The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  In the bank’s second floor conference room, the Coordinating Council of the Islamic Liberation Force is holding its weekly meeting, Iranian Major General Niroomad presiding. Around the table sit Syrian Field Marshal Al-Asadi, Egyptian Field Marshal Haloumi, Jordanian Major General Said. (The Iraqi commander continues to boycott these meetings because Jordan will not permit the Iraqi flag to fly in Jerusalem.)

  At the far end, wearing civilian clothes and a studied look of committed amity, is Aleksei Tupikov, blond, chunky, and vigorous, the Jerusalem station chief of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Tupikov is in fact charged with enforcing Moscow’s directives for the entirety of former Israel. In order to preserve the myth that Russia all along has not held the hand of the Iranians who coordinated the conquest, Tupikov is not addressed by his rank, which is major general. His staff of fifty controls an entire floor of the King David Hotel, now bizarrely renamed the King Hotel. The Hashemite royal family thought at first to call it after the current monarch’s father, but even decades in his grave King Hussein remains despised by the Egyptians, Syrians, and Iraqis for staying neutral in the Ramadan (Yom Kippur) War of 1973, thereby contributing to Israel’s victory. Thus the King Hotel, at least for a time, the word David simply blacked out in its arched entranceway.

  “If I may?” Tupikov says in impeccable Arabic.

  “Please, Mr. Tupikov,” General Niroomad says in his Arabic, which is clearly peccable. Though he takes daily lessons in the future tense of Arabic verbs, as far as the general is concerned the Arabs’ only future is as vassals to Iran. “In Persia a guest is always welcome to speak.”

  General Said takes issue. “Is Jerusalem now Persian?”

  “Dear distinguished general,” Niroomad says, with the unctuous delicacy of a higher life form being exaggeratingly respectful of a barbarian, “all Islam celebrates in the cleansing of Jerusalem. Let us not quibble.”

  “Jerusalem is holy only to the Sunni,” Said retorts. “To the Shia, it means little. Why are the Shia even here?”

  Tupikov shifts sufficiently in his chair to call attention to himself. “Who shares an enemy shares a friend,” he says. The Arab proverb carries within it an even more cynical truth: who ceases to share an enemy ceases to share a friend.

  Field Marshal Haloumi, always pragmatic and very much aware that in numbers Egypt has provided the war effort with more soldiers and hardware than all the other countries combined, speaks quietly but with authority. His sweetly musical Egyptian Arabic is almost soothing. “My brothers, we have strayed from our topic: the precise delineation of zones of authority. War is chaos. Peace must be orderly.”

  General Al-Asadi, whose Syrian death squads have all but wiped out the Palestinian officer class of Hezbollah that Damascus and Tehran have subsidized for twenty years, becomes agitated. “To achieve such orderly peace, brother, how many Hamas have you killed in Gaza?”

  “We have dealt with the Palestinian rabble in the south as you have in the north,” General Haloumi replies calmly. “Unlike our Persian brothers, we of Egypt do not accept theocratic rule. The Palestinians are poisoned with godliness. In the name of their God—”

  General Niroomad straightens his back. “Their God? Is Allah not God of all?” Though the good general does not have a pious bone in his body, the line from the political leadership in Homs, where the mullahs preside, is paramount: Muslim unity must be emphasized, never Arab unity, otherwise the desert rats will throw off the Persian leadership that united them in victory. As he is aware, Iranian dominance becomes more tenuous every day. “Let us hear from General Ali, who is inscribed for the floor.” Scheduled is the word he would prefer, but he cannot quite recall it. The Arabic language, he thinks, is as difficult as its speakers.

  General Said stands, a figure straight as the saber at his side. His uniform, perfectly pressed, is the best in the room, designed and fitted by the same firm of Savile Row tailors who have supplied the British general staff for decades. In matters sartorial, the Jordanian command class follows the lead of their king, a great fan of the film Lawrence of Arabia, in which the king’s great-grandfather is portrayed by Alec Guinness, whose robes—on celluloid at least—are richly ornamented and spotless, spun of the most delicate English tropical wool.

  “Brothers, I have the honor to bring you greetings from his royal highness the King of Jordan, who wishes only the blessings of most merciful Allah upon your heads and upon those of your children and your children’s children.”

  General Niroomad is so tired of this. Must one hold a gun to an Arab’s head to get him to come to the point? Besides, Russian military intelligence has already informed Niroomad of what Ali is about to say.

  “By His Majesty’s decree,” General Said intones, “all of Tel Aviv and its dependencies rightfully now revert to Jordanian rule.”

  “Just at the moment,” Niroomad says drily, “Tel Aviv has reverted to the stench of Jews.”

  General Said pretends not to recognize the Persian’s tone. “This, matter,” he says, “will be corrected soon enough.”

  General Niroomad offers a sigh worthy of a particularly untalented drama student. “Millions of Jews,” he says, sick at the thought but relieved that someone else actually wishes to do this hateful work. “Even the great Hitler did not dream of snuffing out the lives of so many in one day.”

  45

  POCKETS OF RESISTANCE REMAIN. But because the country is essentially judenrein, the few bands that form in the wake of the invasion, largely composed of IDF soldiers and escapees from the cities, can find no shelter among the indigenous population. Outside of Tel Aviv, there is none. But in the north, deep forests provide cover, as do the caves penetrating the cliffs of the Mediterranean coastline from Binyamina north to Mount Carmel. The south, being mostly flat if not outright desert, provides little natural cover—Bedouin bands seeking bounty would certainly pick off any Jews foolish enough to try this inhospitable terrain. To the east, in Judea and Samaria, the country is hilly, which offers possibilities for harassment and sabotage, but once this is achieved escape is difficult. Movement must be by foot or, in several instances in the cattle-grazed Golan Heights, on horseback. Non-military vehicles remain banned from the roads. Even should civilians—whether Israeli Arabs or Jews disguised as same—manage to seize the kind of transportation that can get by the ever-present roadblocks manned by Arab machine gunners, such as UN-marked buses or enemy jeeps, no gasoline is to be had outside of the Muslim military bases, which are of course former IDF bases with fresh signage.

  Worst of all, like the anti-Nazi partisans in Eastern Europe, these makeshift bands find themselves working in isolation. Command and control does not exist for the same reason the units themselves cannot contact one another: the sophisticated and extensive IDF wireless network almost immediately fell into the hands of the Iranians, whose Hebrew-speaking intelligence officers monitor it for any sign of organized resistance. Israel’s civilian phone companies, wired and cellular, no longer function. At best each group of holdouts eventually must find its way to Tel Aviv, there only to discover their own lack of capability mirrored in a leaderless, hungry, fearful, and dispirited population.

  Though scattered small groups continue to move about with the intention of harassing the enemy, these have enough on their hands finding sufficient food to survive. Some bands stage attacks on Arab supply lines, but the weaponry they grab comes with little ammunition.

  The last of the larger groups, close to one hundred men and women, mostly paratroopers whose unit lost its way in the initial fighting and then was bypassed by the enemy surge, manages to find a large cache of mortars, sten guns, and ammunition hidden in a cave on Mt. Carmel. In 1941, aware that then British-governed Palestine was the next target for Rommel’s Afrika Korps, the Jewish leadership hid the weaponry for a last stand. Instead, Rommel was stopped in Egypt.

  Though primitive by modern standards, the cache might have provided sufficient firepower for large-scale resistance. B
ut the cave leaked rainwater for decades. The cosmolite-soaked rags that were meant to preserve these armaments remain in place, but the guns they embraced have long since rusted away.

  Traveling by night in groups of ten, seventy of the Mt. Carmel partisans make it to Tel Aviv. The rest are never heard from.

  46

  AT THE WHITE HOUSE, the presidential press conference is packed with American and international correspondents, including a single reporter claiming to represent Ha’aretz, formerly the Israeli newspaper best known abroad, but now out of electricity, out of paper, out of business. A month earlier, Israel boasted a dozen daily papers; today there are none. As a matter of policy, the White House press office does not normally grant access to ghost correspondents from dead newspapers, but the White House gatekeepers examine only credentials. Though her newspaper is history, the Israeli correspondent’s credentials look good.

  The room is packed, and tense.

  As is his wont, the president manages to be simultaneously folksy, curt, respectful, and evasive, recalling one of the chief executive’s own heroes, Ronald Reagan, who like most dependable actors never strayed from the script.

  “Now there’s a real good point, Ted,” the president pretends. “All I can tell y’all is we’re meeting next week with my counterparts from Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Jay-pan.” As a graduate of Harvard, the president is well aware of how to pronounce the name of the country governed from Tokyo; he never spoke it that way at Harvard, or at Yale where he took his law degree, though admittedly second from the bottom of his class—the only graduate with a worse scholastic record is now one of the world’s richest men. “With goodwill and persistence, the Jewish refugee problem will be solved.” The president winks conspiratorially as he turns his broad smile to the other side of the room. “Rich, you look like you’re about to have a cat.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, there’s been much speculation about Israel’s use, or should I say non-use, of the nuclear option. Has the administration been restraining the Israelis from going nuclear?”

  “Rich, I can’t address that in detail, which I’m sure y’all appreciate. But I can say we have counseled patience to our Israelian friends. Elizabeth?”

  “Mr. President, gas at the pump is now eight dollars a gallon and expected by some analysts to exceed ten dollars in a matter of days. Have you talked with the Saudis about restarting production?”

  “Liz, no one feels the pain of the driving public more than myself. As a car collector and an amateur mechanic, which I guess most of you folks are aware of, seeing as how many of you have visited with the first lady and myself at the farm, there’s nothing I like better than pure, unadulterated horsepower, which I hasten to add has been, is, and I expect will be for a good long time the pleasant pastime of many Americans. So the answer is yes, talks with our friends the Saudis are ongoing, and I hope to have good news soon for the American driving public when the king of that country and I meet in several days. Let me say this: there will not come a time while I am in office that one yellow school bus anywhere in America will not deliver our young’uns to school for lack of gas. Lance?”

  “Mr. President, recent opinion polls show little enthusiasm for absorbing millions of immigrants. With so many Americans jobless, do you see political implications for the administration in an election year if, as some in Congress have suggested, some six million Israelis are to be admitted to the US?”

  His smile narrowing only a little while his chin seems to jut out like the prow of a ship, his head raised as though seeking guidance from above, the leader of the free world nods the presidential head with a mixture of moral rigor, statesmanlike certitude, and religious faith. “Lance, if there’s one thing I can tell the American people, it’s this: our administration will do the right thing, both by the American people and by the Israelians who have fallen on such hard times. God bless America. Y’all have a nice—”

  Before he can complete the sentence that customarily concludes his every public statement, a svelte woman in a red pantsuit stands and, in a voice at once professional and desperate, addresses the chief executive directly, her mild accent cutting through the manufactured ambiance, as the president would describe it later, like a hot knife through ice cream.

  “Mr. President, I am Ornit Peck from Ha’aretz Israel daily newspaper. Can you please tell us if you have a plan to bring aid, specifically food, water and medicines to the refugees now in Tel Aviv who—”

  Don Beadle, the president’s press secretary, finds his feet, and as well an opportunity to prove that he is more than a mere mouthpiece. “Madam, I can understand your need to express yourself, but in fact the president has already concluded today’s briefing. If you’d like, you can present any question you might have in writing and I’m sure—”

  The president raises his hand. “Miz Beck, is it?”

  “Peck. I—”

  “Miz Peck, then. First and foremost, I want to state that I and every member of this administration, and I speak as well for my friends in the legislative branch on both sides of the aisle, that every American feels your pain and the pain of the Jewish people. I assure you that this administration will do everything in its earthly power to find a solution to what is certainly a disastrous situation, a solution that is amenable to all parties in the conflict, so help me God. We are working on it. Now, y’all do have nice day.”

  By the end of which nice day Miz Ornit Peck, ghost correspondent of the major ghost newspaper of what is barely more than a ghost nation, is informed via email that her White House press credentials are no longer valid, but that should she reapply under the auspices of a functioning media organization the White House press office will be pleased to consider issuing fresh credentials. This last flourish, uncharacteristically generous from a press office known to be hostile to the press, is the result of a comment by the president to Don Beadle on their way out of the hall: “Got to hand it to the little lady. Jewess got her more balls than our en-tire Su-preme Court.” Absent that comment, Beadle would have had Ornit Peck or Beck or whatever declared persona non grata for life. Or until the president leaves office, which if the cost of gasoline at the pump does not drop might be a matter of months.

  Either way, Beadle’s own future is assured. He receives fresh job offers every day. At the moment. he is leaning in the direction of a position as communications director of Shell, with a salary that causes him to become hard as a teenage boy on his first date. Of course, if by some miracle the president is able to resolve the oil crisis and is elected to a second term, there is every reason to hang on as press secretary for another year, not least to share in the triumph. Shell will wait. They’ll all wait. Whatever happens to the president, whatever happens to Ornit Peck, whatever happens to those poor kikes in Tel Aviv, Don Beadle’s future is bright.

  47

  EVER FAITHFUL, JUDY DOES not object that Yigal is using her body to forget at least momentarily how otherwise impotent he feels. She knows that his thrusting is not even remotely personal, and though this is probably the worst form of marital intimacy—two people engaging their individual loneliness—she is not averse to being used if it means being useful. Perhaps, she thinks, this will take his mind off Cobi, who has not been heard from since the first day of the war. It doesn’t work, of course. Certainly not for her. She is so far from arousal tonight’s lovemaking might as well be a form of consensual rape. She lies there as he continues to pound her, poor dear Yigal, and thinks for the first time in a long time whether she should simply fake an orgasm. Does Yigal require that as well? She doesn’t know, and then the problem is solved.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I just can’t.”

  She kisses the closest part of him, the base of his neck. “Me neither.”

  “I’m sure he’s alive,” Yigal says. “He’s a survivor, that one.”

  “Like you.”

  He rolls off her, both of them stretched out and looking at the white
ceiling, gray now in the night. In one corner it is lit by a projected beam of red light from a clock on the table on Yigal’s side, one of those silly gadgets her husband likes to bring back from his travels abroad. The kitschy German cuckoo clock she would not hang in their home. She gave the foot massager to their maid, who probably sold it, along with the selection of miniature perfumes from the south of France. She prefers one scent, has for years, because Yigal likes it. Why change? But the time-projecting American clock, this found a home, though if she had her way she would have relegated it to Cobi’s room—time passes entirely too quickly as it is. She is on her way to fifty. And now Cobi. And the war, though hardly anyone calls it that anymore because it is over. The defeat. The disaster. The holocaust. No, that one is taken. The end. Yes, that is available.

  Last night she dreamed Cobi returned. A knock at the door. A stranger, and another stranger behind him. And then he was back, hugging her. But Yigal was not there. And then Cobi was Yigal. And she woke. The clock projected in red light on the ceiling reads 23:01—military time, as Yigal prefers, though she always has to work out the real time after 1200 hours.