Last update - 00:00 18/01/2007
Only the names have been changed...
By Amos Harel
"Ramatkal" ("Chief of Staff"), by Ram Oren, Keshet Publishing, 317 pages, NIS 92
Ram Oren rightly identifies Dan Halutz as the most interesting character in the story of last summer's botched war in Lebanon. From the outset, no one had any great expectations regarding the ability of the prime minister and the defense minister to run a war, but the chief of staff's performance is still a source of disappointment and mystery.
Halutz is a fascinating man: He went to war wearing the halo of a brave pilot. As the first chief of staff to hail from the air force, he was meant to upgrade the army and infuse it with the norms of the best air force in the region. Politically, he was considered a possible heir to the man who promoted him, Ariel Sharon. But Halutz emerged from the war with his feathers plucked, almost a tragic figure. Until his abrupt announcement of his intention to resign, earlier this week, he had to contend with months of his generals squealing on him, senior reserve officers dealing him out tongue-lashings in public, and ongoing demands for his head from the media. And the hubris, the hubris.
Although he has a different name, Halutz is the main character of Ram Oren's new book, "Chief of Staff" - a war novel, as it says on the cover. Oren's chief of staff is called Noam Einav, and he is a naval commando rather than an airman. But most of the other components are there - the popularity that turns into angry demonstrations, the arrogance, the aloofness toward those under his command, the mounting distress as the war in the North goes awry.
Oren performs an interesting experiment here, translating the very recent events of the summer into a novel that is only semi-fictional. And "Chief of Staff" is already a major commercial success.
Oren - and this is nothing new - is a skilled writer of airport novels. The book reads easily, the dialogue is relatively credible, and the plot races to the finish line. The use of familiar materials, with public interest in the war and its aftermath still at a peak, is good for book sales. In the coming months, many books on the subject of Lebanon can look forward to being bestsellers.
Oren told a newspaper interviewer that he flew off to Cuba as soon as the war was over. He needed a vacation to get the book done as quickly as possible. In this case, the early bird did get the worm. The plot of the book engages in a kind of dialogue with "real" events. The story unfolds during the same weeks as the real war, and even the enemy is the same. The differences in the opening stats are minor, as if the story were taking place in a parallel universe only a few degrees to the left or right.
Oren's Amir Peretz is Defense Minister David Raviv (formerly Arbiv), who lives in the gentrified Northern community of Hatzor Haglilit rather than working-class Sderot. Katyusha rockets rain down on his neighbors the same way that Qassam rockets rain down on Peretz's neighbors in Sderot. Even a Russian oligarch with a shady mafia past is not missing from the book: Here his name is Grisha Semyonov.
Human drama
In Oren's telling, a kidnapping on the Lebanese border also follows a kidnapping in Gaza, but only one soldier is abducted in the North, instead of two. And here comes the important twist: The hostage is an officer in the reserves and also the son of the chief of staff. In this way, Oren introduces an interesting dimension to the story: He creates a link between the key figure in the war and the human drama of abduction.
Because Oren is an omniscient narrator, we, as readers, are given an opportunity to peer behind doors that are locked to us in real life: Oren offers us a glimpse of the physical and emotional state of kidnapped soldiers, which often remain a blank to the public even after their return from captivity. Even if his account is somewhat predictable, it is gripping nonetheless.
The book skillfully portrays the chain of events and offers interesting bits of information: what the captive soldier eats, the conditions of his imprisonment, how the Hezbollah kidnappers treat him and so on. At the same time, the author builds a complex picture of the chief of staff's family, which is torn between worry for the captive and recognition of the father's duty to continue overseeing the war.
The book's weak link is its inability to add flesh and depth to many of the characters, whose faces we have seen on TV. The touches of local color are not convincing, not even the part where the chief of staff has a one-night stand with the woman soldier - gorgeous, of course - who runs his office.
Oren's problem is that life can be more surprising than any story he could have concocted. What writer could invent a chief of staff who sells his entire stock portfolio on the day the country goes to war? What literary mind could produce a character like Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, the sacked Galilee division commander, who seems to have been taken straight from the movies?
A wonderful world
Oren's dashing the book off so quickly does seem to have taken a toll. The bad guys are too flat, and there are an inordinate number of cliches, some of which border on racist stereotypes. Nasrallah lets out a high-pitched wail, the Arab coffee is black and steaming, the Russian oligarch drinks only vodka, and the cigarette that the Lebanese kidnapper offers his Israeli captive "stinks" (and our captive, good boy that he is, turns it down, in the same way that he rejects Hezbollah's offer of a call-girl - a Shi'ite, no less).
It's a wonderful world, indeed: The captive does not break under interrogation or give the Hezbollah even a stitch of information. In its less good moments, "Chief of Staff" has the whiff of a "Hasamba" adventure story about it.
And if we're being picky, it should be said that the book is dotted with factual errors that probably have more to do with overly hasty research than artistic license.
A partial list of the mistakes: The village of Ghajar was not bombed by the IDF, because it has been on the Israeli side of the border for many years. Ghajar is Alawi, not Shi'ite. It is unlikely that an officer in the Duvdevan undercover unit would be injured in Gaza because the unit has always operated in the West Bank. The chief of staff's leftist daughter (a sly allusion to Dana Olmert?) couldn't have protested against the separation barrier seven years ago unless she was clairvoyant, since construction of the fence only began in 2002. No chief of staff has served a five-year term, although Shaul Mofaz tried. The chief of staff's bureau chiefs are not necessarily combat officers. The General Staff meets on Mondays, not Thursdays. Dahiya is a neighborhood in southern, not northern, Beirut. The Northern Command has its headquarters in Safed, not Nazareth, and the office of the IDF spokesperson hasn't been outside the Kirya compound for a long time. And where on earth did he get the idea of a tent camp of the Sayeret Matkal special-operations force in the heart of Lebanese territory while the war was on?
Altogether, the plot resolution feels forced, and some of the stitching is showing. But most important, nearly all the leaders responsible for the bungled war resign in the end. Where does this Ram Oren fellow live? He really must have spent too much time in Cuba after the war.