Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (23 page)

We boys were also encouraged to offer our opinions on everything from the food at a particular café to the political torment of President Johnson. In 1968 a stranger’s question—“So where are you from?”—would lead to a long discussion of the violence at the Democratic Party’s nominating convention back in our hometown.

As the eldest and most talkative I would usually push my way to the front of these conversations, but as they got older Rahm and Ari managed to add their voices to mine. On most nights I was able to follow the flow of the conversation, even when it was laced with Hebrew, and the excitement kept me alert late into the evening. My brothers, especially little Ari, did not have the same stamina. By eight or nine o’clock at night he was liable to fall asleep right where he was sitting.

It was easy to understand why he might be worn-out. Although our days were not exactly demanding, they were full of play and relaxing doses of sunshine at the beach. Just a few blocks from Esty’s apartment, Gordon Beach was a wide expanse of clean sand that occupied all the space between the street and the warm Mediterranean Sea. We would meander down the beach to a place where you could rent a few minutes on an in-ground trampoline to practice bouncing and doing flips. We also got pretty good at a paddleball sport they called
matkot
, and we made friends with the lifeguards who oversaw the beach from raised platforms and skimmed across the water on little boats they called
hasekes
(hah-seh-kahs), which looked a lot like oversize paddle-boards that could hold five or six people.

Over the years we became quite friendly with three lifeguards in particular. Big, bronzed guys who seemed stronger and more athletic than anyone we had ever met before, David, Avraham, and Mickey chain-smoked cigarettes while they scanned the water for trouble and the beach for pretty girls. I think they were interested in us because we were Americans and because of our beautiful mother, whom they would chat up whenever she appeared to get some sun herself or to bring us back to Esty’s apartment. From the distance of several decades I know, now, that they must have been attracted to my mother. Tall, slim, and to locals exotically foreign, she was prettier than most Israeli women of this era, who aged quickly under the hot sun and did not have access to the clothes and makeup that were available in Europe and the United States.

Our mother was never quite as charming as when she was in Israel with us. In this setting, she did not have to compete with my father, whose magnetic personality and social gifts usually made him the center
of attention. Out from under his shadow, our mother enjoyed being the most interesting person at the table. She could also reconnect with people she had known when she lived there, and make some new friends.

Fortunately, Esty and my mother knew people who were happy to take us boys on adventures of different types around the city and in the countryside: Yaacov, a young lieutenant and navigator in the Israeli Air Force; Victor, a lieutenant colonel in the IDF who ran the jail in the West Bank city of Nablus; and Max, a retired British diplomat with white hair, a big handlebar mustache, and a convertible MG sports car who had served in Egypt and Nigeria.

Each of these men was a model of the kind of robust, action-oriented, risk-taking man who inhabited the history books and biographies I liked to read. Victor wore his uniform and gun almost all the time, even when he took us to the park or to see the sunset at the beach. He told us stories about the battles he had seen and reassured us whenever we had questions about moving safely round the country. He was so confident that he invited us to visit him on the West Bank even though Al Fatah terrorists were infiltrating from Jordan and conducting attacks.

On the day we went to Nablus, Victor picked us up in his own car, drove us from Tel Aviv to the jail, and then commandeered a military jeep that he used to take us all over the region. Riding in a military vehicle only increased the macho thrill we boys got as we toured battlefields as well as historical sites. He also took us through downtown Nablus to visit cafés and markets and out to see an old Arab sheep-herder who measured us for sheepskin jackets, which turned out to be smelly and more fashionable for Lawrence of Arabia than for Chicago. We never wore them.

We were still in town after the last bus back to Tel Aviv departed. “No problem,” said Victor as he invited us to stay at the jail. Built by the Turks, who ruled the region until 1917, the prison was an imposing concrete block surrounded by fences that were topped with barbed wire. Once operated by the British and then the Jordanians, it became one of the main processing centers for prisoners taken by the IDF during
the war. After the fighting stopped, the prison became a detention center for terror suspects and convicted criminals. It was the site of many protests by local Arab citizens, and prisoners often went on hunger strikes and attempted riots.

On the night when we visited, the Nablus jail was overflowing with more than 350 convicts and detainees. For three boys from the United States the sight of the facility and the security search required as we passed through the gates were thoroughly sobering. We followed Victor through the complex and saw the bars on the windows and heard the sounds of men talking in Arabic and heavy metal doors opening and closing. Victor, who was originally from Iraq, spoke fluent Arabic and Hebrew and was learning English from Esty. He used all three in the course of interacting with us, the guards under his command, and the prisoners.

Exhausted from the day, we all fell asleep pretty quickly. Sometime later shelling and small-arms fire woke us up. We could hear men running and shouting outside and dogs barking. When the lights came on, we noticed that Ari was missing. Within minutes, as the commotion subsided, Victor showed up with eight-year-old Ari in his arms. He had crawled into Victor’s bed. When the gunfire began he wet the bed. Victor reassured him, changed him into one of his own T-shirts, which hung down to Ari’s knees, and let him spend the night with him.

In the morning Victor and our mother were so calm and matter-of-fact about the gunshots and fighting that we felt reassured enough to go out and play basketball with some of the prisoners. For Israelis, who had to deal with potential enemies and terrorists every day, this attitude was the only one that allowed them to live halfway normal lives. If you let yourself live in constant fear you might as well leave the country.

Most of the time, this live-and-let-live philosophy worked. But we never lost sight of the danger faced by Israelis who served in the military and were charged with patrolling the West Bank and other captured territories. This reality was brought home for us by a letter we received in Wilmette several months after our adventure with Victor.

In that letter, my mother’s sister Esty reported that Victor was
dead. He had been on patrol in the West Bank looking for Al Fatah terrorists. He and his soldiers went into a cave where they suspected armed men were hiding. Instead they came upon a woman who was breast-feeding a baby. Finding no fighters, they turned to leave. In that moment Victor was shot in the back and killed.

Victor’s death was a sharp reminder of Israel’s status as a new and endangered country where conflicts over land and power were very real and everyone had a personal stake in both history and current events. Indeed, everywhere you went, and almost every time you opened your mouth, there was a chance that you would stumble upon an issue, person, or place that reverberated with political significance. History lay in every square inch of the Israeli soil.

For example, you only have to mention the King David Hotel to open a door to emotions ranging from pride to shame and from resignation to condemnation. The symbolism of the grand hotel that overlooks the Old City of Jerusalem looms large in the history of Israel. This is how it is in that country. The woman sitting across from you on the bus was a courier who carried secrets around the world. The family friend sitting beside you on a veranda was part of a team that bombed the King David Hotel and killed ninety-one people.

Born in Turkey but raised in Israel when it was part of the British Mandate of Palestine, Yoel Carmi was married to my father’s childhood classmate and close friend Batya. With a big, round chest and full head of dark hair, he looked strong and full of life. But he also had developed a potbelly that spoke of his increasing comfort. Usually it was hard to get him to speak seriously for very long. His habit was to joke around, and play at switching from accent to accent. One second he would ask a question in the Queen’s English. In the next he would answer in southern American drawl. Then it was on to Cockney or an Australian accent. His attitudes were as varied as his comic routines. Politically, he was rabidly right-wing and anti-Arab. But he also had a deep and warm appreciation for every culture in the world and almost everyone he met. This contradiction was evident in the bomb shelter
he built at his house to withstand a poison gas attack. It was crammed with freeze-dried rations but every wall was lined with bookshelves carrying all the great Western classics of philosophy, literature, and history, from Plato to Bellow.

Yoel claimed to speak ten languages and I believe he did, because he did not need to exaggerate. His strengths and talents were obvious to anyone who met him and he was brutally honest and direct whenever he talked about his own life and the life of Israel. He was a Zionist with such firm convictions that he had no doubts about participating in one of the most controversial attacks ever, carried out by the Jewish underground paramilitary called the Irgun.

The year was 1946, Yoel recalled while sipping tea next to me and my mom on the King David veranda. The British—who controlled what is now Israel—were doing little to stop Arab attacks on Israeli civilians. At the same time, hundreds of Jews were rounded up and thrown in jail on suspicions of anti-British activity. In truth, all but a handful of Jews had come to settle the region with the specific goal of creating the state of Israel and that required getting the British to leave. The reality of the Holocaust had intensified their resolve. When the British raided Irgun offices and carted away truckloads of documents, the Jewish militants chose to strike back at the British military and police headquarters, which was housed in the King David.

Yoel, who worked for the British as a translator, says he did not plant the bomb. However, he was intimately involved with the plot. One of his tasks involved checking to see that the offices were cleared of Jews. The men who planted the bomb actually gathered hotel workers, held them at gunpoint, and then allowed them to flee before the bomb went off. Three separate calls were made to warn the British before the explosions. The officer in charge said something about “not taking orders from Jews.” Then, at 12:37 on July 23, 1946, the explosives carried into the hotel in milk cans went off, collapsing the six-story wing of the hotel where the British kept their offices. While dozens inside were killed by the collapse, others outside died from the impact of flying debris. The passengers in a bus on the road outside the hotel were injured when the shock waves hit it.

The Jewish Agency and the National Council of Palestine Jews, the two main civilian Jewish authorities, immediately condemned the attack as a crime. Talk of shutting down the Irgun spread quickly. But as Yoel told the story, this public condemnation was a cover for the private support the Irgun received from almost every corner of Jewish society. They agreed with the American senator Guy Gillette, who immediately blamed pro-Arab British policies for the attack. This feeling intensified as five hundred Jews were rounded up in what the British called a “contempt” campaign.

The drama and danger in the story Yoel told was much more real and tangible than anything recorded in a book or recalled by the marker at some ancient battlefield. The fact that the place where the attack occurred was unchanged from that era, and I could sit with one of the bomb plotters and drink tea, made a profound impact on me. Yoel and the King David were solid, palpable proof that big, historic events were carried out by real people I knew, called upon to act, who were willing to live with the consequences.

Public opinion was, and may forever remain, divided on the point, but Yoel believed that time had shown that the attack on the King David had been justified. He was certain that the bombing was a legitimate attack on a military target and that it had hastened the birth of the state of Israel and saved countless Jewish lives. In Yoel’s mind the casualties were the fault of the British officers who failed to heed the warnings.

The stories people told about these grave and powerful events were often spiced by the flavor of personal experiences and unexpected connections. Yoel could tell bawdy jokes and swear in many languages. One of his best tales recalled the time when he and Batya took me, still a baby, my parents, and Esty, all crammed into my parents’ tiny Fiat, for a tour of the Negev Desert. The year was 1958 and thousands of Bedouins lived as nomads in the Negev, herding sheep and camels unmolested across Israel’s borders with Jordan and Egypt. Yoel found his way to one of their camps, where everyone piled out of the car like the circus clowns and he began talking with the man in charge.