The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  After Yitzhak Rabin, the Minister of Defence in 1987, had seen Shoah, he asked me if I might consider making a film about the War of Independence. I gave the matter some thought and, after a few days, I said ‘no’. There are two possible accounts of that war: the Israeli and the Arab. What is at issue here is not truth, it is the fact that neither account can disregard the other and it is impossible to explore the motives of both camps simultaneously, at least not without making a very bad film, something a number of people have since done on the subject. I did, however, suggest to Rabin a film about the idea I have already mentioned, the reappropriation of force and violence by Israeli Jews. He accepted, saying, ‘We don’t have a single shekel to offer you, but I shall put the army at your disposal, we will hide nothing from you, you will be privy to all its secrets.’ And it is true that I was shown much more than I chose to show. I knew all about the drones, for example, the unmanned planes, long before the First Gulf War. The American drones were, first and foremost, a magnificent Israeli invention. I saw missiles being made, rockets and sophisticated weapons about which I can still say nothing. But I also shared the daily life of tank troops, participated in manoeuvres, drove a Merkava, sat in the gunner’s place firing from a stationary position but also from a tank moving at top speed, which is considerably more difficult. I took part in combined manoeuvres in the desert lasting forty-eight hours that involved infantry, paratroopers, tank divisions, the artillery, Cobra and Apache helicopters and bombers. Advancing, kilometre by kilometre, with the front-line foot-soldiers through the roar of machine guns and submachine guns firing live rounds while shells from a mobile artillery division explode 200 metres ahead of the shock troops to ‘prepare and clean’ the ground before them is a physical ordeal that is both exhausting and impressive. These exercises are designed to be so realistic that accidents, sometimes terrible accidents, are not uncommon. Everyone, from general down to private, is aware of this and it adds to the tension, to the exhaustion that ravages their faces, furrowed with sweat and sand within hours of manoeuvres beginning. Out of foolish pride, wanting to play the young man, I refused to protect my ears as I was advised, even ordered, to do. I am paying for it still.

  Meeting up at Sde Dov, the domestic airport of Tel Aviv, attwo o’clock in the morning with Uri Saguy, head of Aman (the Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence), or with Amram Mitzna, commander-in-chief of Central Command, and later leader of the Labour Party, or with Matan Vilnai, Yossi Ben Hanan, or Talik, boarding a small aircraft capable of landing anywhere at a moment’s notice with one or more of them in the dead of night; being the only person awake apart from the young pilot flying on instruments in the pure, profound darkness of the Sinai or the Negev, while Israel’s generals, knowing what awaited them, snatched every possible minute of sleep, was an experience I found profoundly moving, as though I were there to watch over them, as though the precious sleep of these warriors, all devoid of airs and all younger than me, only depended on my vigilance. Night on the peninsula barely has time to pale before the harsh sun appears brutally in the east over the mountains of Moab, seeming to begin its course at great speed: I could literally see it scale the heavens as the little plane begins the final part of its descent in the suddenly audible din of gunfire. The manoeuvres – I was about to write ‘the battle’ – had already begun.

  Having found these flights from Sde Dov so moving, what can I say about my first flight in a Phantom from Tel Nof airbase or, many years later, my first flight in an F-16 from Ramat David airbase in northern Israel? The sky that morning was lowering and the air-traffic controller was late in clearing my pilot, Eitan Ben Eliyahu – at the time second-in-command of the Israeli airforce (he would become commander-in-chief the following year) – to release the fearsome power of the plane’s Pratt & Whitney turbofan engine. We spent a long time waiting at the end of the runway, but Eitan made up for it, taking off in a blaze like a torpedo, performing two flick rolls as we climbed. I got to know most of the airbases in Israel, questioned a hundred pilots; I remember a devout, taciturn Ashkenazi, at least twice as old as his colleagues, from whom I found it difficult to extract a word but who was, I knew from his colleagues, a tiger of aerial combat who had single-handedly brought down six Syrian MiG fighters in forty-eight hours in 1982. I could not imagine making the film without flying myself, without experiencing the ‘black veil’ – the loss of consciousness Richard Hillary describes – something all fighter pilots are familiar with despite even the most modern G-suits. The airforce authorities understood, and agreed to my request on condition that I successfully passed a physical. I was sixty-seven years old. The examination took a whole day and was intensely serious and meticulous, every one of my organs was examined scrupulously and, after my heart, my kidneys or my brain had been scanned, I was dispatched with a friendly pat on the back and the assurance that, barring accidents, I would live to be 120. This was just as well since the last call of the day was with the airforce dentist, who did no fillings and no extractions, but who, without a word, X-rayed my jaws from every possible angle. Not understanding his purpose I began to worry and finally I asked him why he was taking all these cinematic high-angle and low-angle shots. He replied impassively, ‘The planes you will be flying are dangerous. They have been known to explode. And should your plane overshoot the border and stray a few kilometres into enemy airspace – which is easily done here – it could be shot down by a surface-to-air missile: your teeth will be all that is left of you and these X-rays will be the only means of identifying you.’ Of course, I was required to sign a waiver absolving the state, the government and the army of all responsibility. I did so with a light heart.

  I arrived on a sunny morning at Tel Nof, the central and one of the most important airbases in Israel, having passed a number of stringent checkpoints. There I was met by Relik Shafir, the thirty-three-year-old commander of the Phantom squadrons. He led me into the vast, comfortable pilots’ lounge with its deep leather armchairs and began to tell me how hard the 1973 Yom Kippur War had been on the Phantom crews. Relik was much too young to have taken part, but these sudden, heavy losses and the confusion of the first days had left indelible traces and were part of the history of the Tel Nof squadron. Accustomed, since the Six Day War in 1967, to being masters of the air, six years later the Israeli fighter jets found themselves being shot down as soon as they came close to Suez by the terrible SA-6 missiles, the latest Soviet technology, exported in quantities to Egypt and often operated by specialists from the USSR. The pain of the Yom Kippur War was still raw at Tel Nof: half of the planes had exploded in mid-air, their pilots and navigators had never returned. Improvised counter-measures had to be hurriedly devised, pilots had to learn to bank hard in the seconds before a missile hit, a manoeuvre that threw it off course, rendering it useless and making it possible for its intended target to shoot it down. The fighter pilots devised many other tricks and ruses to fool the SA-6s and in the latter half of the war, more often than not, the missiles were neutralized. Relik was tall, taller than most of the pilots, his face was at once grave and mischievous. He had taken part in the raid on Osirak, the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which had involved a long return flight over enemy territory. ‘According to our estimates,’ he said, ‘it was likely that one or two of the eight planes would be shot down. I was flying one of the last two planes in the formation so there was a very real chance I would be killed…’ I forgot to mention that he had seen Shoah and seemed to know it by heart. He went on, ‘As we took off, we all felt the gravity of the moment, we knew that the fate of the state of Israel lay in our hands. And suddenly I knew who I was flying for. I bear my grandfather’s first name and my daughter bears my father’s sister’s name. Both died in the Shoah. They were deported from Vilnius and were killed, probably in the Ponary massacre. Suddenly I knew that I was flying for them. I needed that. It helped me to know, as I boarded the plane, that even if my destiny should end in the saddest way, my death, inscribed in the lineage of those defenc
eless innocents, would be an accomplishment.’

  I was disappointed when Relik explained that he was not to be my pilot and introduced me to Gad – I only ever knew his first name – a short, gentle-looking man, yet hard and muscled, who, like many Israeli pilots, had been born and raised in a kibbutz. To tell the truth, my heart was in my boots. As Gad led me to what I would not call a changing room, I tried to win him round, telling him that I preferred to fly straight with no stunts. He replied that we would see, that he would make decisions based on my reactions, though he was clearly and understandably annoyed that I was asking him to turn a Phantom into a transport plane. In the ‘dressing room’, Rimbaud’s lines from ‘Les Chercheuses de poux’ [‘The Lice Hunters’] came to mind: ‘There come to his bedside two tall charming sisters / their frail fingers tipped with silvery nails’, as three ravishing young women busied themselves about me, attempting to undress me completely, leaving me in my underpants – though on reflection and given the amount of time that has passed, I am not even sure. The ceremonial dubbing of the modern knight could then begin: I was given underclothes expressly designed to absorb sweat, flying boots, a helmet, glasses and, most importantly, the G-suit that prevents blood draining away from the brain when the plane banks sharply, pulls out of a nose-dive or performs, when in fighting mode, any of a thousand impossible manoeuvres. In such circumstances the suit automatically applies pressure to the calves, the thighs and the abdomen, to prevent blood draining away from the brain. But in spite of this lifesaving invention, blackouts have not been eliminated: even very experienced pilots blackout at 10g when acceleration is such that their weight is ten times normal.

  Gad and I were escorted to the plane by the young dressers, one of whom carried my helmet. The Phantom is a monster, one of the fastest aeroplanes in the world, boasting two General Electric J79-GE-15 axial-flow turbojets that look like half-open shark’s jaws and can reach speeds of 2,500 kilometres per hour and altitudes of 19,000 metres. It is famously solidly built and fit for all types of combat missions. I climbed the ladder and slipped into the navigator’s seat just behind the pilot; other uniformed young women strapped me in, placed a white skullcap designed to absorb perspiration on my head and my helmet over it. Gad checked that everything was in order, explained how the ejector seat functioned, informing me of what I should do in the event of danger or if he so ordered. ‘You’re sitting on an actual bomb there, so whatever you do, don’t touch that lever.’ He showed me how to turn on the microphone and headset that allowed us to communicate at all times, then finally handed me a paper bag: ‘If you need to throw up, go ahead, don’t feel embarrassed or afraid, we’ve all done it, just throw up into this bag.’ He settled himself in the pilot’s seat, strapped himself in, turned on the engines, exchanged a few words with the control tower, gave the thumbs up to let them know we were ready and that they could take away the chocks. We taxied to the far end of the runway to join the tailback of a hundred other Phantoms manned by young pilots, all waiting to take off. It was like rush hour at Chicago O’Hare, Dulles in Washington, McCarran in Las Vegas, JFK in New York or Charles de Gaulle in Paris combined. The navigators sitting at the rear of the other cockpits must have wondered as to the identity of this strange colleague in the pristine white helmet staring at them intently, tenderly. This colleague was in actuality preoccupied with the imminent takeoff, intensely aware of the great favour Tsahal had accorded him.

  Gad took off quickly, gaining altitude, and then, over Jerusalem, dropping to fly as low as he was permitted over the city, and at first I felt a little like the peasant in Malraux’s Sierra de Teruel [Days of Hope] who, from the air, does not recognize the lands he has worked all his life. But I quickly got my bearings, soon knowing where I was. Gad then headed straight for the Red Sea and, as we flew over Aravah, he clearly decided that the good times were over: now was the moment to test my mettle. In a series of quick, abrupt manoeuvres and sudden rolls, he brought me almost to the point of blackout – which I found an oddly pleasant sensation. We headed back for Tel Nof having flown one and a half times the length of Israel, and he informed me that I had experienced a force of 4g – not bad for my first flight in the monster. Besides I had not vomited, or even felt nauseous.

  The Phantom taxied back to its hangar; above me, the cockpit was slid open and immediately the ground crew, all smiles, unstrapped me and helped me up and out of the plane. I stood on the top rung of the ladder, my return to earth was greeted by rapturous applause from a crowd of 200 people, by flashbulbs and cameras and – especially – by having Israeli champagne sprayed right in my face, which I welcomed, arms flung wide, like Schumacher winning a Grand Prix.

  Tel Nof and my flight on the Phantom was a challenge that I had set myself. My flight from Ramat David aboard the F-16 was an entirely different matter: it was part of the shoot of Tsahal and it required two fighter jets, one filming the other while, strapped into an F-16 two-seater, and talking into a tape recorder, I attempted to comment on events as they occurred and the various phases of the flight. Eytan Ben Eliyahu, second-in-command of the airforce, who had been assigned as my pilot, was audacious. The son of an Iraqi Jewish father and Serbian Jewish mother, he was a flying ace of rare freedom and had performed the greatest exploits for the Israeli airforce. The F-16 is as terrifying as the Phantom, more terrifying maybe, but in a different way. In a sense, the F-16 is like ‘the Beam’ in Brioude: the canopy is so transparent and perched so close to the nose of the plane that, even at 10,000 metres, it feels like being aloft with no protection. To go into battle in an F-16 and in a Phantom are very different things: the F-16, in its fighter bomber version, has no need to see its target: the on-board computers that the pilot is trained to master can pinpoint a target at a range of fifty kilometres, a target the pilot could not possibly see even with his huge, transparent canopy. The basic F-16 fighter beats all its rivals by the stunning virtuosity of its design and the wide variety of manoeuvres it permits the élite pilots who handle – and manhandle – it as they see fit, secure in the knowledge that this marvel of the air will always obey their commands. The women who acted as ‘dressers’ at Ramat David were somewhat less charming than those at Tel Nof, but the procedure was the same, though Eytan was very different from Gad. As I was being strapped in, he turned and asked, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You can always say no, there’s no shame.’ I liked his tanned face with his hook nose; and I said, ‘Let’s do it,’ though his words had served to heighten my fears. He began, as I described earlier, with a double flick roll, so that even as we took off, I was completely disoriented. I stayed calm as earth and sky whipped past violently. For a moment, Eytan consented to fly in a civil fashion, then suddenly his voice came over the headset: ‘Take the stick and push it all the way forward and to the right,’ he said in perfect, guttural English. I obeyed, if a little too timidly, and the F-16 banked into a half-roll, an unforgivable mistake, indicating a lack of decisiveness and daring. Eytan completed the failed roll and ordered me, in a brusque, military tone, to try again. This time I succeeded – with no training, no certificate – in getting the F-16 to perform a flick roll to the satisfaction of the second-in-command of the airforce. We were escorted by another F-16, piloted – I say this because it’s true – by a tall lanky Jew from the Cape in South Africa, who had taken on board my cameraman. His heart in his mouth, he could barely operate the camera. At this point – you can see the footage in Tsahal – Eytan Ben Eliyahu decided to administer the supreme punishment, banking hard, plummeting in a vertiginous nose-dive and pulling out only at the very last minute. Proud of me, of my stoicism, my imperturbable stomach, he rewarded me by flying over the Lebanon as far as Beirut in a few short minutes, something he clearly should not have done. Flying back along the coast, we overflew – in a thunderous roar, I hope – the headquarters of UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), I think we may even have dipped our wings. Although the French find such flyovers ‘intolerable’, they will continue
for as long as the threat continues. Back at Ramat David, I was not welcomed with another champagne shower because I had already ‘crossed the line’, but I received something much more important to me: the congratulations and the praise of some of the greatest pilots in the country. I had been subjected to 7g, the equivalent of weighing 600 kilos – seven times my actual weight – suffering only a brief blackout, without whining or complaining, without screaming or throwing up. They considered this phenomenal. So did I.

  Chapter 4

  June 1940 was a month of implacable beauty: each day more dazzling, more glorious than the last. We were living on the outskirts of the little town of Brioude in the Auvergne, beyond the train station where, since the beginning of the war, my father loaded coal, on a secondary road, in a two-storey house with a backyard and a long sloping garden. The relentless flow of refugees heading south took the main road through this sub-prefecture of the Haute-Loire, and only the most astute, in search of petrol – an extremely precious commodity at the time – arrived at our doorstep because nearby stood a huge tank bearing the name of its owner – Desmarest, who later became chairman of Total – only casually and poorly protected by guards from the defeated army. The guards could sometimes be bribed and the drivers headed off with a full tank and several jerry cans as well.

  Whenever he could, my father listened to the news on the wireless. I remember hearing two of Hitler’s speeches with him, during the Munich Crisis of 1938 – although we still lived in Paris then, at the time we were spending our holidays in Saint-Chély-d’Apcher, in the Lozère, with Marcel Galtier, a secular republican headmaster whom I adored because he taught me everything, and first and foremost to fly-fish in the narrow, serpentine trout rivers of the Aubrac plateau. And so Galtier, my father and I listened to the threats and ravings of the Führer and my father said in a low voice, almost to himself, ‘This is war.’ He felt no ‘sense of cowardly relief’ after the sham treaty of Munich; on the contrary, it confirmed his opinion that war was inevitable. The seventeenth of June 1940 was another beautiful day: we were lunching in the courtyard when we heard the solemn announcement that Maréchal Pétain was to make a speech and, immediately afterwards, for the first time, we heard the quavering voice of the ‘Saviour of Verdun’ in full pomp and ceremony: ‘I make the gift of my person to France… It makes me sick at heart to have to tell you that, today, we must stop fighting. I have this night approached the enemy…’ and, a little later that same day: ‘the pursuit of pleasure has prevailed over the spirit of sacrifice. People have asked too much and given too little. We have sought to spare our efforts: today we must face misfortune…’ I don’t know now whether I fully grasped the implications of this breast-beating, I went on playing with my dog, a three-month-old puppy that ran pell-mell after every stone I threw for him. He was a Great Dane, white with black patches, and was to grow up to be as huge and fierce as the dogs that had terrified me and my brother and sister when, living in Vaucresson before our parents separated, we used to take the steep path that led from our house to the school, past a large estate guarded day and night by monsters separated from us only by openwork railings along which they ran, their fierce barking accompanying our every step. My dog, Draggy, was a pedigree. My father, who loved dogs, had given him to me before the German attack in a rare moment of optimism, as he tried to forget what he never ceased to believe to be true, that the worst was inevitable.