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THE JEWISH WARS

This was in the Gaza Strip: a long, secret, protracted agony of daily attack and counterattack that turned our days and nights into a flare-lit shadow dance with skulls, on head-nodding patrols in areas where even the wild pariah dogs shunned to go.

We were a reserve unit of combat-trained Israeli armored infantry but minus our big, boxy personnel carriers—long ago we left them buried to their hatches in scorpion-infested sand somewhere out in the camouflaging desert—and sent here to quell “unrest,” some general’s euphemism for armed Palestinian revolt.

In exchange for our TOW shoulder-held tank blasters and other sorts of dangerous toys that we took pride in handling well, we were issued rubber bullets, body armor, riot helmets, shatterproof shields, and nasty-looking crowd control batons, but the men never used that junk except for the bulletproof ceramic vests. They left the rest rattling in heaps in the corners of our fast-moving steel-plated patrol trucks, or Noon Noons, as they were called.

Because some of us yet thought of ourselves as soldiers. And some of us still thought that we just couldn’t be down here forever, though by now the service had dragged on over years.

But again and again they sent us down to Gaza, and the more we operated down here, the more we hated the work, but also the better at it we got until counterinsurgency became our pet calling. It was an ugly little pet indeed, and we had to walk it every day and keep it fed on blood and tears.

We learned as we went, methods strictly unconventional, no big hardware set piece battles but dry, dirty games of small arms and concealable explosives, informers and smugglers, and suspects hauled in for attitude adjustment by the Sheen Bet Security Services. Some of us couldn’t even remember how to load or shoot a TOW anymore, let alone recite the code for purity of arms, but we could blow a terrorist safe house sky high in nothing flat and unearth an arms factory where you thought you saw only a dress shop.

Tonight some sort of wide-scale action was in motion throughout the Khan Yunis sector. Other patrols had gone out in a big hurry, but since no one had summoned us—which as far as we were concerned was just fine—Brandt, Avi, and I had just stayed in the garrison club room, with its scarred Ping-Pong table with the shredded net and a battered TV set with reception so bad that the picture looked like transmissions from Mars.

This TV, by the way, had a wire clothing hanger antenna, and part of the ritual of watching it involved jumping up from your seat to fiddle with it in a futile quest for the exact invisible spot for good reception. There was a way, though, to get it good enough that you could watch the Jordanian broadcast of the American sitcom Three’s Company, with its girls in tiny shorts and the emasculated male roommate bumbling around issuing bland punch lines.

It was the closest thing to sex we had, and we sat around staring at it numbly, our unshaven cheeks sagging in insomniacal frowns.

Brandt nodded at the blond TV star with the ponytail. “How sweet is that ass?”

Avi shrugged. “She looks like Goldie Hawn. Falk, here, he likes that—right, Falk? Falk eats that bony Goldie Hawn tail.”

“Like lobster.” I grinned.

“Lobster’s not kosher,” Avi said gravely.

“Bullshit,” snapped Brandt. “Blondes are kosher. Besides, I eat lobster. With plenty of butter. Huh, Nathan? You like that butter sauce?”

I nodded happily. “You know it. I like it blond and buttery.”

“Falk,” said Avi. “What kind of Jewish name is that?” to which I replied, “It’s New York City Yiddish for ‘Go Falk Yourself,’” and we all burst out laughing.

We teamed well together, we three—liked each other a lot, got along. Which meant your back got watched when you went out there knocking on Arafat’s door. It gave you something close to peace of mind.

Brandt, our handsome squad leader, was only a reservist corporal but was treated like an officer by the staff because looks-wise he was movie-star caliber; he worked as a ground maintenance supervisor for El Al airlines and so not only had unlimited access to a constantly replenishing supply of Israel’s most beautiful stewardesses to fuck, but flew anywhere in the world he liked, cost-free.

And as if to etch our envy with hydrochloric acid on Sinai stone, God had also arranged that Brandt should happen to be a professional soccer referee as well, who was quite often seen on national broadcast, officiating in major league play. And while the rest of us in civilian life scrambled for bleacher seats to the playoff games, the lucky SOB saw any match he liked; just turned up at any stadium and walked right in.

Even Brandt’s divorce was enviable. Not to go on too much about him, but this Brandt, you see, his ex-wife was a former Miss Israel, a ten named Mariana, the daughter of multimillionaire plastics manufacturers, the famed Borzoys of Haifa. She was Brandt’s best friend and close confidante and had not only waived child support but even given Brandt full access to his kids, who could stay with him whenever he liked. She actually even entertained, I was told, some of the girlfriends he brought home.

He had a certain cynical charm, our corporal, a wry confidence that women found absolutely devastating. They fell for him like axed trees.

Some who had gone with him into Tel Aviv on twenty-four-hour leaves could attest to how he entered a club and ten minutes later left in the escort of not one but two bombshells. His secret? He regarded all things with a sneering curl of his upper lip, a disdainful gleam in his eye. He beheld alike, with equal contempt, generals, beauty queens, soccer stars, politicians, policemen, tax collectors, and terrorists. He had, as I said, this little smirk. Only a corporal, yet he wielded a captain’s influence. When high-ranking officers glanced his way for approval, he smirked and it leveled their self-esteem.

Our unit commander was Lieutenant Yitzak, who strolled around in the freezing cold garrison in a wife-beater T-shirt and bling-bling gold chains, his spoiled, rich-boy voice whining in our ears. Here was an officer who stepped from his barrack each dawn with his hand thrust down the crotch of his bleached white BVDs, lovingly scratching his balls and yawning like a pimp on holiday in Cancún. So it was not exactly Yitzak we obeyed, but rather the hulking, begrizzled Sergeant Dedi, who implemented Yitzak’s “orders,” though only in his own way.

In action, this Sergeant Dedi, who was built like a wrestler, had the darkstaring focus of a Ninja tenth-degree black belt. He called clear shots when things got tough and he got you through in one piece. When Dedi spoke in his low, measured way, everybody listened up. We were all agreed, even Yitzak, on one thing: this Dedi was a good boy. Had a bright head too. In civilian life he was finishing up a graduate art history degree. Van Gogh’s no help in a fight, but when the rocks and bullets flew, Dedi’s the one you wanted in there, dropped to one knee with weapon cradled in his arm, his calm hand signals directing you to cover.

But also, as I had learned on one of my first times out with this unit, in a really tight spot often you needed a fast way out, and for that there was Avi, working the gas and the brake pedals of the steel-plated Noon Noons.

Avi had the deadpan reflexes of a mobbed-up getaway man; could spin-turn in a kasbah alley, under fire, a two-ton armoured car.

Bullets didn’t even make him flinch. He drove with a kind of dour defiance. Avi even sort of looked gangland, with his swarthy, hard-boned face, lanky build, kinked nap, and laconic air.

A Fez-born Moroccan, he had smuggled himself to Israel as a teen and now owned and operated in civilian life a paid-up Mercedes Benz limo taxi that made shuttle runs beween Tel Aviv and the Holy City of Jerusalem.

I was the anomalous American, to most Israelis something strange: a New York Jew who had actually acquired Israeli citizenship in return for the dubious privilege of getting called up to serve in the most dangerous army on earth, the Israel Defense Forces.

For in so doing I had bucked what had become, after years of ceaseless warfare and endless terrorism, the primo fantasy of so many sabras born behind the Green Line, Israel’s traditional borderline: complete your army service, and then jet straight out for the fleshpots of Berlin, Amsterdam, New York, or L.A., there to live by your greencarded wits, make a killing in bucks, not blood, and, more so, to thrive immersed in Coppertone and Disney World, SUVs, Costco, and Cost Plus, neck-deep in fluffy towels, CDs, skateboards, laptops, wide-screen TVs, and Betty Crocker cake mix.

Most Israelis who fled the Jewish State wanted never ever to have to don a uniform again, or fire a .05 machine gun, or numbly roll through an Arab refugee camp exposed to hidden black-masked jihadists with shoulder-held RPG waiting to turn your jeep into a Jerry Bruckheimer fireball.

So all through my two years of regular army service and now as a reservist I was asked, again and again, by grinning, incredulous troops: “What brought you to this insane mess? Why join the army if you don’t have to?”

The best I could come up with was that during my time in America I’d lived pretending to myself that the non-Jews didn’t really think I was a Christ-killing, world-dominating, media-controlling kike—pretending to myself that they really didn’t chide my Jewishness behind my back. But after all, they often did. And always, there was this ice-cold separateness. They never let you forget not so much that you were a Jew but that they, bless their Christmasy asses, were not.

I figured the one place on earth where I could really feel free of all that shit was in Israel. I wanted, for once, to be just generally human, immersed in a kinky-haired majority. To whatever soldier asked me about my strange presence I held up in my hands the assault rifle, the Colt automatic rifle, or CAR-15, that we carried: “See this?” I said. “Truth is, once I saw you Israeli soldiers, Clint Eastwood Jews with big guns in your hands, man, I couldn’t even pretend that I didn’t want to serve. Fuck my feminine side. Are you kidding? You know how proud you guys made me feel? It brought the man right out in me!” They always laughed and clapped my back for saying this.

But not Avi. Disposed to gloom, he didn’t seem amused. He went right past my shtick, snorted, and said disdainfully: “You’re full of shit. Majority? What majority? I ask you, Nathan: what majority? You know how many Arabs are out there? Do you?” His hand jabbed toward the “out there” of the whole Middle East, at Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and sheikdoms I didn’t even know the names of. A couple hundred million Arabs, an ocean. “And now they hate you even more as an Israeli then they would have hated you as an American. You wanted to escape the difference and the hate? But now you are really hated. No one in the world is hated by Arabs more than us Israelis. We are the ‘difference’ that they are born to hate.”

Now Udi, the radio man, leaned his bespectacled face in the club room door. “He himself wants to see you.” Meaning: Yitzak. We groaned to our feet, trooped past Udi’s insolent smile.

The lieutenant met us with his boots planted on a wall of the communication room; rocked back and forth on the chair’s rear legs, headset on, his hand shooting out to adjust the transmitter’s dials.

When he saw us he removed the headset and studied us with a weak smile as though we were his long-awaited salvation. “I have special work,” he said, his free hand making a nervous adjustment to his gold chain. “And I want you three in there. To go to a settlement. But not just any settlement. These are true believers. There are known conspirators among them. They’re not just playing. They kill Arabs. If they could, they’d blow up the Temple Mount. Several of them from this settlement have been in and out of jail for various serious activities. You can guess what those are. They are very to the right. Religious fanatics. Of all the groups, these are known to be the most extreme. They have had it hard, where they are. Many attacks against them. Also, they feel betrayed by us. After all, we let them in there in the first place. They know that when the time comes, the army will arrive and throw them out of there. It’s just a matter of time before the government strikes some deal with the ‘cousins.’ And they have lived with constant hostilities. They are bitter, believe me. A number of them have lost family . . . a few children, a couple of infants, newborns—you understand. A wife. A sister. A boy. All killed by the Palestinians. And so on. Not good. Not good.”

“You’re talking about Neve Parsha,” said Brandt.

Yitzak nodded. “Yes. Go there and take a look. Just a look. Nothing special. See. Just see. That’s all. Just have a look around.”

“Tell me, Yitzak,” said Brandt, “why is it every time there is something in Neve Parsha, you send us and you make this same fucked-up little speech as though we never heard of the place?”

Yitzak’s face and ears reddened. His chair’s front legs and then his boots struck the floor hard. “Because Falk here is still somewhat new to your squad and, uh, he, uh, he has not been there. Isn’t that true, Falk?”

“I’ve been with the unit for two years. But I guess in a way it is.”

“And so, I, uh, I want he should understand. He is not born here, remember. He should know.”

“Know what?” I asked.

Yitzak looked at me disdainfully, using his eyes to transfer onto me the shame that Brandt had laid on him. I stared back coldly, deflecting the transfer. His eyes retreated, grew small, narrow, lonely. Yes, lonely. This surprised me.

“It’s not a piece of Israel that you have maybe come across before. These are poor moshavniks, not wealthy. They are Yemenites. They came here in the Magic Carpet airlift. They were treated badly in Yemen. Persecuted. Killed. The Israeli Air Force flew them out, rescued them. So, these folks have no especial pity for the Arabs, the Palestinians, or for Yemenites for that matter, or any other kind of Arab whatsoever. To them, it is all the same. Because they had no country in Yemen, and they were not just treated there like second-class citizens but murdered. Then they came here and were safe, yes, but not much else. We gave them jobs as low-wage laborers and janitors. To improve their prospects, they volunteered to start their own farms. They were very poor and illiterate, these settlers. Right after the Six Days’ War they established Neve Pasha. They have been on the front lines, so to speak, for many years. They are hard people, used to suffering. They have no illusions. They don’t trust anyone, not even us. They know that in the name of some agreement with the Palestinians, even the very murderers of their children, we’d sell them out in a minute. I’m afraid they haven’t got much use for us.”

“And also we have to go protect them,” said Avi sarcastically.

“Yes,” said Yitzak. “The area commander is worried that because of the operations tonight there will be retaliation on their moshav. To be truthful, they don’t want our help. But we are still responsible to put in an appearance. So, you three will go. This will not be a provocation. They know you, Brandt, and you, Avi. And they are big soccer fans. They will like that Brandt is there because Hapoel plays tonight and they’ll be glued to their TVs and they’ve seen Brandt on television. You’re the most famous soccer referee in Israel, Brandt.”

“They never once recognize me,” said Brandt. “Years now I’m going to this moshav for these ‘emergencies’ and they never recognize me. They don’t know me. To them, I am just another Frank.”

“A Frank?” I said.

“An Ashkenazi Jew. From Europe. They don’t like us. They don’t like the way we treated them when they came here.”

“How was that?”

“Like shit,” said Avi. And since he was himself a Sephardi, like the moshavniks, a Jew of Middle Eastern origin, we did not comment further or dispute his summary. We all knew, even I, that it was indisputably true.

So, this was our “special” mission. We jumped into our Noon Noon, Avi gunned the big patrol truck’s engine, and we went roaring down the road. For miles, we saw nothing. Vague shapes gleamed in darkness. Then, off to the north, flickering yellow and white parachute flares trickled down the black sky. Mosques and high buildings and tall villas pulsed into view. “Look how many villas there are!” shouted Avi over his shoulder, slowing down to admire them close up. “They claim to the whole world that Israel keeps them in poverty! So, look at the poverty!” We sped up. We heard cackling gunfire. We saw red tracers stitching seams into nearby pockets of darkness. Searchlights swept over a column of APCs and tanks. We were in the thick of the operation. But at a fork in the road we veered away west, down a pitch black stretch of Arab homes, farms, and fields, these much poorer, anonymous smudges of tin and cement on a muddy void, the operation fading behind us as the silence of Gaza under curfew closed around us. There were no patrols visible now, though they were present, implanted deep within orchards, waiting, camouflaged by rows of snaking trees or else crawling with motors at low hum and lights switched off down alleys and back streets, faces smudged black, guns poised to fire, or they were, we knew, down there in the occasional wadi we passed, stealthing on foot through gashes in the earth. Only once, a Noon Noon bearing six soldiers tore past in the opposite direction at high speed and with its headlights dimmed, the soldiers’ parkas billowing like torn ragged sails in a gale.

We were in the deepest recesses of Gaza, alone, our only link the shortwave radio, our only protection our snub-barreled short CAR-15s and the handguns from home that some of us wore jammed into belt holsters at the small of our backs, ugly, blunt little Spanish-make Taurus automatics or Smith & Wesson five-shot .38 Detective Specials and the like, which you weren’t meant to have with you but did. And always one bullet in the clip or chamber for yourself—an outcome infinitely preferable to falling into the hands of some of the crews, gangs and militias we pursued. In the ear or mouth and Shalom! as the keffiyeh-masked butchers close in.

Avi stepped hard on the gas and now we broke into countryside even more desolate than the lonely lane of hamlets and groves. The close, hot air smelled like a dog’s breath. Stars riddled the sky like bullet holes. The vibrating armored truck blurred vision and made my sand- and wind-stung eyes tear. I tugged down my goggles and bandit-masked my face in the plain black kaffiyeh I wore around my neck. I had bought it in the shuk in East Jerusalem in the Old City, years ago, from a vendor who claimed it was from Reddiah, Saudi Arabia, and was of a type worn by Bedouin marauders of that region, though none of the Bedouin trackers in our unit had remarked on it. Still, I like to think that it was true. And then, suddenly, unprepared for the spectacular squalor of the place, I saw Neve Parsha hugging the ground, almost invisible; no high towers or other disturbing architectural landmarks—just the long one-story cottages, row on row, and those ugly sheet iron corrugated sheds and workshops, poultry houses and storage warehouses.

There were fogged-up bubble-wrapped crop tents, and the stench of skeletal goats and bony nag horses hung over the place, but I couldn’t make out corrals or pens where the pathetic beasts, which I glimpsed off to the side, bathed in ghostly moonlight, might be kept. There was not a single light on in the place that I could see. But then I saw at the gates the silhouettes of five men heavily armed with Kalatchnikovs and short Galils. They lifted hands in a wave as we slowed through the gate, and Avi gently gunned us up a dusty road that ended before a shed with plastic garbage bags stretched over the windows. The door was shut but a thin seam of light bled through the spaces between the frame and door. Brandt pushed the door gently forward, stepped inside. We followed.

There, nursed by a little lantern, sat a man alone on an upended wooden milk crate, a Kalatchnikov automatic rifle between his knees. His gun, I noted, was not just any Kalatchnikov but a Chinese Kalatchnikov. These are very prized in Israel and distinguished from their more common Russian counterpart by certain parts that are coated in a rubberized material burnt umber in color. It is also sleeker and more elegant and uses the very same ammo as the Russian model, or for that matter the Galil, Israel’s own assault rifle, or the American M-16 from Colt. You could not legally carry one in or out of the service unless you belonged to a certain kind of military commando unit and had taken it off a dead enemy in combat. Then it was yours to keep, your trophy. Most donated theirs back to the IDF, to be put in the Army Museum of Terrorism. But some kept them. This man had. He had taken it from the corpse of one he killed. There were certain elite units you would never learn anything about so you didn’t bother to ask. Clearly, he had served in one.

His face was the hickory color of cured tobacco. When he moved, hints of bronze light ripped over the fierce angles of his face. His eyes were sunken hollows carved of stained mahogany. When his lips moved, as they did when we entered, they parted not to smile but to prepare for speech, exposing the tips of his white teeth like bone fragments in a fatal wound.

He seemed to recognize Brandt, whose face looked, frankly, unhappy. He didn’t pretend to like us either. The flashing of teeth from out of his dark face was the extent of his hospitality. He wore a yarmulke that capped a head of steel gray curls. He wore payos, the earlocks of the ultraorthodox. But in all other respects, he looked in dress, build, and manner like any moshavnik or kibbutznik. The red, blue, and yellow plaid shirt had been laundered and pressed hundreds of times and was faded, threadbare. So were his blue jeans. His shoes were desert boots, the kind worn by commandos and terrorists alike. There was nothing to distinguish him from the majority of Israelis but for the look in his eyes. They were beautiful black velvety eyes but contained at their center something much harder than flesh or spirit, a flint spearhead of unshakable conviction. Clearly he disdained me for my failure to blindly embrace and embody something, as though I would know exactly what it was without our ever having spoken, and in fact he was right: I knew precisely what it was. It was his belief that the Israel granted us Jews in the Torah, stretching from Lebanon to the Euphrates, and all the way to Amman and Damascus, was the Israel that we should have today. It was his belief that attainment of it justified the use of any and all means, including population transfer and any kind of violence.

“So, Brandt,” he said, “what do we hear?”

Brandt grunted and scratched under his chin. “Nothing, Elchanon. You don’t want us to be here and we didn’t want to come, but others there in the great headquarters in Tel Aviv put us together. So: do you offer us some coffee or what?”

Elchanon laughed with more warmth than I would have thought him capable. “I have nothing against you, Brandt.” He looked at all of us. “Sit!” he commanded. We found seats.

He rose slowly and began to fuss at a workbench on which stood a small tripod, a blowtorch, and a small blue tin beaker with a handle and a base scorched black. There was a big brown bag of Turkish coffee. Elchanon scooped out three handfuls and tossed them into the pot. He then poured in water from a plastic pitcher that he lifted off the floor from under the workbench. Last, he removed a box of wooden matches from the pocket of his work shirt, took one match out, and struck it to life on his blunt, hard fingernail. It flared brightly in the dark shed. With his right hand he turned the gas release lever on the torch, held it up, put the match to the nozzle, and a blue-white spearhead of pure fire hissed out. With his left hand he casually removed a cigarette from his shirt pocket, placed it between his lips, and lit it with the blowtorch. Not a word transpired between any of us during all this.

Now I could see his eyes very clearly. They were large, brown, hard—not a trace of warmth in them. Underscored by brown hollows of blackened skin, his sleepless eyes were determined never to rest, as if he, Elchanon, had been seated in this metal hut not even guarding but waiting . . . not for one night but entire days, weeks, even months—blowtorching cigarettes to life, smoking incessantly, not eating, living on mud coffee, tobacco, fire. He drew deeply, with obvious pleasure, on the cigarette, then rested the torch on the table so that the flame burned directly on the pot’s scorched bottom. Then he turned down the flame to a feeble bud of blue light, propped a block of wood against the cylinder to prevent it from rolling, and removed four cups from a shelf above the worktable. He took down a tin of sugar as well, and a spoon, which he examined, wiped on the corner of his shirt, then examined again. Finding it satisfactory, he laid it beside the sugar tin.

“So, there’s your coffee,” he said begrudgingly. “You are also hungry?” Clearly he expected us to say no.

We did as he wished.

“Suit yourself.”

We all pulled our chairs and milk crates from the various corners of the shed and arranged them in a circle around Elchanon’s crate, where he sat perched again, as we had found him, with his elbows on his knees, hands hung loose and head tilted slightly forward, just waiting, though for what we couldn’t say and maybe he couldn’t either. We listened to the water bubbles fight to rise through the mud coffee’s thick brown sludge. We watched Elchanon’s face, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t. I looked around me. Tools hung from the walls, all well used but relatively new, with bright red or blue or green plastic handles: shovels, rakes, hoes, axes, sickles, and shears. There was a buzz saw in the corner. A calendar on the wall was the only decor. Rust streaked the metal walls.

“It must be hot as shit in here during the day,” said Brandt. “How do you stand it? Why don’t you build this thing of wood? It’s cooler.”

“Wood burns,” said Elchanon. “One Molotov and poof!”

Brandt nodded. “Has it been quiet?”

Elchanon shrugged. “What is quiet? They shoot at us every chance they get.”

“They don’t want you here,” I said.

Elchanon looked at me. “And you? They want you here?”

“No,” I said.

“Maybe yes,” said Elchanon. “You have an accent. American, yes? Maybe you are their friend.”

“Look at the uniform he’s wearing. How can you say such a thing?” said Avi.

“What do I care about that uniform?” said Elchanon with an angry grin. “When the time comes that uniform will come to throw me from my home.”

“Your home is in Israel,” I said.

“This is Israel,” said Elchanon.

“I don’t see many Jews around here. Mostly Arabs.”

“And you. You are not Israeli or Arab. You are American.”

“I’m a Jew from New York. But I have Israeli citizenship. I serve in the IDF. That makes me as Israeli as you.”

Elchanon nodded with a sarcastic smile. “So easy to be an Israeli,” he said. “It was harder when my parents came from Yemen. They were made citizens and had to serve in the IDF as soon as they stepped from the plane but they still couldn’t get a job or even a decent place to live. So the government put them in tent camps. That’s where I grew up—in a tent camp. Now they give you someplace nicer to live?”

I shrugged. “Right now I live in a barrack in an old British fort in Khan Yunis. You should come live there with us. Better than a tent.” I looked around. “But by the looks of the houses you have here, you don’t live in a tent now.”

Brandt glared at me. I pressed my lips tight to signal halfhearted regret for my insolence, nodded, and shut up.

More time passed in silence. Now the coffee was ready. Elchanon rose without a noise, moved to the table, and poured out three cups. “Sugar?” We all nodded yes. He added sugar to our cups. Then he handed them around and although he knew that like all Israeli soldiers we had drunk hundreds upon hundreds of cups of mud coffee and knew exactly what we must do now, he said, as all Israelis say when handing you your cup of mud coffee: “Don’t drink that yet. Let it settle.”

And we returned the customary nods to signal that we understood and would let the sediment drift to the bottom of the cup.

The first sip was like a shot of methamphetamine. It loosened our tongues, even Elchanon’s.

“So,” he said with a perverse grin, “what made you leave New York? I hear it is like Sodom and Gomorrah in America.”

I laughed. “It really is, in its way. Too much of everything.”

“The women: they are loose.”

“No more than Israel.”

“Not true,” said Avi. “I had an American girl. She fucked all the time, no big deal, anytime I wanted. My Israeli girlfriend makes me promise a ring each time she takes her panties off.”

“But who would you want to be waiting for you when you come home from war?” said Brandt.

“The Israeli girl. Of course. You can’t talk to American women. Too selfish. And their heads are full of noise.” He made a motion by his head to signify a dizzying amount of noise filling up one’s head. “They don’t really hear you. All they seem to think about is themselves. Isn’t that true, Nathan? You would know.”

I shrugged. “I felt this weird loneliness in America that I never quite shook—over there no one meets your eyes in the street—and no matter what I did, who I had for a lover, what we called love left us both angry and hurt and feeling more alone than when we were single.” I shook my head. “Maybe Americans have too much of everything—food, cars, clothes, sex—and we’re all ruined over there, men and women both.”

“So, American, where do you stand with your politics? Are you a Laborite? Or a Likudnik? Or are you a Communist? There are Communists in our government. Maybe you are one? You want to give these Arabs a state of their own?”

I looked at Brandt. He offered a little smile, as if to say, Answer at your own risk.

“I don’t want to give anybody anything. I don’t think about these people at all, except when the army sends me down here. You like it here? Good luck. To me, Gaza is a shithole.”

Elchanon’s bottom lip depressed with mock awe. “You have strong feelings about this, I see.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

He clapped his dark leather hands together in fake applause; flashed an unamused smile of snarled yellow teeth. He looked at Brandt and Avi with raised eyebrows. “Very nice what you bring here. What is this, a kibbutznik?” He looked at me. “You are kibbutznik?”

“No,” I said. “But I have many friends who are. And I understand what they are saying.”

“They are socialist Communists,” he snarled. “They are against God. They . . . they love the Arabs. Their great-grandfathers used to dress like Arabs. Did you know this?”

“Not all of them. And anyway, so what? It was poetry to them,” I said.

He said. “You are against Israel. You are an enemy.”

I gaped at him in disbelief. “What are you talking about?” I said in a shaky voice. “I’m an Israeli soldier.”

“You are a traitor,” he said.

“Hey,” said Brandt, “take it easy on him. Don’t you see: he’s a new immigrant. He came all the way from New York City to protect your ass.”

I glanced at Brandt, who crossed his eyes good-humoredly as a signal not to take any of this seriously. But I couldn’t help myself. Elchanon’s words struck deep and hurt.

“And so, I’m a traitor. I’m the enemy. That means what? That you put me in a league with Arafat?”

Elchanon waved his hand dismissively. “You are the enemy of Israel. Either you are with God and with Israel or you are not. And if you are not then you’re just another Arab. Just the same.”

“And Brandt?” I asked with cold fury. “And Avi? These are also enemies.”

Elchanon looked at Brandt and laughed. “Of course.”

Brandt nodded. “Avi and I are enemies from way back.”

“And you, Avi? You’re the enemy?”

Avi tilted his head back with heavy-lidded eyes and lips pursed wistfully. He nodded with theatrical gravity. “It seems so.”

I should have taken their cues, stopped there, let it go. But I couldn’t. I felt my rage mounting unchecked.

“But there’s three of us and one of you. There’s more of us than you. So, maybe you’re the enemy.”

Brandt shook his head and tisked disapprovingly. “Don’t need to do that, Nathan. That’s not a good way to go.”

“And—and this?” I stammered, looking at our accuser. “I’m here to guard his fucking ass, and he calls me a traitor?” I looked at Elchanon. “You motherfucker. You stinking motherfucker.”

Elchanon’s smile drew tighter, colder. He nodded slowly, absorbing my words. He did not use such words himself, I could tell, was a religious man who watched his language, though not his opinions. Having openly stated his point, he now regarded my face of “treachery” with a calm, even casual eye, as a kind of emissary of all the enemies of God and Israel amassing beyond the gates of Neve Parsha. I wanted to strangle him. At the same time, he frightened me—terrified me much more than any Arab. I could not understand him. Not even a little. I have always prided myself on an ability to fathom outlooks remote from my own. But with him, who should have stood beside me, not against, I drew a blank. A Jew with earlocks and a yarmulke. A Jew who wore a tallith. Who said kaddish for his dead and motzi for his bread and wine. A Jew and yet, somehow, not a Jew.

“My mother,” I said, voice trembling, “was in the Holocaust in Europe. Do you understand that? They tried to kill her. They murdered her family and her friends. I came here on my own because I am a Jew and want to defend Israel, the Jewish people. How dare you . . .”

“I dare,” he said, “and I don’t care that you wear this uniform or that you are here. I didn’t ask you to come. I don’t live in Tel Aviv or Petaq Tikva. I am here, on the edge of what they call Egypt but that belonged to us not long ago: the Sinai. Now it is Egypt. Before we gave it away, all was quiet. Now, we have trouble. We are giving away our country, bit by bit. In Sinai I fought in ’sixty-seven and then in ’seventy-three. I saw friends die at Chinese Farm in the Sinai. Now we gave back what they died for. And now this government or the next will try to give back this, my home. Land that God gave to me, to the Jewish people. And you want to return it to the Arabs, the Amalekites. They kill us and we give them our land. This is the arrangement. So, they are enemies of God and of me. And so are you. But the day is coming. Soon it will come. And we will take care of you and your kind.”

“How?”

“As it is written in Tanach: ‘After the war against the goyim will come the war between the Jews.’”

“You will kill us? Kill me? You, a Jew, will kill me, a Jew! My mother was hunted by Nazis, her family and friends were put into ovens, and you will point your gun at me and fire?”

Elchanon looked right at me: “Sure.”

Brandt stood. So did Avi. I remained seated, transfixed by the inscrutable expression in Elchanon’s eyes. He wore a calm, murderous smile. I saw that he could kill me as easy as that. But I could never bring myself to kill a Jew. Not even one with a gun pointed at me. I did not come into this world to kill Jews but to protect them and myself as well—of course, myself as well. Would he shoot my mother too, if he could? With her French accent, in her flower-patterned, quilted housedress and the scarf tied around her neglected hair like drooping bunny rabbit ears, and her blue and pink house slippers? Would he shoot, this Elchanon, my father, a Bronx-born American Jew, in his leather jacket and Florsheim loafers, with his iron-hard potbelly and a Smith Corona cigar poking from his face? Shoot them dead as sinners and traitors and bad Jews? They were “bad” Jews, as was I. We hardly ever prayed or went to shul. In civilian life I drank too hard and slept with my best friend’s wife. I smoked cigarettes like a chimney. I read novels with dirty passages. During sex, I liked for the partner to take my member into her mouth and when I felt like it I pulled out and penetrated her from behind. Sometimes we tied each other up. And what would he think of the tattoo of a black panther on my shoulder? Or the earring I wore in my left ear in civilian life? Or my passion for the Rolling Stones, who sang songs like “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man”?

But what if he made a play for his weapon to shoot me? Right now?

“Come, Nathan. Y’Allah. Right now.”

But I sat there. What if he lifted that Chinese Kalatchnikov right now? Would I waste him? Hoist my CAR-15 and put one, one single shot, into his gut? That would give him something to pray about. Then I’d pray too. Each morning and at night. Better to pray get-well prayers for him then please-save-me-God prayers for myself, like please stop the agony, O God, please more morphine O let the nurse come now come now or an angel of the Lord to stay his hand . . . but no hands are ever stayed in this world . . .

“Asshole,” said Avi when we were outside.

“They are up to something,” said Brandt.

Avi nodded. “I saw it in his face. What about you, Falk?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You think . . . he means it? He would kill Jews?”

“Of course,” said Brandt. “So would you. I promise.”

“Never,” I said fiercely.

Avi regarded me with mild disdain. “Look, Falk, God bless you for coming to Israel. But don’t be better than us, OK? Don’t be better than him. And don’t be better than me. If someone points a gun at your head, what the fuck does it matter if he’s Jewish or not? Shoot him before he shoots you. This is the rule.”

“What rule?”

“The rule that is.”

“But I . . .”

“Did you hear me, you mother’s cunt? Don’t be better than us. Understand? Or not?” He glared at me as if his anger were my fault, and spread his boots wide in a combat stance. I saw the back-alley street fighter he must have been as a Fez gutter boy, ready to bleed for the sake of being right at any cost, his dark, lean face dour with crossed pride.

But this was about my dignity, not his.

“Shit on that,” I said.

“Mother’s cunt,” muttered Avi, his anger fired. “He shoots, you shoot. Understand?”

He was now pacing back and forth before the Noon Noon.

“Jump in,” said Brandt casually. “Let’s get out of here.” A true referee, he chose no side in the dispute. “Besides, Avi,” he said, “since when do you give a shit? Remember? Nothing you do changes when your number’s up, right? How many times have we seen that? So why the hell quibble? Live well, make money, screw like a champ. If you die in bed, you’ve won the game.”

“Brandt, you’d make a good American.” I laughed.

“Someday, God willing,” he joked back, playing along—

trying to defuse tensions.

“Motherfucker,” Avi swore, his temper mounting. “He shoots, you shoot. Got it?”

“OK,” said Brandt, winking at me, “he gets it.”

“And you too, Brandt. Do you get it? You also?”

“OK,” said Brandt with that ironic smile. “He shoots, I shoot.”

“To kill,” said Avi.

“Definitely,” said Brandt. “Definitely.”

“But even a Jew?” I asked, still sickened by the thought.

And Avi looked at me with the eyes of Elchanon, and all of a sudden I understood. I understood completely. I understood in my bones.