The Trials of Zion Read online

  Abe glanced at his baby, now a beautiful young woman. As Emma unconsciously tossed her long black hair, Abe found himself thinking about her late mother, who had been killed in an automobile accident years earlier. Emma had the same remarkable combination of sweetness and—Abe hesitated even to think this—sexiness. Having lost one love of his life, it was easy for him to imagine losing another.

  “Emma, be reasonable. Put yourself in my place. You’re my only child. I couldn’t go on without you. Please stay here. Do your clerkship. There’ll always be opportunities to do good.”

  Emma nodded, and the tone of her voice softened. “Now’s the opportunity. I don’t want to go through life regretting blown chances.”

  “But you do want to go through life! You’re too young to put yourself at such risk.”

  “I’m going, Daddy. You just have to accept it. I’ll be safe. I’m smart, remember?”

  “Lots of smart people get blown up by dumb bombs, Emma. Think of Yarden.”

  Emma flinched. This was a direct hit from her father, and Abe felt momentarily sorry for saying it. Yet it was important to him that Emma think through the possibilities, and what better example than Yarden Golani, an Israeli woman who had been Emma’s bunkmate at Camp Ramah in the Berkshire Mountains when they were both in their early teens.

  Yarden had become a jewelry maker and was engaged to a young Israeli archaeology student named Ram Arad. Yarden and Ram had visited Emma several months earlier, in Boston, where they’d had a great time planning their wedding. Emma then traveled to Israel to be one of Yarden’s bridesmaids. On the night before the wedding, Yarden and her father, a Holocaust survivor and emergency-room doctor, had gone to a café on Emek Refaim in Jerusalem for a celebratory drink. A Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up right next to them, killing them both. Yarden’s wedding day became her burial day. Emma, wearing her bridesmaid dress and with a face streaming with tears, was a pallbearer at Yarden’s funeral.

  Tears came to Emma’s eyes again as she remembered her friend. “I’m going to the Mideast for Yarden, Daddy.” Her voice was now unsteady, woeful. “There have been too many Yardens on both sides. Too many funerals of young people. I want to help stop this.”

  “Believe me. I understand why you want to do this. We all want the violence there to end, so that the Yardens of the world can lead happy lives. But what can you, Emma Ringel, a young American, do? You’re a lawyer, and, need I remind you, not a very experienced one.”

  “Experience is just repeating old mistakes.”

  Emma looked so sure of herself. Abe knew that this argument was one he’d lose; she was too young, too idealistic, too naïve about the situation in Israel to listen to her father’s wise words.

  “Emma, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. The hostilities in the Middle East go back generations. Everyone living there has a personal history tied to the conflict.” Abe paused, leaning over to touch Emma’s hand. “Even our family has suffered from the violence. Over there, experience is everything.”

  Emma shook her head. “They need fresh eyes. Young people who aren’t locked into the mistakes of the past.”

  Abe exhaled, and his shoulders sagged just slightly. His posture signaled to Emma that he was resigned to the loss of this argument.

  “Don’t ruin it for me by worrying all the time. How will I be able to enjoy myself if I’m worried about you worrying?”

  Abe looked deeply into his daughter’s eyes. “I may not be able to stop you from going, Emma. I wish I could,” he said wistfully. “But you can’t stop me from worrying. It’s a father’s prerogative.”

  Emma smiled at him. “Deal, Daddy. I go. You worry. And then I come back with the Nobel Peace Prize. Okay?”

  “Not okay, but what can I do?”

  Emma sprang from her side of the table and threw her arms around her father.

  “When are you planning to leave?” he asked as he hugged his daughter, disappointment audible in his voice.

  “In a week,” Emma said, smiling.

  “A week!” Abe ran a hand through his hair. There’d be no time to talk her out of it.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I’d go tomorrow if I could, but I need clothing and stuff.”

  “That’s Rendi’s department,” Abe said, referring to his wife and Emma’s stepmother.

  “I know. Rendi’s on board. We’re going to Banana Republic this afternoon.”

  “You told Rendi before me, too?”

  “Of course. I needed her advice on how to make my case to you. She’s my dad coach. She has you down pat.”

  Abe groaned. “ ‘Patsy’ may be a better description.”

  “Seriously, Dad, Rendi understands Israel. She knows the Israelis and the Palestinians. I figured I could pick her brain while we shopped.” Rendi had been born in Algeria and had worked for Israeli intelligence before coming to America. Emma had often tried to coax her to tell stories of this time in her life, but she wouldn’t. She would purse her lips and change the topic. But now Emma hoped Rendi would tell her secrets, especially since Emma was going to be in the middle of the action.

  “That was years ago, Emma. You need more current information, too. I’ll call my cousin Shimshon. You remember him?”

  Emma nodded. She had met Shimshon Regel when she was thirteen and in Israel for her bat mitzvah. That branch of the family had changed their name, but there were still ties and shared family traits. Shimshon was also a lawyer, but a career prosecutor. Abe liked to call him “the black sheep in our family of defense attorneys.”

  “He’s a wonderful man,” Abe said. “I’ll arrange it so that you stay with him.”

  Before Emma could protest, Abe continued, “No, it’ll make me feel better to know you’re with family. And you’ll need Shimshon: He can tell you about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in a way that newspapers and reporters’ accounts never could. He can tell you the personal stories.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Emma said, kissing his cheek.

  “The Regel family helped to establish Israel more than a century ago,” Abe said with pride. “We have deep roots over there, Emma. And Shimshon takes this genealogy stuff very seriously, so he can tell you about it. He not only plants orange trees in his spare time, he constructs family trees.”

  “I promise, Daddy, I’ll dig into the family history. I hope I don’t find too many skeletons,” she joked.

  “There are always skeletons. That’s why we have closets,” Abe said, with a knowing look designed to pique his daughter’s curiosity.

  II

  Habash Ein

  In and Near the Offices of Pal-Watch, Israel

  EMMA HADN’T TOLD ABE all her reasons for wanting to go to Israel.

  Everything she had told him was true: She wanted to make a difference, and she believed that her unbiased opinions would help mend fences.

  But there was something else. Someone else.

  Habash Ein.

  Habash Ein was a Christian Arab, a demographic that Abe said was part of a shrinking minority in the West Bank and even more so in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas had made the lives of non-Muslims difficult. After graduating from Yale a year before Emma, Habash had returned to East Jerusalem and opened up a law practice specializing in human rights—the Palestinian Human Rights Watch, or “Pal-Watch.” Emma had followed his work through newspaper accounts and updates from Yale colleagues. Unlike other so-called human-rights lawyers, who represented only “their side” against “the other side,” Ein had Palestinian and Israeli clients. He also challenged both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Consequently he had few friends, since he took no side other than that of human rights.

  At Yale Law School, Emma and Habash had both been part of a human-rights reading group. Emma was the “fox” and Habash the “hedgehog” among the group. (Isaiah Berlin had borrowed this distinction from the Greek poet Archilochus, who observed that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big t
hing.”) Emma was something of a dilettante who dabbled in many subjects, while Habash focused exclusively on human rights in one small part of the world. She had grown infatuated with his intellect, as well as his olive skin and chiseled good looks, so she asked him out on a date. Habash apologetically declined, giving no reason. Yet they remained platonic buddies during their years at Yale, and he would often go to her house for dinners with Abe (his blatant admiration for the man, bordering on sycophancy, amused Emma). She always wondered why he had resisted her romantic overture. She never saw him with another woman—or man. He was a mystery that she wanted to solve.

  She hadn’t told her father about her “other” reason for accepting the job with Pal-Watch. She worried that he might doubt her sincerity in wanting to make a difference. She also wondered whether he would approve of a relationship—if one were to develop—between her and an Arab man. Abe had never given her “the lecture” about how important it was for her to marry a Jew and raise her children Jewish. He was too egalitarian for that, and too smart to think it would work on Emma, but he was always more relaxed around her Jewish boyfriends than around her non-Jewish ones. In that and other ways—often less subtle than he intended—he conveyed to Emma his true, if unconscious, feelings about intermarriage. Of course she told Rendi about her feelings for Habash but swore her to secrecy. She told Rendi everything.

  And now—after a long flight in the middle seat of a crowded El Al plane, a chatter-filled ride home with her cousin Shimshon Regel, and a very pleasant evening spent with him and his wife, Hanna, and their two children—she was on her way to her first day of work with Habash, more impressed with his goodness than ever. Here was a man purposely defending the most hated man in the Western world—Faisal Husseini, a self-confessed mass murderer! Her father, Abe, was the only other person she’d ever met who had the strength of character to do something like that.

  She checked the tourist map she held in her hands and crossed into East Jerusalem on foot—she’d promised Abe no buses because of his fear of suicide bombers. There were no borders or barriers, but everything was suddenly different. The sights, the sounds, the smells—all were more exotic. She had felt at home in Jewish West Jerusalem, in her cousin Shimshon and Hanna’s comfortable three-bedroom apartment. Now she felt like an outsider. And then, suddenly, Emma heard a voice calling out across the humid, busy streets of East Jerusalem. “Hey, Emma, over here!”

  She lifted a damp handful of hair from her neck and adjusted her backpack. It was Habash, looking just as handsome as she remembered. He stood in front of a run-down house and waved at her. That is how to look good in this heat, she thought, admiring the crisp blue jacket that covered his tight frame. His dark hair was just as it had been back at Yale: wavy and thick. His smile was warm; he looked very happy to see her.

  She moved toward him, crossing the street and nearly getting hit by a fast-moving car honking its horn. “Hey, Habash,” she called out. “I expected to see you wearing a caftan instead of that Brooks Brothers blazer you never took off at Yale.”

  “Old habits die hard,” Habash replied, hugging her. She noted that he squeezed her tightly if briefly. It was a heartfelt embrace. “You may notice that the blazer is a bit tighter than it used to be.”

  “Too much falafel?” Emma quipped, patting his stomach.

  “I wish,” Habash said seriously. “I could always get rid of a few extra kilos. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop wearing the bulletproof vest.” He opened his shirt to display the cobalt-colored protective garment.

  “My God,” Emma replied, instinctively moving away from her friend.

  “Not to worry, Emma. They’re only after me.”

  “A bomb can’t tell the difference,” she said, remembering Yarden.

  “I’m not important enough for them to waste a suicide bomber on. I’m a candidate for a cheap, well-aimed bullet in the back.”

  “I’ll remember not to dance with you,” Emma joked halfheartedly. “Is this it?” She pointed at the building behind him.

  “Yes. This beautiful building serves as the base for Pal-Watch and also as my home. I sleep in the attic, and the rest of the house is full of files, computers, volunteer research assistants, and him.” Habash pointed at a large, dark-haired man dressed in a black suit who lingered just inside the doorway.

  “Who is that?” Emma asked.

  “That would be Jamal. He keeps me alive.”

  “Armed guard?”

  “It’s necessary.”

  Emma looked at him, recalling Abe’s worried warnings in the days before she left Boston. Habash was a target, he’d said, high on the hit lists of both Islamic and Jewish extremists. Now the danger she was putting herself in seemed real.

  As if sensing Emma’s thoughts, Habash placed his hand on her back and steered her away from Pal-Watch, toward the opposite side of the street. “I wasn’t sure you’d come, Emma. This is a dangerous time and place.”

  “You mean you thought my dad wouldn’t let me come.”

  “Your old man is a powerhouse. I figured he’d get your passport revoked.” There was a teasing tone to his voice.

  “He would have if he could have, but I’m my own person,” Emma insisted, raising her head a bit and twisting her hair.

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Habash said. “You proved it in the pages of the New York Times.” He was referring to Emma’s very public dispute with her father about whether torture should ever be authorized to prevent terrorism. Abe had written an op-ed piece arguing that since the United States was in fact using torture to obtain information from captured terrorists, it would be better to bring the practice out into the open and regulate it. Emma wrote a letter to the editor arguing that her father’s proposal would lend legitimacy to a barbaric practice that should never be tolerated. It had been the talk of Yale and the subject of much discussion at the occasional Ringel Friday-night dinners, which always included several other “FOEs” and “FOAs” (friends of Emma and Abe), as they were called by Rendi.

  Habash stopped walking when he came to a large building whose beautiful façade had been defaced by an explosion. There were police barricades erected between the sidewalk and the entryway to the structure, but because of the damage, Emma could see the interior. It looked untouched.

  “Is this the crime scene?” she asked, excitement gathering in her words.

  “Yes, this is the American Colony Hotel.”

  Emma took in the scene before speaking. “I thought the damage to the building would be much worse, considering the number of people killed and injured.”

  “The explosive was concentrated. It was designed to destroy lives, not buildings.”

  “It sounds as if those who did it knew what they were doing.”

  Habash pointed at her. “Exactly. They weren’t amateurs—remember that when you meet our client Faisal. The attack was clearly designed to accomplish big things.”

  The two of them stood in silence for a minute as Emma focused on Habash’s characterization of Faisal as “our client.” It made her feel good to be part of the team.

  “I’m ready to go to work,” she said as Habash began to walk them back to Pal-Watch. “How is it going with Husseini’s defense?”

  A troubled look passed over Habash’s face. “I was appointed by the court, but there’s a problem. Husseini doesn’t trust me. He’ll barely speak. I don’t think he did it. I don’t think his group was even involved, but they’re claiming credit. The prison authorities even have him on tape bragging of his guilt to the other prison inmates.”

  “Prisoners always brag about high-profile crimes they didn’t commit. My dad had a client who went around telling everyone he was involved in the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. He figured that this would ingratiate him with the Aryan Brotherhood and frighten the black prisoners. You can’t believe jailhouse brags,” Emma said proudly, eager to show she had something to contribute to the case.

  “I think the prison authoritie
s here know that, but in any event they moved him to solitary confinement for his protection.”

  Emma slowed her steps and peered up at Habash, who was at least a half foot taller than she. “But just because he’s bragging, doesn’t prove he’s not guilty,” she said softly. “Maybe he did it.”

  Habash smiled. “No. This holds with what we know about him. In the past he volunteered to be a suicide bomber. There’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t volunteer to be a suicide defendant. If he is convicted and executed, his group would gain credibility—maybe even electability. The more we investigate, the less cooperative Husseini becomes. If we can prove that his group had nothing to do with it, they’re finished.”

  “I thought Israel didn’t have the death penalty,” Emma said, arching her brow.

  “They don’t, except for genocidal acts of the kind Eichmann was hanged for, and terrorist acts that cause multiple deaths.”

  “Like this one.”

  “Yes, like this one. If Faisal is convicted of killing so many heads of state, there will be great pressure on Israel to execute him.”

  “Which is what he wants, right?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Can I meet him?” Emma asked eagerly.

  Habash’s smile told her that he appreciated her enthusiasm. “I’m trying to arrange something for today. I would value your outsider’s perspective on whether he’s being truthful. But I warn you, I’m having enough trouble getting him to open up to a fellow Arab who speaks his language. And with you there, a Jewish woman, I wouldn’t expect him to talk, or even be civil. You’ll have to be patient.”

  “It’s among the qualities I lack,” Emma admitted.

  “I know. It’s one of your most appealing traits.”

  She smiled at Habash’s ability to turn what she regarded as a flaw into a virtue.

  By this time they’d arrived back at Pal-Watch, and he led her into a large open room that looked like a mini-UN, with young men and women of all colors and shades sitting at or standing near the dozen desks. There were Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druzes, Kurds, Bahais, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, and even one coal-black Ethiopian Jew. The amazing thing to Emma was that you could hear a pin drop. They were all working on their computers. No one was talking.