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Weekend Butler: Timothy Snyder on the Hamas attack: Israel’s reaction is part of the plan. The answer to my Literary Quiz. The answer to weekend dinners: Beef Stew. A Louise Glück poem. Madonna’s secret weapon. A Leonard Cohen memory.
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Published: Oct 18, 2023
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Weekend
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A PERSONAL NOTE: I was in California last week, on a book tour for “Black Beauty,” working on an old laptop that refused to let me use Word. A few readers got this Weekend Butler via old-fashioned email. Most didn’t. So here it is, delivered with a promise: no more book tours for at least a year.
LAST WEEK /THIS WEEK IN BUTLER: The Hidden Life of Trees. Thich Nhat Hanh. The HeadButler Guide to Great Coffee. Lypo-Spheric Vitamin C.
“BLACK BEAUTY,” ABRIDGED: Cruelty to London’s 10,000 cab horses was of no great concern to the public in the 19th century. “Black Beauty” changed that. In 150 years, its passionate plea for kindness to horses has sold 50 million copies and is said to be the 6th biggest bestseller in English. Now I’ve abridged it and Paige Peterson illustrated it. You can read about this edition, watch a short video, and order “Black Beauty” here.
TIMOTHY SNYDER ON THE HAMAS ATTACKS, IN THE CONTEXT OF LARGER EVENTS
Yale professor Timothy Snyder is the author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century and Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler. Snyder was first to make a point that others made later: Israel’s reaction to the murders and kidnappings of Israeli citizens was part of the Hamas attack plan. If so, is all-out war against Hamas the wisest response? I think 10% maybe, 90% no. One thing I’m sure of: Snyder’s piece is worthy of your reflection.
I want to share a thought about terror and counter-terror, prompted by the Hamas attacks and the dilemmas Israel faces. It is not based on regional knowledge but does draw from scholarly work on the politics of terror and insurgency. It is not so much a take on specific events as a general reminder of the larger shape such events can take.
For the victim, terror is about what it is. For the terrorist, it is about what happens next.
Terror can be a weapon of the weak, designed to get the strong to use their strength against themselves. Terrorists know what they are going to do, and have an idea what will follow. They mean to create an emotional situation where self-destructive action seems like the urgent and only choice.
When you have been terrorized, the argument that I am making seems absurd; the terrorists can seem to you to be raving beasts who just need punishment. Yet however horrible the crime, it usually does not bespeak a lack of planning. Usually part of the plan is to enrage.
Americans have fallen for this. 9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so. Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States. Without 9/11, the United States presumably would not have invaded Iraq, a decision which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, helped fund the rise of China, weakened international law, and undid American credibility. 9/11 was a contributing cause to American decisions that caused far more death than 9/11 itself did. But the point here is that 9/11 facilitated American decisions that hurt America far more than 9/11 itself did.
(On 9/13/2001, I dropped my planned lecture on east European history and spoke entirely about terror and counter-terror, along these lines. I was worried, but did not imagine then just how well the provocation would work. The invasion of Iraq was a disaster that arose from many sources; but one of them was the logic of terror — and indeed its exploitation by people who wanted a war in Iraq anyway.)
In evaluating what Hamas has done, it is important to remember that the atrocious crimes are not (or are not only) ends in themselves. They are utterly horrible and deserving of every condemnation, but they are not mindless. Unlike Israelis, who are shocked and feel they must urgently act, Hamas has been working out this scenario for years. The people carrying out the bestial crimes follow a plan that anticipates an Israeli reaction.
Classically, a terrorist provokes a state in order to generate so much suffering among his own people that they will take the terrorist’s side indefinitely.
I won’t claim to know what Hamas expects from Israel, nor what Israel should do. That would be a matter for people with the languages and expertise to read and analyze the documents and the data. My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist’s script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But it also might be you.
PS. I am conscious that the cool tone of this thread might seem jarring in the context of human suffering. I regret this.
PPS. I anticipate the objection that Israeli state policy has been designed to provoke Palestinians. I agree that the strong can also terrorize the weak.
THE QUIZ: WHERE DID I GET THE IDEA FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER OF MY NOVEL?
This is the first chapter of my just-finished, not-yet-published novel, “The Next Dalai Lama.”
The Dalai Lama had been feeling poorly, and he knew — of course he knew — he was about to die, so he turned his attention to dying.
He summoned his aide, had him open the windows and close the door, leaving him alone to his final work.
He lay on his right side. He placed the fourth finger of his right hand in his right nostril. He recited a sutra and began the meditation on death he had rehearsed for decades.
He expressed gratitude that he had been chosen.
He felt, as he had felt for some years, satisfaction that he had done all he could to kill his ego and serve as a simple monk.
He closed his eyes and watched the movie of his life.
Standing with Richard Gere on a stage in Central Park.
Delivering the Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Tibetan.
Drinking cup after cup of hot water in the afternoon.
Putting on a soldier’s uniform and carrying a rifle as he left Lhasa on a cold night in 1959, not turning back to look at a home he knew he would never see again.
Meeting Mao in Beijing and believing Buddhism and Communism might be able to co-exist and even bring progress to Tibet right up to the minute Mao said religion is poison.
Watching prisoners from his room in the Potala with his telescope, and marveling that they prostrated themselves when they looked up and saw him in the window.
Reading Life Magazine and making toy tanks out of tsampa dough.
The first time he took a broken watch apart and put it together and it worked.
As an infant, sleeping by the stove.
He arrived at the beginning of his life in this incarnation.
Eyes closed, breath weakening, he mind-traveled 900 miles from his bedroom in India to the night sky over Tibet and the clearest stars he had ever seen, and he looked into their light, and embraced it, and died.
The answer is the most famous chapter in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five.” It describes a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy Pilgrim, the movie went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter plans flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
LEONARD COHEN WENT TO ISRAEL IN 1973 TO “HELP”
Why he went, what he saw, and the classic songs he wrote — it’s an astonishing story.
WHAT’S MADONNA’S SECRET?
She was injured during her last tour and had a hip replacement following it. “I was in more pain than I’ve ever been in my life. So, how did I get in shape for this tour? It’s all in your head … It’s called will, it’s called no one’s gonna stop me, and how I stay in shape is no one’s gonna stop me. And how I stay in shape is I don’t believe in limitations.”
(Many thanks, Mary Hawthorne)
WEEKEND POEM: Louise Glück: “The Denial of Death”
Remember when you kept what you called
your travel journal? You used to read it to me,
I remember it was filled with stories of every kind,
mostly love stories and stories about loss, punctuated
with fantastic details such as wouldn’t occur to most of us,
and yet hearing them I had a sense I was listening
to my own experience but more beautifully related
than I could ever have done.
(Many thanks, Christine Franklin)
WEEKEND RECIPE: BEEF STEW
Molly O’Neill brought her recipe for old-fashioned beef stew to The New York Times in 1994, and it has since amassed five stars and more than 20,000 ratings on NYT cooking, testament not just to its staying power but its excellence. Molly’s is a delicious stew, one that benefits mostly from patience and time. “The cook can stir and adjust seasoning,” she wrote, “but is basically little more than a witness to the adagio of a low flame nipping the underside of a big pot, working a slow alchemy. Rushing ruins the whole thing.”
4 servings
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 pound beef stewing meat, trimmed and cut into inch cubes
5 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 cup red wine
3½ cups beef broth, homemade or low-sodium canned
2 bay leaves
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
5 medium carrots, peeled and cut into ¼-inch rounds
2 large baking potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾-inch cubes
2 teaspoons salt
Combine the flour and pepper in a bowl, add the beef and toss to coat well. Heat 3 teaspoons of the oil in a large pot. Add the beef a few pieces at a time; do not overcrowd. Cook, turning the pieces until beef is browned on all sides, about 5 minutes per batch; add more oil as needed between batches
Remove the beef from the pot and add the vinegar and wine. Cook over medium-high heat, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits. Add the beef, beef broth and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a slow simmer.
Cover and cook, skimming broth from time to time, until the beef is tender, about 1½ hours. Add the onions and carrots and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes more. Add broth or water if the stew is dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle among 4 bowls and serve.
