Around ten o’clock this morning, I heard an intense flurry of highly-accented yelling coming from the reception area outside my office. Somebody was screaming obscenities at Gretchen, my blonde, blue-eyed twentysomething Pennsylvania Dutch private secretary. Line One rang.
“Mr. Collins,” Gretchen calmly informed me, “there’s a Mr. Makat Zayin from the Israeli Embassy here to see you.”
“Send him in right away,” I promptly directed.
“Yes, sir,” she crisply replied. “Do you have any… guidance?”
“Sure,” I confidently told her. “To him, the sight of someone like you is tantamount to waving a red flag in front of a bull. All he can think about is the Holocaust. Don’t take it personally.”
In a trice, Mr. Zayin was through my solid oak office doors and ensconced on the chair positioned directly in front of my desk. I was hardly surprised by that – sitting there indicates a confrontational personality, and I’ve never met an Zionist who didn’t have one of those. And, of course, I’ve never met an Israeli diplomat who wasn’t a Zionist, either.
“Why haven’t you gotten rid of that [expletive] yet?” Zayin indignantly demanded. “Didn’t I tell you to fire her? She’s got no respect! She’s stupid, too! Everybody knows blondes are unintelligent! Can’t you do any better than that?”
“Feh,” I lied, feigning a supercilious air and an indifferent shrug, “the little shiksa works really, really cheap; als, ish kabibble, nu?”
And with those magic words, Zayin stopped dead in his tracks. After a brief silence, he popped open his attaché case and pulled out an iPad. Closing the case, he placed it on top and began to employ it in a most furious and ostentatious manner.
“Okay,” he muttered, “let’s get started. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to offer Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas several goodwill gestures in exchange for Abbas’ approval of an Israeli renewal of construction activity in the West Bank.”
“So I read at http://news.xinhuanet.com earlier today,” I confirmed. I understand Prime Minister Netanyahu is talking about releasing some jailed Palestinians, making it easier to move commercial goods within the Palestinian National Authority and removing military checkpoints.”
“Yeah,” Zayin spat. “For the last twenty months, all we’ve heard from that schvoogie over there,” he growled, thrusting his chin toward the White House outside my office picture window, “is ‘mutual sacrifice with mutual understanding,’ ‘shared futures in the Middle East,’ ‘geopolitical imperatives for peace’ and other such [expletive]. Now he’s finally talked both of them into coming here to Washington for a [expletive] dinner party with him tonight, and tomorrow, they’re supposed to start negotiations again – for what, the tenth time?”
“Something like that,” I confirmed, “depending on how you count them.”
“And so,” he griped, “they send me down here to talk to you.”
“About what?” I gingerly inquired.
“About what else we can offer the Palestinians!” Zayin ruefully sighed. “That’s what I got. Did they put me on the negotiation team? No! Did they make me security liaison? No! Did they put me in charge of media relations? No! Did they assign me as military attaché? No!” With his left hand, he picked up his iPad, and with his right, he picked up his attaché case, which he held aloft, brandishing it at me vehemently. “I’ve got a [expletive] attaché case, God damn it! But do they make me an attaché? No! No, they don’t! What they do is, they send me down here to talk to Tom Collins!”
“Well,” I carefully cajoled, “that’s not so bad, is it?”
“Are you [expletive] kidding me?” Zayin slammed his attaché case back on his lap, angrily thumping his iPad back down on top of it. “It’s [expletive] hell! Now what the [expletive] have you got to say to that?”
“Um… how about falafel?”
“I’m not [expletive] hungry!” Zayin roared.
“No,” I clarified, “I meant, in order to make nice-nice to the Palestinians, you Israelis could give them credit for inventing falafel.”
“We [expletive] invented [expletive] falafel!” Zayin protested.
“Really?” I responded with just a note of incredulity. “I know you invented pastrami…”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he interrupted. “The Ashkenazim invented pastrami, corned beef and half-sour pickles. But the Sephardim invented falafel!”
“Out of the question, then?” I sought to confirm.
“No way,” Zayin declared, shaking his head with firm certainty. “We invented falafel, and we’re not going to let any Arabs take credit for it!”
“All right,” I continued, exploring another possibility, “how about you admit that their hummus is better?”
“What?” Zayin sat bolt upright, his eyes wide as saucers. “Arab hummus tastes like [expletive]! They put too much garlic in it! They skimp on the sesame tahini – you hardly even know it’s there! And the olive oil they use! Why the [expletive] don’t they just pour in some used motor oil instead?”
“Fair enough,” I pressed on, “no concessions on the cuisine front, then. But what do you think – couldn’t you promise to stop arresting them for dating Jewish women?”
“There are perfectly good reasons for that,” Zayin argued in a matter-of-fact tone, raising his left hand and ticking off his points on its fingers with his right, “Number One: those Arabs already have a bunch of wives and concubines at home; that’s plenty of women for them, and they sure as [expletive] don’t need to be sniffing around ours. Number Two: according to the Talmud, every child born to a Jewish woman is automatically Jewish, and we don’t want those Arabs mixing their DNA with ours. It’s the same problem you Americans have with anchor babies, terror babies, you name it. We don’t want that kind of thing happening in Israel, period. Number Three: not to put too fine a point on it, but Arabs are a bunch of [expletive] retards, okay? Look how many Jews have won Nobel Prizes, then look at how many Arabs – pardon me, but it’s a no-brainer, no pun intended, all right? Face the facts – this is the [expletive] space age; the age of the microchip and the Internet, all of which Jews invented, by the way. So who wants to breed their women with a race of morons that still live in tents and herd [expletive] goats, huh? Number Four: Israel is a Jewish state, and as such, should be a place where a Jewish man can get a date with a Jewish woman without fear of competition from sweet-talking Arabs, athletic Negroes, or goyishe shagitzes with high IQs and/or plenty of money of their own. Number Five: Arabs all have just about every possible venereal disease on the planet. I know, because my Aunt Naomi told me. And now, I’m all out of fingers; so forget it.”
“Well then,” I suggested, “could you perhaps offer to stop prosecuting non-violent Arab protesters in your military courts?”
Zayin looked at me as if I had suddenly sprouted an extra head. “You can’t be serious!”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because,” he replied, with an obvious air of irritation, “there is absolutely no such thing as a non-violent Arab! It’s in their blood, I tell you!”
“Very well,” I conceded, “if that’s how you see the situation…”
“It’s not my point of view!” Zayin insisted. “It’s the [expletive] truth!”
“Let’s move on,” I recommended, “without addressing the veracity of that theory, and consider another possibility. Couldn’t you promise that, from now on, whenever a radical rabbi publicly beseeches… um… He Whose Name Cannot Be Mentioned… to bring down plagues on the Arabs, to destroy them with natural disasters, to strike them dead with bolts from Heaven – whatever – the Israeli government will denounce such behavior as depraved?”
“’Depraved?’” Zayin’s eyebrows shot up skeptically.
“How about ‘immoral,’ then?” I offered.
“’Immoral’?” Zayin sniffed. “What’s immoral about praying for the destruction of your enemies?”
“Evil?”
“No way it’s evil, not at all,” Zayin declared with an authoritative shake of his head.
“Deplorable?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Execrable?”
“Afraid not.”
“Reprehensible?”
Zayin leaned forward defiantly. “According to who?”
“Odious?” I proposed.
“Out of the question.”
“Vile?”
“Completely inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate?”
“Utterly incorrect.”
“Scurrilous?”
“Out of the question.”
“How about… impolite?”
Zayin stroked his chin in solemn contemplation. “Hmm… maybe… ah… no, we couldn’t say ‘impolite,’ either; not honestly, anyway.”
“Well,” I concluded, “how about this, then? Historically, every time a UN or EU official pleads for justice on the behalf of the Palestinians, the Israeli government routinely issues a press release denouncing that official as a dupe and the Palestinians as international criminals. You could promise to stop doing that.”
“Which one,” Zayin sneered, “the part where we tell the world the Palestinians are international criminals, or the part where we say that the UN or EU official who sympathized with them is a mindless, spineless, unprincipled dupe?”
“I was thinking…” I cautiously proposed, “um… both, actually.”
Zayin abruptly ceased taking notes on his iPad, opened his attaché case and tossed the iPad inside, slamming the case shut, loudly snapping the cover clasps, and making an elaborate show of twirling the combination locks on them, after which he stood up, stiffly extending his hand. “Thank you for your ideas,” he slowly uttered in his best diplomatic tone, “I think we can both agree that this has been a frank and productive encounter.”
“Of course,” I said as I extended my hand to his, “and may Israel’s upcoming negotiations with the Palestinian National Authority be just as frank and productive, too.”
Zayin cracked a stiff smile. “I’m sure, Mr. Collins, that they will.”