Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

“DWAYNE, ACTUALLY OUR PLAN is not exactly to reduce the number of our nuclear weapons. It’s more like we’re storing them, for the safety of all concerned.”

“Well, Yi-gal, I’m sure that would be fine.” Another pause, this time with whispering. “Uh, where precisely were y’all thinking these weapons might be stored?”

Yigal has been waiting to say these three words since he devised this plan in the middle of the night, scribbling on a whiteboard in this very office. “With… our… enemies.”

“Beg pardon?”

“That’s correct. In exchange for our Arab neighbors taking possession of our nuclear arsenal, Israel proposes to take possession of their arsenal. It’s the oil weapon that counts, isn’t it?”

This time a lot of whispering. “Yogi, you want to run that by me again?”

THE NEXT DAY, THE president has a phone conversation with the King of Saudi Arabia, this time with video. The king feels more comfortable seeing the faces of those who approach him for favors. The two leaders speak English, though a pair of translators stand by in the palace should there be confusion. The president’s English is known to be bizarre. “Yo, your highness. How ya doing?”

“Thank Allah, my good friend.”

“Amen to that,” the president says. “Your highness, you may not be so familiar with the practice, but every four years we here in America have what our Asian friends call an erection?” Because it is the White House photographer’s night off, the president has fortified himself with two Peronis, not enough to dent the presidential judgment, but just enough to stimulate what the first lady calls his “inherent friskiness.” The king does not so much as hear the joke. “I am familiar with elections, Dwayne.”

“Well, your—say, would you mind if I call you Abdullah?”

The silence that greets this is so glacial the president eases back. “Your highness, the American people been paying through the nose for oil for decades. They need a price at the pump they can live with.”

“Dwayne, as always we do our very best.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you do. But there’s been a development.”

“A development?”

“Yes, sir. Seems that while you been doing your best, our friends in Israel been doin’ theirs.”

“Dwayne, to characterize these people as my friends is not, how shall I put it, suitable. But please continue.”

“The sons-o-guns gone and installed their nuclear devices in your oilfields.”

The monarch signals for his translators. “Would you mind, Dwayne, repeating that?”

“They got nukes in oilfields all over the Middle East. Sort of a stealth thing? You know: surprise!” The president is at once pleased with himself and concerned about the effect of that second beer. But not that much. “It’s changed the equation.”

“Excuse me, my dear friend.” The king has never studied mathematics—others count his money. The royal translators are challenged. One suggests situation; the other tries formula , then realizes this is no better than equation . He chooses playing field .

The monarch gets the picture. “If true, it is an act of war.”

“Jesus, king. You folks don’t really want another one, do ya? If so, those Israelians gonna open up a can of kosher whup-ass. And they ain’t gonna stop until they visit whatever palace you plan to be sleepin’ in that night.”

“Mr. President, I hope I do not understand correctly that you approve this act of… of piracy.”

“Your kingship, how do I say this delicately? You people been flyin’ the skull and crossbones for eighty years. Anyhoo, to cut to the chase, we’re talking two bucks a gallon at the pump. Regular.”

The king needs no translators for this, nor mathematicians. Oil is now selling at over $150 a barrel. The new price would cut that by two-thirds. “My dear friend, that is simply not possible.”

“Yeah, well, then you can expect the Jews to blow up your oil, and you won’t have none at all.”

The king learned to play this game before the grossly smiling man on the other end of the telephone was born. “My dear Mr. President, neither will you. It is a… standoff, no?”

“Hmmm,” the president says. “Let me think on that.” He mimes thinking, the tip of his index finger to his lips, his face screwed up as if in intense cogitation. “Uh, actually, no. Number one, we made you king and we can unmake you. Number two, the US of A is not about to sit still until we get to the point where some damn Jew with a itchy trigger finger blows all that oil to kingdom come. Number three, let me put it to you direct. The price of oil is always going to be an internal political problem in my country. Your highness, Abdullah, whatever, oil goes up over two bucks there’ll be so many American military in your oilfields you’ll have to salute some nineteen-year-old corporal from Mississippi just to take a leak.” He signals for another Peroni.

“Mr. President!”

“And some of them military gonna be women. And by golly, by executive order I’m gonna make sure every goldarned one of them ladies be wearing short shorts!”

“Mr. President, I have never been addressed in this manner! By anyone!”

“And Abby, by the way,” the president says, “don’t ever be fuckin’ with a sitting American president in an election year.”

OVER THAT YEAR, MANY changes are to take place.

Connie Blunt is promoted to CNN anchor, replacing Damian Smith, who becomes presidential press secretary after Don Beadle moves on to the private sector. Smith has an easy job: with gasoline at $1.93 a gallon (regular), the president barely has to campaign at all. Blunt brings with her to CNN a certain IDF Special Forces colonel who commandeered a certain plane to Kuwait to be the network’s resident military analyst, on the side co-authoring a book on the operation with the Air Kuwait 717 captain who never lost his cool. The movie does $170 million in its first week. But only in North America.

In the rest of the world it bombs, reflecting a sociopolitical antipathy whose roots precede Islam and Christianity, and which date back at least to the time of the Pharaohs. Though cheering for the underdog is normally seen as instinctual, a curious reversal takes place as it becomes clear the oil weapon is now in Israeli hands, controlled by what many European newspapers and websites unabashedly term “malignant special interests.” These special interests, rumored to control the world economy, are said to be manipulating the price of oil in order to stimulate business, and thus generate even more wealth for themselves. Or something.

As though the near annihilation of a second six million Jews is little more than a fast-dissolving early-morning dream, the image of Israel returns to status quo ante . This is nowhere more evident than in the image of the Palestinians, who once again have taken their place in the front rank of international martyrdom. What is left of their leadership assiduously labors to present evidence to the West that the recent decimation of its people has occurred not by their fellow Muslims but at the hand of Israel.

The Palestinians demand a return to their native land, which—through the bloody efforts of their Muslim neighbors—is now by and large empty of Palestinians. The population of Israel’s own Arab citizens, slaughtered wholesale in retribution for decades of “collaboration” with their Jewish fellow citizens, declines from two million to one half of that—this genocide is also blamed on Israel. In the West Bank and Gaza, the death rate is even higher; the actual number will never be known because Palestinian spokesmen, once adept at exaggerating the population of living Palestinians, now invent similarly magical numbers for the dead, all ostensibly victims of Israel.