading CBO monitoring groups; Benetech open source reports; data triangulation via UN and NGO reports; Palestinian & Israeli governmental data. 

Primary Root: Physical integrity of bi-national territory.

Quantitative factors measurements: the following are primary tracking indicators. # Instances of mass violence reflected via hospitalizations/ reported casualties. # Instances of arrest. Weekly prison population. # of demonstrations/ funeral processions in approximate participating numbers. # targeted assassinations quarterly. # exchanges of fire with casualties. # Suicide attacks/Rocket attacks. Settlement expansion by m3. $ US aid/remittances to both sides civilian/ military per quarter. Quantity # of multinationals present in occupied territories. Quarterly demographic reviews.

Assumptions: Presence of bi-lingual, bi-national data analysis team. Operational relationship with understood mutual aid agreements with monitoring agencies based in Gaza, Israel, West Bank and United States. Open channels of communication with all major factions. Aggregate software to recommend daily threat levels and trend annual data in means that as politically useful for the peace process. All operational imperatives meet two decisive bottom lines; a) violence cessation and b) the right of both peoples to exist within the territory of Palestine within three administrative units; Gaza, Israel and West Bank as a confederated entity.

Resource Implications/ Availability: Office staff of 24 staff/ 24 volunteers to utilize tool 24/7 based in Greece. Regional administrative bases in Gaza, Jerusalem, & Nablus. Strategic Autonomous Partner Action Organizations in every population center above population 25,000 capable of monitoring and actionable effect. 

Conflict intervention recommendations: The FAST team in Greece will issue daily reports to all allied Partner Organizations; make weekly ‘process threat’ advisories; hold monthly web briefings on findings and trends, and issue quarterly summaries directly to the communications/ diplomatic representatives of all Israeli/Palestinian/American Jewish factions. It will issue twitter and text message alerts in the event of imminent hostilities to all subscribers. It will maintain clear line of communication open between a) Hamas leadership, b) Fatah leadership, c) the Israeli party in power/ the 2^nd and 3^rd largest Israeli parties by seat in Knesset d) AIPAC e) U.S. State Department.    

Intervention recommendations will proceed via three levels. A) Public Address via mass advisories, b) Partnership Network Alliance and 3) External Factions of influence. All will embrace free association, autonomous action, explicit non-violence and human rights based approach via Benefit/Harms Handbook (BHH) Tool.

Tool: BHH

Application of Benefits/Harms Handbook (BHH) in “Approximate benefit/harm of threat & intervention:

Application purpose is to “to help actors take responsibility for the impact of their work on people’s human rights. It offers a set of simple interrogative tools that help staff think more deeply and effectively about the impacts of their work, and taking responsibility for both positive and negative impacts. It also provides a framework for monitoring potential negative or unintended impacts, as well as ways to mitigate these.”(Action Alert, 2004).

BHH is centered on weighing the impact of ones interventions though three delineated categories of existing human rights: Security Rights (RR), Civil/Political Rights (CPR), and Economic/Social/Cultural Rights (ESCR) along with their indicators, impacts and logical framework outcomes. 

The Tool applies a Human Rights Based Approach to the logical framework model. It best used in local operations and not well suited for conflict management at large short term.

Assumptions: Participation of organized Palestinian and Israeli NGOs with indigenous bases of support to accurately conduct Human Rights centered DME of recommended interventions is imperative. Each is operating autonomously in our network with daily operations, budgeting, and operational protocols independent of central authority. Symmetric Indicators agreed to by all parties in conflict utilized throughout engagement. Demographic disaggregation of quantitative data based on religion, ethnicity, political faction utilized in FAST are withheld as this system centers on overall human rights implications.

A focused BHH application to an intervention is up to discretion of the faction or operational body recommended too. Non-discrimination/ protected categories are selectively applied as needed. Broad Segment data is used to guide operational discretion on intervention usage. For our system we will have provided training to each of our allies to apply a Logical Framework Approach algorithm to assess use of an intervention based of level of potential war violation (harm) with level of peaceful rights advancement (benefit). The fundamental process revolves around ‘Symmetric Indicators’ being agreed to within the analytical process.

“The practice of human rights actors in development reveals little consistency in the formulation of indicators. A bewildering diversity prevails, whether actors are focusing on duty-bearer compliance at the macro-level or on performance of planned development change at the micro-level. One overriding challenge is therefore how to establish greater consistency in the design of indicators to facilitate horizontal comparisons between countries or between state parties” (Human Rights Indicators, WB p.15)

Analytical Framework: Main Steps and Suggested process

BHH contains “tools for situation analysis (profile tools), impact assessment (impact tools), and project (re)design (decision tools)” (Action Alert, 2004). Profile tools allow us to achieve a human rights centered, balanced assessment of the perceived impact an intervention will achieve. The objective supply of data to aid the best practice implementation of the tool will be supplied by the FAST team making the intervention recommendation. BHH will allow the local operational leadership to act.

Consultation with local contacts in community, organizational review of the FAST data and individual partner organizations’ information & intelligence capacities will ultimately guide the decision to select the intervention.

 Guiding Questions / Pre-Arranged Indicators

Two quotes serve to illustrate the challenge and dilemma. In the OHCHR Draft Guidelines on a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction, from 2003, it was argued that “most of the indicators proposed in these Guidelines are standard indicators of socioeconomic progress, although it should be observed that some human rights indicators, especially those relating to civil and political rights, do not usually figure in measures of socio- economic progress. Essentially, what distinguishes a human rights indicator from a standard disaggregated indicator of socio-economic progress is less its substance than (a) its explicit derivation from a human rights norm and (b) the purpose to which it is put, namely human rights monitoring with a view to holding duty-bearers to account. (OHCHR Indicators Draft)

The Profile, Impact and Decision sub-tools are each organized according to the three categories of human rights: 

1. Security Rights (SR):

Right to a) life b) liberty c) security of person d) Right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. Civil/Political Rights (CPR):

Right to a) participate in public affairs, b) freedom of opinion/expression c) a fair trial

3. Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (ESCR):

Right to a) the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health b) to adequate food c) to adequate housing d) to education e) to social security f) to work with paid leave & ability to form trade unions.

Special Protective Categories: a) women, b) children, c) migrant workers, d) demographic minorities.

The tool addresses the full action impact of rights holders/ duty bearers and the underlying causes of the potential harm or benefit via action. Actions, Attitudes and Artifices are the focus of the tool.

Human rights-based approach to relief and development presupposes that all people are entitled to certain minimum conditions of living with dignity (human rights). Relief and development organizations aim to help people achieve these conditions, thereby acknowledging their human responsibility to do so. This implies they take responsibility for the human rights impact of their work –whether positive or negative. Human rights are therefore the central criteria for analyzing the overall impact of a project.” (Action Alert, 2004.)

Quantitative/ Quantitative data measurements: Agreed to “Symmetric Indicators for Separation & Economic Development in Israel Palestine 2020.”  

Resource Implications/ Availability: Utilizing DME/BHH trained staff regional leadership assesses a threat and intervention response via 3 categories of benefit/harm to rights (Security, CPR, ESCR) posed by threat/event/action looking at its history-nature via PROFILE. That threat/event/action data is plugged into IMPACT TOOL algorithm which weighs the Benefit/Harm Level (potential rights violation) on a scale of 58. Each increment has corresponding intervention recommendations made via the DECISION. The 3 rights categories via benefits/harms are then again re-assessed and intervention is selected. 

Conflict Intervention Recommendations: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a multi-dimensional, ongoing low-intensity mass human rights violation that directly aids in fueling the instability of the region at large. One of the least understood aspects of the occupation and conflict has been the role of non-Israeli/ non-Palestinian multinational volunteers. Although comparatively low in overall casualty count compared to other global conflicts since the 1991 Palestinian Uprising a steady cohort of European, Latin American, American and Iranian volunteers have changed the overall strategic calculus.

Military intelligence officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have highly enhanced Palestinian capacity for military action and terrorism since the first intifada. Multi-nationalization actions via the International Solidarity Movement have smuggled thousands of Euro-American volunteers to serve in Palestinian development capacities as well as human shields in the occupied territories. The combination of capacity to inflict harm, European non-violent foreign volunteers embracing the BDS movement, the Israeli embrace of structural apartheid via the Security Wall and take over Gaza by Hamas have all worked to reduce the levels of violence that peaked in the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Surely track 1, 2, 3, & 4 peace work has contributed as well.  

Our intervention recommendations involve measured, scalable responses in the following categories based on threat levels corresponding to rights violations in the 3 categories. 

All interventions are reviewed once implemented via BHH Human Rights implications, impacts, and outcomes. Each side should adopt a 1 for 1 approach. Harm for Harm & Benefit for Benefit.  

Application of “Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts” (MSTC) to “place the intervention in a wider context of outcomes that secure rights obligations and make complex ethno-political phenomena understandable to outside parties.” Most of the problem/ provocation data was detailed in section one.

Primary Purpose: The MSTC Tool’s primary purpose is to render highly complicated, protracted ethnic conflicts understandable to internal and external actors.

Conceptual Assumptions

“Turbulent Contexts” refers to “Situations of Chronic Political Instability (SCPI).” This term expands the notion of ‘complex humanitarian emergency’ to reflect the long-term, cyclical and political nature of many of these contexts. It covers phenomena such as cyclical conflict, violence against civilians, political unrest, extreme polarization of wealth, natural disasters over a number of years, population displacement, and the need for humanitarian assistance. The emphasis is on the chronic and political nature of these contexts. (Action Alert, 2004) The goals is to analyze greed/ grievance as well as historic and current perceptions in light of complicated political science/ identity driven variables.

Conclusion

We do not possess the arrogance to assume that all or many of these specific tactical or policy suggestions will result in coexistence or peace in the immediate future. We shall no longer be beholden to the European constructed state system, to international law forced upon us from the outside or the so-called norms of diplomacy and state building. To advocate for a Para-State is a revolutionary act as it inherently rejects the salvation of either people lies in a government imposed solution. It also conquers the means to attain human rights from those that perpetually violate them.

This blueprint, like the ones we wish to see emerge in every nation where governments and elites trample on the rights of humanity is an emerging vision. One subject to the free association and consensus of those it effects; to be led by social movement organizations that do not believe in the particularism of national origin or identity or the exclusionary determinism forced upon them by either history or an outside party.   

A people without a land retuned to a land that still had people. This land has changed hands via blood and fire throughout the centuries and while “holy” to some and “strategic” to many; it is now the home of over 13 million people, Jews and Palestinians who respectively seek a solution that is based on Justice. That barrier to peace is never common people. It is always in the interests of those that rule to perpetuate war. The Parallel State’s aim is not one state, two state, three state; or to redraw a map that never reflected anyone’s wishes to begin with. Our aim is simple. Without violence or political office our aim is to seize control of those things that were our states obligation; freedom, security and development thus safe guarding our collective human rights without waiting for those that have trampled upon them of centuries to negotiate responsibly for their attainment. 

References

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Appendix 1

Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities (all figures rounded)*

1	40,000,000	Communist China, 1949-76 (outright killing, man-made famine, Gulag)
2	10,000,000	Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag)
3	4,000,000	Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
4	5,400,000	Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
5	2,800,000	Korean war, 1950-53
6	1,900,000	Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
7	1,870,000	Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
8	1,800,000	Vietnam War, 1954-75
9	1,800,000	Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
10	1,250,000	West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
11	1,100,000	Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
12	1,100,000	Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
13	1,000,000	Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
14	900,000	Rwanda genocide, 1994
15	875,000	Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the government 1991-2006 (200,000)
16	850,000	Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
17	650,000	Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-present (200,000)
18	580,000	Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal’s retreat (1972-2002)
19	500,000	Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
20	430,000	Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
21	400,000	Indochina: against France, 1945-54
22	400,000	Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
23	400,000	Somalia, 1991-present
24	400,000	North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
25	300,000	Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
26	300,000	Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
27	240,000	Colombia, 1946-58; 1964-present
28	200,000	Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
29	200,000	Guatemala, 1960-96
30	190,000	Laos, 1975-90
31	175,000	Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
32	150,000	Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
33	150,000	Liberia, 1989-97
34	140,000	Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
35	150,000	Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
36	140,000	Kuwait War, 1990-91
37	130,000	Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
38	130,000	Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
39	100,000	North Yemen, 1962-70
40	100,000	Sierra Leone, 1991-present
41	100,000	Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
42	80,000	Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
43	75,000	Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
44	75,000	El Salvador, 1975-92
45	70,000	Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
46	68,000	Sri Lanka, 1997-present
47	60,000	Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
48	60,000	Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
49	51,000	Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
50	50,000	North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
51	50,000	Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
52	50,000	Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
53	50,000	Peru, 1980-2000
54	50,000	Guinea, 1958-84
55	40,000	Chad, 1982-90
56	30,000	Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
57	30,000	Rhodesia, 1972-79
58	30,000	Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
59	27,000	Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
60	26,000	Kashmir independence, 1989-present
61	25,000	Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
62	22,000	Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
63	20,000	Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
64	20,000	Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
65	19,000	Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara, 1975-present (16,000)
66	18,000	Congo Republic, 1997-99
67	10,000	South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)

Sources: Z. Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993; S. Courtois, Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997; G. Heinsohn, Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999, 2^nd ed.; G. Heinsohn, Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.; R. Rummel, Death by Government, 1994; M. Small and J.D. Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982; M. White, “Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century,” 2003.

Appendix 2

NINE TRACKS IN THE MULTI-TRACK SYSTEM

Track 1 – Government, or Peacemaking through Diplomacy. This is the world of official diplomacy, policy making, and peacebuilding as expressed through formal aspects of the governmental process.

Track 2 – Nongovernment/Professional, or Peacemaking through Conflict Resolution. This is the realm of professional nongovernmental action attempting to analyze, prevent, resolve, and manage international conflicts by non-state actors.

Track 3 – Business, or Peacemaking through Commerce. This is the field of business and its actual and potential effects on peacebuilding through the provision of economic opportunities, international friendship and understanding, informal channels of communication, and support for other peacemaking activities.

Track 4 – Private Citizen, or Peacemaking through Personal Involvement. This includes the various ways that individual citizens become involved in peace and development activities through citizen diplomacy, exchange programs, private voluntary organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and special-interest groups.

Track 5 – Research, Training, and Education, or peacemaking through Learning. This track includes three related worlds: research, as it is connected to university programs, think tanks, and special-interest research centers; training programs that seek to provide training in practitioner skills such as negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution, and third-party facilitation; and education, including kindergarten through PhD programs that cover various aspects of global or cross-cultural studies, peace and world order studies, and conflict analysis, management, and resolution.

Track 6 – Activism, or Peacemaking through Advocacy. This track covers the field of peace and environmental activism on such issues as disarmament, human rights, social and economic justice, and advocacy of special-interest groups regarding specific governmental policies.

Track 7 – Religion, or Peacemaking through Faith in action. This examines the beliefs and peace-oriented actions of spiritual and religious communities and such morality-based movements as pacifism, sanctuary, and nonviolence.

Track 8 – Funding, or Peacemaking through Providing Resources. This refers to the funding community-those foundations and individual philanthropists that provide the financial support for many of the activities undertaken by the other tracks.

Track 9 – Communications and the Media, or Peacemaking through Information. This is the realm of the voice of the people: how public opinion gets shaped and expressed by the media-print, film, video, radio, electronic systems, the arts.

Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy

Appendix 3

A Realistic View

Of the Islamic Resistance: 

Hamas as the Partner 

For Separation and Economic Development

Prepared by: Walter Sebastian Adler

Abstract:

The status quo of Israel in Palestine is not sustainable. There are critical security, international relations and domestic crisis issues that threaten the very existence of Israel more so than the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian zones of control in the West Bank and blighted Gaza. All of these scenarios are inseparable from the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To stop the flood gates from opening, to address the broad systemic internal contradictions of the Israeli state and to secure the third Hebrew commonwealth, a radical policy of reorientation must begin with a realistic assessment of the only other party on the ground besides Memshala Yisrael which can broker regional stability. Hamas.

The central thesis of this paper is that in order to safeguard Israel as a ‘Jewish National Home,’ some very fundamental assumptions on regional security and domestic policy must be altered to reflect new realities emerging on the ground. The most vital among them being recognition of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement/Hamas) as the only viable partner the State of Israel has to implement lasting détente, separation and a cessation to this prolonged conflict with an endgame result of peace.

Introduction:

It is no longer a question of moralizing the conflict, obsessing over past failures or temporarily abating a cycle of degenerating violence. Both the Israeli Knesset, the Palestinian resistance factions, the various Arab power brokers and the para-state organizations on the ground (and in Diaspora) all realize that neither by sheer will nor by force of arms can they destroy one another. Blame for the modern quagmire that is the Middle East may fall squarely on the post-colonial powers of Europe and the United States for proliferation of arms without stipulation or control. However the new reality is that if the third Hebrew Commonwealth of Israel is to survive as well as if any measure of regional stability is to be achieved, radical and unorthodox steps must be taken to close the breach. The breach is not simply a result of Israeli defense against Arab aggression, or vice versa; it is a breach in the foundation of the modern security calculus. All parties involved must become more attuned to the heightened stakes via lessons of history and sound political science.  

This paper offers an objective analysis of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya in order to advocate for its recognition as a viable partner, not in immediate peace; but in implementation of separation, economic development and most importantly; Hudna.

To claim that Memshala Israel has secured its borders, or contained conventional military threats to its existence is to say that glass is made out of sand. The process by which glass is made from sand renders the base substance un-alterably changed and requires much the release of energy through fire and heat to yield something far more unstable than its original form. While the cousins of Ishmael and Yitzhak, the Israelis and Palestinians, are indeed two peoples intractably bound to a single piece of land, they are met with a reoccurring problem. The Israeli public and government lack the will to commit genocide. The Palestinian Resistance factions cannot procure or introduce a means to mass murder that won’t render their own homeland a house of ash.

Surely whispered in both camps is the notion that it wouldn’t be ‘objectionable’ for the other and their kind to be ‘pushed into the sea’ or ‘dumped on the other side of the Jordan.’ The survivors of the Shoah cannot (yet) bring themselves to this, nor would international opinion condone genocide in the Holy Land in this day and age. As for the Palestinians, pushing the Jews into the sea has more to do with rhetoric than ability, conscience or even intention. The ancestors of both races defended the holy land against the Christian Crusader locked arm in arm. There are over 1,400 years of precedent for relatively peaceful co-existence and less than 100 to the contrary.

Even the death toll of the First Intifada (estimated at 421 Israeli/1,549 Palestinian) and the more bloody melee of the Second Intifada, which included suicide bombers and collective punishment,  cost only 1,062 Israeli and 5,500 Palestinian lives. The invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 resulted in 13 Israeli and 1,417 Palestinians. The body count of the Palestinian Israel civil war is comparatively low when compared with other global ethnic conflicts like those waged in Sri Lanka, Darfur, Rwanda and Chechnya. 

Hamas must be engaged as the only viable partner capable of securing Palestinian temporary acceptance of the third Hebrew Commonwealth and thereby securing the Jewish National home by buying both sides more time for ultimate reconciliation before more desperate measures are introduced.

This paper is broken into four Sections each with sub-segments utilized to illustrate the viability of the central thesis. Section one is a baseline on Hamas’ tactics and beliefs to establish how they have developed as a movement. Section two demonstrates Hamas’ evolution in response to failed Israeli tactics of counter-insurgency. Section three deals with the evolution of the Hamas’ military-political strategy over time. Section four explains how these evolutions can be interpreted as establishing Hamas as a reliable partner for separation and economic development.  

Section 1: What Hamas Believes

“Allah is its goal, the Prophet is its Modal, the Qur’an is its constitution, and death for the sake of Allah its most coveted desire.”

-Hamas Charter

Article 8.

Religious Nationalism

It is impossible to grasp the political dynamic of the region by embracing either one’s visceral reaction or a revisionist reinterpretation of historical events. We must divest our respective identities from the end game solution. We must then look at the progression of events and ideas behind the formation of Hamas through the prism of reality not Western notions of morality or international convention. The Hamas movement holds beliefs and a worldview that are a direct descendent of the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood style of political Islam and of the tangible military victories of the Shi’a Revival. We must understand the roots of their world view to calculate their evolution as a movement. 

The failure of the Arab states to make social and economic progress their people yearned for, the widening socioeconomic gap between rich and poor, the growing phenomenon of social and moral anomie identified with Western culture especially affected the urban, educated, lower middle-class Muslims. Their disillusion with modernity and revolutionary secularism heightened their inclination to seek refuge in religious traditions as a cure for the current social malaise and as a source of individual and collective hope. The growing trend of Islamification and institutionalization in the cultural and social spheres soon assumed a political, sometimes violent form (Mishal & Sela, p. 27).

To assert Hamas won the 2007 elections due to a Palestinian embrace of rejectionist political violence and collective fundamentalism is to make the equally baseless claim that Israel is a product of Western guilt following the Holocaust. Both claims would be divorced from over 1600 years of generally amicable relations between the houses of Ishmael and Yitzhak. The most uncompromising, principled and ruthless advent of Palestinian Resistance is surely Hamas much as the Hebrew Commonwealth must trace its own nationalistic yearnings of nationhood to the French Revolution, the Jewish enlightenment, labor Zionism and Jabotinsky militancy following centuries of persecution in Europe. Hamas’ rise is also a product of historical factors including the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Revolution and the successes of the Hezbollah movement in forcing the withdrawal of Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 and 2005. The amalgamation of religious zeal with tightly compartmentalized political organization as Para-state infrastructure has proven to be a powerful force in the demand for radical social change in the Middle East, which has been utilized by Hebrew and Muslim alike. The circumstances through which the ruins of Arab nationalism gave birth to political Islam is both a logical consequence of socio-economic factors and a resurgence of Islamic identity reacting to the failures of western secular ideology. 

Islamist movements are loose coalitions of three elements: a counter elite composed of businessmen and professionals, a second stratum of frustrated intellectuals and unemployed or underemployed university of secondary school graduates, and a mass base of the young, semi educated unemployed…these people harbor deep grievances. They are personally and collectively frustrated. Education and exposure to the wider world have broadened their horizons, but the grim realities of the job and housing market have dashed their hopes (Richards & Waterbury p.347).

The Muslim world has always struggled with political identity. The emerging states had attempted to co-opt populist sentiment and place power firmly in the hands of the authoritarian regimes by the early 1950’s and 1960’s in a region defined by a deep rooted tradition of religious faith and left with the deep and humiliating battle scars of colonialism and foreign domination. An identity became manifested in groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that sought to re-implement the tradition of Shari’ah law and a revival of Islamic values in the world beginning at a grassroots level. Arab state repression could not wholly stifle the resistance produced by the conditions of their regimes despite the attempts of the Nasserists to drown religious fervor in the drumbeat of Pan-Arabism and Arab socialism. Nor could they harness the deep-seated belief system of religious national identity that the political Islamists could harness via the Masjid and imagined history.

          The nationalist regimes of Egypt and Syria had been dealt a crippling blow by the Israeli Defense Forces in the Six Day War by the end of 1967. Just as the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 had demonstrated the weakness of the monarchs; the illusion of Arab unity and the strength of Arab Socialism were called into serious question over their inability to uproot the ‘Zionist Entity.’ Adding insult to injury, the state led economies that were promised to bring economic equality to the region were hopeless failures insuring that a quickly growing, educated urban class of young people held far greater expectations for their futures than their government could produce. They turned to the Islamist ideology as a vehicle which could bring about an end to the domination of the authoritarian elites and rehabilitate the political weakness the Arab street felt was responsible for the emergence of a Jewish State when they were offered mindless jobs in a hapless state bureaucracy. With state suppression of dissident opinion many found that the mosques were the only place where grievances against the state could be openly addressed. This desire for social and economic justice spread across class lines uniting the implementation and belief in Shari’ah law with the conception of an Islamic state; the Qur’an as their constitution. 

The intellectuals did this by concentrating on the moral and cultural dimensions of religion. They won the broadest base of support when they mobilized both the young urban poor and the devout bourgeoisie with an ideology that offered a vague social agenda but a sharp focus on morality. (Kepel p. 67) 

In the year 1928, an organization by the name of Al Ikhwan Al Musliimeen (the Muslim Brotherhood) was established in Egypt by religious scholar Hassan al-Banna embracing Islamic Dawa and activism as a grassroots response to Western cultural imperialism and the weakness of the post-colonial Muslim world. Many found common cause with his ideas (for which he was murdered by the Egyptian state in 1949. The organization of Al Banna evolved over time. There was state repression of the writings and oratory of a second man named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was an Egyptian intellectual and member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was also arrested, imprisoned and murdered by the Egyptian state in 1966. He wrote prolifically on the subject of political Islam declaring that the nationalist regimes were jahiliyya, or barbaric and contrary to the Muslim ideal. He considered the nationalist “worship” of the army, party or state to be a form of idolatry. His language was directed at the young whom he advocated to carry the torch of Islamic revolution first against their own corrupt regimes and then the Dar al Har, governments of the West. Along with the later Shi’a writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, it was Qutb who almost single-handedly codified the ideology for revolutionary political Islam. The ideology of revolutionary religious nationalist filled a vacuum left in the early 1970’s as Pan-Arabism, Arab Socialism and secular nationalist factions were met with defeat on the battlefield against Israel and brought the iron heels of repression upon the necks of their own people, notably the Palestinians.

The Muslim Brotherhood by the 1980’s was the dominant organizational framework for political Islam throughout the Middle East. It members were at times hunted and hounded by authoritarian regimes, or in other cases, like in Saudi Arabia or Hashemite Jordan, it was co-opted by the oligarchs. While the Brotherhood attempted to the tone down the radicalism of political Islam preached by men like Qutb, they none-the-less succeeded in making the message of Islam easily accessible throughout the Muslim world at a time when the economic and social systems of the West were proving to be less than popular. After the murder of Qutb in 1966, the Muslim Brotherhood spread rapidly. Its leadership took haven in Saudi Arabia and its activists laid in for a long haul strategy of Islamic society implemented from the bottom up.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Muslim Brotherhood expanded rapidly, despite period of government repression in several countries, to become one of the largest (if not the largest) Islamist organizations in the world. Experts often haggle over the exact membership of the worldwide movement, but the Brotherhood has penetrated every Muslim country, with predictably strong membership in the Arab world but also surprisingly large numbers in the West (Schanzer, p. 15).

The events of the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and Jerusalem was instrumental in allowing the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan and Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt to connect their activists via Israeli occupation. The burden of Palestinian liberation was being taken up by the secular nationalist operations of the Fatah dominated PLO, no longer trusting of military victory via the Arab-Socialist coalition, but upon forces organized on the ground. While the PLO conducted wave after wave of terrorist strikes and struggles against Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood focused itself on the spiritual reformation of the Palestinian people in the occupied zones.

   The Iranian revolution in 1979 represented a social manifestation of the ideas of political Islam. This model had failed to apply itself practically in any of the predominantly Sunni Muslim countries. While various MB factions in Syria, Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians and several variants in North Africa had waged various campaigns under the banner of Islam against their authoritarian regimes, political Islam found itself confined as a movement unable to break the stranglehold these regimes held on their countries. The return to Islamic practice had increased exponentially despite the failures of the revolutionaries. The rise of political Islam both symbolized a return to the imagined roots of their civilization and an increased association of the current regimes with impiety. The seizure of state power in Iran in 1979 and advent of Lebanese Hezbollah sent a clear message to Sunni Muslim loyalists of the Muslim Brotherhood. Religious nationalism could be marshaled and the successes their Shi’a brothers had achieved against Israel and the West could be tactically replicated within occupied Palestine.

The vast material network and supply lines of communications and logistics the Brotherhood possessed throughout the Muslim world would in 1987 merge Sunni Political Islam with tactics of Shi’a asymmetric resistance. On the eve of the first Intifada Hamas was born. There is virtually no doctrinal distinction to be drawn from the mother organization. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood’s creation of the Islamic Resistance Movement of Hamas was a tactical evolution borrowed and enhanced by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their surrogate force Hezbollah. While isolation based on religious confession can hinder the logistics and mass support in the Muslim world for these two victories of the Shi’a Revival, Hamas being spawned out of the Gaza City Branch of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood laid the groundwork for an internationalist manifestation of Sunni political Islam, which could rely on a vast pool of resources both doctrinal and material across sectarian lines in its fight against Memshala Yisrael.

The Masjid as a bunker and a school

The development of autonomous space and minimization of the Israeli intelligence forces ability to penetrate the organization and its zones of control is directly linked to the period after 1967 when Israel encouraged the rise of political Islam via the Muslim Brotherhood to discourage support and indoctrination carried out by the secular Fatah, PLO and Palestinian left then responsible for innumerable acts of armed resistance. The creation of a corporate identity on the basis of religious fundamentalism, albeit then not harnessed toward Jihad, was thought to offset gains the PLO and Palestinian leftists were making to organizing resistance activities. 

The Israeli decision, despite obvious second thoughts, to grant the license to the Islamic Compound in Tel Aviv was an indicator of what would become unannounced, but official, Israeli policy. The Israeli government perceived its staunch enemy to be the nationalist and secular PLO and, by allowing Islamist rivals to flourish, believed that opposing Palestinian groups would do its work on the ground in a way that did not necessitate active Israeli involvement (Chehab, p20).

Israel allowed and granted official license for the Muslim Brotherhood to construct a massive network of mosque-centered, bootstrap social services, which by the late 80’s had become a new Muslim nucleus of Palestinian civil society complete with social infrastructure and civic organizations not controlled by the Israel occupational authorities or the wildly corrupt Fatah party. The nucleus of this organizing was the Al-Mujamma (Islamic Center), a focal point for hundreds of grassroots social services and schools of Islamic indoctrination.

In the beginning the Muslim Brotherhood was quite cognizant of the fact that it would have to begin its campaign of dawa on a mass scale in order to arrive at a Palestinian polity that was Islamic was well as independent of Israeli rule. From the outset, the mother organization of Hamas (Muslim Brotherhood) was engaged in education, proselytizing and vast reorientation of largely secular Palestinian society from the pulpit rather than the barricade. While throughout the 70’s and early 80’s groups like Black September, Fatah-PLO, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other secular nationalist groups launched successive waves of hijackings, bombings and political violence; the political Islamists who were quite aware of the force of state repression being carried against their movement throughout the Arab world, chose to engage in a program of Islamification from the ground up, by which the final armed struggle for Palestine would be proceeded by a return to ‘true Islamic practice’ by the Palestinian masses.  

Until the advent and formation of Hamas as the mechanism for revolt and insurrection catalyzed by the competing forces of militant Islamic Jihad and PLO domination at the opening of the first Intifada, the Muslim Brotherhood and its chief instruments of indoctrination, Islamic University of Gaza and the al-Mujamma movement, sought to reform the religious character of Palestine via the Masjid and bootstrap social services. The Muslim Brotherhood tapped a vein of latent religiosity that had proven so successful for the Shi’a Hezbollah movement in Southern Lebanon via tapping into the hierarchy of needs. ; Palestinian society has taken an obvious turn toward conservative Sunni Islam as evidenced by the wearing of Hijab as a superficial indicator of Islamification as well as avoiding gender mixing, western dress and the permeation of Western culture. The Hijab is now commonly worn where it was once not. Cinemas have all but closed and Hamas has instituted, often by force, a regime in Gaza akin to the Taliban’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.  

Hamas now directs the most sophisticated hearts and minds apparatus of any of numerous factions on the ground. Israel cannot easily penetrate the vast network of mosque-based charities and instruments of indoctrination via religion as it is loathe to shut down the only functional network of charities operational in the occupied territories, which would risk an even larger human rights disaster than that which currently exists. Israel will not risk international condemnation to demolish a mosque, nor will it raid a hospital or a school. Yet the mosque is to Hamas the focal point of the resistance above all other tactics. Islamification, the blending of nationalism and religious zeal, the purge of Western influence from the Palestinian masses and the re-crafting of identity are the bedrock of the new Jihad.

The corporate identity of a movement cannot be suppressed with assassination, retaliatory airstrikes, sanctions or siege. The zeal that is being taught via the Hamas Masjid network and the successes of their grassroots charities are a bunker the Israelis cannot penetrate and a rallying point that cannot be captured. 

Social Programs and Grassroots Advocacy

The sheer scope of the Hamas’ network of social infrastructure is breathtaking and bears direct responsibility for the group’s popularity. Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the other factions of the PLO do not come close to providing the wide range of services the charities set up by Muslim Brotherhood and now controlled by Hamas.

As a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and indeed inextricably intertwined with it, Hamas has been able to build on the mother organization’s extensive infrastructure in expanding its public base of operations. It is thus that nursery schools, kindergartens, social and sports clubs, libraries, and other such associations fall under its auspices, and the Islamic University continues under its control. These various institutions, to say nothing of the network of mosques-are useful vehicles for spreading Hamas’ ideas and influence and enlisting supporters (Abu-Amr, p.14).

The foundation of Hamas’ popularity and deep connectivity to the civilian base, which shelters its leaders and fighters was established through the decades of Islamic activism of the Muslim Brotherhood. Israel’s tacit approval of this dawa organizing, as well as Israel’s fixation on standing Arab armies and PLO terror squads inevitably allowed Hamas the breathing space and time build a mass base in both Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas has Islamified Palestinian society via the bread basket by combining the millions in aid from foreign backers and the ground apparatus of its mother organization 

The Islamist movement whose Dawa tradition has most influenced Hamas, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is notable for having a politically activist nature. Academic scholars have noted that Brotherhood activists use communal activities at the grassroots level to “reshape the political consciousness of educated youth.” By focusing on impressionable youth and in areas lacking social welfare services, the Brotherhood’s Islamic institutions serve as “functional substitutes for the welfare apparatus of the state and constitute a natural and familiar setting in which young activists can reach out to uncommitted peers.” In other words, social service institutions function as an ideal tool used by Islamists to radicalize and recruit Muslim youth (Levitt, p.17).  

Hamas administers its social services network via its indirect affiliations. This prevents Israel from connecting specific charitable organizations, hospitals, mosques and Palestinian civic associations with pipelines from arms and guerrilla operations. This enables vast amounts of foreign capital to fill Hamas’ coffers from Iran, Syria, Sudan and the West without allegations being made besides regular ones by America and Israel that aid money is being used for armed struggle. Each piece of indirectly affiliated Muslim Brotherhood, al-Mujamma foundation, or spiritual/educational apparatus is absolutely employed in the war effort with Israel. It is estimated that not only does Hamas utilize these boot-strap operations for indoctrination and its hearts and minds victory, each doubles as a command base, a cache or a means for the dissemination of propaganda. The most epic failure of groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah-PLO and Islamic Jihad was their myopic obsession with armed struggle without establishing such networks. 

It is not logical to assume that Hamas would not engage its organizational and social programs purely for humanitarian purposes if one studies the absolute nature of the Hamas war against Israel. One can also draw lessons from years of insurgency by studying Israeli allegations of ambulances being used to move arms, of hospitals being converted into military operations centers and of mosques as being used as platforms for the spread of religious hatred.  The Palestinian people certainly have their backs to the wall if one looks at sixty years of occupation and the full quarantine and siege underway in Gaza since 2007 combined with the reality of Israeli military prowess and the grinding bloodshed of two failed uprisings. Hamas social programs have become the bed-rock of their Para-state, which is utilized for both survival and the ongoing war effort. 

These social services are vital to the masses of occupied Palestine, as are those administered by Hezbollah to the Shi’a of Southern Lebanon. Israel encouraged their establishment in the late 80’s and from them Hamas derives the bulk of its support in leadership of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Democratic Participation 

Hamas had previously boycotted participating in the Fatah dominated government. Its leadership had posited that legitimizing the PA would by default give legitimacy to final partition. This changed in the staggered municipal elections of 2004-2006. When Hamas ran candidates in the January 2006 election, for the Palestinian National Congress, it shocked the world (and itself); by winning. To the shock and appall of Israel and the West, Hamas captured a plurality of 42.9% of the total votes as well as 74 out of 132 available seats in the congress.

Hamas’ strategies reflected a perception based on neither a full acceptance nor a total rejection of the political order emanating from the Oslo accords and the establishment of the PA. Although Hamas made its struggle with Israel a religious duty, it did not lose sight of its socio-political interests. Senses of political realism and “here and now” considerations were signs of pragmatism. Hamas’ thrust toward extremism was balanced by its awareness of political constraints and structural limitations. Hamas refused to accept basic assumptions or to officially recognize the consequences of the peace process. But, it did not seek all out confrontation with the emerging new political order prompted by the PA-Israeli dialogue. Thus the Hamas discourse represented its inclination to stick to its ideological premises and pursue its long term goal of establishing an alternative social and moral order, but it also  demonstrated its implicit acceptance of the current political realities (Mishal & Sela, pp147-148).

The newly formed Hamas government was immediately boycotted by all Western aligned countries, and of course Israel, upon assuming power within the Palestinian Authority in elections that had been internationally monitored and had engaged some 80% of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Like Hezbollah before them, Hamas refused to put down their guns and acknowledge Israel’s right to statehood while engaged in the formation of an elected para-state. Although democratically elected, both the EU and USA deemed the election of a designated ‘terrorist group’ wholly illegitimate and proceeded to cut all but the most basic aspects of foreign aid via humanitarian groups and the UN. 

The election was a vote of no confidence for the perceived inept and corrupt Fatah faction. It also intensified the internal fitna between Hamas and Fatah. This civil strife, which had been going on since the late 80’s and had resulted in numerous small-scale violent clashes between the two groups now reached a boiling point. A Hamas electoral victory alongside the vast networks for dawa and charity they already controlled placed incredible pressure on the Fatah party of take radical steps to consolidate a semblance of control. Both Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades and Yasir Arafat himself were highly responsible for initiating the second wave of bloodletting in the Second Intifada. Yet, after the Hamas victory the West continued to pin hope on the fact that the PLO-Fatah might revive the doomed Road Map to Peace. The West and Israel with continued skepticism, redirected aid and arms to bolster the PLO. They had been the official Palestinian negotiating party in Oslo after all; the enemy Memshala Yisrael believed it tacitly understood. Hamas prepared to seize Gaza. 

Hamas crushed the Fatah regiments and police forces in Gaza in a six day military operation culminating on June 14, 2007 and assumed full control of the besieged Strip. This resulted in the international blockade of Gaza on all sides and a desperate Western attempt to shore up the positions of Fatah in the West Bank before a second seizure occurred. PLO President Mahmoud Abbas nullified the Hamas government with Western approval and set up another un-elected Congress based in the West Bank. Hamas now dominates the Gaza Strip ‘ghetto’ of 1.5 million and while is temporarily ‘contained’ by the blockade and sanctions; surely has its eyes set on the West Bank.

While various commentators view the participation in the elections as an evolution toward moderation it must be called for what it is: another card in their deck of tactics. Their mandate to rule the para-state of occupied Palestine was not a result of an across the board Palestinian embrace of terrorist tactics or political Islam. However, two lessons ought to be drawn from their stunning victory. First, the West once again has demonstrated to the Muslim world that it prefers the corrupt oligarchy that can be controlled as opposed to the democratic regime that it deems adversarial.  Second, Hamas has evolved from a religious nationalist association, to a guerilla army and now on to an elected para-state. This is a testimony to Hamas’ ever increasing political sophistication. Not even in the EU or United States does 80% of any country even show up to the polls.  Occupied Palestine could reasonably be called the second emerging true democracy of the Middle East except for the fact that unlike a true democracy, the political loser Fatah will surely not give up power without an even bloodier fight.

Hamas’ behavior during the 2004-2006 electoral campaign suggests that it is acutely aware not only of what constitutes power in an electoral environment, but also of its dependency on gaining votes. Its emphasis on grassroots consultations and surveys in the shaping of the electoral program and the selection of its candidates suggests that, in an electoral context, Hamas heeds public opinion-within the boundaries of its ideological commitments. It remains to be seen whether a U.S.-Israel sponsored peace process is capable of reconciling itself with an electoral system which can bring opponents of the peace process to power. But, the fact that Hamas has invested so much effort in the playing the electoral system well suggests that, at last in Hamas’ eyes, a future Palestinian state is likely to be built around an electoral system in which power is concentrated in elected offices (Gunning, p.191).

It may no longer be stated that the PLO-Fatah is the ‘sole legitimate’ representative of the Palestinian people. After the 2006 elections Hamas is.

Pragmatism and Political Maturity

In most Western academic literature on Hamas there is the attempt to pigeonhole the movement as fundamentalist and unwavering in its call for the destruction of the Jewish state. While most Arab intellectuals produce tomes to the contrary, it is actually Hamas’ unwavering zeal to destroy Israel and dogmatic insistence on religious doctrine that make it the ideal partner to implement a meaningful truce.

In the 22 years since the December 8^th, 1987 founding of Hamas the party has exhibited near total commitment to its core mission, the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In its Islamification of highly secular Palestinian society, and its 2006 electoral victory over Fatah it has assumed the reigns of democratic para-state power without compromising itself in the minds of the Palestinian masses. As compared to the PLO, which has all but accepted a two state solution ceding more than 78% of the territory to the ‘Zionist entity’; renounced armed struggle against Israel (accept when pressured into it simply to compete with Islamic Jihad and Hamas); was beaten and expelled from Jordan in 1970; was beaten and expelled from Lebanon in 1983; and had for all intents and purposes neglected the running of social infrastructure while lining the pockets of its bureaucrats and family members living abroad.

Hamas is hardly to be compared to the Paki-Afghan Taliban in three important regards. First, the leadership of Hamas is largely composed of Western educated technocrats who while they embrace a framework of religious nationalism are fully cognizant of international law, global political trends and world history. Secondly, they can rely on and cultivate deep religious understanding of their faith and are for the most part capable of carrying out internal debate applying Shari’ah in a loose and far more inclusive structure than other more literal fundamentalists (like Taliban and Pakistani Salafists). Third, there exist numerous competing trends of leadership within the movement which forces Hamas to engage in a balancing act between modernity and zeal which it has thus so far navigated rather well.

To draw a parallel to the evolution of Memshala Yisrael, observe its three founding resistance factions Ha Haganah (The Defense), Ha’Irgun HaTzva’i HaLe’umi (ETZEL/National Military Organization) and the smaller, albeit more inclined to sensational terrorism: Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters of the Freedom of Israel, also called the Stern Gang). While none of these three factions were particularly rooted in Jewish religious fundamentalism they serve as telling indicators of future of the three principle clusters of the  Palestinian resistance. Upon victory in 1949, the Haganah (likened in this metaphor to the PLO) assumed responsibility as the ‘sole and legitimate’ instrument of Jewish National Defense and its Labor Zionist backers were designated as the sole representatives of armed struggle. The Revisionist Irgun (which in this case I shall liken to Hamas) was co-opted into the government, but was virtually cut out of the labor coalition until the Menachem Begin victory of 1977. The Stern Gang, which in this allegory I liken to Islamic Jihad, after serving its brutal function was suppressed entirely. The members of the Haganah and members of the Irgun, most certainly were as ideologically divided as Hamas and Fatah, and certainly one came to the forefront; the one with more time, money and guns on the ground, the one first on the scene. For near forty years the Fatah dominated PLO and its leftist ilk have engaged in every tactic under the sun from hijacking, to car bombing, from Columbia Yard to the White House Lawn. And like the founders of the Labor Zionist (descendants of Haganah) realized in 1977; the PLO in a single election learned their number was up. The Irgun (Herut Party and Likud Party) had watched the mistakes of the Haganah. In the realm of Palestinian national struggle, Islamism has triumphed over Marxism and secular nationalism. In the future realm of Israeli politics: Revisionist Zionism can reshape and re-orientate Israel at the brink of ruin after a near thirty years of Labor Zionist influence and rule. 

The forces that are coming to power now, are forces that brought about the beginnings of this war. The Palestinians were Muslim before there was Palestine. The Revisionists, like the Islamists of Hamas had patiently watched both their near and far enemies, developed a base and reignited the war. Just as Stern Gang had a use, as does Islamic Jihad, but just as Stern Gang lacked a base; Islamic Jihad will be absorbed or destroyed before long. But Likud is not just an evolved and matured Irgun; it is a sophisticated political machine evolved via observation and years in power. Hamas will react in a simlar fashion, in fact it already has. These rumblings about long term ceasefire (Hudna), the new responsibilities of governance, its gradual divestment form the tactic of suicide bombing, its several periods of unilateral calm(unilateral cessation of bombings); its participation in the Palestinian Authority 

Elections; and its interactions with para-state actor Hezbollah have all evolved Hamas. It is no longer proper to view Hamas as the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood bearing arms. They too will become more mature with power and with time. Fatah is largely discredited, its ideology of secular pan-Arab nationalism disproven, and its time is up.           

Section 2: How Memshala Yisrael Behaves

“Our feet are standing within thy gates O Jerusalem and they will never leave. This is Zionism, and the United Gentiles call it ‘Racist’ and debate how to take my city away from me. Foolish world; sooner will the sun fail to rise tomorrow. The Jews have come home to their Zion and have welded their city together with fierce tightness that none least of all the humor that is the United Nations can sunder. A people patiently bides it’s time for millennia will not easily-ever-give up its state and capital.”

-Rabbi Meir Kahane

Listen World, Listen Jew

The Israeli Defense Forces, by all accounts, are superior to Hamas’ Ez Ed Din al-Qassam Brigades in funding, training, raw numbers and firepower. Yet, despite its superiority in strength the IDF has repeatedly failed to uproot the Islamic Resistance or destroy its leadership in nearly 25 years of continuous counter-insurgency and siege. The strategic failings of the Israeli military in attempting to destroy the Islamic Resistance are many. This section will survey the Israeli strategy in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip and look to illustrate failures in several tactical segments. This section outlines the primary military deficits that have allowed Hamas to survive and thrive despite tremendous and overwhelming Israeli military pressure against them.

Unpreparedness for Asymmetric War

Certainly Hamas is a very large movement, and within it you can find a range of voices and concepts, this is part of our diversity. Still, some account should be taken of extreme pressures on the ground in terms of the Israeli occupation and military incursions, not to mention the economic boycott and the deprivation of rights. Such a situation can occasionally push people to give priority to self-preservation. Such a situation can produce errors and excesses. But this a reaction, an attempt at self-defense in the face of attack. Oppression and abuse always produce counter-reactions, which can be extreme and which we do not desire (Khalid Mishal in interview with Journal of Palestine Studies, p.178).

In analyzing the outcome of a military confrontation between disproportionately matched forces the following observation is made by military strategist Ivan Arreuin-Toft: “in regards to strategic interaction weaker powers can win conflicts when they employ tactics that minimize direct confrontation with the enemy, cultivate and maintain civilian support, and prolong the duration of the conflict.” Hamas has heeded this critical lesson well. The key factor according to Toft goes beyond the will and interests of the two parties (Israel and Palestine). It relies on applying the proper response to the enemy’s tactics that favor the conditions suitable to resistance by the weak; that is to say favorable to irregular warfare and a guerrilla campaign.

The Toft analysis is seen in light of Andrew Mack’s ideas of ‘interest asymmetry’. This understanding of asymmetrical warfare has three key elements: 1. “Relative power explains relative interest” (Hamas is representing an occupied people/ Memshala Yisrael is the strongest military power in the region), 2. “Relative interest explains relative political vulnerability” (Memshala Yisrael must answer to public wary of war and occupation) and 3. Relative vulnerability is why strong actors lose”. Summed up, Mack is saying that weak powers (like Hamas) have a high interest because it is the survival of their people that is at stake and their political freedom where as strong power’s are viewing the conflict through a prism of expansion, a theory of political dominos, or an issue of credibility. This makes them more politically vulnerable because the rational for waging a long war has to be justified on the home front to an increasingly adversarial population. The stronger power will often, according to Mack, abandon the war because of unrest at home on behalf of population or local elites (as Israel has done in several recent military engagements). Toft introduces the idea that while interest is a factor it is not the sole factor. The decisive element to the equation is known as strategic interaction.
In a conflict there is always a grand strategy (the totality of an actor’s resources devoted to the military, political, and economic objectives of the engagement) and the tactics (the art of fighting battles and specific instruments of war employed). According to Toft the objective of war is to compel the other actor to do its will. To understand this combination of grand strategy implemented through the tactics employed Toft identifies four specific types of engagement: two offensive, two defensive. Direct Attack is the use of force to capture an opponent’s values (cities, strategic assets, economic centers) and eliminate the opponent’s armed forces’ ability to resist (which Israel successfully utilized in the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973). Barbarism is a systematic violation of the laws of war (War Convention) directing violence at non-combatants via rape, torture, and genocide to achieve the military or political goals of the campaign (which Memshala Yisrael is relatively loath to do). Direct Defense is the use of armed forces to thwart an adversary’s capture or destruction of values (which Hamas avoids).  The goal is to cripple the advancing force. Guerrilla Warfare is the organization of a portion of the society to engage in irregular warfare while avoiding direct confrontation with the enemy. (This is the bulk of the security threat Memshala Yisrael must contend with.) Since every strategy is presumed to have an ideal counterstrategy Toft argues that these four strategic interactions in varying combinations are at the heart of explaining asymmetrical warfare scenarios where the weak win.

In a situation of Direct Attack v. Direct Defense nothing mediates the imbalance of one side’s armed forces. The defending, weaker power as a result most is almost certain to lose the interaction.  In the situation of Direct Attack v. Indirect Defense i.e.; guerrilla warfare; the forces of the attacker tend to kill large numbers of non-combatants in their attempt to uproot an irregular force. This stimulates weak-actor resistance. The defender has sacrificed values for the ability to engage the attacker when he is least prepared to resist. Values are sacrificed for time. In this scenario the weaker actor can win. With Indirect Attack v. Direct Defense attacks on civilian population centers generally harden the resolve of the defender and general acts of barbarism stiffen resistance to the enemy (as Suicide attacks and Israeli collective punishment have illustrated). In the case of Indirect Attack v. Indirect Defense where barbarism is used to repress an irregular campaign cases prove that the stronger power when willing to use barbarism on an occupied population soon make the costs of the guerrilla campaign too high to sustain (which Israel has not attempted to do). These are Toft’s strategic interaction outcomes.

In general Toft’s thesis supports the idea that each side is always better off using a mixed strategy; that is to say by using the opposite approach of the one being offered in resistance or attack. Anything that allows civilian participation in resistance, prolongs the conflict, and avoids direct engagements deflects a stronger conventional force. Whenever a stronger force can directly meet a weaker enemy or resorts to barbarism in the face of irregular warfare the weaker party is likely to lose. Toft therefore believes it is interaction not interest that explains the phenomenon of why the weak sometimes win.

Surprise is the essential feature of Guerrilla Warfare. In a circumstance where one cannot beat ones enemy in a direct confrontation the best approach is to draw out the conflict, attack when unexpected, and rely on civilian support. Passing off one’s forces as civilians but functioning as combatants; poses a challenge to the War Convention (on acceptable conduct under arms) by blurring the definition of combatant/non-combatant. If surrender is an explicit agreement and exchange: an actor stops fighting for benevolent quarantine. Than in guerrilla war the actor allows occupation (surrender) but carries on all the activities of a war. Guerillas don’t subvert the war convention by attacking civilians (as terrorists do): they invite the enemy to do that by hiding in their midst.

Walzer states that resistance is legitimate and the punishment of resistance is therefore also legitimate. There is a twofold justification for guerrilla action which serves as a framework for those that fight it. First, the people are no longer being defended by an army; the only army in the field is the army of the oppressors; the people are defending themselves. Second, if you want to fight them you are going to have to fight civilians and you won’t be war with an army you’ll be at war with a people and a nation. In this kind of war the lines are blurred.

Both Memshala Yisrael and the Islamic Resistance have incredible (and obvious) stake and interest in winning this war. However, the framework Israel has chosen to fight from make it particularly vulnerable to guerrilla attacks. Says Walzer: “Soldiers are supposed to protect civilians who stand behind them; guerrillas are protected by civilians among whom they stand.” Hamas completely blurs this line as does Israel with its national service mandatory conscription, but the reality is that Israel is still fighting the six day war, which worked in 1973, but hasn’t worked since. 

Embrace of Effects Based Operations (EBO)

The IDF has zealously embraced the American tactic of EBO. The aim of Effects Based Operations (EBO) is to paralyze the enemy’s operational ability in contrast to destroying its military force. According to Col. John Warden, the author of The Enemy as a System¹³ in which the idea of EBO was first developed; there are three preconditions to EBO use. First, the enemy has a system-like structure; second, the system has critical junctions; and third, there is sufficient familiarity with the enemy’s system and its critical junctions. The EBO system is designed to reduce casualties by using “Shock and Awe” tactics on key elements of the targeted actor’s infrastructure. This could include elimination of the leadership or bombardment of key communications components as was so successful in both the 1956 War in Sinai and the 1967 Six Day War in which Memshala Yisrael was engaged in pre-emptive strike against Soviet supplied Para-modern armies with fixed assets, critical junctions and top down chain of command. 

This strategy, in regards to Hamas and Hezbollah has failed with the Israelis for three reasons. First, Israel is unfamiliar with overall command structure (specifically identity and location of the external command of the HAMAS movement); second, the Islamic Resistance command structure is designed to reduce operational confusion by eliminating critical junctions (i.e.: granting autonomy to both regional divisions, infrastructure, and combat groups); and third, failing to utilize ground forces effectively Israel did not neutralize the bulk of  Hamas bunkers, tunnels, fighting groups; nor disable the groups arms cache or logistical pipelines by which the movement can be materially resupplied by its allies Syria and Iran.

EBO only works when coupled with an overwhelming use of force on the ground and Hamas has re-organized itself to function even if a break down occurs in its lines of command. Not only does it zealously protect the identity of external leadership outside the territories from which it receives state-sponsor funding, it has subdivided districts of command and control (seven districts with five sub-districts per sector) within the Gaza Strip and West Bank to enable fighters to operate if necessary without critical junctions by which a modern army would need to coordinate battle. 

 Each sector within the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is organized with the armaments it needs to hold out for long periods of time without needing to be re-supplied or issued direct orders from a central command. In this way Israel would have to seek out and destroy each and every combat group (totally embedded and harbored by the Palestinian population at large) and not rely on overwhelming aerial force to neutralize their ability to operate. As successive wars in Lebanon and Gaza have demonstrated, EBO is the tactic of the ‘last great war’ and using it is akin to fighting a land war in Asia. Not only does EBO fail against guerrilla armies, the primary deficit inflicts the greatest harm on the Palestinian civilian population while doing little to materially weaken the Islamic Resistance. In so far as tunnels remain open, an external leadership can raise funds abroad, and Hamas can continue to operate its network of grassroots social services EBO is in effect useless. If anything, by attacking these listed critical junctions maximum burden falls on the civilians of the Gaza Strip while providing propaganda value for Hamas. Unwilling to engage in re-occupation of the Strip and casualty intensive uprooting of underground logistics bases from which the resistance functions, Memshala Israel has directed operations largely utilizing targeted assassination in essence presuming individual leaders as critical junctions themselves.

Over Reliance on Air Power

The Israeli engagement in the Gaza War of 2008 was largely limited to air power. The IAF proved quite incapable of capturing of terminating large numbers of central leadership, disrupting supply tunnels, or accomplishing more than exacerbating an already grievous human rights disaster to little or no political or military gain. The reality is that while Hamas is certain to lose the firing mechanism (the launcher) anytime it fires a medium or long range missile from Gaza into Israel proper; there is (as was surely demonstrated in the 2006 Second War in Lebanon) little Israel can do to prevent Qassam or Katusha rocket fire simply because the launchers are cheap, mobile and ultimately disposable. 

Differentiating between military and civilian targets is therefore problematic if not impossible on both sides, precisely because Hamas uses most civilian facilities as covers for their military operations and can justify most reprisals on the Israeli public due to the complete mobilization of Israeli society into the war machine. The IAF was proven incapable of contending with Hezbollah’s short and medium range missile batteries where the signature is low, the firing mechanism simple and expendable, and the volume far higher. Hamas utilizing similar operating systems with an even lower signature in its prolonged siege of areas like Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderiot and Negev Settlements utilize simlar mechanics of operation while eliminating many of Hezbollah’s restraints on movement (i.e.: with similar weapons Hamas can strike the remaining key metropolitan urban areas of Israel; Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva and Eilat). As long as Islamic Resistance Fighters can set up and fire short range Qassam rockets close to the barrier wall with a range of 3-10 km depending on rocket class (1-3) the IAF can only cope with a part of the missile threat. And an ineffective part at that, back to the zero sum game of tit-for-tat reprisals. That is to say, failure to seriously commit ground forces led to engage a Hamas military arm leaves the organization still very much intact and the missile threat undiminished. 

Long and Medium Range rockets need to be fired from trucks or installations especially outfitted to fire missiles of this size. Since the Hamas rocket campaign is more psychological than material (15 Israeli deaths since 2001); further enlarging its short range arsenal allows Hamas optimum psychological impact in Israel without exposing the lives of its fighters to retaliatory strikes.  

Presumably the Israeli public and world opinion would not tolerate a highly casualty intensive re-occupation of the Strip by ground forces. The result of moving the necessary amount of troops into Gaza to disarm the Hamas Qassam brigades and demolish the numerous supply tunnels and subterranean bunker systems would result in a Grozny like atrocity. The Gaza Strip is the world’s most densely populated area with a population of 1.5 million. Hamas understands perfectly well that it can hold that strip for at least as long as the world will exert pressure on Israel (notably the Obama Administration and the EU) to disengage. Hamas is more than understanding of Israel’s unwillingness to engage in atrocity on the mass level or the Israeli public’s ability to tolerate a high threshold of causalities.   

The expectation that the IAF could single-handedly dispatch a highly organized guerrilla army on the ground gave rise to false expectations. The solution to short range launchers is better intelligence and the commitment of ground forces. As long as the Islamic Resistance controls the area from which short range rockets can hit Southern border cities; air force retaliation is not an effective deterrent. 

The options available are not attractive. Using ground forces to reoccupy Gaza will alienate Israel in the international community and commit the IDF to a method and theatre of fighting for which Hamas is better prepared to inflict substantial casualties. A second option relies on punitive strikes upon an area from which the missiles are launched which is called barbarism, collective punishment and a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Thus so far Israel pursues the second option. It’s the choice between the method that is ineffective and the method for which one’s enemy calls the terms of engagement. Being that the Israeli public is not likely to allow a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip due to the risk of life involved the remaining option remains with air power whose limitations we have illustrated above and whose implementation only hardens the resolve of those who support the Islamic Resistance.      

Inadequate Intelligence

Memshala Israel, like most state actors continues to fight the last war, with the last wars tactics. The bulk of its counter insurgency operations against Hamas are from the playbook of combating terror inflicted by 1970’s formations Black September, PFLP and the PLO (from a time when information could be purchased from collaborators with ease). The focus had been on secular-nationalist factions largely operating from abroad, with limited territorial infrastructure to win the hearts-minds-bread-basket game Hamas so ably administers. Not only did Memshala Yisrael encourage the rise of political Islam as a counter balance in the territories, it has achieved backwards operational familiarity with the more disciplined and horizontal style of command utilized by Hezbollah and Hamas, as taught by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As a result the IDF was in the largely in the dark at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, but more grievously during the brief Gaza War in three crucial intelligence arenas. 

In regards to weapons; Israel failed to contain the traffic of arms and munitions through tunnels into the Gaza Strip, thus allowing for a massive proliferation of small arms vital to attrition based urban fighting. Memshala Yisrael was also unclear as to what extend the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their surrogate in the region Hezbollah had facilitated training programs, infiltrated supplies and evolve  d the Hamas military arm into something of far greater combat proficiency. 

In regards to combat and defense tactics; the IDF trained in scenarios largely based on combating conventional force invasions from Arab states and Palestinian terror cells (akin more to Islamic Jihad than Hamas) found themselves in an “unfamiliar work environment” when the deployment of IDF ground forces occurred in a hyper-restricted manner. Simply put Israel was not prepared for the sophistication and training of the Islamic Resistance fighters because intelligence reports underestimated not just their size but depth of training.  

Critical failures in intelligence prioritization on behalf of the Shin Bet and Mossad contribute to misunderstanding and reactionary development of armed intervention. All of the military operations carried out in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Southern Lebanon in the last nine years have accomplished nothing in regards to deterrence.  The Islamic Resistance has in fact largely been strengthened because of them. The intelligence situation of the 1980’s and the field today are not comparable. Hamas and Hezbollah have maintained strict adherence to communications security and have left the IDF unprepared to deal with their military arms once hostilities resumed in 2000. Since the critical formation of Hamas and its internal security arm where once Israel might have had thousands of informants on payroll ready to sell out the resistance for coin and visa, Hamas has hunted down and murdered hundreds of informants, compartmentalized its command, and kept the identity of its external leadership secret from the military intelligence arms of Memshala Yisrael. 

Underestimation is a critical failure in asymmetrical warfare especially when it leads to gross unfamiliarity with the organizational structure of one’s adversary.      

Strategic Settlement

The settlements have become an integral part of the escalation of violence between Memshala Yisrael and Hamas. The surge in settlement activity on behalf of Likud government in an effort to create a permanent hold on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is viewed by the Hamas government and the Palestinian people as a whole as tantamount to ethnic cleansing of their land hill by hill. For by transplanting hundreds of thousands of Jews into the occupied territories the Israeli government has sought through settlement to effectively legitimize the annexation of the Palestinian land. The formation of the settlements has been a progression, their trends and development evolving in response to whatever coalition holds power in the Knesset. While the settlement program was initiated by the Begin government beginning in 1977, it has proceeded unabated even during brief periods of Avodah (Labor) and Kadima control. 

The Settlements are fortified civilian compound communities with the occupied territories captured in the six day war of 1967. While concentrations have been established in the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (until vacated in 2005) at the time of publication there are 280,000 settlers concentrated largely in the West Bank in 121 authorized settlements, as well as 190,000settlers in East Jerusalem and 102 unauthorized outposts of various sizes. 

Large commuter settlements like Mod’in Illit, Maale Adumim, Betar Illit, and Ariel are veritable mini-cities with near 40,000 plus residents. Some such as those in the Gush Etzion Bloc are ideologically dedicated to reclaiming lost or destroyed former holy sites such as those in and around Hebron. These sites continue to be one of the most divisive issues in the conflict as their supply and security involve vast restrictions on Palestinian movement and continuity of a future state. Hamas and every other Palestinian faction interpret settlement growth as ongoing attempts to seize and hold more of already diminished Palestine.

As stated, by 1967 Israel had conquered not only Gaza, the Golan and Sinai, but the region of Judea and Samaria known as the West Bank. In order to legitimize the conquest the Israeli government created military posts on seized or abandoned land to create a “security zone for the protection of the state”. This of course was another way to justify expansion. 

The original settlement wave, post the establishment of military compounds in outlying areas was started by the squatters of the Gush Emunim movement. They stressed the need to keep the whole of Israel intact by taking over land conquered during the Six Day War and creating armed encampments that could be expanded into towns to establish Jewish control. The Allon Plan, the intended plan of the state, sought to settle Israelis in the relatively unpopulated Jordan rift to create a buffer against future attack while consolidating Palestinian population centers into three mini-cantons. The Gush Emmunim, representing a more radical trend in settlement activity sought to position themselves near Palestinian population centers and holy sites under Palestinian control. Their activities were supported by the Begin government who legitimized widespread settlement activity and promised to help establish more upon coming to power in a landslide victory supported by the Sephardic Jews in 1977.

In order to establish a cold-peace with Egypt, Israel agreed to return the Sinai along with the settlements it had set up there. Israel had never before abandoned a settlement and the Begin government decided they would make up for the loss with a consolidation of the more ideologically significant West Bank. By the 1980’s the Memshala Yisrael said that it would create only ten settlements and enlarge the three existing ones, but the object was clear, consolidate a hold on the West bank by establishing settlements at strategic points that could be linked later and annexed into the state.

The Begin government held through the 1981 election by a slim margin by rapidly expanding the settlements before election day. At this time much of the population was greatly in favor of holding the settlements and the Begin government appealed to the people by promising to hold Judea and Samaria. They organized tours of the West Bank settlements and began a building project to expand them for thousands of families. The commuter settlement had been born.

The Drubles plan was put together by the World Zionist Organization called for an expansion of the settlements to accommodate 100,000 settlers. It was his belief that such an expansion could legitimize hold on the West Bank. This Program of 100,000 would become Israel’s new settlement policy. The problem was that Gush was running out of human resources and the state was short of volunteers. They created a land reclamation fund and began subsidizing immigrants move into the territories.  Hebron became a heated center of settler activity as religious zealots more radical than even the Gush movement began violent efforts to reclaim the Tomb of the Patriarch starting in 1981. As the government moved immigrants into newly constructed settlements, the zealots sought to drive Palestinians out of the Hebron holy sites which resulted in various riots and inter-communal violence.

By 1986 the 100,000 mark had been met and the courts had opened up much of the seized land for development. The Likud party was strong with the settler lobby and many non ideological settlements had been established through the subsidies.  While there was opposition on the basis of renewed attempts of land for the peace, by the early 1990’s the settlements were firmly established and had little intention of being removed by either Likud or Avodah governments.

The settlement strategy was piecemeal and waves would be followed by radical action and then by lulls. The settlements remain a crucial stumbling block for the peace process being that they are now at such a substantial population. Massive amounts of funding have gone into their creation and they must be defended against constant attack by the IDF. To Palestinians, they are a constant reminder of the permanent intent of the occupation and a prelude to finalized annexation. 

Apartheid Barrier

The security wall was not initially supported by the Sharon government due to the fact that it would harden a boundary that would allocate more land to the Palestinians than was considered desirable. As the Al-Aqsa Intifada intensified it became clear that pleasing the public and keeping hold of the land were not mutually exclusive. Israel’s far-left opposed the barrier on the grounds that such highhanded unilateralism would set back the peace process, but the political mainstream embraced the wall as a self-defensive measure to be implemented to stem the waves of suicide bombers largely emanating from the Nablus-Jenin-Tulkarm triangle.  

The security wall was originally intended to seal out the West bank along the 1967 border, but plans soon changed. The actual construction of the wall runs deep into Palestinian territory to incorporate the settlements into is defensive boundary. While the barrier in the north initially follows the 1967 border path, albeit built on the Palestinian side, the farther south the barrier runs, the more it starts to swerve and dip eastwards to include the settlements. It is the extent and reach of these detours from the Green Line that convinces Palestinians that the barrier is both a project for Israel’s security, but more a means to realize the colonial ambitions of the settler movement and its supporters. Several Palestinian population centers are trapped between the Green Line and the barrier. The inhabitants of these areas will be prohibited from entering Israel to the west, and barred from reaching their lands, businesses, and extended families in the West Bank to the east. 30,000 Palestinian farmers who live on the east side of the barrier are now cut off from their orchards, groves and farms on the western side. The UN reports that 160,000 dunams (36,000 acres) or 2% of the West Bank’s total land area, now falls on the Israeli side of the barrier. This brings Israel in control of a full 80% of country should a unilateral break be affected giving the East Bank (of the Wall) and Gaza for some incorporation into a future state. 

The Israeli government claims that the land has been seized for security reasons and that it is legitimized by law that they can utilize it until a threat no longer exists. To the Palestinians the wall looks less than temporary; an enormous investment has been made in it construction. The barrier is between 60 and 100 meters wide, built of concrete walls, electronic and razor-wire fences, trenches or ditches, and is surrounded by three roads: one to trace infiltrators, another for army patrols and a third wide one for tanks. The wall has cut many farmers off from their land and many have abandoned it. The Israelis use an old Ottoman law that states that if the land is abandoned for three years it can be claimed by the state. Since 1967, Israel has invoked this law to take over 60% of the West Bank as state land, to build 135 settlements and to transplant more3 than 500,000 of its Jewish citizens into occupied territory, including East Jerusalem. The wall and settlements will insure that a two state solution cannot be a viable reality as the “Palestinian State” will become little more than a patchwork isolated communities. Once this canonization reaches a critical juncture, disengagement will become politically impossible for any Israeli leader to accomplish. 

Management of Civilian Casualties

It is in fact commendable to both the Israeli Defense Forces (and intelligence services of the Mossad and Shebac) as well as to the Parties of Palestinian Resistance that so much restraint has been used.

This is not discount the many tens of thousands maimed, the tens of thousands of homes and lives destroyed, or the incalculable human suffering caused. But measure via raw, unsentimental body count; less than 10,000 men, women and children have dies in the bloodiest decade of intra-communal fighting these two groups have seen.

Compared to the two separatist wars in Chechnya: most estimates give figures of between 3,500 and 7,500 Russian military dead, between 3,000 and 15,000 Chechen militants dead, and no fewer than 35,000 civilian deaths—a total of at least 41,500 dead. Others have cited figures in the range of 80,000 to 100,000 in a period between 1994 and 1996. Round two of the fighting from 1999 to present is placed at 3,643 Russian soldiers, 1,722 Interior ministry troops and 1,045 Chechen police officers killed, 113 militants killed. Chechen civilian deaths in the Second conflict run between 25,000 killed and up to 5,000 “disappeared in filtration camps” to as high as 50,000 killed in various stages of shelling..

Comparable death tolls of non-combatant deaths in Darfur are placed at 300,000, in Rwanda at 800,000 and Sri Lanka at 80,000. These conflicts all took place after the start of the first Intifada. The devil in the details is that the Palestinians and Israelis show incredible, incredible restraint.   

Both Hamas and Memshala Yisrael accuse each other of war crimes and of the indiscriminate targeting of civilians; in fact both justify some of their more messy operations as retaliations for each other’s attacks. Israel claims that Hamas fighters hide weapons and command centers amid civilian neighborhoods and fire rockets from within civilian population centers (which they obviously do). And Hamas does not deny this at all claiming the basic principles of a guerrilla war. Hamas claims that suicide attacks and the firing of rockets at Israeli population centers is a reprisal for murdering Palestinian civilians and movement leadership. Hamas also contends that since virtually every member of Israeli society will be, is, or serving in reserve for the IDF; than the line between combatant and non-combatant is equally blurred in a fully war mobilized society. Israel thus finds itself in a difficult situation. It is dealing with a popularly supported guerrilla army shielded by a sophisticated Para-state apparatus (that is now the elected leadership of the PA) that is willingly shielded by the masses. Israel continues to engage in tactics that lead to the deaths of non-combatants further radicalizing the Palestinians in favor of the Islamic Resistance. 

This latest tit-for-tat cycle of retaliatory violence (directed against civilians) appears to have stemmed from the Goldstein massacre of 1996 when a revisionist settler opened fire in the Mosque of the Patriarchs killing 32 unarmed women and children. Just as the massacre in Deir Yassin triggered the massacre of the Mt. Scopus medical column, each side has unlimited justifications for political violence and unrestricted willingness to turn that violence against non-combatants, even if both sides non-combatants are directly or indirectly engaged in the struggle. An Israeli would say little Muhammad Dura would have surely grown up to support Hamas, and a Palestinian would claim that while it is objectionable to kill children, they would one day go off to join the IDF.

As per recent reports by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, during the period of fighting from 2005 until 2008 116 Israelis, including both civilians and security forces were killed in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories involved in “direct conflict related incidents” and 1,509 were injured. During this same time, 1,735 Palestinians, including civilians and militants from various groups, were killed and 8,308 wounded in “direct conflict related incidents”.

As compared to previous rounds of war, the Israeli ability to inflict harm increases while that of the Palestinians decreases, this result is not purely determined by an advance in Israeli counter-insurgency. It is as much via a Hamas change in tactics.

Assassination of Leadership

Since Mid 2001, Hamas has lost three of its founding members- Ismail Abu Shanan, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, and Abdel al-Aziz Rantisi- in addition to more than 300 cadres in Gaza and abroad. The assassinations increased popular support for Hamas which quickly recovered from the loss of its founders, although it became cautious about naming its new leader publically in an effort to protect their lives (Knudsen & Ezbidi, p.198).

There is probably no better example of a failed Israeli tactic in this regard. For each member of the Palestinian leadership, particularly Hamas, it terminates; the Israelis supply 100 more convicted zealots to the movement which so rewards the notion of martyrdom in the Jihad as if it were synonymous to charity or prayer. 

During the first Intifada Israel sought to decapitate the movement by deporting its primary and secondary leadership to Lebanon. The 417 leaders (of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad) were in fact delivered right into the open arms of Hezbollah movement. While the round up and deportation of major players of the first Intifada briefly united Fatah and Hamas (as well as much of the international community) in outrage against Israel, it did little to neutralize the nascent movement. In fact, not only did a long and active partnership between Sunni Hamas and Shi’a Iran form out of this deportation, the street credibility of Hamas skyrocketed. In fact, each time Memshala Yisrael deports a Hamas leader or arrests one, or has them ‘liquidated’, the organization evolves to tighten security, more radical leaders emerge and the Palestinian street celebrates the sacrifice of the group.

Hamas has vast pool of trained recruits and cadre to re-coup its ranks from. Drawn from a large body of sources and supporters, the horizontal nature of their structure; external/internal leaderships, Shura Council support from clerics, wide ranging and diffuse pools of recruitment, autonomous military units; all of this makes the Israeli EBO strategy of liquidating leaders little more than a political maneuver to their own people. 

Now with the Al-Aqsa Intifada underway a policy of liquidation, or what Israelis officially termed ‘targeted killing’, ‘pin-pointing attackers’, or ‘neutralizing the organizers of attacks’, namely Palestinian activists affiliated to Fatah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, was approved by the Cabinet. The aim of the policy was threefold: to weaken the Palestinian command on the ground, to deter new potential Palestinian leaders from joining the ranks; and perhaps most importantly, to foil and pre-empt Palestinian attackers- suicide bombers and others from carrying out their missions in Israeli towns and cities (Bregman, p.220). 

However, as best demonstrated with the botched assassination attempt in Jordan of Khaled Mish’al, the 200,000 plus Gaza City funeral procession for Sheik Yassin, or the countless instances of glorification within the Hamas ‘cult of martyrdom’; killing individual leaders (even on the highest level of command) has done the reverse of the intended effect. Rather than have an identifiable nemesis who might be brought to bargain, there are now multiple levels of leadership with varying influences (few of them moderate).  

Each leader Memshala Yisrael kills fuels the commitment within the ranks to strike back harder and more aggressively. Next to settlement construction and prisoners it is assassinations that provide the greatest fuel to the fire of Islamic resistance ignited by Hamas. 

Section 3: The Evolution of the Hamas Strategy

“I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews! We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land and our homes; they attacked our children and our women; they scattered us. All we want is our rights. We don’t want more.”

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin

Hamas Founder 

Localization of Jihad

To date, Hamas has not carried out a single attack outside of Green Line Israel and the occupied territories, nor has it deliberately targeted Westerners or foreign nationals whose governments support Israel. This is not to indicate that when you ignite your own body in a blaze of c4 and ball bearings indiscriminately hoping to slaughter civilians that some foreigners have not been killed. 

Hamas posits itself as the vanguard of Pan-Islamic revolution, but suffice to say it has very nationalistic goals that preclude its involvement in international Jihadist activities except in direct cooperation with Israel’s immediate enemies: Sudan, Syria, Hezbollah zones of control in Lebanon and of course Iran. While it may rhetorically support the actions of various international Jihadist groups, it hardly embraces an irrational utopianism akin to say, Al Qaeda. For that reason Hamas is loath to take symbolic of tactical acts of collaboration (such as those extended by Bin Laden and Chechen guerillas) for any cause not involving Israel and Palestine. It has a rational localized objective and does not distract itself with what it perceives as antagonistic actions (attacking the West and U.S.) that will only marginalize its fight with Israel. 

Iran and Syria have long term policy interests in a strong and militarily formidable Hamas and both countries have been formative in nurturing and supplying both Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanese Hezbollah with anything they needs. Both Damascus and Tehran have facilitated various factions within the resistance as a means of power projection in the Levant and in pursuit of harming their common enemy Memshala Yisrael. Over the years Hamas as made use of both foreign aid and training working as military a surrogate while it maintains its long term goal of an Islamic state in Palestine.

Syria is not interested in another head-on military clash with Israel that it is certain to once again lose. Its support for Hamas and Hezbollah falls in three main areas of interest. First, Hamas serves as a thorn in Israel’s side and reminder over the annexed Golan Heights that Syria 

seeks to keep in the focus of any peace settlement with Israel. Second, cross border war is bad for the Lebanese economy which in turn could displace the hundreds of thousands of Syria workers in Lebanon and exacerbate the refugee problem the Syrians already have. War by proxy minimizes this risk. Third, Syrian provoked wars with Israel further tarnish the Syrian relationship with the Lebanese people while working through Hezbollah and Hamas promotes pro-Syrian policies from indigenous proxies.

From the very beginning in 1982 Iran’s Revolutionary Guards supplied Hezbollah with the material and ideological support it needed to grow as an organization. As Hezbollah’s skill and arsenal developed it continued to rely on Iran for the tools it needed for its war with Israel. A product of the “export the revolution” policies of Khomeini; Hezbollah is dependent on Iran for all of its arms and much of its funding. Lebanon is home to the largest Shi’a Arab community second to Iraq and Hezbollah gives Iranian policy a platform in Lebanon. Contact with Hamas was initiated in 1986 and beginning in 1987 Iran began an arms and money pipeline hoping to shore up Sunni Hamas and Islamic Jihad as allies in the common fight against Israel.   

Both Syria in the way of movement logistics and Iran in the way of funding seek to use Hamas as their proxy in the war with Israel. Hamas over the years has exploited this reality to its advantage retain its own autonomy in voice and operations.

At times Israeli or American pundits and politicians attempt to claim that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are part of the larger ‘Islamo-fasciest’ constellation of ‘Global Jihadist’ groups united around the ideas of Al-Qaida. This mythology transforms the loosely affiliated, former-Mujahedeen of the Jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan into a shadowy transnational conspiracy. It (via the War on Terror) proceeds to lump a wide range of militant Islamic nationalist groups waging struggled with their near enemy (local corrupt regimes); with franchise type cellular networks willing to engage in indiscriminate violence against the far enemy (Israel and the West); along with state actors like North Korea, Iraq and Iran which endorse and fund terrorist insurgencies. This cluster of identities does not embrace a single world view, have a coordinated leadership, or share more than a wide constellation of perceived grievances.  Periodically Memshala Yisrael and the U.S. assert that Hamas is linked within the broader Al-Qaida network: an irrational and expansionist Islamic regime.  

It is true that Hamas has embraced terrorism since 1996. It is also true that numerous foreign nationals have been killed in its various attacks. It is further true that Hamas rhetorically makes statements in solidarity with various components of the Jihadist movement. It is true that Hamas receives state aid from Iran, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Libya in various degrees over time. It is true that Hamas has mutual aid and training alliances with Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and various wings of the Ikhwan. This does not mean that Hamas has ever, or will ever embrace indiscriminate violence against the West, nor will it materially support internationalist Islamist groups whose guns are not singularly turned on Israel. To that end Shi’a Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas, in sharing a common enemy (Israel) and common patrons (Iran and Syria) while not sharing a theological framework, engage in tactical mutual aid. Both however, clearly an explicitly denounced the 9/11 attacks on the trade center (while at the same time claiming the Pentagon was a valid military target). Both have not carried out a single attack (even against Israelis) on foreign soil. Both have limited nationalist goals (Shari’ah states in Lebanon and Palestine.)

While pariah states such as Syria, Sudan and Iran (for varying reasons) all provide vast degrees of support for Hamas, they too have only a limited interest in striking out at the Western far enemy. Sudan for ideological reasons provides Hamas supply conduits into Sinai but is more preoccupied with its internal civil war (read ethnic cleansing). Syria has a long term grievance over the Golan Heights that it fears will be permanently annexed to Israel in the event of any peace settlement. A long time enemy of Memshala Yisrael its capital Damascus is also a major base of operations for Hamas EXTERNAL leadership. Syria supplies land routes and training bases to move Iranian supplies into Palestine. However, as smuggling routes are far softer for infiltration via Sinai, Sudan and Syria are logistical bases for camps and smuggling, not financial powerhouses behind the movement. The real patron extraordinaire is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s leadership beyond its embrace of revolutionary Shi’ism remember the recent past of 1978 when it was Israel who trained and supported the Shah’s brutal internal security corps.

Memshala Yisrael and the world’s only Islamic republic are locked in a mortal combat of conflicting ideologies both with a road through Jerusalem. Hamas certainly embraces the old Chinese military adage that the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’, but that does not mean that the friend of Hamas’ enemy becomes its enemy. Hamas has no aspiration for a transnational Islamic revolution or a restoration of some golden aged Caliphate. It has a simple pragmatic aim; restoration of Palestine restored via localized nationalist resistance. 

Sophisticated command Structure

The Hamas structure, post-interaction and training via the Iran revolutionary guards has taken on the form of a highly evolved Para-state apparatus. Its structure is both difficult for Memshala Yisrael to engage and even more difficult to infiltrate. After repeated waves of imprisonment, assassination and deportation Hamas has taken moves to secure its leaders and further neutralize the forces within Gaza and the West Bank that have supplied information on its members and branches. 

Hamas is organized in four areas of operations. The Gaza Strip, under Hamas control since 2007 is at this stage their largest center for weapons caches, social services, recruitment and religious indoctrination. However, since their election to control of the PA and their armed seizure of the strip from the Fatah faction a year later, tight sanctions and security cordon has largely prevented members inside rte strip from leaving. The second area is the West Bank, now under the control of Mahmud Abbas led Fatah but Hamas still maintains vast organizational networks their via charities and Masjids, as well as numerous combat cells, particularly in the Jenin-Tulkarm-Nablus triangle. The third area is inside green-line Israel where Hamas enjoys varying degrees of logistical support and sympathy from the INSERT number Arab-Israelis. The fourth area are the training bases, regional command offices, fund raising fronts, and pipelines of arms that Hamas has established largely in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, and various cities in the West.

Hamas is led by and INTERNAL and an EXTERNAL leadership, guided by a carefully concealed Advisory Council called Majalis Shura. A Political Bureau (al-Maktab al-Siyasi) coordinates the various branches of the organization while shaping its poltical message and sanctioning its tactics. This Political Bureau is organized into five sub-division; Foreign Affairs, Finance, Propaganda, Internal Security, and Military Affairs. Both the internal leadership (residing within the territories) and the external leadership (abroad) hold various posts on the Political Bureau which relies on the Advisory Council for material support and theological rulings. While it is now fairly established who holds power on the Political Bureau, Hamas has managed to completely conceal both its leaders in the territories (Internal) and its secretive Shura Council. It is believed that this external leadership (which composes most of the Bureau) is at times at odds with leadership on the ground, but has classically exhibited more influence via access and coordination of foreign purse strings.

Directly subordinate to the Political Bureau are District Committees (five in the West Bank, seven in Gaza) which serve as local implementing bodies of Political Bureau (ie: external leadership) directives through intermediaries, largely unknown to Israel who are influential West Bank and Gazan organizers. These District Committees are largely political in nature, largely logistically autonomous and are only partially aware (beyond a few key spokes people in the Bureau) of the identities of other INTERNAL and EXTERNAL leadership. These Committees are organized into five sub-divisions: Education, Prisoner Support, Area Security, Publishing, and Finance. The Political Bureau operates in ‘informal affiliation’ with the multitude of Muslim Brotherhood controlled social services; particularly the Islamic Center (al-Mujumma al-Islami) the vast charity and mosque network founded by former Chairman Sheik Yassin; the Islamic University in Gaza which Hamas controls via its faculty and funding, a wide range of Hospitals, clinics, and professional associations; as well as the National Islamic Salvation Party (Hisb al-Khalas al-Witani al-Islmai).  

The twelve localized District Committees aid in the political-charitable-military interface, but are largely to further legitimate political ends of the movement. Most charitable work is being performed under the auspices of an informally affiliated subsidiary and military operations are carried out via autonomous combat groups.

Apart from the victims of guerrillas, few still identify irregular paramilitary warfare with terrorism but the two activities do overlap a great deal in their operational characteristics. The tactical logic of guerrilla operations resembles that in terrorist attacks: the weaker rebels use stealth and the cover of the civilian society to concentrate their striking power against one among many of the stronger enemy’s dispersed assets; they strike quickly and eliminate the target before the defender can move forces from other areas to respond; they melt back into civilian society to avoid detection and re-concentrate against another target. The government or occupier has far superior strength in terms of conventional military power, but cannot counter-concentrate in time because it has to defend all points, while the insurgent attacker can pick its targets at will (Betts, p.8).   

All Hamas fighters are mainly civilians that do not stay in the field outside of specific combat engagements. Thus, the Islamic Resistance is a reserve army that is sheltered by the population making it even harder for Israel to pinpoint specific members or sector leaders.  Islamic Resistance fighters are students at universities, farmers, and professionals in the major cities. Sector leaders can instruct a fighting group’s members to report to an Operational 

Headquarters where they receive their instructions before deployment. Once assembled the group is instructed by a Sector Commander on the specific nature of the operation. Fighters are then armed, uniformed, and put into the field.  

Hezbollah has a relatively flat and decentralized organizational structure, and compromises a network of territorial units operating almost autonomously and, generally, without the need for maneuvering forces or transporting supplies. The fighters, weapons, and supplies are deployed in the field in advance and blend easily within the civilian populations or in “nature reserves” (concealed bunker systems in valleys). On the other hand, Hezbollah does not have an operational center of gravity whose destruction would lead to the collapse of the organization’s other organs and obviate the need to destroy them individually (Tira, p.4). 

And it is the Hezbollah modal Hamas has embraced.

During the Gaza war Hamas generally refused to wear uniforms and defend fixed positions, Islamic Resistance fighters then are indistinguishable from civilians. Each member only has knowledge of the few other men in his combat group although Hamas is attempting to build a popular army in a Gaza to keep roughly 40,000 fighters in reserve. Because the Israeli army is trained for large scale engagements with aggressive Arab armies fighting from fixed positions this structure makes it difficult for the IDF to effectively stop Hezbollah because they are not fighting on the same playing field. That is to say Hezbollah maintains an indirect defense.

Bunker Systems

Since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Hamas has wasted no time in constructing elaborate fortifications throughout the strip, building elaborate bunker complexes, supply tunnels, and underground attack corridors under Israel’s security barrier. 

Although it was suspected that Hezbollah was building defensive fortifications, neither the UN peacekeepers nor the Israeli military had any idea as to the scale they had assisted the Palestinians. When Israeli troops discovered and dynamited one of the bunkers days after the cease-fire, they found a structure consisting of firing positions, operations rooms, medical facilities, lighting and ventilation systems, kitchens and bathrooms with hot water-sufficient for dozens of fighters to live underground for weeks (Blanford, p.7)  

Not only do the numerous Hamas bunkers allow the Party to conceal its low-signature mobile fleet of short range Qassam and Katyusha rocket launchers, it allows the Islamic Resistance to move and remain hidden long before the IAF makes retaliatory strikes. That is to say these sophisticated bunkers build with Iranian funding and technical support prevent the IDF from effectively neutralizing the Gaza Strip command posts of the Islamic Resistance without a protracted occupation and an unacceptable amount of casualties. 

The oddest deployment of ground forces took place in the last sixty hours of the fighting. The ground forces were deployed after the political campaign ended; in other words, the deployment was not intended to achieve any political objectives. The forces were deployed without the area being cleared of enemy combatants, i.e., the aim was not search, destroy, and inflict damage on Hezbollah’s firing capacity or its forces. When the ceasefire came into effect, IDF forces were interspersed with the enemy forces, and hence there were difficulties with land and air supplies (Tira, p.5).

Hamas ally Hezbollah was able to fire over 100 Katyusha rockets a day at Northern Israeli cities and Settlements because these bunkers allow them to unveil and quickly fire without the IAF being able to successfully pin point firing locations to neutralize the launcher and crew. Such installations once active in the Gaza Strip could target the reminder of Israel’s major population centers in the next round of hostilities. The bunker complexes also serve the vital function of concealing the Islamic Resistance Fighters. The approximately 20,000 fighters of the Izz Ed Din al-Qassam Brigades could never hope to withstand a direct confrontation with several Divisions of the IDF. In absence of centralized command or fixed fronts and positions the bunker complex allows fighter units to wait out Israeli advances and attack the Israeli supply lines once the IDF has passed deeper into urban territory. Basically, the Hezbollah inspired bunker system allows Hamas to make the best use of its guerrilla training and assets by forcing the IDF to fight on its terms in a theatre it controls and maintains civilian support. 

Short Range Rockets

Hamas, under the tutelage of Hezbollah (and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard) has begun a compartmentalization of military action moving away from suicide bombings (which Hamas is surely cognizant are inexplicable and anathema to the West) towards use of short range Qassam rockets as resistance modus-operandi.

Integral to the balance of fear is the constant and unpredictable nature of where and when Hamas can strike. In utilizing rockets not suicide attacks Palestinian resistance factions, replicating lessons learned in Lebanon via Hezbollah instinctually realize how alienating the West via suicide bombings makes it harder to paint themselves as freedom fighters as opposed to terrorists. Rockets which don’t cost much to produce and fire (and rarely sacrifice trained operatives to do so) are a dual result of three factors, a) the effectiveness of the security barrier, b) a Hamas evolution and understanding of how the Western media views their ‘martyrdom operations’, and c) internal debate regarding the religious justification for sacrifice vs. suicide in Jihad.

During the Al-Aqsa Intifada Hamas began production (under Iranian ) tutelage of a domestic arms industry. The product was the Qassam-1 Rocket, a short range missile that could be built out of a wide range of household and construction items available in Gaza to fire a protracted battery of rockets over the wall into Israel proper. The early modals had a maximum range of 3 miles (4.5 kilometers). Most of the suicide attacks of the Al-Aqsa intifada occurred between 2000 and 2004, prior to the construction of the security barrier, largely using operatives form the West Bank. The Qassam missile strategy is to instill a renewed balance of fear, and enable besieged Gaza to strike at various surrounding areas. To date 15 Israelis have died from Qassam rocket attacks which have become increasingly sophisticated and longer in range. Thousands of these homemade rockets have fallen on the Israeli town of Sderiot and during the 2008 Gaza War of Operation Cast Lead; Hamas demonstrated it could fire Qassam 3 and Katusha rockets as deep into Israel as the largest Southern City:(4^th largest in Israel) Be’er Sheva. 

The Qassam Rocket class 1-3 are quickly produced out of basic goods both available from the UN relief agencies and more sophisticated via smuggling operations through the Sinai tunnels. The Qassam is propelled via a mixture of sugar (available via relief organizations) and potassium nitrate (found in fertilizer). The explosive war head is packed with TNT (smuggled in) and urea nitrate (another readily available fertilizer). The rocket is constructed out of steel cylinders of varying sizes (UN relief or scavenged pipes) and a simple trigger mechanism is then  

built at the end out of a cartridge, spring and nail. The Qassam is impossible to aim and thus what it hits is purely up to probability and direction of firing. The manufacturers of the Qassam rocket class do not have canted nozzles (the rocket thus doesn’t spin), this is to simplify launch procedure at the expense of accuracy which is nil with home-made short range missiles to begin with. The Qassam’s basic components are highly unstable which prevents a stockpiling and barrage type tactic. Instead, missiles are built and quickly fired in order to create the low intensity version of the terror inflicted via their suicide attacks. 

Suicide Terrorism

Suicide bombings are undoubtedly the most contentious element of Palestinian resistance. They merit equal condemnation with Israel’s killing of civilians; yet it is important to explain why some individuals carry out these acts, as well as why some groups promote their use. The explanation resides neither in the propagandized version of Islam (which says the bombers are brainwashed to believe that if they die martyred they will go to paradise, where some 72 virgins await them). Neither is it because they hate Jews and want to kill as many as possible. Fundamentally, the explanation is to be found in despair so overwhelming that these individuals believe they have no future and thus they are willing to sacrifice themselves. In the context of occupation, and the Israeli’s daily assaults on their families and friends, the despair combines with rage and an explosive desire for revenge fuels their actions (Rubenberg, pp.338-339.)

The Palestinians are in a comparable position to the Jews of the early 19^th century, their homeland in the hands of a foreign power, their numbers divided among many continents and nations, their collective welfare in the hands of squabbling political factions. They live in ghettos, the bulk of their number in poverty with little chance for social and political advancement. The Israelis on the other hand possess international recognition by the world’s great powers, a modern conventional military capable of defeating all other forces in the region on the battlefield with the possible exception of the Islamic Republic of Iran; as well a vibrant economy, and the ability to strike at Palestinian leadership and population centers with near impunity.

Palestinian organizations that use martyrdom operations maintain that they never target children. They insist that they target predominantly army personnel, and that any attacks on civilians are either unintended or inevitable, as long as Israel continues to target Palestinian civilians. Additionally, they argue that Israel is a military state where every man and woman, part from the ultra-Orthodox Jews, serves in the army. They explain that they target buses because soldiers travel in them. They target bars and night clubs because these are meeting places for off-duty service men and women who earlier in the day would be actively engaged in military operations in the occupied territories (Tamimi, p.186).

A great body of scholarship has been done on the motivations for, psychology of and history behind suicide bombings, called by Hamas ‘martyrdom operations’. Hamas began utilizing this tactic operationally in 1996 and is to date the leading Palestinian faction in its prolific use. However, as documented a combination of a) Iranian influence, b) the separation and barrier and c) internal religious discourse has led to a discontinuation of suicide bombings in the past few years. Of course this does not preclude their total discontinuation, but it appears that Hamas seeks to develop more conventional military capabilities to achieve some degree of recognition as a guerrilla army, not as a terrorist group.

The Iranian influence is very important in this regard. Although Shi’a Hezbollah inflicted heavy causalities against France, America and Israel during the Lebanese Civil War via the use of suicide truck bombs, by and large Shi’a revolutionary groups draw a hard line between combatant and non-combatant which makes fatwa based justification of suicide bombings directed at civilian population centers impossible to justify on a religious grounds. Iran (next too foreign money raised to run al-Mujamma charities) is the largest financial contributor to the Hamas movement. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has provided engineering support, training facilities, weapons, and a whole range of contributions which lend the Hamas ear to the powers in Tehran. Hamas, as a keen student of history has evolved its tactics since 2000 to more closely resemble Hezbollah, the Shi’a Lebanese proxy of Iran.

It is far easier to rationalize a missile fired toward an enemy city as an act of war (albeit without a targeting system) than is a cross-dressed man in a lethal leisure suit lighting up a club of underage kids with ball bearings. 

It is of importance to recognize that from the outset there has been a debate within Hamas as to whether these kinds of attacks are even permissible in Islam. Desperation being the mother of violent invention, it is clear that Hamas initially embraced these ‘martyrdom operations’ in the hopeless days of the first intifada and intensified them after the death of Oslo in the Al-Aqsa intifada of 2000. The Iranian embrace hands Hamas more deadly tools and training, but forges them into an army of resistance fighters who must then act like soldiers, not desperate terrorists eager for death and revenge.

Section 4: Hamas as a Partner in Separation

“I have also shown to you already that, in our submission, there is no question of ousting the Arabs. On the contrary, the idea is that Palestine on both sides of the Jordan should hold Arabs, their progeny and many millions of Jews. What I do not deny is that in that process the Arabs of Palestine will necessarily become a minority in the country of Palestine. 

What I do deny is that it will be a hardship.”

Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky

Founder of Revisionist Zionism

There comes a time beyond outsider pontification, and insider political imagination when the forces on the ground most come to the realistic calculus that the end game for this conflict must be in separation. As we have outlined, militarily neither side’s strategy proves remarkably affective at eliminating the other, and certainly hardens the resolve of both confessions. Historically, each has a vague historical (and at the same time existentially immediate) claim to this land. Religious zeal aside there is overwhelming archeological proof of this being the historical Hebrew homeland, and suffice to say the Dome of the Rock occupies its place as Islam’s third holiest site. From a human rights perspective the Palestinian people, cognizant of a nationalist identity or not, were living on this land for at least the last 1,930 years. 

The mindset and values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of bi-national statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds (Morris, p.187).

Surely Israeli society is an incredibly diverse one in both ethnicity and political perspective. It has vast potential to be an exporter of development, science and structural development of the third world once it can divest itself form this war. Surely Palestinian fundamentalisms and Hebrew fundamentalisms are not the desired ends of either peoples, but a part and parcel result of this war.

To end the war we must sepearte the combatants, but this task must fall upon the sholders of the hardliners; the Revisionists and Hamas who can at present muster the poltical will to take this bold step. To cantonize and ghettoize the Gaza Strip and West Bank into inviable micro-states will not end this conflict. The sepeartion must be imlimented and development must follow.

Hamas has in recent years undergone an incremental process of political integration, a process mostly ignored by the movement’s foes and detractors. It has displayed political and tactical moderation, including keeping unilateral ceasefires until June 2006, abandoning the claim to mandatory Palestine and accepting a two-state solution comprising the 1967 territories. Hamas has not, however, complied with external pressures to abandon armed resistance, disarm and recognize Israel. The main reason for doing so is not only ideological, but strategic: complying with the demands would leave Hamas without any credible sanctions in the final-status negotiations that until now have been the only scenario for a lasting peace (Knudsen & Ezbidi, p. 204).

We are at the brink. The demographic realty is that within twenty years there will be an equal number of Arabs and Jews occupying the territorial space of Palestine, this will not broad well for either Israel’s commitment to democracy or the Palestinian’s already diminished human rights. The willingness of Iran to fuel violence by proxy as well as the total lack of dialogue and cultural exchange within the Middle East between the Muslim nations and the third Hebrew commonwealth leaves no lasting avenues for human exchange. Vultures swoop over Palestine and both the Christian and Muslim world have explicitly demonstrated their zeal to use both Jew and Palestinian as pawns in a game.   

If Hamas will not put down its guns (and who could rationally expect it to) or acknowledge the right of the Jews to occupy their land, then let us work with what they have offered for some time. The premise of Hudna: long term truce. 

Hamas is silent about what happens when a notional long term Hudna signed with the Israelis comes to its appointed end. While Hamas’ leaders have left open the length of the term of the proposed Hudna, regarding this as subject of negotiation with the Israelis once they have accepted the principle, their general philosophy is that the future should be left up to future generations. It is usually assumed that a long term Hudna will probably last for a quarter of a century or more. That is viewed as too long a time for anyone now to predict what may happen afterward. There will always be a possibility that the Hudna will come to a premature end because of a breach. If that were to occur, it would be unlikely that the breach would come from the Hamas side. This is for the simple reason that it is a religious obligation on the Islamic side to honor such an agreement until the end, once made, unless violated by another party. Should the Hudna last until the proscribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiate a renewal (Azzam, p.168).

Were emerging, strong Israeli leaders able to the muster the will of their divided society to accept their sworn enemy Hamas as a partner in Hudna it might have lasting impacts that would shake the region to the core. The signing of such a truce need not happen on the Lawn of the White House or need be rewarded with some Nobel Prize. The proof of its worth would be in its results. The objective would be simple to grasp. The House of Israel and the House of Ishmael have been sixty years and more locked in bloody combat. To stop the war one need not peace, but instead the structural pursuit of lasting ceasefire coupled with a program to build two economically healthy nations with intertwined need. 

Surely the Jewish radicals of the Kach underground and Gush Emunim would prefer a Jewish civil war to a lasting partition, surely no one on either side wishes to give an inch. But this program is an inch by inch reclamation coupled with one more territorial reality. Other than Egypt, Israel and Iran what county in the region has any claim to historical borders other than those imposed by Sykes-Picot. That is to say that the Palestinian Diaspora must surely be aware the extent to which the Arab regional powers owe them, have failed them and have despised them.  

A Hudna, signed by a Zionist government and Hamas would be an act of covenant not international relations. To Hamas it would be a holy act and an existential necessity to prove the validity of Islamism in Palestine. To Memshala Israel it would mean a settlement of a prolonged drain on its nation’s coffers and moral and an opening of its society to the developing world. As per the Blue Print, not the Road Map: Jerusalem would be divided (the Palestinians would maintain control over the Temple Mount, Christian and Muslim Quarters and the East of the City as AL Quds). The West Bank and Gaza Strip would be supplemented by additional territories in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Sinai; settlements would be exchanged for Arab towns and land would be purchased (or simply seized) from neighboring countries unwilling to endorse this lasting truce. Refugees abroad would have the right to return to newly constituted Palestine and those with specific claims to land and property inside Israel proper would be bought out and compensated. Hamas would have free reign to Islamize Palestine in so far as it did so within a Democratic sphere and allowed secular space in its new society. But, even if it refused to moderate its zeal for religion, it would be empowered by Israel to dismantle the armed forces of all other factions and be the sole army on the ground.

The messy business of a population transfer must begin immediately at the off set of implementation. It goes without saying that Israel’s Arab Israeli population will seek and lobby to have their Palestinian cake and eat it too as it were. That is to say some will find it far easier to live as second class citizens in a multi-ethnic Hebrew dominated commonwealth, then as forced participants in a newly independent, Shari’ah dominated Palestinian nascent state. Suffice to say these are the painful realities of survival. Israel cannot maintain even a minute percentage of 20% Arab population within its borders; so-called Arab Israelis, Bedouin, and any Druze unwilling to serve in the armed forces will find themselves on the other side of the line.

This process must proceed in staged evacuations one for one; one settlement block for one Arab Israeli town, there will be misery, separation anxiety, and great soul searching as to moral justification and long term finality of peace. There will be obvious Palestinian anxiety on absorbing a largely secular, more affluent Arab-Israeli middle class, and finalizing the loss of sum 78% of their historic territory to the Zionists. The Israeli public will surely grieve the infighting of evacuating 200,000 plus settlers from the West Bank and ceding any claim to East Jerusalem, “Judea” and “Samaria”. But it is the very homes of the settlers, their infrastructure, their roads, their settlements into which the larger Arab Israeli evacuees must be placed. 

I reiterate that this process will not be easy, nor will it be quickly accomplished. There will be resistance on the part of the settlers, anticipatively armed resistance; and there will be obvious international objection to the forced deportation of the Arab-Israeli into the newly created Gaza-West Bank Palestine.

The vital stage must be to insure that Memshala Yisrael and Hamas dominated PA work together to implement this transfer and maintain Hudna with the realization that territorial integrity of their respective nations is vital.

It is irrelevant as to whether Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, or if the final treaty implementing the separation plan is one of ‘peace’ or instead ‘Hudna’. It is irrelevant if the two sides agree to a 10 year truce, a 60 year truce, or a 100 year truce. Phase 1 is separation in its most utter form, the sealing of each side behind their lines. As the Jew and Arab are separated from each other’s forced and hateful embrace the iron wall must be strengthened. The separation barrier must be built taller and its gates must be locked on both sides. For in the period of Hudna there must arise a new generation who does not remember the war or the blood spilled in repetition. 

The common media adage suggests that the Arab world is particularly hostile to democracy. In virtually all but a single regional state a cruel military oligarchy rules with a junta and an iron fist. Surely, second to Israel the greatest acknowledged enemy of the Arab masses are their own governments. However, in both Israel and occupied Palestine the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly demonstrated a zeal for both democratic process and a commitment to civic society. Although the election of the Hamas government was a seemingly critical blow to the trampled peace process, it has not been argued that this was not a supervised and legitimate expression of Palestinian democracy. Within Israel itself the Arab parties and the 1.3 million Arab-Israeli Palestinians participate in the regions only democracy, within the Jewish State.

We are not dealing with howling mullah unfamiliar with Western ideas of statecraft. The Blue Print as a plan is flexible and staged in its intricate redrafting of the Middle Eastern Map, its specifics are for another treatise at another time. Paramount to the survival of both people’s is a rational acknowledgment that they have failed for nearly 100 years at both peace and war. Surely some of the responsibility for rebuilding the Palestinian nation falls on the oil oligarchies and the European Union, just as surely does America have a long term relationship with Israel. But, before any realistic mobilization of these respective mini-states can be used to demonstrate Democratic Islamism and Zionist Universalism respectively; they must stop the war.

It has been found that social movements like those which are responsible for the modern concepts of Israel and Palestine thrive on ‘imagined community’, strictly defined identity, and symbols of some historical Golden Age. When coupled with religion a social movement has the ability to draw from a deep well of support and sustain a struggle indefinitely.

The acronym for Hamas translates to the word Zeal. There was once a group of Hebrew revolutionaries in the year 66 CE that carried the same name in their war with an occupying power the Roman Empire. Their faction, the Zealots and Sicarii carried out merciless acts of terrorism against their own people and the Roman occupiers. The Hebrew people are ‘stiff necked’ the Torah says, prone to stubborn arrogance as well as religious fervor.  I am not a man of peace, but a man of pragmatism. If on this wide earth the Hebrew and Palestinian people have found no meaningful source of shelter and security for their respective kind; if locked in bloody struggle the sins of Europe and the sins of Arab oligarchy are channeling both out houses to cosmic, unending war; then we must separate and do so quickly.

If in a simple ten year Hudna both Houses can be made relatively homogonous and their peoples can, uninterrupted by siege and war build two nations, side by side. Then one day, as each subsequent Hudna is renewed the fundamentalists on both sides will find their grasp weakened, they will find blue jeans and art museums are more to the mass appeal than puritanical embrace of religion. The time to act is now. The leaderships of both houses are old men who know nothing but war. But old men die. Younger more visionary leaders who forge their respective nations in the prism of human rights not theological canon can from inside their war torn land and from its vast Diaspora bring both peoples apart and then raise them up side by side together.

Summary of Appendices

Appendix 1: Maps of Israel Palestine

Appendix 2: Hamas Attacks by Year

Appendix 3: Assassinations carried out by Israel

Appendix 4: Total civilian/military casualties in Second Intifada

Appendix 5: ‘Road Map’ highlights and benchmarks

Appendix 6: ‘Blue Print 3’ highlights and benchmarks

Appendix 7: List of Israeli political parties and factions

Appendix 8: List of Palestinian parties and factions

Appendix 1: Maps of Israel Palestine

Appendix 2: Hamas Attacks 1993-2005 

1993

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Mehola Junction bombing	April 16, 1993	Mehola Junction, Palestinian Territories	1	Hamas claimed responsibility.[1]Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

1994

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Afula Bus suicide bombing	April 6, 1994	Afula	8	Hamas claimed responsibility. Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Hadera central station suicide bombing	April 13, 1994	Hadera	6	Hamas claimed responsibility. Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Tel Aviv bus 5 suicide bombing	October 19, 1994	Tel Aviv	21	Attributed to Hamas
Netzarim Junction	November 11, 1994	Netzarim	3	Hamas claimed responsibility. Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

1995

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Egged bus 36 bombing	April 9, 1995	Vicinity of Kfar Darom	9
Ramat Gan bus 20 bombing	July 24, 1995	Ramat Gan	6
Jerusalem bus 26 bombing	August 21, 1995	Jerusalem	4	Police Chief Noam Eisenman was killed

1996

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Ashqelon bus station bombing	February 25, 1996	Ashqelon	1
First Jerusalem bus 18 suicide bombing	February 25, 1996	Jerusalem Central Bus station	27
Second Jerusalem bus 18 suicide bombing	March 3, 1996	Jaffa street, Jerusalem	20
Dizengoff Center suicide bombing	March 4, 1996	Tel Aviv	13	Attributed to Hamas. Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

1997

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Cafe Appropo Bombing	March 21, 1997	Tel Aviv	3
Mahane Yehuda Market attack	July 30, 1997	Jerusalem main market	16
Ben Yehuda Street Bombing	September 4, 1997	Jerusalem Ben Yehuda Street	5

1999

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Egged Bus 960 bombing	September 5, 1999	Tveria	None
Haifa Central Bus Station bombing	September 5, 1999	Haifa	None

2000

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Mechula bombing	December 22, 2000	Mechula Junction	None

2001

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Netanya centre bombing	January 1, 2001	Netanya	None
Netanyah bombing	March 4, 2001	Netanya	3
Mifgash Shalom attack	March 28, 2001	Mifgash Shalom gas station, Kfar Sava	2
Kfar Sava bombing	April 22, 2001	Kfar Sava	1	Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility
Kenyon HaSharon bombing	May 18, 2001	HaSharon shopping mall, Netanya	5
Hadera Mall bombing	May 25, 2001	Hadera	None
Dolphinarium discotheque suicide bombing	June 1, 2001	Tel Aviv	21	All of he 21 killed were immigrant teenagers from the former Soviet Union.
Binyamina train station bombing	July 16, 2001	Binyamina	2	Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing	August 9, 2001	Downtown Jerusalem	15	Carried out together with Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Nahariya train station bombing	September 9, 2001	Nahariya train station	3	Suicide bomber was an Arab Israeli citizen
Erez Passage bombing	October 7, 2001	Erez Passage near Gaza	None
Ben Yehuda Street Bombing	December 1, 2001	Downtown Jerusalem	11
Haifa Bus 16 attack	December 2, 2001	Haifa	15
Hilton Mamilla bombing	December 5, 2001	Mamilla, Jerusalem	11 injured		Carried out together with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Neve Dkalim bombing	December 12, 2001	Neve Dkalim	None

2002

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Jaffa Street bombing	January 27, 2002	Jerusalem	1	First Female suicide bomber in Al-Aqsa Intifada
Taibe bombing	January 31, 2002	Taibe	None
Maccabim bombing	February 27, 2002	Maccabim	None
Café Moment bombing	March 9, 2002	Rehavia, Jerusalem	11
Egged bus 22 bombing	March 17, 2002	Jerusalem	None
Passover Massacre	March 27, 2002	Park Hotel, Netanya	30	Suicide attack in Passover ceremony in Park Hotel. Carried out together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Matza restaurant suicide bombing	March 31, 2002	Haifa	15
Efrat Medical Center	March 31, 2002	Efrat	None
Rishon LeZion attack	May 7, 2002	Rishon LeZion	16
Netanya Market bombing	May 19, 2002	Netanya	3	Carried out together with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Afula road bombing	May 20, 2002	Afula	None
Rothschild Street bombing	May 22, 2002	Rishon Lezion	2
Shawarmat Jamil Sokolov Street bombing	June 11, 2002	Herzliyyāh	1
Patt junction bus bombing	June 18, 2002	Jerusalem	19
Emmanuel bus attack	July 16, 2002	Emmanuel–Bnei Brak bus 189	9
Neve Shanan Street bombing	July 17, 2002	Southern Tel Aviv	5
Neviim Street bombing	July 30, 2002	Jerusalem	None
‘Frank Sinatra’ bombing	July 31, 2002	Hebrew University, Jerusalem	9	Included American and French casualties. Bomber was from East Jerusalem
Meron Junction Bus 361 attack	August 4, 2002	Meron Junction	9	Bomber with Israeli citizenship.
Tel Aviv synagogue attack	September 19, 2002	bus 4, bear the Great Synagogue, Tel Aviv	6
Geha road bombing	October 10, 2002	Bar-Ilan interchange, Geha road	1
Jerusalem bus 20 suicide bombing	November 21, 2002	Kiryat Menahem, Jerusalem	11

2003

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Haifa bus 37 suicide bombing	March 5, 2003	Carmeliya neighborhood, Haifa	17	Carried out by Hamas member and attributed to Hamas, yet never acknowledged.
Mike’s Place bombing	April 30, 2003	Mike’s Place pub, Tel Aviv	3	Carried out by British citizens of Pakistani descent and together with al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.
Gross square attack	May 17, 2003	Gross square, Hebron	2
Jerusalem bus 6 bombing	May 18, 2003	Jerusalem	7
Kenyon Afula bombing	May 19, 2003	Afula shopping center	3
Jerusalem bus 14A attack	June 11, 2003	Downtown Jerusalem	17
Bus station Ariel bombing	August 12, 2003	Ariel	2
Jerusalem bus 2 suicide bombing	August 19, 2003	Shmuel Hanavi, Jerusalem	23
Tzrifin attack	September 9, 2003	Bus stop near Tzrifin army base	8
Hillel Cafe bombing	September 9, 2003	Hillel Cafe, Jerusalem	7

2004

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Ashdod Port attack	March 14, 2004	Port of Ashdod	10	Carried out together with Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades
First Erez border crossing attack	April 14, 2004	Erez Crossing, Gaza Strip	4	Carried out together with Fatah
Second Erez border crossing attack	April 17, 2004	Erez Crossing, Gaza Strip	1	Carried out together with Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades
Beersheba attack	August 31, 2004	Downtown Beersheba in buses 7 and 12	16

2005

In 2005, Israeli security forces foiled and arrested 29 Hamas suicide-bombers.

Name	Date	Location	Death Toll	Notes
Karni border crossing attack	January 13, 2005	Karni crossing, Gaza Strip	6	Carried out together with Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees
Gush Katif checkpoint attack	January 18, 2005	Gush Katif, Gaza Strip	4

Total number of fatalities, by year

Year	Total
1994	38
1995	10
1996	59
1997	24
2001	78
2002	141
2003	89
2004	31
2005	10
Total	480

Appendix 3: Assassinations carried out by Memshala Israel

1990s

January 6, 1996	Gaza strip	Yahya Ayyash	“The Engineer”, a bombmaker for Hamas	Killed by a bomb planted in a cell phone.	SHABAK.
September 25, 1997	Amman	Failed attempt to poison Khaled Mashaal	Hamas political leader	Two Mossad agents captured. Israel provided antidote after pressure by Clinton. Canada withdraws Ambassador.	Agents have Canadian passports.

2000s

Date	Place	Target	Description	Action	Executor
November 22, 2000	Gaza Strip	Jamal Abdel Raziq	Senior official of the Fatah faction Tanzim	Killed with his driver, Awni Dhuheir, when their car is fired upon by IDF troops in Gaza. Two innocent bystanders in the car in front of Abdel Raziq—Sami Abu Laban, 29, a baker, and Na’el Al Leddawi, 22, a student—also killed in the attack.[6][7]	IDF
February 3, 2001	Gaza Strip	Massoud Ayyad	Lieutenant-colonel in Force 17	Killed while driving in the Jabaliya refugee camp by three helicopter launched rockets.[8]	IDF
July 31, 2001		Jamal Mansour	High ranking official of Hamas’ West Bank political wing	Killed when his office is struck by helicopter launched missiles.[9]	IDF
August 20, 2001	Hebron, West Bank	Imad Abu Sneneh	Leader of Tanzim	Shot and killed.	Israeli undercover team
January 14, 2002	Tulkarem, West Bank	Raed Karmi	Head of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades	Killed by blast.
July 22, 2002		Salah Shahade	Leader of Hamas Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades	Killed using 2,205 pound of explosive dropped by an F-16. The attack also killed his wife and 9 children.
March 8, 2003	Gaza City	Ibrahim al-Makadmeh		He and three of his aides were killed by helicopter-fired missiles
August 21, 2003		Ismail Abu Shanab	High ranking Hamas official
March 22, 2004	Gaza Strip	Ahmed Yassin	Co-founder and leader of Hamas	He and bodyguards are killed in when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.	IAF
April 17, 2004		Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi	Co-founder and leader of Hamas and successor of Ahmed Yassin as leader of Hamas after his death	Killed by helicopter-fired missiles along with his son.
October 21, 2004		Adnan al-Ghoul	Hamas weapons expert	He and Imad Abbas were killed when an Apache helicopter fired missiles at their car.
May 25, 2006	Sidon, Lebanon	Mahmoud al-Majzoub	Commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad	Injured in a car bombing and died the next day. Islamic Jihad blamed Israel, though Israel denied it.
June 8, 2006		Jamal Abu Samhadana		Killed by an Israeli airstrike along with at least three other PRC members.
January 16, 2008	Qabatiya, Westbank	Walid Obeidi	Commander of Islamic Jihad‘s al-Quds Brigade	Gunned down by Israeli commandos.	IDF
February 12, 2008	Damascus	Imad Mughniyah	Top Hezbollah commander	Assassinated by a car bomb. Some news reports indicated the Mossad was responsible, though Israel denied carrying it out.
August 1, 2008		Muhammad Suleiman	Syrian General and top liaison between Syria and Hezbollah	Killed by sniper fire. Israel never takes credit for the killing but is widely suspected.
December 16, 2008	Jenin, West Bank	Jihad Nawahda	Top Islamic Jihad commander	Ambushed and killed by undercover Israeli troops as he enters an internet cafe.
December 27, 2008	Gaza Strip	Tawfiq Jabber	Commander of Hamas’ police force in Gaza	Killed in the opening strike of Operation Cast Lead.	IAF
December 27, 2008	Gaza Strip	Ismail al-Ja’abri	Commander of the defense and security directorate	Killed in the opening strike of Operation Cast Lead.	IAF
December 27, 2008	Gaza Strip	Abu-Ahmad Ashur	Hamas’ Gaza central district governor	Killed in the opening strike of Operation Cast Lead.	IAF
January 1, 2009		Nizar Rayan	Top Hamas military commander and decision maker	Assassinated in an Israeli air strike, along with his four wives and eleven of their children. He is the most senior Hamas member to be killed since 2004.
January 3, 2009		Abu Zakaria al-Jamal	Senior Hamas commander	Killed in an Israeli air strike.
January 15, 2009		Said Seyam	Hamas Interior Minister	Killed in an Israeli air strike that also claimed his brother, his son, and Hamas general security services commander Salah Abu Shrakh.
March 4, 2009	Gaza Strip	Khaled Shalan	Senior member of Islamic Jihad	Killed in an Israeli air strike as retaliation for Palestinian rocket attacks on the Israeli city of Ashkelon.	IAF
May 27, 2009	Dura, Westbank	Abd el-Majid Dudin	Major Hamas commander in West Bank	Killed by gunfire during an Israeli raid.	YAMAM

Appendix 4: Total civilian/military casualties in Second Intifada

Appendix 5: ‘Road Map’ highlights and benchmarks

• Phase I: End to Palestinian violence; Palestinian political reform; Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities and freeze on settlement expansion; Palestinian elections.
• Phase II: International Conference to support Palestinian economic recovery and launch a process, leading to establishment of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders; revival of multilateral engagement on issues including regional water resources, environment, economic development, refugees, and arms control issues; Arab states restore pre-intifada links to Israel (trade offices, etc.).
• Phase III Second international conference; permanent status agreement and end of conflict; agreement on final borders, clarification of the highly controversial question of the fate of Jerusalem, refugees and settlements; Arab state to agree to peace deals with Israel.

Appendix 6: ‘Blue Print 3’ highlights and benchmarks

Primary Structural Tenets:

1. PHASE ONE: Separate Populations: Jewish Settlements for Arab Towns
2. PHASE TWO: Purchase of Sinai from Egypt 
3. PHASE THREE: Purchase of portions of the East Bank from Jordan
4. PHASE FOUR: Partition of Jerusalem-Al Quds
5. PHASE FIVE: Free Trade Zones in Western Sinai and Saudi Coast
6. PHASE SIX: Implementation of Demilitarized Zones
7. PHASE SEVEN: Staggered return of Diaspora
8. PHASE EIGHT: Resource Sharing Agreements

Primary Resource Agreements:

1. Joint PA/Israeli control of Galilee water resource
2. Joint Administration of select Hospitals and 4 Universities
3. Doubling Israeli-Palestinian land mass via purchase of Sinai and parts of East Bank of the Jordan
4. Palestinian control of Dead Sea
5. Security Parity (Demilitarization/ Arms transfers)
6. Israeli non-proliferation for Iranian non-proliferation
7. Demilitarized Golan (to be included in the Palestinian State)
8. Demilitarized Gaza Strip (to be connected to West Bank via a security corridor and train tunnel)
9. Demilitarization South of Litany River and North of Kishon River. (to be filled with UN Peacekeeping forces).
10. Return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon
11. Golan Heights transfer to PA control
12. Implementation of a 2 Child maximum per family 
13. Extension of West Bank PA down to Gulf of Aqaba
14. Triple Seacoast of PA (Acco, Gaza City, and a third site build between Aqaba and Eilat)
15. 4 Separate Courts, Civil and Religious; 2 per polity
16. Separate Knesset/ Palestinian Congress both based in East and West Jerusalem respectively.
17. Release of all Palestinian political prisoners
18. Right of Return respective and regulated, parity in returning numbers negotiated to return to respective zones of control.
19. EU to aid Palestine (infrastructure only)
20. US to aid Israel (infrastructure only)
21. Bedouin autonomous region in Sinai or population transfer to Palestinian zone.
22. Structural dual citizenship benefits (tax credits, work visas, healthcare, educational)
23. Physically strengthening the barrier wall
24. Reduction of Israeli arsenal in exchange for greater aid, (Aid for decommissioned weapons program).
25. Structural reform from Parliamentary system to representative democracy. 

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