From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. The lesson of your experience seems quite obvious: if even someone like yourself, whose instincts (I suspect) are much more pro-UN than mine, has turned skeptical, then the organization is really as useless as I imagined. And the point you've raised regarding its treatment of Israel is but one example of why it should be scrapped, or at least marginalized. Giving it more power will be very costly to Israel, as instead of working to better the world as it should, what I expect the UN to do it is to try and use any power it might obtain to make Israel less secure.

So let us agree (I think we do) on that, and turn to the question of Darfur, and to Jewish-American involvement in trying to make this cause a keystone of using Jewish political power to improve the world.

The facts are indisputable: Jewish Americans were on the forefront of the battle toScene From The Armenian Genocide: Jews fought against genocide even before the Holocaust save Darfur. If you happened to attend the largest Washington demonstration for Darfur you couldn't ignore the fact that although it wasn't a "Jewish" rally, most of the participants happened to be Jewish. Jewish legislators (among them the late Tom Lantos) were vocal, Jewish activists were, well, very active, Jewish organizations were, and still are, making space for this issue on their agenda.

But what is the reason for all that?

One possible explanation should make all of us very proud: Jews, who suffered the most from genocide, feel compelled to raise their voices against it in every part of the world. They feel they have the moral authority and obligation to do so. And they're right.

But there's also a second possibility (which isn't mutually exclusive from the first): For the past few decades, American Jews were spent most of their political capital on the just cause of securing Israel --- and then got tired of it. They got tired of being seen by some elite groups as particularistic and tribal. They got tired as the cause (Israel) has shifted from being David to being Goliath. And they were looking to prove that American Judaism is not a hostage of the Israel-first school of thought, that it has its own priorities.

This comes out in discussions of Darfur as well as other humanistarian causes. One expression of those sentiments the outrageous letter (former IDF civilian volunteer) Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) sent to Israel's Ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel be more receptive to Sudanese refugees who reach Israel's borders. Another expression was the denunciation (in which Jewcy played no small part) of the Anti Defamation League after its leader, Abe Foxman, came out in opposition to the Armenian Genocide bill presented to Congress by --- you guessed it --- a Jewish legislator. (The bill was defeated for the very reasons on which Foxman based his opposition, but you didn't hear much criticism of its sponsors and of the leadership of the House when they failed to deliver on their unrealistic pledges).

So you see where I'm going with this --- and I hope the readers will spare me comments blaming me for not caring enough about genocide. I'm happy to see the Jewish community as active as it is in humanitarian causes. I do also think, however, that there's some merit to this niggling question that keeps coming back: Will universalist causes eventually replace Israel as the great political cause of American Jewry?

One might suspect that domestic considerations are also in play here. American JewsBeta Israel: The Jews of Ethiopia were always at the forefront of fighting for the rights of African-Americans. They were marching alongside Reverend King in the high days of cooperation between the two communities, but sometimes along the way the bond between Jews and African Americans have soured. The Jewish community has been trying to prove, ever since, that it did not abandon African-Americans for racial reasons --- hence some of the appeal to Jews of Barack Obama, offers the community the intriguing hope of repairing those historic relations.

That's why Israelis interpret the intense involvement of American Jews in shaping the policies toward Ethiopian Jews, as being motivated by domestic considerations. The same logic applies to the very active role Jews are playing in trying to help Darfurians. The Jews, arguably, were not as involved as a group during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. (Interestingly, Ariel Sharon opposed international involvement in the crisis, fearing it would set a dangerous precedent. He anticipated an effort by the countries in control of international organizations hostile to Israel to influence the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the use of international force).

And again, this is not an indictment of the Jewish community for acting for the "wrong" reasons. Motivations that lead to the outcome of fighting genocide are all "good". However, I think one should be able to have an honest discussion of such motivations, because other than implicating the just war against genocide, it also raises issues related to the relations between Israel and Diaspora Jews, especially in cases in which the interests of the communities come apart.

Such contradiction was visible in the case of Turkey and the Armenian genocide, when fighting to establish historical truth ran contrary to Israel national interests (and American interests, to judge by the coverage and the outcome). The case the Ethiopian Jews was a similar story of American Jews pressuring Israel to accept more immigrants than it wanted to.

So: we started with the UN and its inability to stop genocide, and we now turn to explore Jewish involvement with stopping genocide. Is there a special Jewish responsibility here? Does it also apply to Israel? And what happens when the preservation of the State of Israel contradict the cause of stopping genocide?

I'm looking forward to your answers.

Best,
Shmuel

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your letter. I now see that it was probably an error not to first detail more of the stories highlighted in your book, and only then move to ask the grand-question of "the UN, an angel or Satan."

So now you corrected my structural mistake, and we can go back to this question. You say that you'd first like to see a "a system of internal UN accountability that calls to account those officials involved in the UN’s failures" – but that is not a real answer to my question.

Or maybe it is; if one wants to see more accountability at the UN headquarters, oneAli Khamenei: Can the UN stop him from going nuclear? can still see the benefit of having the organization function properly. However, this is not an obvious conclusion for the reader of your book. As you rightly blame the permanent five members of the Security Council for failing to meet their duty, you also reveal the incoherence that is inherent to the process necessary to achieving any goal through this paralyzed body.

Consider a problem that we're all familiar with by now, sanctions on Iran. Whether it is wise or not to sanction Iran, whether sanctions can really stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals, whether it is even necessary to stop Iran from achieving its goals – all these are beside the point. We are now looking at the mechanism at the heart of every decision reached by the UN, and what you've masterfully detailed in regard to genocide in Rwanda is repeating itself in regard to Iran: an inability to reach a decision and to act upon it decisively that originates with the domestic considerations of the different members, and their conflicting interests in dealing with the world.

In his book A War In A Time Of Peace, the late David Halberstam was quoting an interview with Canadian General Romeo Dallaire – the one commander that was left in the field in Rwanda whom you mention in your letter. "Rarely had a commander at such a tragic venue" writes Haberstam, "been so unsparing of himself, even though his superiors had not listened to his warnings." Here is what Dallaire had to say:

I haven't even started my real mourning of the apathy and the absolute detachment of the international community, and particularly the western world, from the plight of Rwandans. Because fundamentally, to be very candid and soldierly, who the hell cared about Rwanda? I mean, face it. Essentially how many people remember the genocide in Rwanda?... Who comprehends that more people were killed, injured and displaced in three and a half months in Rwanda than in the whole of the Yugoslavian campaign in which we poured sixty thousand troops and the whole of the western world was involved there?

So yes – in theory they are all against murder and rape and violence. I'm sure they are. But you'll have hard time convincing Dallaire that they care enough. Not enough for the Chinese to support a more robust response to stop the atrocities in Darfur, not enough for Russia to stop Slobodan Milosevic, and apparently, not enough for Bill Clinton to support a military response in Rwanda. Washington, wrote Halberstam, "wanted no part of Rwanda. The political fallout from Somalia had caused enough damage."

Damage – political damage at home. And Clinton didn't really move in the Balkans until he was certain that the political damage would be greater if he didn't act, than the possible damage if he did. Political considerations at home were always a decisive factor for any government. When the British government headed by Tony Blair was reluctant to deal with Darfur, you write, "several British members of Parliament began to press the Blair government, which had once proudly announced a new, ethical, foreign policy, on its unwillingness to take a robust stand."

Now, you highlight the fact that careers were not hurt by the failure to preventBill Clinton With Rwandan Children: Ballsy catastrophe, but why would they be if, as you write in the book, "the Secretariat takes its cues from the P5." On the one hand you blame the countries represented at the Security Council, but on the other hand – lacking the means to punish them for their deeds or lack thereof – you want the bureaucrats to pay a price.

So maybe the problem is with the way this system was devised. Maybe we should stop hoping that the UN will somehow miraculously improve, and be more realistic about it. Maybe genocide can only be stopped if someone is willing to pick up the tab and pay the price of stopping it. Maybe sharing the power in a parliament-like world institution is the less efficient way of dealing with the horrors of the world.

And if that is the case – no technical fine-tuning of the way the UN operates can fix the problem. This can only be fixed by an overhaul of the international system. It could be this old-new idea of League of Democracies now promoted by presidential candidate John McCain, or it could be a decision by powerful countries, like the US, or powerful organizations, like NATO, that preventing genocide is a cause important enough as to justify circumventing the UN. This means unilateral action – an idea that was discredited by the Iraq war and that people here have no appetite for.

My grim conclusion will be this: as soon as the next genocide starts to take shape, you can start working on your new book. Unfortunately, it will be very similar to the one you already wrote.

Best,

Shmuel

In researching Complicity with Evil, Adam LeBor discovered that the three great killing fields of the last decade—Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur—were not only ravaged by murderous convulsions (still ongoing in the case of Darfur), but abetted in doing so by the appalling negligence of the United Nations, which sat idle without shutting the killing fields down. LeBor's bleak conclusion is that the UN, at present, is simply incapable of fulfilling its foundational obligation to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz's chief U.S. correspondent, has seen his share of war-zones as well, and explores the questions of genocide, the duty to stop evil, and the legitimacy of international institutions with LeBor in the dialogue below.

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Adam LeBor

Dear Adam,

That is one depressing book.

Complicity with Evil you call it, but it is also complicity with hypocrisy, withMass Graves At Srebrenica cynicism. "The United Nations in the age of modern genocide" is an example of complicity with mediocrity. Your book is the story of an institution incapable of doing the one task that is important enough to justify its less than obviously justified existence. A depressing book. I will recommend it to anyone who's still idealistic enough, or naïve enough, or stupid enough, to think that the United Nations has the power of moral authority. Amazingly, I do meet such people from time to time.

This story has been told before in many ways. How the world failed to defend the people of Srebrenica, and the people of Rwanda, and the people of Darfur. Samantha Power, in her masterful work, A Problem From Hell, was pointing at America and asking, essentially, the questions you're asking now. Her work was extraordinary, but I find yours more persuasive in at least one respect. That is, one can claim that America has no duty to stop all evil, and that its policies are justifiably aimed at maximizing American interests. But one can not say the same of the United Nations.

You make this point right at the beginning of this book: "If the United Nations, whose very raison d'être is the maintenance of international peace and security, does not bare some responsibility for failing to stop the slaughters… than who does?"

The power of this book is the way it assembles the details, the everyday decisionsRwanda's Killing Fields that made genocide possible. "Bosnia could not be saved because it was small and mountainous. Darfur cannot be saved because it is large and flat." A couple of months ago, writing for Slate about Darfur, I angered some activists by stating that "The campaign to save Darfur is alive, but it is no longer kicking. You could say that it has achieved all its stated goals: public awareness, international pressure, congressional action, the administration's involvement. Well, all but one: The crisis in Darfur is not yet solved, and the campaign to save Darfur is running out of options."

Sadly, I do not see a reason to change even one word in that paragraph. But after reading your book I now understand even better why this campaign—to save Darfur—was probably doomed to fail before it even started.

When I was interviewing President Bush in mid May at the Oval Office, one of the questions he was asked referred to recent events in Lebanon: "We have in place U.N. resolutions, Security Council resolutions that were meant to deal with the problem of Hezbollah. Nevertheless, it has not seemed to help." Unfortunately, only by translating the President's body language to words can one convey his response. "If you're going to pass a resolution, you better mean it," he said. In the case of Lebanon—a country suffering from the aggression of Hezbollah, but that cannot be compared to a country in which a genocide in taking place—the UN has proved incompetent. In many ways, this incompetence is no different in nature than the ones you describe in your book. The UN is hesitant whenever there's an aggressor involved, whenever there's a threat of violence involved. The UN can only keep the peace in places of—well—relative peace.

But here is the question I have for you, the expert on UN incompetence. It is actuallyRemnants Of Darfur a dilemma on which I also wrote in the past. Reading your book, one might conclude that what the world needs is a more vigorous, more determined world body. But I have my doubts, and the reason is simple: I do not believe such body will be more moral—and if I do not trust it to be more moral, why would I want it to be more competent?

Here is the way I framed it, writing to an Israeli audience about the Security Council, Lebanon and Iran:

A powerful and effective Security Council is a double-edged sword. More than once in the past Israel benefited from the fact that the council did not press for the implementation of resolutions less favorable to it. The U.S. administration, which has a complex relation with the UN and its institutions as well, also faces a similar dilemma… Use the Security Council for your needs, but do not seek to make it more powerful than necessary so that it will not turn around and bite you.

So: this will be my question for this first session of our dialogue: Do you want a more efficient UN, or would you prefer a more robust response against genocide from countries like the US, while giving up on this righteous-UN idea once and for all?

Best,

Shmuel

To: David Samuels

From: Shmuel Rosner

Dear David,

How lucky I am to have a thick skin.

So, thank you for complimenting my relatively meager talents; I'll just ignore the insults, as I'm sure you did not really mean any of the bad things you said about my lack of literary skills. You're right: "Kafka and Babel, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth" were all geniuses of literary work. It was probably my short-sightedness that prevented me from making the connection between your work and theirs.

Moving forward: you started by asking many questions, and some of them merit an answer. But I need to warn you first: this might not be the literary, sophisticated answer you'd expect, but rather an answer that resonates with the simple narrow-minded people of "Potomac, Maryland" (I'm in Rockville, not far but a little bit different). Anyway, I'm going to try:

Why do they pray every Sabbath for the welfare of a foreign government and its leaders, and the soldiers who defend its borders?

That's easy: because they care about this country and believe it is the homeland of the Jewish people. They also see the people inhabiting this country as their brothers and sisters, and wish them well.

Why do they celebrate the new year in September instead of in January?

Because they are Jews, and according to the Jewish calendar the year starts in the fall, not winter.

Why do they insist on converting their goyish wives or children's children to their religion instead of simply letting them chose to be whoever they want to be?

Because people, generally speaking, tend to want their children to value the same things they value. That is why educated people tend to want their children to succeed at school and artsy people tend to want their children to go to the theatre.

Now let me turn to one of the things you've said at the bottom of your letter. "You", you write, referring to Israelis, "live in the largest Jewish ghetto in history, under threat of nuclear catastrophe, and under the thumb of a corrupt ultra-orthodox religious establishment whose definition of Judaism is quite literally medieval." Like many of the other assumptions you've made in your letter, this is both condescending and factually wrong.

Israel is not a ghetto, but rather a place in which Jews get to live and make decisionsIsrael: Not a ghetto about their own lives. If the ghettos of the past were like Israel, there would be no Zionism --- which, contrary to your assumption, is not just about making Jews safer, but even more so about making them the masters of their own fate.

But this is not the end of it: You also claim that Israelis live under the "thumb of a corrupt ultra-orthodox religious establishment." I don't know when and if you ever visited Israel, but such description is laughable. I could easily argue that the influence of religious zealots in the US is much more significant than the influence such zealots have on Israel's society and daily life. (Though of course, you can always argue that your literary imagination allows you to fabricate such nonsensical-realities.)

And anyway, how did this become a debate about my assumed Israeli mindset? I think what happened is that you pushed aside all the arguments I was making and was trying to get away with it by simply claiming that as an Israeli I'm probably too dumb to understand your position. Then again, your position is not that complex, and the quasi-courageous posture you've adopted cannot hide its many flaws. So many, in fact, that it's scarcely a position.

To make this long story short let me first summarize our differences:

You said that Jews are liars, pretending to be Americans when they are not.

I disagreed and said that the "weirdness" you ascribe to Jewish Americans is what makes them even more American.

You got angry, though I'm not exactly sure why. "We live as Americans even as we also live sometimes contradictory lives as Jews," you wrote. I can live with that, but still insist that "contradictory lives" is not the equivalent of "double-ness, lying and imposture." I also said that such allegations are dangerous. This is not a difference of opinion, but one of style. Like a rebellious child, you're toying with naughty words so as to impress us with your "speaking the truth." Sorry, but I'm not at all impressed. Words are not just toys, they can also be weapons. Maybe it is time to grow up?

You argue that if all Jewish Americans are lying, because their Americanism is a posture. But on the other hand you seem to praise the Jewish "outsider" state of mind. It seems as if your prescription will only allow American Jews to be in one of two problematic situations: the lying outsiders, or the boring insiders. They can never get it right, can they?

And this is funny because you blame Israelis for thinking that "the doubleness of the Jew in exile is a diseased condition." But the way I see it, you're the one claiming time and again that the American Jewish condition is inherently diseased.

In holding this position, you're certainly in the company of many thinkers. And I was not thinking of Babel and Kafka.

Regards,

Rosner

To: David Samuels
From: Shmuel Rosner

Dear David,

Thank you for your explanation. My impression is that this could become a long and detailed dialogue about the nature of journalism, literature and all things in between, but I'm really not sure Jewcy's the right venue for such discussion.

However, after reading your comments, I think we stand to benefit from summarizing the differences between our respective approaches to our journalistic work. While I think my job is to make the world more orderly and understandable for readers, to try and overcome the chaos, your work does the exact opposite: You meddle with your readers' minds and make them more confused.

The American Melting Pot: Where do Jews fit? Having said that, I'm a little confused now myself: Is what you say in your letter is what you really think or just one of your mind-games? You write a lot of things (that's one lengthy letter, why do they tell me to write up to 800 words, and let you go crazy with a 1300 words - I wonder), but do you really mean them? I'll take a chance here, and assume that you do. So let's make this our topic of discussion for today:

If Americans are self-made people who embrace an imagined future in order to escape the burdens of the past, American Jews seek to have their cake and eat it too by embracing the future-oriented American idea without relinquishing their historically bound identity as Jews.

This, you imply, is the reason that "the themes of double-ness, lying and imposture have a special significance" for you "as an American Jewish writer." And these qualities are self-evidently vicious: Lying isn't be good, trying to have a cake and eat it too is what our mothers warned us not to do. But therein lies your irony. You go on to say that such characteristics "can be the source of a tremendous amount of creative tension." Which is a good thing, isn't it?

Basically, what you're up to is blaming American Jews for misleading their fellow-citizens, their communities, their friends: pretending to be aligned with American society while they really aren't. This is a serious charge, with potentially grave consequences --- a charge that shouldn't be made lightly just for the sake of toying with outrageous ideas. And I must say I am not yet convinced about your motives (if you haven't noticed, I'm the self-appointed responsible adult in this crowded neighborhood of rogue writers).

So the question arises: Is this accusatory description of American Jewry even accurate? Many American Jews whom I know --- who take the trouble to constantly marvel at the extent to which they are an integral part of the great American melting pot --- might dispute your narrative. And they might be even right. They see a tolerant society that can put up with the cultural and religious differences inherent in so many groups playing a part in it. They see an influential group overcoming the difficulties of being a true American minority while preserving its distinctiveness and uniqueness. This, they will say, is not "lying" or "posturing," but rather living a complicated and rich life in this shining city on the hill.

You want to ruin this for them, and one has to ask oneself why. What's bothering you?

"Life Is Full Of Important Choices" is the name of an article you published in the second book you've just released, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a collection of articles you wrote for all sorts of magazines. Supposedly, the piece is about 9/11; it takes time for the reader to realize that as most of it is dedicated to, well, David Samuel's life. And too some degree, this old article of yours pulls the rug out from under the argument you made in your letter to me:

No one could dispute how beautiful Brooklyn was less than one year later, the summer after the towers fell. It was as if the ashes from the tower had fertilized our neighborhood. The local population of stoop-sitters, myself included, were the recipients of an unexpected bounty.

Can't this description of your Brooklyn count as proof that this joint venture of Americanness is no mirage, but rather the daily reality of "worshippers at the Mosque," and of your wife's mother who "called to tell us that Jesus Christ offered the only pathway to salvation," and of "Virginia and I" who "lit the Sabbath candles together, and said our blessings over the wine"?

"What is happening?", Virginia repeated as we stared at the picture on the television screen of the towers falling, one after the other. We went to the hardware store and bought white paper masks so we could safely breath, and then we went down to the Promenade, where my father used to take me to look at the cargo ships. We stood in the crowd of onlookers and watched the black cloud cross over the river.

Thus you, with your candles, and your decision to "not eat pork," were an integral part of an American tragedy. Not as a pretender, but as a participant. I'm no American, but it seems to me that your behavior that day, and the days following, is anything but part of an "ungracious refusal of large numbers of American Jews to buy into the full weirdness and wonder and scariness of the American idea."

It is your American-Jewish weirdness, your American-Jewish scariness --- that is the American idea.

Best,
Rosner

For many people, publishing even one book can be a lifelong dream. David Samuels, a prolific contributor to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and many other magazines, managed to publish two books just in the last month. The Runner is the story of James Hogue, one of the great con men in recent American history. Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a collection of the kind of literary adventures, ranging from Woodstock '99 to a $2000-a-plate Bush-Cheney fund-raiser, that have led the National Magazine Award committee to name Samuels as a finalist.

Shmuel Rosner recently interviewed Samuels about his projects, and tried to see if there were any common threads uniting them.

To: David Samuels
From: Shmuel Rosner

Dear David,

I spent the last couple of days reading the two books that you simultaneously published, and can now officially claim to be suffering from Samuels-fatigue. But it was enjoyable and sometimes challenging, and it made me think about the strange ways journalism can present one with surprising moral dilemmas.

This is especially true for The Runner, your wonderfully crafted story of a con man who was smart enough and able enough to get into Princeton University using a fake name and identity. It is a well-known story that you managed to bring to life again. And it is intriguing and troubling in the way such stories often are: the reader --- at least this reader (and the writer, no doubt) --- finds himself identifying with, admiring, the con man, hoping for his vindication, finding fault with the people exposing him, arresting him, expelling him, erasing him from their biography.

The Ivy Club: Princeton's most prestigious and exclusive eating club didn't admit women until 1991, but did admit James HogueThe Runner is the story of James Hogue, also known to his high school mates as Jay Mitchell Huntsman, also known to his Princeton mates as Alexi Indris Santana. He is an impostor, a thief, a liar. And yet you make us like him for exposing what you seem to think is the hypocrisy and the pettiness of the academic establishment. Yes, he was lying his way into Princeton, but once there he was a straight-A student. Yes, he stole, but his were not major-league crimes. Yes, he lied about his past and present conditions, but his stories were so much more interesting than the usual "I was born rich, went to private school, got into Ivy League university, ended up on Wall Street" stories.

You seem to be fascinated with him for some mysterious personal reasons, and to identify with his cause for ideological reasons. Princeton, you bother to mention, did not even considered keeping him as a student after he was exposed for who he really is --- or officially is, because we will never actually know who he really is. (The way he was exposed also makes for a great story, but here is where I will urge people to get off their butts and go purchase the book if they want to know more). And you bombard the reader with statistics proving that the business of Ivy League attendance is marred by inconsistencies and favoritism and superficiality.

You seem to be writing this story burdened with guilt: You graduated from such universities, coming from not-quite-the-right-background. But even more so, yours is a writer's guilt. "The question of how writers come to appropriate the lives of the people they write about," you confess, "is a tricky one." And then you go on to say this:

While it is facile to equate journalism with lying, it is also true that both actions share in common an unpleasantly instrumental approach to people and to language that diminishes the common store of trust. The subject has no power to alter a reporter's approach to his or her subject, or to take back a single word that they said.

All these are known qualities of your profession --- and mine --- but not the only ones to be considered in this context. Manipulation is part of writer-subject relations, but it also taints writer-reader relations. And reading your book can provide for a perfect example for that, as it is sheer manipulation with which you take the reader on this ride of con man admiration. Finishing the book, I was scratching my head: Was I just convinced that lying is good, that stealing is not-so-bad, and that universities are evil (I have my own complicated relations with the academic world that I never attended --- but let's leave that aside for now)?

I was trying to think about this story differently: To identify with the bicycle craftsman whose product was stolen. To understand the anger and the puzzlement of an institution going out of its way to accommodate someone they believed was a "barefoot runner from Nevada," a college-age, self-taught orphan, only to discover that it was hosting a college-educated convicted felon. Could they really cut him some slack the way you seem to expect them to do? Could they admire him, worship his genius and originality the way I did as I was reading this story?

I don't think it is reasonable to expect them to do such things. And even more, I don't really think it would have mattered. The sad truth, learned and relearned from experience, is that people like Hogue very rarely change their habits. If Princeton were to keep him as a student, I suspect he would have ended the same way he did anyway: in prison. Don't you agree? And if you do, where's the lesson?

I'm sure you'll have plenty of answers to these questions of mine. Let me add just one more. Concluding this first letter, I'm going back to this quote about journalism, while also thinking about the other book you've just published, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a collection of your magazine stories. "The false humility that so many writers show in the face of the lived experience of their subjects", you write in The Runner, "is belied by the act of writing, which always involves a head-on collision between someone else's actual lives and the writer's inner life".

Here is how I read your two books: In order to avoid this "head-on collision" you don't even try to portray the "actual lives" of other people. All you do, both in your articles and in The Runner, is tellyour own story. With The Runner the result is fascinating, and troubling. It might reveal the questionable moral convictions of your inner man.

Best,
Rosner

From: Shmuel Rosner
To: Gregory Levey

Dear Gregory,

“For some time now, I have been testing them,” you write in your book. We both agreed the book was full of funny moments, and those looking for it can find it in this episode. Or, they might think that this one is rather sad:

During tedious UN sessions, I would look straight at the Syrian, Libyan or Iranian diplomat until they felt that they were being watched and turn to face me. When they saw who was looking at them, they would quickly turn away, desperate not to make contact with the Israeli delegation…what’s the worst that could happen, I thought. They lodge a formal complaint with the UN saying ‘the Zionist entity was looking at me?’

Now, let’s think about these moments of pleasure for a second. What was it that made you want to tease the poor Syrian and the miserable Libyan? It was your young age, no doubt, and your boredom in this shrine of nothingness, and the oddness of you being there. However, I suspect there was something else too. Can it be a sense of pride? Or maybe the urge to tell these people that as far as you’re concerned they can all go to hell?

In your second response you felt the need to remind me that the uniqueness of Israel’s situation “doesn’t mean it’s not part of the rest of the world.” Well, I know that. But you have a point: I also think that Israel is more different than other “different” countries, including many of those mired in territorial, religious and national conflicts.

And you know what? I think you know that too --- hence “the stare!” episode at the UN. You were looking at the Syrian as to let him know that ignoring you will not make you disappear. That nothing will make you disappear. Israel is only a “part of the world” in the eyes of those who accept it as such. For many others it is still a temporary nuisance.

Israel: Only a part of the world, and only a part of the Jewish world, much as that might surprise some Israelis The May issue of The Atlantic Monthly asks (on the cover), “Is Israel finished?” That’s an interesting question for someone like me, as I’m planning on going back to Israel someday with my four children in tow. The author of this Atlantic essay, Jeffery Goldberg, is someone whose work I respect and can even admire. But then this nagging question arises: Why doubt the future of Israel of all countries? And also --- why is it that The Atlantic was asking the same question about this same country again? (I have a long memory. Here is Benjamin Schwarz asking, “Will Israel live to 100?” in the May 2005 issue of The Atlantic.) This can seem like a weird choice for an editor if he believes --- like you seem to do --- that mentioning Israel “in the same breath as Canada and Switzerland” is a natural choice.

Of course it is no coincidence that I now mention this work of Goldberg’s, who just like you lived in Israel for a while (and wrote about it the book Prisoners that we discussed a long time ago), and eventually decided that it was not the place for him and went back to live in this land of the brave. He has doubts about the future of Israel. Do I not share these doubts? Of course, we all have anxieties about the feasibility of Israel’s existence. Doubts painfully similar to those you espouse in your own book.

That brings me to your conclusion that “bridging the gap” between Jewish Israelis and Jewish Americans “is obviously a noble desire, but I’m pessimistic about its feasibility.” If both parts of this sentence are true --- if we both agree that such desire is noble --- then the question we should be asking is not whether this is possible, but rather how can it be achieved, if not in full than at least partially.

The answer to this question has both technical and more philosophical aspects. On the technical level, some measures have proven results. Take, for example, the Birthright program, which bets that getting young Jewish Americans to visit Israel will enhance their attachment to it, and their Jewish identity in general. (Somewhat ironically --- judging by your book --- it might be more advisable to have people coming for a short, touristic, kind of trips, rather than having them actually experience Israel.)

The more complicated aspect is the one you relate to: Israel has indeed “been able to create a new culture all its own” --- and the same can be said about Jewish life in America. How one abridges the differences in culture, and frankly, differences in all aspects of life-experience, is a serious question. I think my answer might surprise you: The burden, as I see it, lays more on Israel’s shoulders than it is on the shoulders of American Jewry. Let me explain.

For fifty years now, the relations between Jewish Americans and Jewish Israelis were a one-way street: Israelis were supposed to live their lives; Americans were expected to follow, understand, admire, and applaud their achievements. It was not by design of any malicious force, but rather the natural evolution of these relations. But this can no longer hold. In order to have an understanding, a bond, we need a two-way street. We need Israelis to understand Jewish Americans better, to applaud their achievements, to show interest in their lives (rather than money and support). This “new culture” needs to be one that relates not just to the lives of Israelis, but to Israelis and American Jews alike.

Is this a reasonable expectation? I think it is. After all, this is exactly what Jewish Americans were doing for decades now. Think about Jewish American culture, and you’ll find the influence of Israel written all over it. But where is Jewish America when Israel’s culture is considered? In most cases, it is absent. I think its presence is essential if one wants to foster a meaningful dialogue.

“Sometimes I worry that Israelis forget” that their country is part of the world, you wrote. Let me be less ambitious here, and more particularist in expressing my own hopes (danger zone --- this is really going to make me sound like the oldest, most out-dated, guy on the Jewcy block): Israelis tend to forget that they are part of a larger Jewish world. And this should be fixed.

Thank you so much for this conversation, and for the kind words (note to self: make parents read this dialogue) --- and most of all for the book. Looking forward to hear your thoughts on this matter.

Shmuel Rosner

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Gregory Levey

Dear Gregory,

Having spent the last two and a half years in America (not to mention my year in Canada twelve years ago) - and being the student that I am of American politics and culture – I think I know what you mean by thanking me “for being direct.” It is really: “get lost, you and your primitive understanding of my book.”

And this scares me, and also makes me a bit uncomfortable (am I now showing signs of being somewhat Americanized?).

So let me backtrack a little and say this: Yes, I think your book does not reveal the true nature of Israel. (You should take into account the fact that I was trying to provoke you as to make our dialog come alive.) And --- I do read your book as an allegory, which you understandably protest. However, I’m afraid that on this point, which I probably didn't make coherently enough in my first letter, I will have to insist. Let me explain why.

Reading your book (and being as “direct” as I was perhaps I should be emphasizing that it was really fun to read), I did not think about you and your personal story. I thought about the conversation we’re about to have. And I also thought about your readers, and how will they interpret the book.

And let me tell you this. I’m pretty sure that what these readers will have in mind --- assuming that many of them will be young Jewish North Americans like you --- is exactly what I had in mind. They will be thinking that your description of your Israel is a description of the actual Israel. Which I think is sometimes true, but sometimes isn’t.

A Kassam missile landing in Sderot: why Israelis sometimes get agitated Now, I don’t want to spend too much time arguing this point, as I vividly remember that the instructions I were given by the editors of Jewcy involved something about “moving the dialogue forward.” But here is one last attempt I will be making to sum-up our differences:

You think that I failed to understand the book by saying that you failed to reveal the true nature of Israel. I think that you failed to understand the minds of your readers, and ended up with a book (did I say it was fun to read?) that can be somewhat misleading in the sense that instead of helping people understand Israel you’ll be confusing them even more than they are already confused.

Having said all that, I want to go back to the real reason I’ve wanted to discuss this book in the first place: That is, the gap between educated, smart, liberal, young, Jewish Americans – and Israel, if there is such gap. As you probably know by now, this is a matter of some debate (I wrote about it here).

And your letter gave me the perfect example with which to make one of the many arguments that can be made. Here’s what you wrote:

Let me go a step further and suggest that the personal and political are actually interwoven… As they say, people get the government they deserve.

As I see it, the argument you’ve made in this paragraph is almost outrageous. You say that Canada is not asserting itself on the world stage because of the politeness of its people. You imply that Switzerland is neutral as a result of the “quintessential Swiss demeanor.”

“There are underlying cultural forces that help shape both the personal and the political. There are underlying cultural forces that help shape both the personal and the political,” you say. And this sounds misleadingly true until one thinks about it seriously.

Then you go on to say that Israel has the government it has because of what? “The way that the typical Israeli driver navigates the streets of Tel Aviv”? So let me see if I get this: The “underlying cultural forces” of Israel are those responsible for the bad behavior of Israeli drivers which in turn is responsible for improvisational governments (ones that they “deserve”) and their poorly constructed policies?

Please Gregory, tell me again that I did not understand your position.

Because this is how I see it. Canada does not have enemies, and does not have to assert itself anywhere unless it wants to. Its people can be calm and polite because the only thing they really have to worry about is winter weather. No one is threatening Canada, no one is trying to attack it, or to delegitimize it, or to eliminate it. Switzerland, may I remind you, is in Europe, surrounded by the dangerous militaristic Italy, France and Germany (yes, I know it was not always a peaceful neighborhood, nevertheless, it is now).

Merkava Mk. III: the product of Israeli ingenuity, and Israeli necessity Israel, on the other hand, has real enemies, and very real worries. It is located in a dangerous neighborhood, and has to improvise constantly, as time is of the essence. Yes, this improvisational ethic has side effects, not all pleasant. Among them: careless drivers, inventive high-tech engineers, lawless settlers, courageous fighter-pilots. All these, and many more, are the outcome of the Israeli condition.

I hope I make this distinction clear because it is an important one. It also sheds new light on your assertion, according to which you’ve developed “reservations about specific governmental policies.” And I want to be clear here: I do not think that the policies of Israel or the Israeli government are always the right ones, or the brightest ones. However, your letter made me doubt your doubts regarding these policies. How can you possibly understand the cause for Israel’s policies, while thinking about it the way one thinks about Canada?

With this in mind --- and moving the dialogue “forward”, always forward --- I would like you to address the question of the “divide,” an area on which we seem to agree (unless that proves to be a mirage).

“I can enthusiastically agree with you that the fundamental divide between Israelis and Americans is a cultural one,” you write. So here is my twofold question: Can it be bridged, and should we even aspire to bridge it?

Looking forward to your response,

Is the bond between Diaspora Jews and Israel stronger than a couple of summer teen tours and a vague obligation to keep up with Israeli politics? Gregory Levey might have a deeper insight on that question than most of us who sit strictly on one side or the other of the Diaspora-Israel divide. Levey was a North American Jewish law student (imagine that) who applied for a job with the Israeli consulate and found himself, through a series of accidents, in an inner circle of the Israeli government writing speeches for Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. He recorded his experiences in the engaging and witty new book, Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned In the Israeli Government. We asked Shmuel Rosner, US correspondent for Haaretz, to engage Levey on his time as a misplaced Israeli official and the lessons he learned in the process.

Crown Heights Anti-Zionism: What divides American and Israeli Jews?From: Shmuel Rosner
To: Gregory Levey

Dear Gregory,

Here are some things I’ve recently learned about your background:

Back in the seventies, when your parents were looking for a place to live - having decided they should be leaving segregated South Africa and find a better place – one of the options they have considered was Israel. However --- as you only briefly mention in Shut Up, I’m Talking --- Israel was “not to their liking.” No sin there.

Why exactly they didn’t like about Israel is not quite clear from the book you wrote. “We couldn’t stand the rudeness of the people,” you quote your mother as saying, without much elaboration. The family settled eventually in Canada, preferring, as you amusingly observe, “polite people who had opinions about nothing” over “ill-mannered people who had opinions about everything.”

But here is what I thought was the most striking thing about your book, and about your story --- the story of you immigrating to Israel for a fairly short period in which you worked for the Prime Minister’s office as a speech writer and press officer. Exactly like your parents back in their day, your eventual decision that Israel was not the country for you lacks reasoning too. Yes, you had your fair share of meetings with Israeli bureaucrats --- not exactly an aphrodisiac --- and you had many frustrations with the ways and habits of this country. But what was it about Israel that made you leave after such a short time? Was it the also the “rudeness,” or was it the fact that you saw Israel as a “dangerously dysfunctional family,” or maybe your “doubts that the county’s problems would ever be solved”?

In sum: was it a political problem with the country and its policies, or a personal problem of someone who does not feel as if he belongs. Does not feel at home.

And here is another question: Was this problem not magnified by the fact that you worked for the government? That instead of trying to be an “Israeli” you immediately became the lesser brand of the “Israeli official”?

A cultural or political alliance? As you can probably guess from the tone of my questions, I think I have some of the answers to these questions (now, that’s Israeli rudeness). I think that your “Israel experience” was not at all indicative of Israeli life. I think that your attempt at writing a book that’s supposedly revealing of the true nature of Israel is interesting --- because you’ve failed. Because in failing you did reveal something important. Namely, the difficulties of a nice Jewish American boy like you are (or were when you started this adventure) to understand what it is that makes Israel tick.

I don’t know what Americans, or Canadians, will think when they will be reading this book. Your writing is sharp, and your ability to make fun of Israelis, their strange ways, their abrupt mood changes, their, well, rudeness – I prefer to think about it as directness – is remarkable. But where does it lead? What new things can we learn about Israel that we didn’t already know?

What I learned from this book is that even someone like yourself --- as talented and perceptive as you might be --- has an inherent deficiency when you describe the lives of Israelis. The book describes our governmental failures in great detail, but the details do not add up to a picture of real human beings. We are caricatures, sometimes funny, often pathetic, at times annoying. We are the sum of ridiculous meetings with the taxi driver, the flamboyant spokesperson, the apathetic tow track technician.

Here is one example that keeps popping in the book: your repeated puzzlement with the fact that Israelis constantly improvise. Suddenly, you find yourself in the position of representing the country you barely know in the United Nations General assembly, or representing the Prime Minister’s office in a meeting with senior military officers. In both cases you have no real instructions, no directions. And you’re amazed, and somewhat lost.

This is what separates you from many Israelis. They’d have no problem making the decisions you’re asked to make. Moreover, they’d know that if the meeting was really important, if the vote had any meaning, you’d not be the one to make the call. In a sense, the joke is not on them, it is on you --- the dedicated, strange American who takes his job with such seriousness (and make no mistake, I’m not here to defend the many flaws of Israel’s society or the lack of process in places in which it is indeed needed).

Anyway, what I think will be interesting in this dialogue, is to try and explore your story as a way to understand the real divide that separates Diaspora Jews from Jewish Israelis. Here’s my little theory on which I will ask you to comment: I think North American Jews are not alienated from Israel to the extent they are (and as you probably know there is some debate going on about it) mainly because of its politics.

I think what separates them is a cultural divide. The difficulties Americans have when they try to understand why is it that Israel behaves the way it does, and the equivalent difficulties of Israelis to understand the possibility and viability of Jewish life in America. And I also think that your book provides us with a magnifying glass through which we can see this divide in full color. You just don’t get us – we just don’t get what it there not to get.

Agree?

Best,

Shmuel Rosner

[Ed note: Gregory Levey will be reading from Shut Up, I'm Talking at the Borders on 57th and Park on April 22 at 7pm. Details are here.]

From: Shmuel Rosner

To: Dov Frohman

Re: Leadership

Dear Dov,

I should first thank you for tolerating our differences with a smile. To be truthful, I was hardly expecting you to accept my interpretation of your book without protest, and it should come as no surprise to you that I still see your description of leadership as somewhat unique to the Israeli psyche – and even more so to the psyche of someone with your personal background as a Holocaust survivor.

But since we don’t want to bore our patient readers with the nuances of our different outlook on “leadership-survival” let me try and build upon both the book and your response as to raise another issue crucial to this discussion. You wrote:

I'm very skeptical about so-called leaders who have such a grandiose view of their own talents that they never imagine something going wrong.

And in the book you say:

If a leader is too focused on his own personal survival as head of the organization, he may end up, paradoxically, undermining the organization’s long-term capacity to survive.

My problem here is twofold: First, I don’t see the paradox. It is quite clear even to aThe disasters of failing to distinguish national from personal interest non-leader like myself that personal agendas can unhinge on organizations’ – or, more importantly, countries’ – chances to survive. Second – and this is where I see a more acute problem in your argument – what you say may apply to a rare (and possibly extinct) type of leaders. Most leaders I know – and I’ve been following mostly political leaders both in Israel and in the US – can hardly differentiate between their survival and the organizations’. They tend to think that for the organization to survive they need to stay at the helm. One can look at it as a questionable pursuing of narcissistic agenda, but I tend to think about it as human nature – as one of the things is inherent to the leaders’ mind.

I say all this, as I want to try and drag you to a discussion of Israel’s political leadership and how your book might apply to their skills and faults. Take, for example, the decision made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert not to resign after the relative failure of the second Lebanon war. On the one hand – he was definitely pursuing what you might consider an agenda that’s “too focused on his own personal survival”. On the other hand he will say to you that for him to stay was the right thing to do for the benefit of the “organization”.

And here I go back to your response and to your “skeptical” view of leaders who have a “grandiose view of their own talents”. Does Olmert fall into this category when he decides to stay – or maybe he is right by assessing by staying he can help the organization – in this case the military, the country, the government – be better prepared for the next round, hence increasing its chances of “survival”.

My point here is this: in many cases, differentiating between the “grandiose” and the “talent”, between the “personal” and the “organizational” is a very tricky business. More often than not, this can only be done after the fact, in hindsight. I was making similar point writing about your decision to leave Intel Israel opened during the first Gulf War. It made you a leader, because no one was hurt.

That brings me to the point with which I will conclude this letter.

You write (again, in your response) that “leaders should be accountable for their failures,” hinting that had something gone wrong with your risky decision in the Gulf War you’d have paid the personal price. I’d suspect that you might say the same thing about the political leadership responsible for dragging Israel into Lebanon – a reasonable “calculated risk” in the eyes of most people when the decision was taken, that turned out to be not well enough calculated.

But here is the dilemma with which Israelis now must cope, and to which you do not give sufficient answer: is it more important to make sure that a leader is “accountable” – meaning, pay a personal price for the failure (or lack of success) in this war? Or is it more important to again take a “calculated risk” and let him stay – as the other options do not seem very attractive to most Israelis?

Best,

Rosner

Dov Frohman is the founder of the Israeli branch of the Intel corporation. In a career spanning four decades, he invented the EPROM — the first reprogrammable read-only semiconductor memory — and was one of the driving forces in the high-tech boom in the Israeli economy. He has also served as visiting professor at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and as professor of applied physics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, where he directed the School of Applied Science and Technology.

We asked Shmuel Rosner, the chief US correspondent for Haaretz, to interview Frohman about his new book Leadership the Hard Way --- and the insights it contains about the qualities that define leadership, how they have been applied historically, and how they have yet to be applied to global and Israeli politics.

From: Shmuel Rosner
To: Dov Frohman
Re: Leadership

Dear Dov,

I think I should start our dialogue – dedicated to discussing your new book - with a confession. If it was not for the creative minds of Jewcy editors, I would have never read your book. I should thank them for this opportunity, as it was a pleasure reading it, and also a strange experience for someone totally unaccustomed to reading “how to” guides or “business” books.

But truth is, your book is not really about business. It is about leadership. You say that it can’t be taught but then goes on and try and teach us something anyway. “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience," wrote George Bernard Shaw. But you seem to disagree: making us learn from your experience as a high-tech inventor, a Holocaust survivor, as businessman, manager, pioneer really, is what you’re trying to do.

This proves you to be an optimist at heart, although reading the book doesn’t give one such impression. It is not about the excitement of discovery, or the triumph of originality and dedication – but rather about the constant struggle for survival. You survived under Nazi rule as a child, you survived a deadly storm as a pilot, you survived wars as an Israeli, you survived the ups and downs of the rollercoaster that is the global economy. Survived – and started worrying again without even a pause to breath, to enjoy the moment.

In a way, your book can be read as a sad story about the booming high-tech industry of Israel. We would have loved to think that Israel’s success in that field is all about Jewish genius, or maybe about our youthful spirit, or about our unique organized-mess way of thinking. And it is – to a point. But if your book is to be believed it is not mostly about all those positive qualities of Israelis, but rather about their paranoid nature.

Here’s a quote from the second chapter, the one officially dealing with survival (the other chapters all deal with the same topic but under different names):

I realize that my preoccupation – some might say obsession – with survival is, at least in part, a by-product of my experience as a child during the Second World War.

And here’s one from chapter four, Leadership Under Fire, in which you describe your decision, as the head of Intel Israel, to leave your labs and offices opened as the first Gulf War was forcing factories, businesses and offices to close down because of the threat of Iraqi missiles:

I was convinced that a complete shut-down of our operations threatened the long-term survival of Intel Israel… The key stumbling block to further investment in Israel was the lingering impression of geopolitical instability in the region… I made quick decision. We weren’t going to take the easy way out. We would ignore the civil defense instruction. We were going to make our people come to work.

Here we have it, in full color: survival meets survival. The need to protect your employees, help them survive the Iraqi attack contradicts the need for the small Israeli branch of the world power that is Intel that it can operate under the conditions inherent to the Israeli neighborhood. The Israeli government chose to close the country down – you chose to spite the government and go to work.

This was leadership, you say, but as all leaders luck was on your side. Had a missile hit Intel, had dozens of workers been hurt, maybe severely, by your decision - this would have been considered an act of carelessness, of bungled priorities.

This is also a motive that runs through the book. Your had a great invention, the EPROM (and I’m going to refrain from getting into technical details here, but let me just use the quote from the book saying that this product has helped “Intel’s revenues grew seven-fold, from $9 million in 1971 to $66 million in 1973”) – and this invention came about almost by accident.

So there it is – my version of your recipe for successful leadership: the perfect mixture of paranoia and luck. The Israeli secret that lead the country to be one of the most successful high-tech communities in the word – “a tiny country” that “have more than 70 companies listed in the U.S. NASDAQ stock exchange – and attract twice that venture capital investment as the entire European Union”.

But let me ask you this: is it worth the price of such paranoia, such fear for survival?

All the best,

Shmuel