Tag Archives: war

Judging the Judge of Israel

Posted on by under Journal

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In September 2014, I had the opportunity to form my own judgment about the former UN-appointed judge of Israel.

We were sitting in a brownstone on Crown Street in New Haven, the headquarters of Shabtai, the Jewish society at Yale. William Schabas, head of a three person committee appointed by the UN to investigate crimes against international law in Israel and Palestine during the summer of 2014, had been invited to meet with Israeli academic Moshe Halbertal and give a talk on the topic of Jewish contributions to human rights law. Some wondered why he’d accepted the invitation, but I didn’t. Presumably Schabas, a known critic of Israel who had once declined to call Hamas a “terrorist organization” when giving an interview with the Israeli press, was venturing into the lion’s den to indicate that he wasn’t prejudiced.

I was asked to interview Schabas for one hour about the history of human rights and the law. This assignment was particularly personal for me. At the end of June, I’d visited Israel for a month to attend my brother’s graduation and finish a novel about daily life in my birthplace during the second intifada. Over the course of my stay, rocket fire broke out. I experienced the effects of eleven air raids, including one where a dying relative and Holocaust survivor was unable to be moved into a shelter and asked us to leave her behind. Mindful of everything that I’d experienced, I wanted to talk to Schabas to get some insight into his thought process and judge him for myself. He’d mostly avoided discussing Israel and Palestine overtly on his trip because he said it might compromise his forthcoming report. So I had to be indirect, focusing on historical examples.

What was his opinion of the Allied bombing campaigns in Germany and Japan in the Second World War? He explained that the bombings might well be considered illegal by today’s standards, though the context of 1945 made their status more ambiguous. If it were up to him, it would always be a crime to attack civilians in cities. How did he think a hypothetical commission would deal with limited access to information regarding military decision making and activities undertaken in secret by terrorist groups? He told me that judges must always do their best to come to conclusions even in the face of great obstacles and incomplete information. Were there any examples in modern history of times when the bombing of cities by western powers represented a justified military intervention? He didn’t mention any. If the United States were attacked by rockets from Mexico, did he think it likely that the United Nations would investigate its retaliatory conduct? His answer was yes, absolutely. The law should apply equally to all nations. In an era in which terrorist organizations can embed themselves in the infrastructure of cities, what constitutes the distinction between overwhelming force and disproportionately violent force when dealing with perceived threats? This is the only question he declined to answer.

His discussion of the Goldstone Report was particularly telling to me. He was struck that Moshe Halberthal admitted that white phosphorus was no longer employed by the IDF thanks to Goldstone’s findings; this was the first time that he’d heard someone associated with Israel admit that the commission had done any good. I wondered if Schabas thought that recommendations for small practical changes such as this were the best that his report might ultimately accomplish.

In my judgment, Schabas seemed like a knowledgeable man who understood that there existed significant opposition to his commission, but who was nonetheless deeply convinced of its nobility. Though originally called upon by the UN to focus on Israeli actions, he immediately insisted that Hamas too had to be scrutinized. But this was the least that he could do to ensure that the commission would not be dismissed out of hand as one-sided. Given Schabas’ history of criticizing Israel, he seems to me to have been an undiplomatic choice to head the commission to say the least, almost guaranteeing that the Israelis would call his findings into question. In an ideal world, a report by the United Nations on the situation in Gaza could be a landmark document setting guidelines to help regulate actions by modern militaries when engaging with targets in densely populated cities using asymmetric force. But the efficacy of such a report would be bound to the constellation of voices that it brought to the table—it could only be patched together in a mutually supportive context in which military expertise informed the theorizing of the academics, and the academics considered the facts on the ground when making their recommendations.

I knew that Schabas’ commission would not provide such a document, and believe that his quitting at this point will have little influence on the ultimate reception of the UN’s findings. The entire enterprise was undertaken in a hostile context in which Abbas is increasingly resorting to the authority of international organizations to try to put the squeeze on Israel and draw attention to the iniquities of the stalling peace process. This adversarial atmosphere might not be the most productive for compromise and open discourse; something like the establishment of a truth and reconciliation committee led by truly impartial observers might lead to greater popular perceptions of justice being served. In the meantime, so long as Hamas continues to deliberately target civilian populations and refuses to adopt strategies of non-violent resistance that have proved gloriously efficacious in the cases of Gandhi, King, and Mandela (strategies courageously carried out every day by moderate Palestinian groups ignored by the press in the face of massive opposition by both the IDF and extremist factions), any effort to solve the peace process through legal finger-wagging will prove to be a futile endeavor.

Remember Cawnpore, a Memoir of the Opium War–Chapter V (Children Can Be Cruel)

Posted on by under Novels, Remember Cawnpore

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The sight of the children left to their own devices just outside the house made me shudder. The irresponsibility of their ayah was beyond belief. The District was in an uproar since rumor began spreading that the East India Company had deliberately smeared the cartridges of the sepoys’ Enfield muskets with the fat of pigs and cows. This would have had the effect of forcing Moslem and Hindoo soldiers alike to compromise their faiths whenever they bit down on the cartridges – a scheme altogether too subtle and insane for the insipid minds of the East India Company to have concocted, I can assure you. But perhaps carelessness was to blame rather than design and just such ingredients were in fact assembled at some factory or another. I really couldn’t say, and don’t imagine that it makes much difference. All of this was only the pretext for the expression of deeper passions. Since its earliest days, the East India Company had relied on battalions of sepoys to guarantee the security of the country. The prospective mutiny of the native soldiers could only be cataclysmic.

Symptoms of outright mutiny first broke out at Berhampore, not far from Calcutta. In February, the 19th Native Infantry was threatened with cannon fire and then disbanded for daring to reject the Enfields. Then in late March, a sepoy by the name of Mungal Pandy did a capital job of stirring up a commotion in the nearby city of Barrackpore. He attacked his Sergeant Major with a sword before being restrained, just barely, by a quick-thinking Brigadier-General. After his hanging, his regiment, the 34th Native Infantry, was similarly disbanded.  It did little good that a handful of diplomatic Company commanders reacted to news from Barrackpore by allowing their troops to bend the rules with regard to the muskets, for example, by letting them grease the cartridges themselves with the lubricants of their choice. This only reinforced the rumor that something was wrong with the Enfields in the first place.

By May 10, hoards of native Indian soldiers in the East India Company’s employ had rebelled against their European officers in Meerut. The sepoys then rampaged on the ancient Mogul capital of Delhi, eviscerating every European they met along the way, or so rumor had it. The parlors of Anglo-India were promptly resounding with what we all prayed were exaggerations about children burned alive in their nurseries and pregnant women disemboweled by mutinous sowars. The doddering Mogul emperor Bahadur Shah, hitherto considered little more than an amateur poet and professional debauchee, was proclaimed the puppet ruler. Masses of discontented mercenaries were soon vying for prominence in the newly resurrected court of the Peacock Throne. Gossip suggested that an all-out revolution against British rule was about to break out in Bengal. The sepoys of Fatehgurh and Cawnpore remained loyal, however temporarily. The pathetically kept secret was that mutiny was expected among them any day, and the local landholding zamindars and their ryots would probably rise alongside them. The best that we could hope for was that the sepoys would march on Delhi and spare the century-old European community of Cawnpore and its environs.

I knew that it would be a chore, a ludicrous effort to pantomime optimism when I reunited with my family. The motives for my homecoming were tortured enough as it was. Now I would be distracted from my purpose by the machinations of unscrupulous strangers who hoped to profit from bloodshed. They whispered that the sepoys’ European commanders were plotting to call them all out on parade and slaughter them with cannon fire. Then, baptisms would be forced across the subcontinent on Musselmen and Hindoos alike. The entire length of the sacred Ganges would be mutilated with irrigation ditches. Women would be forced to break purdah, paraded about in public, and, worst of all, formally educated. Rumor went so far as to claim that the Company would begin paying its employees in tanned strips of cowhide rather than rupees, though that claim always seemed particularly ridiculous to me. But preposterous suggestions mated with half-truths to conceive murderous sentiments in the hearts of the oppressed and the self-righteous. At any rate, truth itself has never been an impediment to the spread of rumors in any time or place. And as I’d soon learn, even the most heinous crimes can be readily sanctified by persecuted imaginations.

Thomas presently  scrambled across the garden to greet me. Because I hadn’t seen him since his infancy, I supposed that his older cousin must have whispered my identity to him. Or rather, I suppose it now—at the time, I was intoxicated by the ganja and somewhat befuddled.

“Uncle Maxim!” he screamed, leaping into my arms with such force that I nearly toppled over.

“Oh, what a fat little boy! Climb down and let me take a look at you before you give me a hernia.”

He was a stout child with lively eyes, the type of boy to be hiding a slingshot or some sort of dead varmint in his back pocket.

“Look at this!” I cried with perhaps greater eagerness than was becoming. I was eager to impress someone again, I suppose. I produced a deck of cards and shuffled it with professional dexterity.

“Pick any card. I won’t look.”

Thomas obliged.

“Was it the Queen of Hearts?”

“No.”

“Rubbish. I’m not wrong.”

“It was the Queen of Clubs.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It was.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It was.”

“It wasn’t!”

“Yes, it was. What sort of a magician are you?”

“Look kid, the entire bloody deck is nothing but Queens of Hearts!”

“Got you to admit your trick, didn’t I, Uncle Maxim? And got you to swear!”

I had to chuckle at that.

“Perhaps he uses the deck to trick travelers out of their money at caravanserais,” offered Julia suddenly. “He looks like a dacoit.”

I was too shocked to reply to her directly, so I turned to the boy and said,

“The deck’s a gift for you, Thomas. That’s why I brought it. Do you think that I randomly tramp about with trick sets of cards? Now enjoy your little present, and don’t be so cynical. Believe in magic a bit. I’d also brought a kitten for a certain little girl, but I got hungry along the way and decided to eat it.”

“Thomas, let’s go inside,” ordered Julia with chilling authority for a child of eight. Her surliness reminded me of her father. I hoped for her sake that his broad forehead was the only other feature that she inherited from him. There it was, unmistakable, persistently wrinkled in forethought whenever she was speaking or preparing to speak. This was a girl who would never enjoy the pleasures of polite conversation, I thought to myself. She would always be too busy planning her next move to ever really listen to anybody else.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to Uncle Maxim?” shrieked Thomas.

Julia obliged by glaring at me. Perhaps the child was simply afraid. But at the time, I was quite taken aback. What had her mother and grandmother been telling her about me to inspire this sort of contempt? Thomas improvised as best he could.

“Don’t mind Julia. Papa says that women go mad once a month. It’s our lot as gentlemen to forbear them with patience.”

I roared with laughter, and not only because Julia was prepubescent. Thomas was a perfect parrot of his father Peter, who was always groaning on about “forbearing things with patience.” It was a stock phrase of his since his adolescence.

“Thomas, let’s go inside!” Julia ordered. “We have to feed Ms. Google.”

“I won’t go inside, I won’t!” Then, in a suddenly sweet voice: “I missed you Uncle Maxim! It’s not true the sepoys are going to attack us, is it?”

“God forbid.”

“Of course not. Nothing exciting ever happens around here. Well, anyway, I’m glad that you’re back! It seems like everybody but Christopher is worried and serious these days. But I knew that you’d be different. Ayah Rupee tells us stories about when you were a little boy, so I feel like I know you. And… we’ve been waiting for you to arrive all morning.”

“Have you?”

“The ryots said you reached Cawnpore last week, overland from Calcutta. Gossip travels fast around here. Uncle Maxim?”

“Yes?”

“What’s overland?”

“What does it sound like it means, Thomas? Now come inside!”

“No, Julia! You’re not my bloody mother, and Papa says that only parents have the right to order anyone about. Why are you being so mean to Uncle Maxim?”

“He is no uncle of mine.”

I actually smiled at this. I remembered that I’d worn rags with specific ends in mind. If my appearance so disgusted the girl, it could only mean that my costume was effective. And instinctually, I knew that I couldn’t blame Julia for her haughtiness. I imagined that her fervency that I was no blood relation stemmed from Vivian’s similar insistence, because her mother was in love with me, undoubtedly, and close-minded people would think that since she was my stepmother’s daughter, her affection was unnatural. I told myself that she distanced herself from me as much as possible in conversations with her daughter to justify her love and remove it from the unspeakable taboo of incest in her heart of hearts. I knew that Vivian was being dishonest when she insisted that she felt nothing but a sister’s ardor for me on a certain horrible night. She arched her eyebrows in odd ways when she lied. And as for the anger in her daughter’s voice, well, I’d left the Highlands after I was disinherited, hadn’t I? Perhaps Vivian resented me for leaving her, as I knew that Christopher did.

But something was odd. Thomas had said that I was expected at the Highlands, which meant that Vikram and Ayah Rupee’s acquaintances must have spread the word. Why no entourage, then, to greet me? I suddenly realized that everything was stagecraft. Even Christopher was a liar, divulging nothing about his knowledge that I’d returned. Here was yet another reason to fantasize about punching him in the face. Would everyone else similarly pretend to be taken by surprise, or would they be honest that they knew I was coming but didn’t even care enough to come outside and greet me? Whatever was about to happen, I was prepared for just this sort of theatre.  I was costumed for the part.

Remember Cawnpore, A Memoir of the Opium War–Chapter III (A Prodigious Amount of Ganja and Charas Is Ingested)

Posted on by under Novels, Remember Cawnpore

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Christopher and I drove in silence along the outskirts of several massive estates. Most of them were owned by men whose ancestors had profited from an amnesty granted in 1801 to European officers who’d previously helped to drill and even command contingents of Marathas. These Hindoo warriors were once the vassals of the Moslem emperor of the Moguls, whose dynasty had ostensibly ruled India in one form or another since the fifteenth century. For all intents and purposes, however, the Marathas had formed their own independent fighting forces for centuries in Northern India, and the agents of the East India Company effectively employed them as pawns against the forces of the collapsing Mogul Empire. As they did so, the British gradually assembled an empire of their own from the wreckage of aboriginal princely states.

But all that was a long time ago. By 1857, the Maratha name inspired more ridicule than awe among the British. Their last king, Bajee Rao, had been humiliated against the Company in battle and ended his days reduced to living on a pension in a gaudy palace in Bithoor, just outside of Cawnpore. This monthly allowance was suspended upon his death. His adopted son and successor, the Nana Sahib, was a notorious local character who spent his days holding picnics on his estate and his evenings pleading for British solicitors’ advice on how the defunct pension might be transferred to himself. That is almost all that I knew of him at the time beyond tales of his obesity, poor complexion, and modest talent at snookers. I would never have guessed at the fellow’s future notoriety.

Christopher and I presently smoked a great mound of charas, ganja, and tobacco mixed together in the mouth of a chillum. Then we said nothing for about an hour. I told myself that the intoxicants made us reticent. Finally, Christopher had the courage to lean over and address me in his drawling American accent.

“Did you miss me?”

“Christ, don’t be an idiot.”

Silence.

“So, Maxim, what brings you back to the Highlands?”

“My love of the land.”

“What a romantic answer.”

“I was obviously being sarcastic. After all I’ve been through, I could care less about this place.”

“Are you honestly telling me that the District means nothing to you?”

“No. And it’s so scalding hot this time of year that you literally can’t step out of doors between eleven and six without risking sun poisoning. Europeans should never have settled here. We don’t belong.”

“But didn’t you tell me that you’d go camping with your father in the fields around the Ganges when you were a little boy?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“You used to describe those stories so poetically to me, your memories are proof that you’re lying to me now about your indifference to India. I remember camping trips with my own father on the cliffs around New Haven. I’ll love Connecticut until I die, just as I do the Highlands. And I know that you feel the same way about this place.”

“That’s what you think.”

“Well, I don’t care what you say. This is a fine country, fit for indigo and poppies. And there’s a kind of timelessness here.”

“Nothing is more impermanent than the land, Christopher. The river shifts. The ryots come and go. And honestly, this is an ugly place. Completely mundane. There’s no drama in the landscape – nothing but blood red plains. Trust me. I’ve seen mountains—real mountains. Nothing in India can compare.”

“I’ll have you know that the piddling hills of Scotland—”

“You’ve never even been to Scotland.”

“…that the piddling hills of Scotland are nothing compared to the Himalayas.”

“Which are far away from here, and which you have similarly never seen.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not I’ve seen them, fool. They’re physically located in India, and proof that what you just said was wrong.”

“Excuse me?”

“Didn’t you just tell me that nothing in India can compare to the mountains you’ve seen in Scotland?”

“Yes, but when I used the word India, I meant this specific area of the country, and not the whole geographical region in general.”

“What were we talking about? I don’t remember.”

“I don’t remember either. It’s a good opportunity to change the subject. Heard any infectious parlor songs lately?”

“It’s not my funeral, but you have to admit that you have the taste in music of a coot.”

“I don’t give a hooter,” I said, mocking his dialect. “There’s great beauty to parlor music, and I’m not ashamed that I love it. For example, that song you greeted me with-”

“O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road!” he threatened.

“Shut up. But yes, that song, Loch Lomond…it has special meaning. I mean, there’s an entire history associated with its lyrics.”

“It’s high-falutin, is it?”

I yawned and stretched my arms.

“You could say that, yes. The song’s about two soldiers in the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

“What the hell sort of name is Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

“A pretty bad one. Anyway, he had a claim to the throne of England. And these two soldiers in his army… they were captured by the English and locked in Carlisle Castle. One of them was going to be executed—going to take the low road…and the other one was going to be released and travel on the high road back to Scotland.”

“Or visa versa. The high road could also be a symbol for Heaven, couldn’t it?”

“No, Christopher. The high road isn’t symbolic of anything. It’s as mundane as Purgatory.”

“Is mundane your new favorite word? Tell me, who are you to have the final say on the interpretation of the lyrics?”

“Stop trying to pick arguments with me. The point is, the song is a monument to the love between best friends.”

“How can you compare it to anything by, say, Verdi?  It’s trash by comparison, sentimental trash fit for wakes and funerals. You English-”

“I’m Scotch.”

“Whatever you are, you have embarrassingly bad taste. Parlor-tunes are nauseating treacle as far as I’m concerned. Songs like What Is Home Without a Mother? are nothing but slime.”

“And what’s so wonderful about Verdi other than the fact that he’s Italian?”

“Are you joking? He’s passionate, he’s larger than life, he’s…damn it, he’s modern.”

I looked solemnly at Christopher for a moment and tried to break the silence by farting. My intestines obliged with such a ludicrously high pitched peep, however, that we both began to laugh uncontrollably. He repaid me with a loud,

“Libiamo, libiamo ne’ lieti calici che la belleza infiora!”

“Admit that you only praise Verdi because you’re an Italian yourself! Your grandparents were from Ischia, weren’t they?”

“Balls! Verdi is beautiful everywhere, to everyone. Besides, I’m not Italian. I was born in Connecticut, just like my mother was. And my grandparents were only Italian on my father’s side of the family, just as you’re only English on yours.”

“Scotch! And you’re wrong—my mother was only a Nagar Brahmin on Ayah Rupee’s side of the family. I’m…I’m but a quarter native.”

“God, what difference does it make? And incidentally, Maxim, today’s Italy-” he paused for a moment, licking his lips. Then, he began to speak again with increased conviction. “Today’s Italy is literally fighting for its independence, for its birthright. Verdi’s music is like the voice of the national spirit raised in song… and your Scottish ditty is all about dying for the sake of monarchy.”

“Wrong. As I said, the song is about the love between two soldiers who’ll never see each other again. As to whether or not it captures a national ethos…”

“What a big word!  Greek, is it?”

“The song is exquisitely beautiful, moron. Its politics are incidental.”

“Politics are never incidental when it comes to art. I’ll have you know that when Verdi composed Rigoletto, he and Francesco Maria Piave-”

“Who?”

“He was Verdi’s lyricist. They actually had to fight against the Austrian Board of Censors to have their opera published.”

Christopher grunted and nodded his head in a self-satisfied sort of way. I looked at him quizzically.

“Why are you talking about the Austrian Board of Censors?” I had literally forgotten.

“Verdi and his friend fought the Board of Censors to produce Rigoletto,” he repeated. “It took real grit to do that.”

“So what?”

“In other words, it wasn’t anonymous folk music that they created. It was something greater than that—something defiant and patriotic.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s it!”

“You can’t possibly be arguing that it’s really the context of a piece’s creation that makes it beautiful, and not the thing itself, can you? After all, an objective audience would be deaf and dumb to all of those kinds of issues.”

“No, idiot. You’re setting up a straw man. Even with no knowledge of a piece’s history at all, it can still be inherently impressive to the ear. Especially in the case of Verdi.”

“If you can call screaming sopranos impressive.”

“Don’t be ignorant. What I’m trying to explain to you is that politics is only part of what makes opera beautiful. But that part is vital. We’re living in a new age, Maxim. Empires are dying, and nations are being born.”

“This all sounds very subversive.”

“And you sound like a civil servant. I forgot how puritanical you get when you’re losing a debate.”

“I am not losing a debate. I’m not even arguing with you! We were just having a friendly talk about the merits of different types of music, weren’t we? And I believe you were making the ludicrous argument that politics have something… have anything to do with aesthetic judgments…”

“I’m sorry, but the conversation has advanced beyond that. Now, you have to admit that like it or not, I’m right about what the future will be like. Think about it, Maxim, the birth of whole new states… at the hands of everyone from the carbonari of Italy to the sepoys of India.”

“Utter nonsense.”

“Viva Italia, Viva India!”

I remember that a flock of parrots flew overhead when he said that.

“Spare me your platitudes,” I ventured over the sound of their flapping wings. “There’s no comparison between Italy and India. Even if the mutineers drove every European out of this place, it would quickly be Moslem versus Hindoo versus Sikh in this country. Since the days of Alexander and Porus, India has only existed in the Western imagination. Everybody knows that religion is stronger than anything else when it comes to peoples’ loyalties here, and certainly more influential than national politics of any sort.”

“Then why are the Musselmen and Hindoos cooperating with each other so eagerly in this present revolution?”

“It’s a mutiny, not a revolution.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Proper perspective. Besides, do you see many Sikhs joining against us? Trust me, so long as nothing but the commercial interests of the British Empire unite the people of this place, independence is inconceivable.”

“Incidentally, that ridiculous line about Alexander and Porus and the Western imagination…did you steal it from someone?”

“I did not. Attribute my eloquence to the charas.”

“I never denied that you could be a proper wise-ass, on occasion.”

He breathed deeply before continuing to speak.

“You’ve been away for five years,” he finally said, “and have chosen a hell of a time to come back.”

“Well, there’s a reason I’m back,” I answered mysteriously. “I have important news… and I need money.”

He laughed in my face when I said that.

“I see that you’re still perfectly selfish, Maxim. Are you oblivious to what’s happening around you? If the mutiny spreads here, it’s Armageddon.”

“Well, when Armageddon looms, perhaps perfectly selfish people might be useful blokes to have around.”

“Alright, alright. At least you didn’t lie and say you were coming home to rescue us! Now, enough bullshit. Where were you all this time, and why are you dressed like some ragamuffin out of Oliver Twist?”

I remember that he didn’t lift his voice on the final syllable of the sentence, so that it took a moment for me to realize that he was even asking a question. When I did, I cleared my throat before saying,

“I was filibustering with Billy Walker in Nicaragua.”

“Some pumpkins,” he said dismissively, making no pretense of believing me. Then he repeated “A hell of a time to come back,” and focused his gaze on the horizon. “Do you remember when we were kids and would dream about sailing the Nereid all the way to Corea?”

“I think about it every night.”

“We were pretty naïve then.”

“Were we?”

We were silent for a long time again. Finally, to irritate him, I asked,

“Are you angry that I didn’t say goodbye to you before I left?”

“Not at all. After all, you left a note. To this day, I treasure it as a valued snot-rag.”

He contorted his mouth into a sort of half-smile, and the conversation ended at that. There were times when I felt like punching him in the face and shattering his porcelain features, offset by what can only be described as an elegantly receding hairline, hidden at the moment under a pith helmet. His was not that messy sort of baldness that starts on the top of the head and ravages the scalp in increasingly destructive concentric circles. No, it was Julius Caesar’s type—the sort that vain men try to conceal by maneuvering their dying bangs. I told myself to poke fun at Christopher for being a bald son of a bitch.

He’d reminded a disinherited and broken man of his passion for all he’d lost, and he brought up too, as if off-handedly, the topic of his polluted blood—the causa causarum of his every misfortune. It was all done subtly enough, but sure as hell, I believed then that he was trying to cause me excruciating pain, as I had once caused him. But then again, perhaps I was wrong. I still don’t know.

The Untold History of the United States–A Review of a Question and Answer with Oliver Stone

Posted on by under Journal

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I met Oliver Stone tonight. He was at Yale to promote a documentary and book he created about twentieth century American history: “The Untold History of the United States.” He showed us an hour long episode from the documentary. It lambasted Truman, calling him one of the worst Presidents in American history. Stone particularly blasts Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan (pardon the unfortunate pun there). Stone suggests that the bombings were unnecessary to a peaceful resolution of the war. “The conflict was about to end anyway.” Had Truman only behaved more diplomatically and allowed the USSR to invade Japan, says Stone, there would never have been a Cold War. The nuclear arms race would never have begun. As proof of this idea, he cites Curtis LeMay’s declaration that the atomic bomb had “nothing” to do with ending the war. If “Bombs Away LeMay” said this, Stone reasons, it must be true. He blames Truman for almost singlehandedly derailing the course of twentieth century history, which would have been much better served had he never become President.

Now, I TF’ed a course at Yale last semester on the military history of the West since 1500, and I disagreed with a great deal of the documentary. I didn’t know where to begin when I raised my hand to ask a question of Stone and his colleague. I finally settled on a two part query: “What do you think of the idea of detonating the atomic bomb off the coast of Japan instead of over Hiroshima?” and “what about the idea that the existence of nuclear bombs and mutually assured destruction essentially prevented us from fighting World War Three?” Their answer to the first question was that an experimental use of the bomb might have been an inspired idea that would have helped to intimidate the Japanese into immediate surrender; their answer to the second question was that nuclear bombs made the USSR unnecessarily antagonistic toward the US. Instead, Truman and Stalin could have cooperated on creating a “common man’s century instead of an American century.” At one point, Stone and his colleague literally encouraged the students in the audience to form a revolutionary vanguard. I couldn’t believe my ears—the filmmakers were advocating no less than an alternate version of American history in which the USA became communist.

I would have loved to have said that the reason Curtis LeMay claimed the atomic bomb had nothing to do with ending the war was that he wanted his squads of bombers to get all the credit for that feat. He’d been working for years on fire-bombing Japanese cities, and hoped to claim the glory of the unconditional surrender for himself. And I don’t understand how Stone can simultaneously say that the dropping of the bomb had no effect on ending World War Two, but at the same time that merely detonating an explosive off the coast would have browbeaten the Japanese into surrender. Isn’t this an implicit admission of the fact that the bombs had psychological effects pivotal to ending the war? In fact, the Japanese fought onward until a second bomb was dropped. Do the filmmakers seriously believe that an invasion of the home islands wouldn’t have resulted in millions of lives lost? Or that the Stalinist USSR would have been the best protector of post-war Japan? The documentary said nothing about Stalinist atrocities—the Soviets were largely portrayed as innocent bystanders looking on in horror at Truman’s machinations. Do the filmmakers understand what Stalinist Russia was like? Do they really believe that there would not have been an arms race if the atomic bomb weren’t created in the mid 1940s?

Someone in the audience kept wheezing all night long so loudly that I thought he was going to die—people almost called an ambulance. The old man sitting next to me kept yelling out commentary during the movie like the old men who sit in the theater box on the Muppet Show; I thought it was hilarious. One high school girl asked the filmmaker if he recommended students become “spies” as a patriotic way to help America; Stone almost burst out laughing, and so did I. When it was all over, I talked with some lingerers in the audience, who whispered to me that they thought the film might have been oversimplifying the situation unfairly vis a vis Truman. I agreed. The documentary’s insistence that Truman might have ended the war earlier had he agreed to maintain the office of Japanese emperor rather than call for unconditional surrender was intriguing, though. And it can’t be denied that over the years, Truman consistently gave greater and greater estimates for how many lives the bombs saved, beginning by claiming that they preserved thousands of soldiers, but then raising the total over the years until the sum reached millions.

Eventually, I met Stone face to face at the front of the room. I wanted to ask for a selfie, but was too shy. Instead, I told him I loved Alexander. He told me I should see the 6 hour director’s cut. Then I lied and said it was a shame he never directed I, Claudius. He said, “that has already been directed.” I hugely respected that answer. We shook hands, and went our separate ways.

Memories of Eleven Rocket Attacks from This Summer in Israel

Posted on by under Journal

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At the end of June, I visited Israel for a month to attend a brother’s graduation and finish up a novel about daily life in Israel during the second intifada; the surprise ending is that a Palestinian hunger strike on the Temple Mount results in a two state solution in an alternate universe.  Over the course of my stay, after the murder of the three kidnapped children, the imprisonment of hundreds of members of Hamas, and the torture and murder of the Palestinian boy, rockets eventually began to rain down from Gaza. I went through eleven air raids and wrote down my experience after each one, neglecting to record the dates.

1. Kefar Sava: The wail was louder and higher than the siren of an ambulance or police car. My father, two brothers (one a pacifist, the other a regular fascist), stepmother, and sister all looked at each other dumbly for a moment. None of us felt inclined to enter the shelter. My militant brother insisted on going outside; he said that he wasn’t afraid of the Arabs, and would prove it. I considered to myself that America was a more politically correct country than my birthplace. Half an hour later, my father took my thirteen-year-old sister out running, and I joined them nonchalantly enough. The town was totally empty. We heard two thunderous sounds when we reached the abandoned racetrack, but did a good job pretending not to be thinking what we were all thinking. Eventually, we drove home and met my militant brother in the elevator. He explained that he felt no sympathy for anyone in Gaza, just as they felt no sympathy for him. My father and I told him that he didn’t
realize how foolish he sounded, and asked him if he thought he would speak the same way if he were born a Palestinian. The next day, a couple of my sister’s friends refused to leave their houses in fear for their lives. And my grandmother got into a fight with her jogging partner for inadvertently laughing at her when she said that she was too afraid to walk along the beach anymore.

2. Qiryat Ono: When I woke up at my grandmother’s house a couple of days later after having a dream about a rocket killing my father, I thought to myself “I’ll hear an air raid siren now,” and I literally did. Realizing that the odds of a direct hit were astronomically low, I stayed in bed, exhausted by the nightmare. I then heard an explosion violent enough to shake the whole apartment. I later learned that this was the sound of the Iron Dome destroying missiles in midair.  The official line was that Israelis were supposed to wait for this sound before leaving their shelters. It was hard for me to fall back asleep now, so I got up and ate breakfast. My grandmother made me freshly squeezed orange juice and fried up some bacon, a rarity in Israel.

3. Sde Warburg: I walked with my pacifist brother to his grandmother’s house out in the countryside beyond Kefar Sava. When we reached her farm, we all began to argue about the stalling peace process. She insisted that average Gazans were living in greater prosperity than my brother and I guessed, and that the international media’s insistence on Israel’s brutality but silence on the atrocities committed by Arabs against Arabs every day in the Middle East was veiled anti-Semitism. Just as she was explaining that Hamas’ extremism was the rule rather than the exception in Gaza, sirens sounded. She insisted that we rush to the shelter, and accidentally closed the door on Lucky the dog’s little head when we entered it. My brother and I wanted to leave as soon as we could, but we didn’t hear the Iron Dome’s effects this time, and stayed a full twenty minutes in the stuffy place out of deference to her orders. The room doubled as a closet, and I
spent most of the time observing the various polka dot patterns of her dresses.

4. Jerusalem: I insisted on visiting the Holy Sepulcher for a film project despite my family’s universal pleas that I not go. My pacifist brother backed out at the last minute, and I ended up travelling alone by bus. The Old City was full of Eastern European tourists, Orthodox Jews, and the Israeli police. Some Arab shopkeepers asked me if I was Israeli, and when I said yes, they literally turned their backs on me. I eventually began to feel nauseated and took a taxi ride back to the central bus station. The driver warned me not to puke in his car because it was Ramadan. He tried to drive me to a different location from the one I had requested, allegedly because “the central bus station might be bombed,” but really, I guessed, because he didn’t feel like driving all the way across town. Changing his tune about having exact change, he ended up cheating me on the price of the trip. When a siren sounded, some people left their cars and threw themselves belly-down on the street. On the bus, I leaned against the window and took a long needed nap. When I woke up, an old rabbi asked me what America would do if Mexico were shooting rockets at it from Tijuana. Rather than answering him, I pretended to fall back asleep.

5. Tel Aviv: I went to an ill relative’s apartment for dinner. She was a Holocaust survivor. Her bed was turned toward the television so she could see the news, a ubiquitous and depressing fixture these days in all Israeli households. I asked her if she thought that the world was a better place now than in the 1930s and 1940s. She said that it was no better, but at least now it was the Jews who were driving their enemies into the sea, and not the reverse. I couldn’t believe that she actually said that. When the sirens sounded, most of the party scrambled into the shelter. But my ill relative couldn‘t move. I volunteered to stay with her in the living room, categorically refusing to leave her alone there. My confidence affected the others, and many of them stayed behind as well.

6. Tel Aviv: After returning from a play, I visited my aunt’s house to find the family huddled around the television. Hamas announced that it was going to fire an “unprecedented new type of rocket” at Israel at 9:00. We whispered that this wouldn’t be one of their home-made contraptions, but a proper Iranian missile this time. As soon as 9:00 came, sirens began to blare. My father chose just this time to drive my stepmother and two of my siblings home on the open road rather than enter the shelter. I retreated with the rest of the family in and out of the safe room; pizza bagels were cooking and leaving them alone for too long could result in a fire. Eventually, there was a knock on the door, and my stepmother joined us in the shelter. She’d evidently told my father to turn back. He remained outside with my pacifist brother, though, trying to make out the progress of the rockets in the sky.

7. Qiryat Ono: Sirens sounded just as my grandmother and I were returning from the candy store. We listened for the telltale explosions of the Iron Dome, but failed to hear them. After a time, we shrugged and carried groceries into the elevator. We began to argue about bias in the Israeli press. I insisted that the state-run media’s constant attention to falling rockets but relative ignoring of the situation in Gaza was tantamount to propaganda. She explained that it was natural for the news to focus on “our side,” blamed Hamas for imbedding themselves into civilian infrastructure, and said that Israel was setting new standards for trying to spare civlian lives. We learned later that day that Israel had suffered its first casualty when a piece of a rocket crushed a man who’d been supplying troops with food.

8. Qiryat Ono: Air raid sirens woke me up in the morning. This time, the telltale BOOMS took place during the shrieks themselves rather than directly afterward. I was able to fall back asleep without too much trouble, though, and dreamed about taking a trip to India.

9. Kefar Sava: The sirens sounded just as my father and I returned home from a shopping trip, evidence that a short lived cease-fire had ended. We went out onto the balcony and looked to the southern sky. I saw the long streaks of the rockets just over the horizon, and two bright white clouds where the Iron Dome had evidently done its work. My father and I drank coffee together, even though I hate coffee. Then we spoke for a while about the pitiable situation in Gaza. This instigated my militant brother, and we all got into a screaming match. At the end of the debate, my pacifist brother said that these days, he found himself leaning more and more toward the center politically. Later that night, the ground invasion was underway.

10. Kefar Sava: About to leave for a goodbye party at my aunt’s house, I heard sirens begining to blare again. The family all procceded to the balcony and saw the trails of four rockets high above us. Down below, the excitable and the cautious walked dutifully toward shelters in their apartments, and the reckless and non-conforming went about their daily business as if nothing were happening. The Iron Dome destroyed all the rockets, but it took a few seconds for us to hear the thunderous impacts even after seeing the explosions themselves.

11. Tel Aviv: My aunt held a farewell dinner for me. Just as we were eating cake, an alarm sounded. All fifteen or so of us retreated into the small shelter. The sense of togetherness was nice, in a way. It’s rare that I spend time with my family, and I was about to leave again. My father joined us most reluctantly, and then got into a heated political argument with the rest of the family defending his right to do as he pleased. My grandmother took it badly, and drove home frowning. She explained that though none of us usually bothered to go into the shelters, refusing to do so in somebody else’s house was bad manners.