The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  “It is my honor to be of service,” Abed says, then puts down the plastic fork that comes with the MRE. He has already finished two helpings of “chocolate banana muffin top wheat snack bread” smeared with “seasoning blend cheese spread.” He pauses. “Mr. Prime Minister, I am of the Ghawarna. Though a mere staff sergeant, I feel confident that I speak as well for the Abu-Idris and the Ibn-Harad. In the name of your servants, I ask a favor of the government.”

  Yigal is drinking tea. They have a lot of it. Judy liked to collect all kinds. Normally it just sat in the cupboard, exotic blends with catchy names that would be ignored once they were tried out. Now Judy and Yigal are going methodically through the stock. Yigal is drinking “Orange Pekoe Pick Me Up.” No sugar. Each MRE comes with packets of sugar, but these are gone.

  “Promotion?” Yigal says. “Reward? Name it, staff sergeant. When things improve, we’ll dig you wells you can swim in.”

  “Only this, prime minister. That when the time comes for you to fuck the repulsive invaders from the front, that we Bedu of the Jordan Valley should have the honor to rise up and fuck them from the rear.”

  From far off, there is the sound of thunder. But there is no thunder in Israel during the summer, nor rain. The skies will not open up until late October, perhaps November, the downpour continuing sporadically through March. It is not thunder, but grows louder, closer, imminent.

  As one they run out to the kitchen terrace, beyond which is an empty swimming pool.

  Above them a vast flock of what at first seems to be migrating birds darkens the sky, which then abruptly explodes into something else: the heavens are filled with thousands of cargo parachutes dropped from hundreds of planes.

  Over the next week, these aircraft, C130s mustered from US bases in Germany and England, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Djibouti and even indirectly—routed through Cyprus—from Saudi Arabia, will deliver more food, water, and medicine than during the entire Berlin airlift, two Asian tsunamis, and four Central American earthquakes. Also in the huge crates that come down like wholesale deliveries of manna are radio equipment and heavy-duty batteries.

  From the ground, Yigal is not yet aware of all that is in the crates, but it is certainly one hell of a good sign one day before the counterattack is set to begin. Now he need not worry about starvation at home.

  “Cobi, suit up,” he says. “If things work out, very soon you’ll be a tank commander again. And get our guest a clean uniform from my closet.” He looks up again. “God bless America. Staff Sgt. Abed, our time has come.”

  102

  OVER DECADES, THE INSTITUTION of the president’s cabinet had come to reflect not only the size and complexity of the American government but its relation with the corporate world that is its principle stakeholder. Though more than 90% of United States tax revenues derives from individuals, corporations retain massive power and influence in Washington. Very few individual employees have the leverage to make the mind-boggling campaign donations of American corporations and their special interest groups. Thus the American paradox: individuals finance the vehicle of government, corporations drive it. So it is hardly a wonder that the White House has come to look like the corporate world. The president’s cabinet, once a panel of advisors expected to contribute across a broad range of issues, is now made up of specialists, as in any large business: secretaries of the treasury who would not dare comment on national security, secretaries of defense with no interest in housing or health or education. Because of this, when the president makes decisions, he relies upon a close inner circle outside the cabinet, and in the end upon two individuals: Flo Spier, whose shrewd knowledge of the electorate got him to the White House, and Felix St. George, who never stumbled upon a world crisis that could not be ameliorated by the forceful application of cynicism. Thus every major decision in the White House comes down to delicately balancing the requirements of domestic politics with the demands of America’s role in the greater world.

  “So what you’re saying, Felix, is that we know what the A-rabs are about to do, but we don’t know how the Jews will counter?”

  Like many presidents before him, the leader of the West instinctively and mistakenly includes Iran in the Arab world, just as Israel becomes “the Jews.” In the Oval Office, no one bothers to correct him.

  “We know the Arabs are gearing up,” Felix St. George says. “They’re calling it the Siege of Tel Aviv.”

  “And we know this how?”

  “CIA, DIA, NSA—all in accord.”

  “But nothing from the Jews?”

  “Nothing, Mr. President. The Israelis have gone low-tech on us. Or they just don’t want to talk.”

  “Sigint?” The president loves to use the lingo.

  “Signals intelligence works rather well when there are signals. As to humint, the damn CIA pulled its assets from Tel Aviv when the writing was on the wall. They claim their people in Jerusalem were picked up early in the war and never heard from again. Probably they’re in Tehran. The agency preferred their people in Tel Aviv not suffer the same fate.” St. George carefully adds a note of detachment. “That’s what they say.”

  “Satellite?”

  “DIA has nothing. Just pictures of a severely overcrowded city. Nothing moving. Like a still photograph.”

  “And the mysterious pink planes?”

  “They are working on that, sir.”

  “And those missiles the Jews used to take down the Syrian what-chamacalls?”

  “Sukhois, sir. It appears Israel may retain some missile capability. But Stingers don’t work very well against tanks. In fact, they don’t work at all. And tanks are what’s going to roll into Tel Aviv.”

  “And the nukes?”

  “Those don’t work against tanks either. Even if Israel uses them, it won’t save Tel Aviv. To hit Iran, they’d need long-range bombers. We know they have none.”

  “They have jets,” the president says. “Three at least. They could—”

  “Jets could conceivably deliver the weaponry, indeed.” St. George makes sure he interrupts the president at every meeting, if only just once. He likes to keep the president in line. St. George is a baseball fan. His favorite pitchers always brush batters back. “We’ve seen evidence of only those three fighters, sir. Super Hornets. But if they’re in Israel, our satellite cameras can’t find them. It’s not like they have any ground facilities left. There’s a small field just outside of Tel Aviv, Sde Dov, but it doesn’t have the runway length. Still a mystery, though there is speculation the pink paint may be anti-radar—we know the Israelis were working on this. Best guess: the three planes probably crashed in the sea for lack of fuel. A suicide mission. But it hardly matters. Pink or green or purple, the planes are gone.” He fixes the president with his translucent gray eyes. “What is clear, so far as can be deduced, is that Israel, what’s left of it, is backed into a corner. There’s no way we can see they can use their nukes, other than in a giant suicide. No armor, no air force, no reserves of fuel or ammunition. Not much food or medicine either.”

  “Except for what we’ve just dumped on them.”

  “Mr. President, very few countries have gone to war armed only with MREs, antibiotics, and field radios.”

  “The radios were a nice touch,” the president says. “I see your fine Hungarian hand in that.”

  St. George hates to be called Hungarian. Even “European” galls him. He has been an American citizen for over forty years. “The radios will enable Israel to surrender in an orderly fashion.”

  Flo Spier is not pleased. Damn, she thinks, I light the fire, and now the pest from Budapest is frying his fish on it? “Mr. President, my idea was we don’t want to be caught with our electoral pants down. By sending aid, we look like we care—”

  The president is offended. “We do care.”

  “Yes, sir, of course. But in terms of perception, it’s important to leave a care trail. You will recall my mantra for success in November: Jewish money, Christian votes. What we’ve dumpe
d on Tel Aviv makes a year’s foreign aid look like Halloween candy. A very impressive attempt to intervene without endangering US forces. Plus, we have offered to take three million refugees.”

  “Which we may not actually have to take,” the president says. “When do we announce it?”

  Flo Spier has clearly taken back the reins. Fuck you, Hungarian sleazebag, and fuck your realpolitik—when it comes to real politics, there’s nothing like a woman. “Mr. President,” she says coolly. “We announce it when it’s too late.”

  103

  AT PRECISELY 3:49 AM, as soldiers of the Quartermaster’s Corps paint the last of five blue-green Israeli Egged buses a dull khaki and others follow to stencil on Egyptian insignia, an IDF jeep leading two similarly disguised Humvees rolls through the gates of the bus cooperative’s main installation on Begin Street. The chief of staff returns the sentries’ salute, then dismounts to enter a makeshift meeting room that normally functions as Egged’s repair center. Only a few buses are inside, the rest scattered around the city, out of gas, most functioning as broiling shelters for those refugees who cannot find better.

  Two hundred IDF personnel, armed to the teeth, stand to attention, their folding chairs, arrayed in precise rows, shrieking on the concrete floor. Pinky shakes hands with the colonel at the front of the room. He is in his late thirties, a fireplug whose dark curls, cut close to his head, are shorter than those rising out of his shirt. His muscles strain the fabric of his uniform sleeves, which according to IDF regulation are carefully rolled to an inch over his elbows. When war broke out, the colonel headed up the chief of staff’s commando unit. Half the personnel here are his, together with selected individuals from the navy’s special operations group and a similar team from the air force. In better times, the chief of staff’s commandos would be more than sufficient to the job, but most are gone, either prisoners of war or, as the military euphemism has it, missing.

  “Be seated,” Pinky says. “We’ll make this quick. I’m informed by Col. Lior that you’ve been well briefed, both those of you in the insertion team and the pilots. If you have questions, ask now.”

  The uniformed men and a few women, among them Alex, are silent.

  Pinky expects nothing less. “In one hour, the paint on the buses will be dry. Let’s hope we can say the same for your pants.”

  He salutes, cutting short their laughter.

  “Good luck, and safe home.”

  The assembled force rises as one to return the salute. The chief of staff leaves as abruptly as he entered.

  Col. Lior takes over. For a man of his imposing physical presence—he began his military career as an instructor in krav maga, the IDF’s contribution to hand-to-hand fighting—he speaks softly, the assembled soldiers leaning forward to pick up his words.

  “It is precisely four hours. In thirty minutes, you will be appropriately suited up. From this point until the conclusion of stage one of Operation Davidka—the successful conclusion—the language of ops is Arabic. Those of you who speak no Arabic will be mute under any and all circumstances. I expect the Arabic speakers among us to think in Arabic, be anxious in Arabic, if necessary kill in Arabic. As has been pointed out, upon the success of this operation depends the entire future of the State of Israel. Now be good Arabs and get dressed for the party. Dismissed.”

  104

  AT THEIR BASE JUST south of Jerusalem, 1194 tanks of the Royal Jordanian Armored Corps are lined up like a child’s toy army, but one with the greatest destructive potential of any armored force in the Middle East: 400 upgraded British Challenger I tanks, 250 updated British Chieftains, the remainder modernized US M60s. As their commander’s olive-green Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Landaulette begins slowly to roll past, each tank commander starts his engine, so that what begins as a single roar gathers cumulative force until the noise is so great it is as if the roar of engines is all, the massive 1500 and 1200 cc motors creating their own universe of percussive sound. But as the command vehicle rolls by to take the salute of the tank crews arrayed precisely in V formation in front of their tanks, not one tankist is ignorant of the fact that it is not Ticky Pasha standing in the open back of the Rolls but his second in command. The superstitious Bedouin tank crews know that Ticky Pasha has never not been there to take their salute before an attack. In the dark cloud rising from the smoke of burning diesel, many wonder what this portends.

  105

  FROM THE TERRACE OF a second-floor apartment, Cobi peers up and down Ibn-Gvirol Street, the would-be Park Avenue of Tel Aviv were it not for the design of the apartment houses that line its six lanes. As in the Italian city of Bologna, its apartments are cantilevered over the sidewalk, so that pedestrians shopping at street level or drinking espresso outside the cafés are shaded from the Middle Eastern sun and protected from the long winter days of rain. Now there is neither shopping nor coffee drinking, but there is shade, beneath which tens of thousands of Jews sit on the cracked pavement and do what refugees do. Nothing.

  Apart from the pistol strapped to his waist, Cobi is armed only with a foot-long brass pipe, once a spent artillery shell, sealed at both ends. A ball-peen hammer is tucked into his military web-belt.

  As expected, the first of a long line of Royal Jordanian tanks appears from the south, making its way slowly down the divided boulevard. Not one shot is fired from their cannons. Apparently their intent is to take up positions along its entire length so as to seal the long roadway from end to end.

  Cobi tests the cable strung tight across the boulevard.

  Like the other cables, it is taut as the string of a violin, the white sheet pinned to it announcing surrender—a surrender that everyone in the city understands will not be honored by the victors. Their tanks are not here in some imperial gesture or show of strength. They are not here to proclaim victory, but to execute it. Tel Aviv is about to be blasted to bits.

  As the endless column moves down the boulevard—named for the medieval Spanish poet who wrote in both Arabic and Hebrew, a detail which could not possibly interest the invading force—the lead tank’s commander scans the street through binoculars. Sure of the city’s surrender, he stands in his turret. He sees nothing but white sheets. Satisfied, he re-enters his Challenger, seals the hatch, and orders his driver to continue until the very end of the street, which his digital map shows terminating at a rather flimsy bridge over the Yarkon River. After the buildings on either side are destroyed and their inhabitants annihilated like cockroaches, he will order his brigade to bypass the flimsy bridge, cross the river, little more than a wet ditch at this time of year, and then attack the northern suburbs, whose highrise apartment buildings can be expected to collapse. After that, they must only wait for Egyptian infantry to pour into the open wound that was Israel’s first city and mop up the surviving population.

  106

  AS THE SUN RISES over Highway 2, which links Tel Aviv to the international airport and then continues east to Jerusalem, the commander of a division of Egyptian mechanized infantry, some ten thousand men in two hundred vehicles, spots an Egyptian Humvee and several truckloads of personnel coming straight at him.

  The commander opens communication. “Eastbound force, identify. This is Eagle Green. Identify.”

  “Eagle Green, Eagle Green, this is Reconnaissance Group Gamal, this is Reconnaissance Group Gamal.”

  “Gamal, I know no such formation. Over.”

  Laughter erupts from his headset. “Nor were you to know. Eagle Green, we are an independent unit, very hush-hush, attached to Field Intelligence HQ. We expected to be out of your line of fire an hour ago, but ran into small Jewish resistance. Over.”

  “Gamal, Jewish resistance? I am informed the entire city has surrendered. Please amplify, over.”

  “Eagle Green, this appears to have been a dissident group. You know our cousins: two Jews, three opinions. Small arms. Nineteen men. I personally counted the bodies. Neutralized. Repeat, neutralized. Over.”

  “The city is wide open, then? Over.
”

  “Like a beautiful woman on the cold steel table of a gynecologist,” the voice on the phone comes back. “We are returning now to Field Intel HQ, adjacent Arafat International Airport. Please stand by for signal to proceed west. Over.”

  “Copy that, Gamal. Over.”

  “Eagle Green, Force Gamal now moving out of your trajectory. Happy hunting! Over.”

  The Egyptian commander watches through his binoculars as the reconnaissance unit pulls onto an exit ramp marked with the sign of an airplane. The Hebrew and English for Ben Gurion International Airport have been painted over, but no one has relettered Yasser Arafat over it in Arabic and English. “Allah willing, Gamal. See you in former Tel Aviv. Over.”

  The reconnaissance unit has moved beneath the road to an underpass and is temporarily out of sight.

  “Eagle Green, Eagle Green. Don’t kill all the Jews, my brother. Leave some for us. Over.”

  “Not to worry, Gamal. We have before us many days of hard work. Your assistance will be welcomed. Thousands of blond Jewesses await. Over and out.”

  107

  LIKE ALL THE MAJOR roads in conquered Israel, Highway 2 is controlled and administered by Iran. This came about because it was quickly seen that only an outside authority could be trusted to maintain the roadways snaking in and out of territories administered by four other nations. But Iran has little interest in maintaining the highways of a country split into four sectors, none of which is Iranian. This is why the highway sign leading to Yasser Arafat International Airport is blank.

  By contrast, the sign over the security checkpoint leading into the airport itself is a freshly painted red and black over a dazzling white, the color of the Egyptian flags that line the long drive to the terminal buildings. These flags caused yet another dispute among the nations: should not all the victors’ flags be flown here, at the gateway to the holy land? But the Egyptians are adamant that the airport is as much part of Egypt as Alexandria or Aswan. Did not the Egyptians demand their national banners be flown beside the Jordanian flags over Jerusalem? And what was the answer of the Jordanians under whose aegis it has fallen?