By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta put the Israel-Iran issue back on the front burner, with comments indicating that Israel is likely to attack sometime in the period of April to June. His comments came in the shadow of a prominent address by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that described Israel as a “cancerous tumour that should be cut and will be cut,” and promising endorsement and aid to “any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime.”
There is no end of writing about the pros and cons of an Israel attack, and parsing the significance of statements coming from Israeli politicians, military, intelligence, and media personalities. How much is pressure on others to increase sanctions or to prepare for action, how much is meant to make the Iranians cautious, and how much is serious warning?
Israel’s record has led some to conclude that the amount of talking from senior personnel indicates that Israel has no intentions of actually attacking. The reasoning is that when Israel is serious, it acts rather than talks.
That may be insightful, but it may be misleading. Israel continues to learn. Its patience may reflect a maturity of judgment, sharpened by observing the premature American assault against Iraq and the frustrations there and in Afghanistan. Aggressive talk may be the best way to increase the sanctions against Iran, and even lead greater powers than Israel to consider military action. However, there are indications that Israeli officials are doing more than talking, as it is possible to see in occasional reports about military exercises and weapons acquisitions. More disinformation?
I left the political , military, and intellectual problems unresolved while Varda and I pursued a mid-winter holiday in Malta and Rome. A Middle Eastern address is not all Sturm und Drang. It also puts us within four or five hours flight time of many historic and scenic places throughout the Mediterranean Basin, almost all of which offer interesting varieties of food and wine.
Both Malta and Rome have had their moments in history. Currently both are somewhere below Jerusalem on the international agenda, and that is part of their attraction.
I chose a P. D. James mystery for airplane and evening reading, after just having finished my 20th or 30th Robert Parker. The contrast in style is worth comment while I continue avoiding the issue of Israel and Iran.
What follows will unleash some of my Internet friends to accuse me once again of being anti-American, but I’ll defend myself by noting that I enjoy both. But there are some sharp differences. James is representative of several British authors who take great care not only to tell a good story, but to craft their descriptions of people and places with detail and a quality of language that is worth pondering for itself.
Robert Parker may be unsurpassed for the heroic exploits of his heroes, as well as being applauded for giving his principal hero (Spencer) a Jewish girlfriend and a Black sidekick. Compared to James, however, his stories are the predictable routines of caricatures without the nuances that can make a book last long enough to get me from Israel to one of the great European cities.
This is not the language of any Robert Parker thriller, nor of any other American mystery writer that I know.
“The chapel at the Manor stood some eighty yards from the east wing, half obscured by a circle of speckled laurel bushes. Its early history and the date when it was built were unrecorded but it was certainly older than the Manor, a single plain rectangular cell with a stone altar under the eastern window. There was no means of lighting except by candles and a cardboard box of these was on a chair to the left of the door, together with an assortment of candlesticks, many wooden, which looked like discards. from ancient kitchens and the bedrooms of Victorian servants. ” (The Private Patient, p. 83)
Adam Dalgliesh is a poet as well as a Scotland Yard Commander. Parker’s hero is a former prize fighter who uses his fists at least once in every book. In Private Patient, Dalgliesh does not solve crime as much as participate in a complex story where the solution emerges. Then he expresses doubts about some of its important details.
Next up was a Sara Paretsky V. I. Warshawski, which began with violence in the seediest part of Chicago Her characters would neither understand, or be understood by the upper crust English characters of P. D. James.
Malta has the feeling of Disneyland with lots of monumental buildings reflecting glorious moments in the past, now maintained as monumental buildings for lots of tourists.
The label “Disneyland” does not do the place justice. It’s a real country, with people who live there, speak a distinctive language, and appear to take their religion (Roman Catholicism) more seriously than other countries of western Europe, along with an inordinate number of statues to the local greats, old fortifications, ancient canons, and other monumental stuff.
And Disneyland is a lot wealthier. Aside from its well preserved monuments and churches, Malta seems more thoroughly working class and poorer than Sicily, which is 60 miles to the north.
The data confirm the impressions: GDP/c in US $ for all Italy is 37,000, Sicily 21,500, Malta 19,700, and Israel 32,300.
Rome is the Eternal City. So are Jerusalem, London and Paris. New York and Washington do not yet qualify, and Los Angeles is something else.
Rome still has the feeling of an imperial capital. New York and Washington now surpass everything on this dimension. Jerusalem is a country town by comparison. Yet one finds there an ecstasy of believers that goes beyond anything seen in St Peters or wherever else is open to the likes of me (Mecca being off limits).
One doesn’t usually think of snow in Rome, but from now on, we will.
We chose this trip partly on the basis of weather averages showing Malta and Rome either warmer or drier than Jerusalem in February. In fact, this year’s reality was the opposite on both indicators. Now to hear from my two sons, both doing graduate work in statistics, that only simpletons rely so much on averages.
Back to Israel, where the latest news is of attacks on diplomats in India and Georgia, timed for an anniversary of a nastiness blamed on Israel.
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted at ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com