Avraham Azrieli - The Masada Complex

“And within another four hours,” Masada said, “their toilet bowls.”

Ness pushed on the stick, taking them low over the red roofs of Kibbutz Ben-Yair. She caught glimpses of her childhood-the narrow asphalt paths, the dining hall where members had met for hours to argue over socialism, the children’s house higher on the hillside, with swings and a tree house, now painted red, yellow, and green rather than the peeling white she remembered.

They came full circle over the crest of a hill, returning to the kibbutz cemetery, facing the blue water and the mountains across.

“It’s gorgeous,” Tara said. “Absolutely magnificent!”

Masada nodded. “The best spot is always reserved for our dead.”

“Let’s make a stop,” Ness said, “and pay our respects to your parents and brother.”

“No!”

“It’ll be good for you.” Ness maneuvered to land at a field bordering the cemetery. “Somebody’s down there. Let me land before he chokes on dust.”

She reached over Tara and pushed his hand on the stick. The helicopter tilted upward, and the engine uttered a tortured clattering.

“Hey!” Ness shoved the stick forward. Red lights flashed on the instrument panel. They lifted sharply, swayed from side to side, and dropped to the right, toward the ground.

Tara screamed.

The rotors cut the air faster, and the rate of descent slowed while the view disappearing in plumes of dust.

A buzzer joined the ruckus.

Ness pulled a lever over his head, which seemed to increase the noise. He shifted the stick sideways, back and forth, and held it in place as they began to ascend. The swaying reduced to shaking until they stabilized, finding themselves over the water.

He turned off the buzzer and increased power, moving up in a stable, direct course toward the mountains. Soon the kibbutz was only a green patch in the brown desert.

“Are we safe yet?” Tara peeked though her fingers.

Ness glared at Masada. “If you want to kill yourself, do it alone!”

The helicopter finally departed. Professor Silver pulled himself up and made his way through the graves. A voice repeated inside his head: Israel (“Srulie”) El-Tal.

He stumbled down the path, leaving the cemetery behind, his vision fogged in a haze of fear and confusion.

Murdered 19.8.82

God Avenge His Blood.

There was no other explanation. The boy he had pushed off the cliff was Masada’s brother!

“ Allah hu Akbar! ” His foot hit a rock, and he fell, the hot asphalt burning his hands.

Voices approached, talking urgently. Someone helped him up.

A woman spoke to him in Hebrew.

He hurried off, following the path between the cottages, passing by the laundry.

Masada’s brother!

Allah’s sense of humor.

“Professor!” Ezekiel emerged from the communal dining hall holding a plastic cup.

Silver got into the golf cart. “We must go! Back to Jerusalem!”

“Your wish is my command.” Ezekiel got behind the wheel and drove the cart down to the gate. As they walked through, the guard handed them each a sheet of pale blue paper.

Colonel Ness landed at a military base in the Jordan Valley, where they refueled and collected lunch boxes. They continued north, passing above a section of the security wall surrounding the West Bank. Beyond the Sea of Galilee, somewhere over the Golan Heights, he recited the number of gourmet wine boxes exported every year. Passing low over Safed, he showed them the apple orchards covering the graded mountain slopes and the pine forests burnt by Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon. He noted the vast industrial complex owned by Warren Buffett, which produced jet engine components for Boeing and Airbus. The citrus groves formed a green carpet across the Valley of Jezreel, reaching almost to Haifa, where Ness took them over the Technion Institute. He named the two scientists who recently shared a Nobel Prize for inventing a lifesaving HIV drug.

Masada knew exactly what he was doing but kept quiet, planning her ultimate retort.

They followed the Mediterranean coast southward, flying by the high-technology park at the foothills of Mount Carmel where, Ness explained, Medical Resonance Imaging- MRI -had been invented, and over the golden beach where the latest Olympic gold medalist in windsurfing had grown up learning the ropes.

Over the endless expanse of the Tel Aviv metropolis, he listed international corporations, such as Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, and General Electric, whose research and development centers employed thousands of Israeli scientists.

“These Israeli scientists,” Masada said, “would gladly relocate to the United States if they could get through immigration barriers.”

“And you,” he said, “now that the Americans kicked you out, where would you gladly go? Iceland?”

She wondered how he knew that. “I was deported because you hid the document I needed.”

“You got deported because a Jew-hating government official found a way to hurt you, just like the Jews who had been expelled from Spain, England, France, and Portugal. And those persecuted, robbed, and burnt at the stake on false charges for centuries. Anti-Semitism is as old as the Covenant. An independent Jewish state is our only refuge- your only refuge, as it turned out.”

They flew in silence until he swung inland toward the Weitzman Institute and commenced naming the Noble Prize laureates working there.

“That’s nothing compared to what Jews achieved before Israel existed,” Masada said. “The Diaspora produced the Talmud, the books of Maimonides, the interpretations of Rashi, the Shulkhan Arukh , which every religious Jew accepts as the codification of Jewish law. We made huge contributions to medicine, science, banking, music, art, and human rights. For two millennia we’ve made the whole world better, why do we suddenly need our own state?”

“Because the gentiles kept killing us!” Ness banked sharply and headed west toward the sandy Mediterranean coast, increasing the speed. “The Holocaust proved Jews could never be safe without a state.”

“On the contrary.” Masada ignored Tara’s elbowing. “It proved that Jews should be allowed to immigrate freely. The Germans were not the first regime wishing to get rid of its Jews. From Spain, Jews went to Turkey and Portugal, where they were even more successful. When Portugal merged with Spain, they went to Amsterdam, which is still enjoying the trade they established five centuries ago. England expelled them, so they moved to Poland and built it. And the first Jews in New York were refugees from Catholic South America. If the United States and England had allowed German Jews entry in the thirties, there would be no Holocaust in the forties.”

“Nonsense!” Ness reached the coastline and swept right again, back toward the tall hotels along the Tel Aviv beach. “Our people had a two-thousand-year experiment in living without a homeland, without an army. We were resilient and flexible and recovered from expulsions, pogroms, and crusades, but we still lost half the nation-six million Jewish lives! — to the German butchers.”

“Because of Zionism!” Masada was on a roll now. “If the Jews would be going to Palestine, why should other countries let them in? The European Jews were trapped because of the illusion of Zionism!”

“That’s an ass-backwards logic!” Colonel Ness raised his voice. “Only the early Zionists, who went as pioneers to Palestine before the war, only they survived the Holocaust. And the only defense against a second Holocaust is Israel! We’re only safe here!”