Understanding the Head of the Mossad

The Middle East realities are, fortunately, more complex than we may read and/or heard about in the media. The Abraham Accords launched last year did not occur overnight, but are the result of long years, if not decades, of rapprochement at different levels between representatives of Israel and various Arab countries. Most, if not all, of those contacts were set through the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, the famous - for all its goods and bads - Mossad. 

Reading a book authored by a head of the Mossad may project a lot of expectations. One may think that once one start reading such a book, all the questions and curiosities about the recent history are suddenly answered. Such high expectations may apply to any book written by insiders of the secret world.

In reality thus, the very nature of the intelligence work does not allow too much disclosure. Definitely, there are much praised book offering insights to the general public, but whenm someone as Shabtai Shavit, director of the Mossad between 1989 and 1996, writes a political memoir, most likely the result will be a dairy-like with many blank spaces. Shavit has over 50 years of experience in international security and counterterrorism operations, with three decades of work in the Mossad. His military service was in the elite unit of Sayeret Matkal, where Yonathan Netanyahu and his prime minister brother, Bibi, as well as Ehud Barak, Israel´s 10th prime minister, performed their military duties. He was chosed by Yitzhak Shamir to replace Nahum Admoni, leading Israeli´s foreign intelligence service through very troubled international and internal waters. He was also the first director that do not belong to the generation that led the War of Independence which meant sometimes a different view on political evolutions and the right way to react to changes.

During his long years of service, Shabtai Shavit witnessed tremendous international events that challenged for ever the intelligence environment: the end of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the first Gulf War, the conclusion of the peace agreement with Jordan or the assassination of Yitzak Rabin. Those changes required a constant adaptation in terms of human resources, budgets and intelligence plans. As Shavit himself acknowledges, the political strategy may create ´strange bedfellows´ and this is available particularly after the end of the Cold War. 

Shavit writes in a very systematic, bullet-points way, with the coldness and verbal scarcity of someone used to read, accumulate and categorize tons of important information every day. As a ground operative himself, he appreciates and even praises the value of human intelligence as one of the most valuable assets. 

The book is organised in various chapters, with details about various operations and major international or regional events from the point of view of the information and interests of Israel´s intelligence community, such as the intelligence failures of the Yom Kippur war, the First Gulf War, the Iranian file, the Olso Agreements, the second Lebanon War. The specific details of those operations, although sometimes too general, are important for anyone interested in understanding the Middle East as it is, not as some may want to be. 

The points of view are shared from the point of view of the intelligence professional and this is very important to keep this in mind while reading the book. I´ve found the observations related to the freedom of speech too general and unfair even unrealistic for the journalists, but in the end, I understood that this is the way in which people on the other side of the institutional wall see the things. Expecting the journalists to counter and eventually accept what not to disclose to the public, for high state reasons, it´s widely unrealistic and problematic for the journalist whose mission is a bit different, if not completely contradictory to such principles.

Much more interesting and source of long-term food for thought are the observations regarding the possibility of a new Sykes-Picot agreement in the Middle East. How he sees the new power chess game - a well-inspired cover, by the way - is unexpected, for at least one reason: the idea of a ´Sunnistan´, which may border Kurdistan (a new state as well, but this one I´ve heard more than once before) in the North, Iraq in the East, Jordan in the South and Syria in the West. This state may be a solution offered to Sunni populations in the Middle East. I may need a bit of time to digest further this information...

As expected, there are some thoughts about the Palestinian case as well, with an interesting insights about the ´right of return´, a claim which may made any further negotiation with the Israeli impossible. (More about this in a next review of a book dedicated to the issue by Einat Wilf). How everything started and what are the roots of the common conflict is also explained, with candid details from the very beginning of the state of Israel. 

There are also some thoughts about Iran, where the author himself travelled during the Shah years, and it portrays realistically the dilemma of what exactly to expect from a strong country, with a messianic leadership, whose religious leader has the right to use the red button (or whatever colour the nuclear launcher does have in Tehran). How to operate with such an actor - which is not rational, in the way of the actors we were used to operate during the Cold War.

Admirably, the books ends with a collection of eulogies Shavit made for colleagues and other people involved in the intelligence work. It´s a moving tribute which recognize how important every single person working in this field is. 

I have not been impressed by the style - nonfiction can be well, beautifully written as well - but this is not the point of the book. The other details related to the knowledge shared, based by the author´s experiences, were well convened and therefore, makes the book an useful addition to the already vast bibliography of books dedicated to the Middle East.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book Review: The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs

´Even if we could go back to Iraq, it would be as Jewish ghosts´.

For 2,600 years, Jews lived continously in the territory defined as Mesopotamia, a region encompassed between Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They lived together with the other religions and cultures, although life was not always easy and violent outbursts were frequent. Prophet Ezekiel´s tomb is located there, However, everything changed dramatically in the 1940s, when Jews in Iraq were hit by the Farhood - pogrom, in Arabic. The main contribution for this change of heart towards Jews is attributed to the growing influence in the region of the infamous Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, one of the biggest Nazi supporter in the Middle East. Nowadays, there are only a few Jews living in Iraq, from around 147,000 at the end of the 1940s. 

I had the priviledge to meet and talk with Jews born in Iraq - in Baghdad or Mosul - and I cannot forget the nostalgy of their voice when sharing their childhood memories from places that are no more. Through their stories they transmitted the love for Iraq to their children and grandchildren, some of them feeling the homesickness for the country that they never seen. 

The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs - known also as The Surreal McCoy - is, as according to the undertitle, the Memoir of a Lost Homeland. Based on various accounts of the life in Baghdad, where Jews represented around 1/3 of the population before moving - being forced to move - out of the country, some in Israel some in London, Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Canada or America. The ethnography of Iraqi exiles does not have necessarily a religion, but it cries with the same tears of sadness. Through those stories, the Baghdad or the Mosul takes shape moulded by dreams and memories and memories of the memories shared. This is how The Wolf of Baghdad was written and illustrated. 

The wolf enters in the story as a protector from demons, according to the local superstitions, spread around the entire Middle Eastern region. Amulets made of wolf teeth used to be kept near the baby cribs to protect them from the evil eye and other bad occurences. It seemed that in Baghdad, the evil was too powerful to be beaten by the wolf. 

The story unfolds almost like a ghost story, with a fast-forward overview of the everyday life changes the Jews in Iraq experienced in the 1940s. Sooner, the images populated with voices and children playing or watching from the top of the roofs are replaced by shattered glasses and keys of houses that were long destroyed by hate. 

There is hardly anything that cannot be convened in the form of the graphic novel. The Wolf...is beautifully convening through the drawings and the texts - very sparse, actually - decades of heartbreaking homesickness. The images summon the present and the past, in a dream-like graphic conception. The story it is based on the author´s personal experience. Born in London, she witnessed the traditions and the stories of other Iraqi - not all of them Jews - hosted by her parents. The memories, tastes and fragments of stories, were turned into a song-like story of love for a country that once was. The book is sometimes presented also as a slideshow, with its own musical soundtrack, often performed live by an ense,ble playing music of Iraqi and Judeo-Arabic origin. In this setting, the author herself plays the accordion.

When the Temple was destroyed, the rituals and memories were internalized. What was left from the Temple was the learning and the rituals applied in the home. For the Jewish communities dispersed in the Middle East after the destruction of the Temple(s), being forced to live their homes after thousands of years created another dramatic memory rift. The keys from the houses soon to be destroyed epitomized the longing for a home where they can never come back. Stories and the images are small fragments of the shattered glasses they carry with, in their hearts and minds. Their children can only dream about the dreams of their parents.

As for now, writing and keeping the memory is all that´s left. It can mean a lot though for preparing for those times when hopefully, a return will be possible. The Wolf of Baghdad is one of the many stones against forgetfulness. 

Rating: 4 stars

Book Review: The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid

´Don´t you know people are murderous? It´s in our nature´.

Some books invites you to the journey but let you take the rest of it by yourself. Sometimes, the journey means that you are faced with your own fears and misconceptions or beliefs. Sometimes, your only companion is the memory monster.

The Memory Monster by the Israeli writer Yishai Sarid - a name that I previously mentioned on the blog many years ago - is a short book but long enough to wake you up. That´s why people write and read books, in order to be faced with new realities and exposed to new ideas that may contradict their average ways of thinking and being. I´ve read the English translation from Hebrew, beautifully rendered by Yardenne Greenspan. 

Written as a 1st person account of a PhD in history, former guide to the concentration camps in Israel, who writes his report to the chairman of the Yad Vashem after being dismissed. After years and years of guiding people from a camp to another in Poland, the memory monster wants its share. 

The unnamed author of the report, the character of the book who writes at the first person, was ´drawn to the technical details of the annihilation: the mechanism, the manpower, the method´. His PhD topic and the subsequent book were on the topic of: Unity and Distinction in German Death Camps. Methods and actions during WWII.

Over and over again, he repeats a story that soon will take him over. It´s a mechanical repetition focused on the process, the mechanisms, the balance of power - ´to gain any kind of social standing, man must be capable of killing´. This acknowledgement of the mechanisms of power, repeated over and over again, obliterates the person, leaves place to imagination only. It forgets the persons, many of them anyway forgotten with anyone left to tell their stories. Most importantly, it amplifies the victimization stories and confirms the victory of the murderers. ´The chamber was connected to the motor of an old tank and the people inside were posoned with carbon monoxide, the guide continued, using phrases that glorified the process´. 

But what about the yearly ´March of the living´ bringing young Israeli to visit the deserted places of the concentration camps, wrapped in the blue and white flag, singing songs about how life will always prevail? Who won, in the end, those left with multi-generational trauma to cope with, or those who lost the war but are nowadays in the position to study and analyse and film what their grandparents did and visit Israel and found the country ´interesting´? Whose narrative won - the victims´ or those who made them victims? Is the fact that the murderers were in a position of power when they killed 6 million people perpetuate in fact their victory? How to read the fact that the oppressor´s pattern is considered an example worth following by some of the young participants to the tours? Sooner or later, we will be all eaten out by the memory monster.

I would be curious how those questions and dilemma reads out by someone who does not have any connection - emotional or historical - with the Shoah. For those for whom those connections exist, 

For those who do, this book open up beautifully so many memory wounds. Could it be that keeping them open is the best antidote to the memory monster?

Rating: 4 stars

A Different Way of Reading the Bavli

I haven´t been in a long time so fascinated by a book dealing with religion from a historical, geographical and anthropological perspective. For me, it returns to the Bavli, and to any other religious analysis, it´s deep intellectual meaning.

The Iranian Talmud. Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context by Shai Secunda is skillfully charting the intellectual context of the debates and approaches present in the Babylonian Talmud. Bavli is the primary source of Jewish law and theology therefore, its permanent relevance in the current Jewish legal context nowadays. 

Does a contextual understanding of the Bavli change its significance or may alter/undermine its relevance? Probably not. For the legal-theological mindset, the decisions stay valid and are probably independent of the historical context and the social interactions between the Jews and the other ethnic and cultural groups active within the Sasanian empire.

However, for the historian of religions and the historian in general, the approach followed by Secunda in its very small and applied details reveal an unique and realistic landscape of mutual interaction and, more often than not, coexistence. What is very important to keep in mind is that Bavli, as other religious texts during the Babylonian exile, did not appear in a vacuum and as expected, Jews lived and interacted with the other groups from their immediate neighbourhood and this interaction was at a certain extent translated in the discussions and decisions featured in the Bavli, for instance. 

The research uses the methods of intertextuality and comparative studies, in the ways paved by the 19th century Wissenschaft des Judentums and the recent researches developed by Jacob Neusner. It proceeds with the diligence and application of the archaeologist, with deep knowledge in the field of language, anthropology and history as well as Iranian studies. However, this kind of research should not be considered automatically as belonging to the Reform Judaism way of thinking, as it helps also the Orthodox Judaism to understand the complex web of meanings featured of the rabbinical decisions and discussions.

Personally, I was always fascinated and intrigued by the long details about magi and magical references in general. It seems that this is the result of the interaction with the Zoroastrian practices which I am not familiar at all, but whose understanding makes sense in the bigger overview of the topic. 

The entire book is a marvelous example of literary and historical archeology of human contacts and diversity which makes so much sense. How can we think that the Babylonian Jews were separated from their compatriots living in the Sasanian Empire? Obviously, the interactions and exchanges were on both directions and practices were eventually influenced and changed following the daily contacts with the Jews. Persians, Jews, other minorities, intersected - randomly or for specific reasons - within a vibrant milieu. Outlining the diversity of opinions on the same topic, or identifying the original sources is a work that brings to light extraordinary facts and conversations. Enlightened people with different background need to continue such researches and keep the conversation alive, sometimes against the temporary adversities of the milieu.

Israeli Movie Review: Suicide

 

Suicide, an Israeli film directed by Benny Fredman, is an average crime movie, with sadistic gangsters and company owners in big trouble and debt. The film was released in 2014 and is available on Netflix, part of the monthly subscription.

In debt over his head, Oded Tsur is forced to set up his own suicide in order to honor the accumulated debts to a mafia ring. The events are set in Jerusalem and involve a lot of bizarre characters, and a crime story with some hilarious and spectacular twists. The mafia guys look like ogre - but do not speak Hebrew with a Russian accent - and exhibit an elaborated pleasure to kidnap and kill, especially children. 

The viewer should not expect too much depth from this movie, but it is entertaining and worth spending a bit of adrenaline-fuelled time. There is plenty of black humour too, for those looking for more than just mafia stories from the Holy Land.

Rating: 3 stars

 

Book Review: Lot Six by David Adjmi

I am for a long time very conflicted about when exactly someone may consider his or her life experience rich enough for writing a memoir. I am not radically opposed to the idea that someone before the retirement age has a life eventful enough to turn it into a 1 person personal story, but given the amount of such accounts I came across in the last years and months, I will be very cautious in considering that all those experiences are worth writing about and nevertheless reading them.

After such a skeptical, arrogant even start, let´s talk the book. Lot Six by David Adjmi is a finely written account of the author´s struggle in and out the very conservative - not necessarily strictly religious in the classical Orthodox sense of the world - Syrian-Jewish community in NYC. In my experience, the Syrians are one of the most insular Jewish communities, with a very different and highly exclusivistic attitude towards other Jews, for historical and sociological reasons that I will maby discuss on another occasion.  

The book is not one of those Off-the Derech books, about an Orthodox Jew that left the fold for becoming an atheist, opposed to his previous community. Instead, it is an account of a process of coming at terms with an identity, sexual as well, reinventing a new destiny, but without necessarily opposing the old world. From this perspective, the story appeals too much to audiences that are ready for this kind of accounts, without a dramatic ending - he still stays in contact with his family, although he is dismissed and run away himself from the yeshivish world. 

Adjmi remains connected to his disfunctional family which struggles with money. His family is broken way before the official separation of his parents: his father is a con, he and his siblings are struggling with depression and his mother is rather psychologically absent. ´People in my family talk about killing themselves all the time´. 

Although the family is not strictly religious, rather normally Jewish, they sent him to a yeshiva, where his religious experiences are rather peculiar. There is anything special about his Jewish heritage that remains his background story because, as we many of us know, you cannot divorce it easily, if ever.

Personally, I´ve found the part dedicated to the search for his own literary voice more interesting and revelatory. It made me curious to read some of his plays that are inspired by his personal encounters and life experiences. But as much as I consider it is important to share a personal experience and story of reinvention and transformation, eventually helping other people going through similar experiences to raise and find their voices, sometimes I felt that all the information was enough for a long article at the first person, but definitely too long for a full book. As I had access to the book in audiobook format, I´ve found the book experience even longer...

Rating: 3 stars

Some Details about Operation EXODUS

There are some murky details of how Jews from the Middle East - Arab lands and Iran - were took out of their countries through non-Israeli projects. From the Jews in Yemen that were brought to America by the Satmer and the Iranian Jews by the Chabad, there are some details that are not always too kind with the individuals that were the subject of attention. But more about this maybe on another occasion.

Escape from Iran is a book by Sholem Ber Hecht, emisary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, about the details of Operation EXODUS, aimed to help Jews from Iran escape the Islamic Republic. Hecht, at the time of the operation (1979-1980) rabbi of the Sephardic Congregation of Queens in Forest Hills visited Iran at the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. 

There, he got to know the situation of the Jews there, that, as any other religious communities during the Shah, were under the pressure of secularization. A network of Jewish schools were operating in Tehran and Shiraz, among others, through the ETEHAD, created by the Alliance Israelite Universelle who was active in the Middle East and Northern Africa and Turkey, as a Zionist, not religious, French-speaking educational project. Another Jewish education project was developed through the Otzar HaTorah network funded by Rabbi Isaac Meir Levi, familiar with the Jewish refugee from Poland that were hosted in Iran during WWII.

Chabad helped around 1,800 Jews from Iran, mostly young people, to escape to America - until the embassy was still open. They got the I-20 visas - student visas - and were further directed to various Chabad religious institutions and yeshivot. Those young people were becoming part of the religious sect outreach.

The author mentions briefly a short conflict between Chabad and Agudah Israel - which reunites the the orthodox denominations - on this topic, but what exactly happened is not openly disclosed. Agudah Israel had and has its own policies regarding the Iranian Jews.

Escape from Iran is an interesting account for someone looking to find out more about the story of Jews in this country, but must be considered as part of a specific context and tailored religious projects. Escaping a religious dictatorship that puts spiritual and physical lives in danger is an outstanding gift, but there nothing such a free lunch.

Rating: 3 stars