The Emoticon Generation

by Guy Hasson

  After the Nazis were beaten in ’45, after the British partitioned and left ‘Palestine’ in ‘48, and after the Independence War was won in ‘49, they were married. They have been married, now, for 60 years.

  “Would you like some tea, sir? Coffee? We have mineral water here for you.”

  “Just get it over with. I won’t be here more than ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir. For the record, this is October 16th, 2010. My name is David Sanders.” As I talk, I see his eyes glaze over in impatience. “I am sitting here with Aryeh Shamgar in Tel Aviv. The hour is—”

  “You’re a liberal, aren’t you?” he cuts me off.

  “Sir? I don’t know what that has—”

  “You’re a liberal,” he states.

  “My job here has nothing to do with—”

  “Your job here is to find out the ‘truth’ about how we drove the occupying British forces out of our country, how evil we were and how good they and the Arabs were.”

  “My job is to find out the truth about what happened, sir.”

  “And you happen to be a liberal.”

  “That has nothing to do with—”

  “Why afraid to admit to the truth? Show some guts, show some balls. This is what our meeting is all about, isn’t it? Guts. Guts and truth. Come on, tell me the truth.”

  I look in his eyes. He’s sharper than the hi-tech geniuses I work with. He put me on the defensive on something I shouldn’t be defensive about. I’m here with facts.

  “Yes, sir,” I say, not moving my gaze from his. “I’m a liberal.”

  “And liberals like you have been coming after me since the Seventies. Every two years I’m invited to see another set of ‘facts’ or ‘papers’ that show that the assassination of Colonel Tanner was unjustified and cold-blooded. Every time they come cocky. And every time they are proven completely and utterly false.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s right, sir.”

  “And every last one of them is a liberal. Imagine that. When they try to undermine my heroic act, they are actually trying to undermine the footing and legitimacy of the fight for this county.”

  “Yes, sir. And although I am a liberal, I would like nothing better than to realize that everything I learned about you in school was right. You are my hero, sir.”

  He thinks of answering, but after a second closes his mouth and locks his arms around his chest.

  He is my hero, and has been my hero since childhood. He has been a hero for more than sixty years. A hero of the country, given countless honors and medals, all because of his one assassination, the one that turned the tide of the British Mandate, the one that got the British public to decide they should relinquish their control over Palestine and leave it for the Arabs and the Jews. On the waves of his public adulation, he was a cabinet secretary for ten years, responsible for Israel’s military acquisitions. When he left that office, he had countless offers from lucrative business companies. The successes he had with the five he chose to run made sure he and his family would be set for generations.

  This is the man whose life I have to crumble. This is the man whose heart may be too weak to withstand it.

  “And like I said, sir,” I continue, my voice even, “this is the last time.”

  His eyes watch me sharply, then, rather than be confrontational, he leans back calmly. “Dispense with formalities, then.”

  “Ummm... all right, sir. This,” I put my hand on a folder, and spin it around so that he can read it, “contains information about our institute, Past Intelligence.” He no more than glances at it. He doesn’t have his reading glasses. “We are not a liberal organization. In fact, most of our work is done for military intelligence and the Mossad.” He raises an eyebrow with surprise and respect. “Though we are an independent foundation. This particular project, pertaining to you, is not military in any way and therefore whatever facts we discover are not subject to secrecy. The manner in which we uncover these facts, however, is subject to secrecy.”

  I move the folder to his side of the table. “What we do is, we use new technology, developed at the Weizmann Institute, and available only in Israel so far.” He squints at me, trying to see where I am leading him. “The technology deals with... Well, receiving information through time, from... the past. Basically, what it means is, we can ‘hear’ things that happened in a small window between sixty-five and seventy years ago and record them on...” I almost say a fancy word, and I remember that I am talking to someone from a different age, “on tape.”

  “You can hear things from the past?”

  “Yes, sir. Basically, we have a spy satellite... into the past. But always sixty-five to seventy years ago.”

  “And you... record those things?”

  “Yes, sir. And everything’s real. We are sanctioned, as I said, by the government and the military and the—”

  “Sixty-five to seventy?” he cuts me short again, leaning forward. “Sixty-eight years ago I assassinated Colonel Tanner.”

  “Yes, sir. And we have that recording. In fact, we have the recording of each and every conversation in the British military that led to the conclusion that it was you who was behind it and to the decision that you must be hunted down—”

  “That can’t be true,” he says, but his eyes glisten with the memory of the past, a memory he has been living again and again every day, I’m sure, since it had happened. That long lost past is his present still. He lives it daily. He breathes it. He speaks of it and people speak to him about it. He is invited to other countries to speak of it. He makes headlines when ‘liberals’ like me try to discredit him. “You can’t hear the past!” In this instant, I see in his eyes that the past I’ve listened to is his present.

  “It is possible, sir, and we have put all the DVD’s, uh... the tapes—”

  “I know what a DVD is and I know how to work it!”

  “Yes, sir. We put all the DVD’s of all the recordings in the folder for you. You can listen to them at home. They also include all the conversations in the top echelons of the Lehi that led to your hiding away, and even the first time you met Dinah, at her apartment. We didn’t know that that would be what we would hear, and we thought you would like it, so we put it in for you. We didn’t listen to anything else with you two that came later.”

  He puts his finger on the folder, “All that is here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And this technology is real? This is not a joke?”

  “No joke, sir. Latest technology. Only we have it. And I trust you to keep it a secret.”

  He nods, for an instant a dutiful soldier again, serving the interests of his country, “Of course.”

  “Now... we also happened to record – and that is what we were actually looking for – everything that led up to the most famous assassination of a British soldier that the Lehi has ever carried out. We have the recording of the orders you were given.”

  His eyes widen. “You do?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There is a war in his eyes now. Something new appears there. It’s as if he is fighting some urge. Then, in less than a second, it disappears, and age-old anger reappears, “If your recording does not match my version, word for word, then your entire institution is a sham!”

  “No, sir. Our recording corroborates your version, word for word. It corroborates the version you’ve retold in dozens of documentaries and inquiries here and abroad about the orders you were given and how you carried them out. All that is now corroborated by unshakeable facts.”

  His anger abates slightly. “Good.” Then a sparkle appears in his eyes, “Can I see it? Is it on the DVD?” That sparkle: It’s young. It’s like he’s 23 years old again, talking to me with the energy of youth.

  “Yes, sir. Of course we put it on the DVD.”

  He takes a breath, and that breath feels cleaner and fuller than all his previous breaths. “Excellent.”

  “In fact, I’d like to hear it right now, with you, if you don’t mind.”
<
br />   “No, no, not at all.”

  I nod and take the remote into my hand. There is a big HD screen to my right and to his left. The HD is redundant, since there is nothing to look at. We only capture sounds, and so we only play sound.

  I press ‘PLAY’ and the recording I have heard so many times before begins to play.

  ~

  It begins with the sounds of the street. They aren’t muffled by a closed window. This was the second floor in a stone building in Allenby street, the temporary hiding place of Nathan Shmuelevitch, one of the three Lehi leaders. The Tel Aviv weather was unbearably hot and humid, and this was in January of 1942. As Ben Gurion had said, we were fighting the Nazis alongside the British, as if there was no British occupation of our country, and we were fighting the British occupation, as if there was no world war with the Germans.

  You can hear the market outside: chickens, a donkey, and the occasional car engine sounds – a sound that does not exist today.

  His entire body perks up. “That sounds exactly like—” He looks at me. “You do have that technology?”

  I nod and point to my ear, urging him to listen.

  “Shamgar, come here,” a man’s voice urges.

  Shamgar’s mouth drops, and he slams his aged fist on the conference table. He immediately recognized the voice of Nathan Shmuelevitch, his commander, the man who at that time led the military arm of the Lehi, and would later lead a great political movement that would change the country’s history.

  His voice doesn’t sound like it was recorded sixty-eight years ago, because it wasn’t. It sounds like the cleanest sound one can achieve with today’s technology, because it was recorded only two months ago by us, as if we had the recording equipment in the room.

  “Yes, commander, I’m here.” This is Shamgar’s voice. He sounds like a different person, his voice higher, his words faster, his rhythm different.

  Shamgar doesn’t react to this as powerfully as he did to his commander’s voice. His body is frozen with intensity.

  “Sit down, soldier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There is some scuffling of a wooden chair dragged on the floor tiles. Another car passes in the background.

  “That’s exactly what the street sounded like,” Shamgar whispers, a tear in his eye. “I’d forgotten how much I remember.”

  I nod. The recording continues, “I have dire news and a great task, for which I need my best soldier.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “There is news from our intelligence about the latest plans of the Mandate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Colonel Tanner has sent his recommendations to Churchill.”

  “That’s exactly his voice,” Shamgar’s voice is a whisper. I press ‘PAUSE’. “How did you do that?”

  “It’s the technology, I told you. I—”

  “Turn it back on,” he raps his fingers on the wooden desk. “Continue!”

  I press ‘PLAY’ and Shmuelevitch continues to talk, “Our intelligence has intercepted a copy of it. The Colonel believes a harder hand is required with the Jews. He requests a mandate that following any violent event on our part, he will have complete freedom to arrest any Jew, guilty or not, and let them rot in jail. Guilty ones will be sent to Africa. And the ones he deems most guilty will be executed.”

  Shamgar points at the screen. “Yes! That’s right!” —I press ‘PAUSE’ immediately— “That’s what he said! That’s exactly what he said! I remember! That was it!”

  I nod and wait.

  He looks at me. “Did you stop it? Go on! Go on!”

  I press ‘PLAY’.

  “But that goes against every principle the British claim they believe in.” Shamgar’s young voice booms. He was agitated and appalled.

  “Yes, I would have said that!” the older Shamgar in front of me is riveted.

  “Churchill would never approve!” The young Shamgar half shouts, sounding like a teenager whose voice was still changing.

  “Yes,” Nathan Shmuelevitch says. “These were my sentiments. But we have evidence, irrefutable evidence, that Churchill has sent word that Tanner’s initiative is to be followed.”

  “What!” shouts the young Aryeh Shamgar.

  The old Aryeh Shamgar nods. “That’s right.”

  “Calm down, soldier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There is noise of a wooden chair moving on a stone surface. Shamgar had apparently jumped out of his chair and was now getting back into it.

  “Churchill is busy with the Germans and has no patience for us anymore. Are you following me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I look at Shamgar’s eyes. It is as if he is having an epiphany.

  “Churchill’s message is so sensitive, and he is so afraid that it will find its way to us, that it has been entrusted to one man alone, a confidante. In spite of Churchill’s attempts, we have intercepted that message and have received it before Colonel Tanner. The confidante will deliver the message personally to Tanner. In fact, it will be delivered later today.” There is a slight pause. I always assumed Shmuelevitch was letting Shamgar absorb the news. “We can stop this. It is up to you, Shamgar, to stop this. Colonel Tanner must be assassinated tonight. By you. Alone. Immediately after he receives the message. We will be sending a message to Churchill that the Jews can be even more trouble than they have been so far, and that this new policy is unacceptable.

  “I need a brave, fearless soldier. I need someone who can walk into the King David Hotel, into a party filled with British soldiers, cool enough to appear as one of the help, cool enough not to be intimated by the soldiers. I need someone brave enough to walk up to Colonel Tanner when he walks to the bathroom, put a bullet through his chest, then walk out calmly through a room filled with enemies. Are you that man, Shamgar?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Every time I listen to this part of the recording, I keep thinking that the main difference between Shamgar’s voice today and his voice then is that today you can hear the past, you can hear the battles, the decisions, and the decades with which he had to live with those decisions. But back then, you couldn’t hear any of that in his voice. His past was a child’s past, a teenager’s past, devoid of scars.

  Shmuelevitch continues. “Am I making the right choice by letting you go on this mission on which the fate of our independence hangs?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Good man. Go to your house, then. Prepare. In an hour, a man will drop by with plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, then burn them.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “An hour later, another man will drop off your escape plans. Open them when you’re alone. Read them, memorize them, know them by heart, then burn them. This mission will be just you... alone.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Dismissed, soldier.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I press ‘PAUSE’.

  “Basically,” I say. “That ends this part of the recording. There’s some noises, and you leave the room.”

  Shamgar is looking at me. He can hardly breathe.

  “That’s it!” he says, his voice filled with air. “That’s the proof right there! You have incontrovertible truth right there! That’s just the way it happened!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He’s looking around himself, trying to get a hold over his excitement, maybe even looking for more witnesses. “Every time I’ve claimed this was the reason we killed Tanner, the liberals and the British would say that that couldn’t have been the case, that the British would never behave like that, that there was no such order. But there was and they did! They did! That’s proof of everything I’ve been saying for decades!”

  “Yes, sir.” I want to add my ‘but’, but he continues...

  “Oh... Oh... That is unbelievable. I can’t believe... I was there again... I was there inside the room... This technology... I’m never going to have to need to prove the justice of my deeds again
. I can go to my grave without a scandal hanging over me.”

  “Sir, I just—”

  “You said I have recordings of all of this?”

  “Yes, sir. This, and all other stages of the assassination and escape. Of you and your wife meeting. Of—”

  “Amazing!” He is ecstatic. Suddenly, his entire life seems vindicated.

  It hurts me that much more to bring him down from such a high to total abjection. “Sir, there is one more recording I need you to listen to.”

  “Yes, yes!” He is too excited. He is too happy. His guard is down.

  “The following is a recording of events that took place thirty hours earlier, in Nathan Shmuelevitch’s office. In this recording...” I am losing nerve. I phrase it as delicately as I can, letting the recording bear the brunt of the blame, “In this recording, we can hear Shmuelevitch make the decision to assassinate Colonel Tanner.”

  “All right,” Shamgar is energized. “Play it!”

  “Yes, sir.” I switch to the next track on the DVD, and it begins to play.

  The street noises are different. They’re quieter. There is no hustle. A muezzin is heard in the background – a morning prayer from sixty-eight years ago. There is scuffling of a chair.

  “Sit.” It is Shmuelevitch’s voice. His tone is friendly, not at all the commander-like tone used on Shamgar.

  Another wooden chair moves on stone. The muezzin’s prayer grows softer. A man is beginning to set up shop right underneath the window and call out orders to his lackeys.

  “What have you found out?” Shmuelevitch asks.

  “I followed the subject from yesterday afternoon until she went to sleep.” This is another voice. Young – everyone was young in the Lehi – and serious and idealistic sounding.

  Shamgar straightens at the sound of that voice. “I know him! Who’s that?”

  I don’t press ‘PAUSE’. The recording continues, “What did you find out?”