Haim Watzman To the respected Torah scholar, Rabbi Rosencrantz, may he live a good and long life, amen: I would not disturb you at your studies were it not that the problem I face is pressing and the agony of my soul no longer bearable. Nor would I dare to write you under a false [...]

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Haim Watzman 10 July 1922 To the editor of Kuntres: My fellow music lovers in the Yishuv, tilling the land and laboring on the roads as they whistle and hum the works of the great composers, will no doubt be interested to hear of my encounter with the man who is perhaps the most notable [...]

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Haim Watzman I think it was my senior year in high school in which my friend Dave first discovered the truth. And since I was his best friend, he was determined to impart the truth to me as well. It was a cover story in Time magazine, I’m pretty sure, that set Dave off. It [...]

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Haim Watzman Leaflet pasted up on a bulletin board at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station: “The Carat Hotel in Ramat Gan: small, comfortable, discreet, rooms equipped with DVD and coffee, hourly rates.” To: Adina Hefetz, counsel, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel From: Gal Dagan, proprietor, the Carat Hotel, Ramat Gan Dear Ms. [...]

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Haim Watzman A shamus knows he’s getting old when people ask him stupid questions. And this shamus has been getting a lot of stupid questions lately — things people ought to know without needing to have an over-the-hill private eye like me to tell them. I realized that early one Friday morning in the damp [...]

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Haim Watzman In the valley that runs west of the Omer ridge I wrestle with my angel. Noon is approaching and I’m munching a bagel-and-cheese sandwich under a tamarisk tree with my hiking buddies at our meeting point on the most boring section of the Israel National Trail. It’s a 21-kilometer stretch that is nearly [...]

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Haim Watzman My friend Frank is a man unto himself, a person apart. He stands up for what he believes. He always tells me: “I countenance no compromises in the venue of values. I care about the indigent in India, about the glaciers in Greenland, and about the war-weary in Waziristan.” He is involved in [...]

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Haim Watzman My dearest Ms. Profound Esophagus, My heart has been racing and my mind churning since our meeting last night on level minus 4 of the Jerusalem municipality parking garage. Since my All The President’s Men-inspired leap into journalism when I was just out of college three decades ago I have long imagined of [...]

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Haim Watzman “Just Egypt?” The chiseled-faced, bristle-haired field security sergeant, who looked every one of his nineteen years, fixed me with an intense, cold gaze. They practice that gaze in front of mirrors, I told myself, but my palms were sweating. It was early summer, 1987, and I’d received a brown envelope requesting that I [...]

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Haim Watzman To: His Excellency President Rufus T. Firefly From: His Notsogoodency Haim Watzman, Freedonian Ambassador to Israel As you will recall from my earlier report, this morning I was summoned urgently to the foreign ministry in The Capital That Must Not Be Named. (As you know, the ministry is actually located in Jerusalem, but [...]

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Haim Watzman It’s six thirty-five a.m. as I pull my bike into Jerusalem’s Malha train station. The sun is rising over the seam where the Pat neighborhood’s low, long public housing projects abut the houses of Beit Safafa. A handful of inchoate off-white clouds float through the air like empyrean amoebas, seeking to grab unwary [...]

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Haim Watzman “I don’t like him already,” Leo Shocken barked to Inga, his svelte, silver-blonde assistant, who had just led me into his office. Large-jowled Shocken lounged behind a large desk strewn with files, calendars, and banana peels. He held a half-filled tumbler of bourbon in his hand and both his stocking feet were propped [...]

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