David Grossman - Death as a Way of Life

Now we’ll have the celebrations, the glee of “we told you so”: We told you that the Palestinians don’t keep agreements (unlike us, of course, who honor all agreements); we told you that they will do anything to obtain offensive weapons (whereas we only aim daffodils at Arafat’s window in Ramallah); we told you that there’s no one to talk to, so we’d better keep tightening the noose around their necks (and that way we’ll definitely bring about the profound change in Palestinian nature, so that they’ll agree our conditions). We told you that Arafat is, in fact, bin Laden himself (yet we are all disciples of the Dalai Lama).

In their attempt to smuggle the ship in, the Palestinians grossly violated their agreements and the Israeli army must, of course, do all it can to thwart such escalation. Nevertheless, how can we dull the judgement of an entire nation? How can we keep ignoring the big picture, the acute feeling that Israel — in its deeds and its blunders, and especially with the malicious behavior of its prime minister — is pushing the Palestinians further toward such actions, which provide us, time and again, with that “conclusive evidence” — evidence that is of absolutely no real use to us in achieving our goals?

These are repulsive times. Times in which good sense has been reduced to a zombie-like stupor. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will squeeze every last drop of propaganda out of this ship. The media, for the most part, will fall in line behind him. The Israeli public, too tired and apathetic to think, will accept every categorical statement that will supposedly resolve the difficult internal contradiction and moral dilemma it is living with and will reinforce its shaken sense of its own justice. Who today has the strength to recall the beginning, the root of the matter, the circumstances, the fact that this is about occupation and oppression, about retaliation and counter-retaliation, about a vicious cycle of blood, about two peoples who are turning corrupt and violent and, finally, insane?

February 2002

In the weeks preceding this article, the sides continued their escalation of the fighting. Despite American efforts to mediate, the talks for a cease-fire and for renewed negotiations reached an impasse. The article was written following a press conference in which Ariel Sharon vowed to fight terrorism by all means necessary.

Carry on, Caesar. Death awaits us everywhere, but carry on. Our inconsequential lives, our inconsequential deaths, should not trouble you. You have a plan. We are thus certain that all we see each day is but a prelude to something more successful, to a brilliant concept that will, in an instant, change the scenery. Know this, Caesar: we only appear to be without hope. We only appear to feel like dead men walking. Soon, in a month or two, you will come before us to present the idea that will guarantee us full security. Peace with security. We are secure in your peace, Caesar. We feel it approaching with long, brisk strides. You will compel our enemies to love us no matter how much we oppress them. You will rid yourself of their ruler and put another, deferential and obedient, in his place. Then their hearts will, in the blink of an eye, come to love us, resign themselves to our mistreatment of them, and even declare it just.

But, Caesar, we beseech you, could you please be a little quicker about it? We are not complaining, heaven forfend. Nor do we have any doubts about your ability to reinvent human nature. It is plain to us that you are the man who can finally redesign our enemies so that they will resign themselves to whatever you offer them, even with your absolute refusal to offer them anything at all. The fact that no nation, however powerful, has yet succeeded in maintaining a conquest of this type, in these conditions, is no law of nature. We will be the first! Why not? Just, we beseech you, be quick about it, because soon — how can we put it — no people will remain, neither soldiers nor civilians.

Times are a bit hard, Caesar — you may have noticed. Of course you have noticed, but you are strong, stronger than we; this is beyond doubt. We are weak of mind and faint of heart, and there is nothing to be done about it. That is why we need you. You must lead us with all the force at your disposal, with the help of our army, which is among the strongest armies in the world, toward a new future. Perhaps we’ll call it the Retaliation Era, in memory of your bold cross-border revenge operations against Palestinian guerrillas in the 1950s, when the lives of Palestinian women and children were no obstacle to your military objectives. In that future, each attack by Palestinian guerrillas will bring on a counter-attack from us! They will strike at us here, and we will strike at them there; they will blow up people in our streets and we will bomb their homes. It’s inspired! A perfect and effective use of our might!

True, sometimes a slight doubt, a stray, worthless thought steals into our hearts. Ludicrous thoughts about different definitions of courage and cowardice, of certainty and surrender. Sometimes a false demon insinuates in our ears that perhaps the most horrible surrender of all is our slow, vegetative submersion into oblivion and apathy, without any attempt to save ourselves. Sometimes an evil tongue wags seditiously that even with the bad hand of cards we were dealt — despair, Palestinian carnage in our cities, the settlements, that impossible Arafat — it would have been possible, somehow, to play a better game. To take advantage of every opportunity for mitigation and compromise, to be smart and not just right. To use a bold, generous, farsighted political initiative to create a new condition. But against this towers the decisive, unchallengeable claim: We’ve already tried it! We already offered everything and they refused and betrayed us! We will never repeat that fatal mistake. We will always face forward, toward those methods and tactics and operations that have been so successful in the past, that have brought us to where we are. So, Caesar, continue to fight to the last drop of our blood, so long as you continue to draw blood from our enemies as well. As one we vow, like Samson, to die with the Palestinians. They deserve it.

Though sometimes, we confess, we are a bit confused. Forgive us for this. Nevertheless, when we hear what some of your cabinet ministers say, about ever-harsher military responses, about reconquering the Palestinian territories, about deporting 4 million Palestinians, and so on and so forth, a fundamental, simple bewilderment steals into our hearts. Is your program really so cunning and sophisticated that it also has an answer to the new circumstances we will create if we carry out such ideas? Or perhaps, for the purpose of attaining your goals, you have made a strategic decision to move the battlefield not, as military strategy mandates, into enemy territory, but actually into an entirely different plane of reality, into an entirely absurd multidimensional space, into absolute self-annihilation, where neither we nor they will exist. There will be nothing. Nothing will be.

But, of course, all these thoughts are of no consequence. Your loyal citizens have no doubt as to your wisdom and vision. Very soon, clearly, all will realize that there was a profound and hidden reason why we were compelled to live this way for so many years, in contradiction of all logic. It is the reason why we consented, as if we were at the theatre, to suspend our disbelief until, at the denouement, all is understood. And for this same obscure reason we also pledged to subvert the underpinnings of our democracy, of our economy, of our security itself, and of the possibility that we will ever have a tolerable future here.

Either way, when these reasons and motives, currently concealed from us, are finally revealed, we will certainly understand why we were sentenced to live here for decades on the sidetrack of the life that was meant for us, and why we consented to live our own, irreproducible lives in a kind of latent death. Until then, we will continue to support you wholeheartedly, and even as we go to die, in the tens, hundreds, and thousands, we salute you, Caesar.