And the Sea Is Never Full (13 page)

Meanwhile, the terrorists proceed with the help of Idi Amin to
separate the Israelis from the other hostages. They free the French but hold the Israelis.

Rabin asks his cabinet whether to negotiate. There is tension between him and his defense minister, Shimon Peres. The vote is unanimous: Yes, but only if a military option is excluded. The leaders of the opposition, including Menachem Begin, share this point of view. Human lives count more than principles. Rabin consults General Motta Gur, the army’s commander-in-chief and liberator of the Old City of Jerusalem, as to whether a military operation is feasible.

In New York, with our Israeli friends Raphael and Dina Recanati, we discuss our concern that a military move is not viable. We wonder how the army could possibly transport units that far—some 2,200 miles—into hostile territory. And even if a commando unit reached Entebbe Airport, how could one prevent the terrorists from killing the defenseless hostages? In the end, we all agree: A military rescue is out of the question. None of us is prepared for Israeli logic: that
because
the operation seems impossible, it will be undertaken—and brilliantly executed.

What was the Mossad’s role? To provide information and photographs. And whose idea had it been to load into the giant plane a black Mercedes identical to the one in which Idi Amin liked to parade? Carried out with clockwork precision, the mission is successful. Tragically, there are four casualties: three hostages and the Israeli colonel Yoni Netanyahu. Four families are in mourning, but there is dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv. Begin, the opposition leader, congratulates Rabin.

It meant much to me when, months later, Yoni’s father, Professor Ben-Zion Netanyahu, author of a superb volume on the Inquisition, brought me letters from his son in which my work is mentioned. I then read in his posthumously published diary references to my novels.

In America there is less talk of the bicentennial than of Entebbe. Not since the Six-Day War has there been such a show of admiration for the Jewish state.

Among the hostages was a survivor of the camps. At one point he walked up to one of the German terrorists and showed him the tattoo on his arm: “It may have been your father who did this to me; the Germans wanted to murder me and my family. Now
you
will do the job?” The terrorist did not answer. But when the Israeli attack started, the hostage saw the terrorist aiming his gun at him. “I am convinced
that in that final second, what I had said kept him from pulling the trigger,” said the survivor.

In 1977, the arrival of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in the Israeli capital turns history on its head. By then Yitzhak Rabin is no longer prime minister and Shimon Peres is no longer in charge of defense. Astonishingly, Menachem Begin has been elected to head the new government and selects Moshe Dayan as his minister of foreign affairs. Who could have imagined that the hawk from the right and the military man from the left would bring about a peace that the left had pursued unsuccessfully since 1948?

It all begins on November 9, when Sadat addresses the People’s Assembly in Cairo and states: “I am ready to go to the end of the world if it will prevent one of my sons, be he soldier or officer, from being wounded. I repeat: wounded, not killed. Israel will be surprised to hear me declare before you that I am ready to go to them, to the Knesset, in order to speak to them….”

That very day, Yossi Ciechanover, at that time a high official in the Defense Department and a friend of Dayan’s, is in my home. We discuss Sadat’s speech. I tell Yossi that Dayan must take Sadat at his word. Let Israel invite him to Jerusalem. Yossi rejects the idea, saying it won’t work. In retrospect, I think he may already have been aware of secret negotiations between the Israelis and the Egyptians.

I remember: It is Shabbat. Marion and I are with our friends the Recanatis. Transfixed, we watch television, tears running down our cheeks. In Israel, night has fallen. Lod Airport is brightly lit. Egyptian flags line the tarmac. It all seems surreal. The presidential plane, escorted by Israeli military planes, appears. It lands. We are silent, afraid to breathe, afraid to wake up. The plane’s door swings open. Is it really Sadat, who only four years earlier had ordered the attack on the Jewish state on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur? He slowly walks down the steps and reviews the honor guard. The military band plays the two national anthems. And here is Sadat saluting Menachem Begin, Arik Sharon, Ezer Weizman—and Golda, who not so long ago on her hospital bed had told me that she did not want to live to see the day when Begin would be in the cabinet. But it is Begin who welcomes the enemy leader in order to make peace. Begin, the man of the right, and not she, the former head of a leftist government.

We stay there for hours watching the live telecasts. Commentators describe what they see without seeming to believe it. At a loss for words, they hide behind their own incredulity. I scan the faces of the
crowd shown on the screen—anonymous faces, looking awed. The warmth of their welcome moves me as much as the illustrious visitor’s arrival. After all, among them there must be orphans, widows, bereaved parents of the Yom Kippur War. And yet there appears to be no anger. On the contrary, they welcome Sadat as a friend come from afar, a brother who has overcome dangerous obstacles.

The next day: Sadat in the Old City, Sadat entering the El Aksa Mosque, Sadat addressing the Knesset.

I admire his instincts, his courage, and I refuse to think of the difficulties that await him and his Israeli counterparts on the road to reconciliation. Will we finally learn to celebrate peace just as our ancestors glorified war?

A leap into the future. Nearly a decade later I invite a young woman to speak on the Koran to my students at Boston University, where I now teach. She is Camelia Sadat, the daughter of the Egyptian leader. I eventually become her Ph.D. adviser and she becomes my friend.

Let us take a few steps back. The year 1977 started badly. In January the French government freed the Palestinian terrorist Abu Daoud before Israel could start extradition proceedings. Throughout the world this scandal provoked an unprecedented wave of protest. In the United States there were calls for a boycott of French products. With the financial help of a few friends I arranged for a full-page ad in the
New York Times
, in the form of an open letter to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, president of the French Republic:

Written in the heat of the moment, this letter, regrettably, contained one error: I was wrong to reproach France for having abstained from voting during the infamous resolution equating Zionism to racism. I quickly corrected the error subsequently: France had actually voted against this resolution.

In 1993 on a Paris–New York flight, I find myself sitting next to the former president of France. He asks me what I am working on. I tell him: my memoirs. And I add: “I am afraid it contains pages that may displease you.” He asks why. I say, “Abu Daoud.” “You must let me explain,” he replies. “We were ready to extradite him to Germany, since it was there that he committed his crime. But Bonn didn’t want him.”

In late 1995 the American press reports that Abu Daoud has sold his memoirs for a substantial price. In the book he admits to having participated in the massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich. Where is he now? In the West Bank.

I write every morning. I take notes, I make entries in my personal diary. I sleep less. I read a lot—on planes, in cars. I read very few novels, preferring essays on contemporary history, especially World War II; also, the new philosophers, deconstruction in literature, semiotics.

Writing, teaching, lecturing. Every evening, every morning, I tell myself: The danger lies in trying to do too much. Tomorrow I shall be more prudent, more parsimonious with my time. I never am.

Writing becomes more difficult, more exhausting, more pressing. I need solitude. Silence. I become acutely aware of the ambiguity of words. Always the same questions, the same doubts: How to express that which eludes language? I erase, I rewrite. I fill the waste-basket with superseded drafts. Will I be discerning enough to know when the well runs dry? I redo a single page again and again, until, in the end, I decide on the first draft.

When man is witness to the alienation of his language, when, to quote Rabbi Israel of Rizhin, the parable and its meaning no longer have anything in common, a door has been closed. Literature ceases to be a beacon of salvation or even a means of introspection.

Aesthetics or ethics: Does literature belong to either realm? If one is to believe the Midrash, Adam, when he composed a song for Shabbat, was already making literature. But didn’t Eve anticipate him by telling stories about forbidden fruit and snakes? What is certain is that this couple, the first in history, opened the way to future creators. In the end, they could not escape ethical imperatives. Knowledge compels man to choose between good and evil, life and nothingness. Moses—who was as great a writer as he was a legislator—told his brother Aaron to remain
“bein hakhaim vehametim,”
between the living and the dead, and death backed off. The writer creates a link between the living and the dead; he protects one from the other.

A writer cannot detach himself from his story: He is responsible for it to the end. Jeremiah feels guilty for the destruction of the Temple: He is not sure of having found the words needed to change man and revoke the decree.

In New York, at the 92nd Street “Y,” I continue my annual lecture series, begun in 1966, on the Bible, the Talmud, Hasidism, and Jewish tradition.

I remember my first lecture at the “Y.” There were two of us on the program, the novelist Jean Shepherd and myself. The auditorium was nearly full, but after she spoke many people left. Never mind, I told myself, while counting the few friends and strangers scattered through Kaufmann Hall; so they won’t invite me again.

In truth I was disappointed, because this center is among the most prestigious in New York. Resigned, I walk onstage. I sit down at a carved wooden table. I read a page from
Les Juifs du Silence
, the original
French edition of
The Jews of Silence
. Does anyone in this hall speak French? No matter; they probably won’t stay anyway. I read and comment in English on a passage from
The Town Beyond the Wall
. Please God, make this torture come to an end. In desperation, I evoke Beethoven, of whom it was said that he not only composed his symphonies but also the silence that followed them.

Finally it’s over.

Only it wasn’t. Since then, over more than thirty years, I have given more than 120 lectures at the “Y”.

I am invited to speak at the Sorbonne. My lectures on Rebbe Nahman and the talmudic Master Elisha ben Abuya are given in the very amphitheater where, long ago, I listened so intently to my professors. I still have trouble overcoming my stage fright. My migraines don’t help. Before every speech I remember the words of our sages which Saul Lieberman used to quote: “It takes less than three years for man to learn to speak, and seventy to learn to remain silent.”