Abruptly, the sound of an explosion shattered the quiet. A woman on the patio cried out; at once, Ernheit was on his feet, hand on his gun, listening intently to the muffled echo, the thin sound of distant shrieks. “The Old City,” he murmured.
Remembering the moment of Ben-Aron’s assassination, David felt a tremor in his hands. Some of those around them, he saw, had sought shelter beneath their tables. Howard did not move. With a calm deliberation that seemed both studied and precarious, he took out his cell phone and began to dial. All around them, cell phones rang in a nerve-racking cacophony.
Howard listened intently. After a moment, he asked, “The children are with you?”
As David watched, Howard’s face relaxed. Ernheit sat down again.
“They’re all right, then,” David said to Howard.
Nodding, Howard sat back in his chair, arms at his side. It was a long time before he spoke. “A third of us have lost relatives,” he told David, “or at least someone we know, to a suicide bomber. My wife used to take a bus home from work. One afternoon, a block before it was to pick her up, it exploded. The bus driver’s arm ended up at her feet.
“She never takes the bus now. She tries to keep our children away from crowded places. And when she hears any explosion, anywhere, she calls them.” Howard paused, then said tiredly, “Religion may be the death of us all.”
David contemplated his wine. “Religious fanaticism, you mean.”
“Yes, and it’s most dangerous in the Middle East. Start with the Islamic clerical rulers in Iran, who plan to develop nuclear warheads while financing terrorism throughout the region. Move to their natural allies among the Palestinians, including Hamas. Now groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have missiles that can kill us in our towns and cities. And if we have a nuclear Iran, and the West Bank becomes an Islamic fundamentalist state instead of a prosperous trading partner, a security barrier will do us no good at all.
“But how do we untangle ourselves from the settlements on the West Bank, so despised by Palestinians? To remove perhaps a quarter million settlers by force, including people like Barak Lev and the Masada movement, could well fragment our own army.” Howard looked at David intently. “You claim to believe that the conspiracy to murder Ben-Aron reached inside his security detail. If you are right, the Jews who helped plan his death understood that by placing Isaac Benjamin in power, they were killing the chances of peace.”
David nodded. “The night I met Ben-Aron, one of his aides told me there were perhaps two hundred people actively looking for ways to kill him.”
“A handful of fanatics,” Howard answered. “Those Ben-Aron’s plan threatened most live in the settlements that are most exposed or—like Lev’s—outside the boundaries authorized by our government. Many are American Jews from places like Brooklyn whose only authority is the God of the Old Testament. For them, the only way to keep their dream of greater Israel alive is for there to be no peace.”
The waiter arrived, bringing their dinner and lighting a second candle. The three men watched the flame flicker, then catch hold, casting a circle of light on the white tablecloth. Glancing at the waiter’s retreating back, Howard inquired, “Are you familiar with the rodef principle?”
“No.”
“Stated broadly, Jewish biblical law holds that a Jew is entitled to kill any man who is trying to kill him. Unexceptional in itself. But run that principle through the mind of a fanatic Jew committed to making a stand outside the boundaries of the State of Israel—a man willing to die before abandoning the home God meant for him—and assassinating Ben-Aron becomes an act of self-defense.”
David glanced at Ernheit. “What do you know about Barak Lev?”
“Very little.” Ernheit put down his wineglass. “What is known is that he has deliberately chosen to create his own Jewish frontier, an illegal settlement outside of any boundary. Four years ago, two of his followers drove a trailer at night to a Muslim village and parked it outside a school attended by Palestinian children. The trailer was filled with plastique timed to blow up as the children were coming to school.
“Our police caught these men as they were deflating a tire—their intent, it seemed, was to make the trailer’s presence less suspicious. Only that prevented a tragedy which would have inflamed the intifada still further.”
David considered this while he ate his pasta. “When Rabin was killed by a Jew,” he said at length, “Hamas launched a wave of suicide bombings, effectively changing the electoral dynamic and transferring power to Rabin’s opponents. Suppose the murder of Ben-Aron involved the help of Jews but is blamed exclusively on Palestinians. That would accomplish the same thing: discrediting Faras and Al Aqsa, bringing Isaac Benjamin to power, and strengthening hard-liners on both sides.”
“Two problems,” Ernheit responded. “First, your theory requires the collaboration of someone close to Ben-Aron—some fanatic Jew living in a trailer on the West Bank could not pull it off. Second, it would necessitate close operational cooperation between this person and the Palestinians who carried out the murder.
“It’s conceivable that there could be the parallel plots to assassinate Ben-Aron—one by Jews, one by Arabs. But it is hard to conceive how two sides who so hate each other would come together in a seamless conspiracy.” Ernheit’s smile was fleeting. “While, incidentally, framing the unfortunate Ms. Arif.”
David sat back, looking at both men. “Your government has launched a massive inquiry,” he said. “But it’s buttoned up tight. If right-wing Jews were involved in killing Ben-Aron, and that became public, it would hardly help Isaac Benjamin.”
Howard shook his head. “If you’re implying that those investigating would deliberately ignore, or cover up, such a possibility, you should think better of everyone involved. Our legal system is at least as honest as yours, and Isaac Benjamin—whatever his faults—would want the murderers brought to justice.
“But before the election? This investigation will proceed carefully, deliberately, and confidentially. Whatever his motives, Benjamin cannot stampede them. Which means, effectively, that he will remain in power.”
David studied him. “Unless?”
“You are on a faster timetable,” Howard answered softly. “You have a client to defend. Others, deeply interested in the outcome of our election, may also share your sense of urgency. Some may even have sources within the government who quietly hold a similar agenda.
“Perhaps, in time, you will hear from them.”
4
The next morning, at the invitation of the Israeli government, David drove to Tel Aviv to meet General Ehud Peretz, head of the Intelligence Bureau for the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF.
The appointment, as Zev Ernheit explained, was Israel’s concession to David’s request for information. Peretz was a national figure; a heroic young officer in the 1973 war and an adviser to prime ministers on intelligence and terrorism, he was now charged with running counterterrorism activities on the West Bank, including the swift and comprehensive reprisals aimed at eradicating the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. It was only during the 1973 war, Ernheit said, that Peretz’s mother had told him she was a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Maidanek. When the war was finished, Peretz had gone there; once he saw, still preserved, the bones and ashes of the dead, he resolved to spend his life in the defense of Israel.
As David worked his way through the security procedures for entry to the massive cement-and-glass structure, Israel’s Pentagon, he reflected on this story. The young people bustling in and out of the building, barely out of their teens, bespoke a commitment to military service very different from that in the United States: even in this city on the Mediterranean, the border between Israel and the West Bank was at most an hour away. For Israelis, obliviousness was not a choice, and national defense not an optional activity. David Wolfe, the American Jew, was an outsider.
Ehud Peretz looked as smart and tough as he no doubt was—crew-cut hair, intent brown eyes, a seamed, rugged face, and
a barrel chest, with muscled forearms exposed by a short-sleeved khaki shirt. Though he greeted Wolfe with a firm handshake, his cool expression suggested his distaste for David’s visit. Waving David to a chair, he said bluntly, “I am familiar with your theory. But the performance of Amos’s security detail is now the business of others. That leaves us to discuss the mythic people known as Palestinians.”
Directness was best, David thought. “My client doesn’t consider herself mythic.”
“Perhaps not. But then her husband is a chief perpetrator of the myth.” Despite its flatness, Peretz’s tone betrayed a weary sarcasm. “Do you know where Ibrahim Jefar and Iyad Hassan were from? Refugee camps—Hassan from the Aida camp, Jefar the cesspool of Jenin. And why do such places exist after nearly sixty years? Because no Arab countries will take those people, and the Palestinian Authority does nothing to relieve their misery. The camps dramatize our role as ‘occupier,’ and keep alive this fantasy of return. Most important, they breed hatred of the Jews—and, not so incidentally, suicide bombers.
“Let me show you something.” Circling his desk, Peretz sat next to David, angling his computer screen so they could watch together. A film appeared, apparently a mosque filled with men listening to an imam, his speech translated in English subtitles. “This was broadcast on public television in Ramallah—two days before Ben-Aron’s assassins departed for America. The imam is a darling of Hamas.”
His voice shrill, the bearded young cleric spoke in an angry rush underscored by the rapt attention of his listeners and the poisonous words rendered in the subtitles: Israel is a cancer, David read, and the Jews a virus worse than AIDS.
“We protested to Faras,” Peretz said, “and the imam was taken off the air. But he remains employed by the Palestinian Authority in its Ministry of Religion.”
On the screen, the faces of the imam’s listeners were intent—some men nodded, and all but a few seemed focused on every word. In the history of the world, Jews are behind every suffering. The British and the French had to punish and expel Jews. So did the Spanish.
“That’s a fairly perfunctory account of the Spanish Inquisition,” David observed.
The Jews provoked Nazism. They encouraged hatred of Germany, and the boycott of goods, as Jewish bankers strangled the German people until they rose up in self-defense. Praise be to Allah for giving us the worst enemy of believers, the verminous Jews.
David felt a visceral outrage. “This was on Palestinian TV?”
Clicking his keyboard, Peretz froze the picture. In one corner of the screen, David saw black arrows touching the heads of two men, one with his head bowed, one staring straight ahead. This was the man David recognized first: Iyad Hassan. The man with the bowed head appeared to be Ibrahim Jefar. “Faras can speak as politely as he likes,” Peretz said coolly. “But this imam has become the true face of the Palestinian Authority, and these assassins his progeny. What choice does he give us but to kill them?”
David searched the faces of the men imbibing the imam’s speech. Hassan’s face seemed alive with fervor; Jefar looked down as though, detached from the crowd around him, he was reflecting on something else. One other man caught David’s eyes: in profile, his face shadowed, he seemed not to be watching the imam but Jefar.
Nerves suddenly on edge, David leaned closer. The man was slight, smaller than the others. Something about the angle of his head was eerily familiar.
David placed his finger on the screen. “This man. Do you know him?”
“No.” Peretz smiled slightly. “But you’re wondering if it’s Khalid.”
“Yes.”
“So are we. Whoever it is, he seems to have greater interest in Jefar than in the imam. But we’ve blown this image up, and there’s no way to be certain. Before and after this, he does not appear at all.” Peretz gazed at the picture. “In any event, that film suggests why the West Bank is a Garden of Eden for terrorists. Hassan and Jefar are notable only for whom they killed, where they killed him, and what it will cost us all.”
“And, therefore, for who sent them.”
“In theory, it could have been anyone. There are untold numbers on the West Bank who see terror as their only weapon and believe that Jews have no history but as ‘oppressors.’ In their schools, even in children’s notebooks, you will find photographs of suicide bombers. Men like Hassan and Jefar grew up believing that by killing and dying they will bring honor to their families, redeem their victimhood, and pave the way for the return to the land we ‘stole.’ That is why there is such an endless supply of ‘martyrs.’”
“In the early 1990s,” David said, “I understand that Israeli intelligence gave covert support to Hamas, hoping to drain support from Arafat.”
Peretz shot him a look of surprise, as though recalibrating his sense of David’s knowledge. “A terrible mistake. But then the law of unintended consequences was born in the Middle East.”
“And so Arafat encouraged the formation of the Al Aqsa Martyrs,” David went on, “to keep Hamas from monopolizing ‘armed resistance.’ Both Faras and Ben-Aron believed Al Aqsa could be diverted from violence, perhaps by joining a security force that could fulfill one of Israel’s requirements for peace—that the Palestinian Authority control Hamas and others. But now you, personally, are directing the eradication of Al Aqsa on the West Bank.”
Peretz spread his hands. “What choice do we have? We’re confident that Jefar was linked to Al Aqsa. Faras does not control terrorists, and his government, now dominated by Hamas, is little more than armed gangs playing at democracy.”
“And when Israel has destroyed Al Aqsa,” David asked, “and Faras is reduced to a eunuch, who profits?”
Sitting beside David, Peretz folded his arms, gazing out the window at the skyline of Tel Aviv. “Anyone who opposes peace—on the West Bank, anyone who can pick up the pieces. In particular, Hamas.”
“And the Iranians?”
Peretz gave him another look of appraisal. “Yes, the Iranians. We and they have a history. In the early nineties, they struck at us in Argentina; in 2002, we caught them trying to smuggle their most advanced explosives, rockets, and long-range missiles to Arafat on a boat called the Karine A.
“The cornerstone of Iranian foreign policy is our destruction. They’ve funneled money to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Al Aqsa. And they did not like Faras for his overtures toward Ben-Aron.”
“Given all that,” David asked, “does Iran operate within Israel?”
Peretz’s expression became closed. “Yes,” he answered tersely. “And in the United States. But through Arabs, not Jews. We have far fewer extremists than the Palestinians, and we take responsibility for controlling them. They could not murder our prime minister, and they have yet to blow up Arab schoolchildren.
“We are not killers, Mr. Wolfe. We are trapped in a cycle of violence, fighting for our own survival. Do you know about the Passover bombing?”
“Only what I read.”
“Every year, a group of aged survivors from Auschwitz brought their children and grandchildren to a restaurant in Haifa, to celebrate their families and their lives. Two years ago, as always, they met amid much warmth and laughter, much wonder at their good fortune to be alive. Then, at seven o’clock, a Palestinian entered the room and blew up thirty people, mostly children. The elders who still lived were forced to search among the ruined bodies for the children or grandchildren they cherished all the more for having survived Hitler.”
Listening, David envisioned Harold Shorr in such a gathering, and realized that, in the logic of this fantasy, David, Carole, and their children would be with him. Quietly, Peretz continued: “I am sure Arif and her husband decry our operation in the refugee camp at Jenin—how children died, how indiscriminately we killed the innocent. I ordered that operation.” He stood, gazing down at David. “The Passover bomber was from Jenin. The group we targeted planned the bombing. I ask you—as a man and as a Jew—what would you do if the choice were yours? And do you, as lawye
r for this accused assassin, feel better than if you were in my place?”
In the words, David heard the bitterness of a soldier whose hardest decisions felt inevitable. “I can’t answer that,” he said.
“Good. Because now you are a part of this.” Peretz still spoke quietly. “You cast about for plotters, and convince yourself Arif is innocent. I have read your statements—how can this woman, a lawyer and a mother, also be a murderer? Harsh experience provides my answer. The Passover bomber was a young mother, a lawyer like Arif. As she set off the explosives, she was smiling at a two-year-old, the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her own two children are now orphans.
“Your client was not required to die—or, if Jefar had not survived, even to sacrifice her freedom. So why would a mother do this?” Peretz’s tone became steely. “Hatred. Her husband’s, and her own, fed by Sabra and Shatila, their own version of Jenin. Don’t believe your client is immune to hate. I’ve read accounts of her classroom lectures. You are now the guest of ‘the worst human rights violator in the Middle East,’ ‘imperialists masquerading as victims,’ and Amos Ben-Aron was just another man who ‘steals our land and walls off our hopes.’ Perhaps, in your client’s view, such a man deserved to die.”
David maintained his calm. “If you have any evidence against her, tell me.”
“None but what you already have. Nor anything concrete against Saeb Khalid, though I sense you’d like that better. Nonetheless, I have spent an hour with you, even though you’re playing games with Israel’s national security on behalf of a woman who, unless this implausible ‘frame’ of yours is real, is the killer of Amos Ben-Aron.” Abruptly, Peretz’s voice softened. “In the army, my mentor and closest friend.”
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