Revenge! Let Loose the Dogs of War!

There is a well known proverb, usually attributed as an Arab one, though I think it has more universal origins, to the effect that “revenge is a dish best served cold”.

It is a concept I have never understood, at any temperature. I will admit that a handful of times during my life that I have wreaked petty vengeance. I think twice I have deliberately mentally hurt someone, though I hope not for very long.

I have never, and never now expect to, revenged myself for any slight with physical violence (unless you count a judo throw of a school bully when I was 13, and only twice since even threatened it. And they are all episodes of my life I still remember, and regret.

But among some, it seems almost endemic. Let me give you an example. Of course, compared to the vengeance being wreaked on Gaza, it is trivial. But it illuminates an attitude, I think.

Some years ago, I was asked if I would have a meeting with someone who, as it happened, lived on the opposite side of the street to me, who needed advice on developing a complex idea into something that could be put on the Web. That was not really my expertise, but I was asked because I knew a young team who had just set up a business developing quite complicated computer games and were making a considerable success of it.

It turned out, in the end, that this involved the Jewish Kabbala. Now that is something that i have long suspected engenders a great deal of troublesome nonsense, sometimes dangerous, and in any case the concept described to me, inevitably accompanied with sheets and sheets of complicated diagrams, seemed to me entirely unworkable.

Not wanting to be too dismissive or impolite, I suggested that it would be very problematic, since it would certainly involve search algorithms that even Google has yet to come up with simply to achieve the kind of initial indexing the thing would need, but I said that as far as the interactive parts of it were concerned, my friends would probably have the kind of imagination and technical expertise that it needed.

It was then that I realised this might not be, as I had somewhat innocently thought, merely an impartial academic interest, or a personal enthusiasm, when I suddenly recollected that the blue and white cloth I had passed in the hallway was an Israeli flag. I had to explain that if this was to be some kind of overtly religious Jewish endeavour, there might be a problem.

My contacts, I explained, while not being any more religious than me (which is to say not at all) were nonetheless young British boys of Arab descent. Though, I said, if I were to put it to them I thought they would be amused, they would be all too well aware of the potential for, shall we say, cultural conflict, so I would prefer to have some reassurance about the standpoints of the people they would be dealing with on what could be a long project before I approached them.

What I meant, of course, was that I had no intention of landing three very clever lads I liked (even if they had been descended from Welsh Patagonian sheepfarmers) with a bunch of fanatical Zionists, which is what I had by then begun to suspect this was really about.

Well, as usual in this sort of case, I heard no more. I made a couple of follow-up calls, but they were not returned, and I pretty well forgot about it except as a little amusing paradoxical tale to be told to a friend or two over a drink after dinner.

I had, in fact entirely forgotten it until a neighbour told me he’d heard that my flat had been raided by the police because I was a suspected terrorist. At one in the morning. Had I actually been arrested?

When I managed to get my jaw back in working order, I told him far from it, I had rather been hoping that the visiting policemen were going to arrest the two teenagers who I had heard earlier trying to break into my flat, but had run away when they realised there was someone inside, not me. That two police cars had turned up was merely accidental. It had been, apparently, otherwise a quiet night.

Rather angry, of course I demanded to know where this story came from. It originated, he admitted rather shamefacedly, from—would you like to guess?

Yes, the gentleman I mentioned at the beginning with an interest in the Kabbala.

In a thoroughly irritated mood, I rounded up my local friends and acquaintances, and made sure that the true story got about; the rumour was one that (as I am sure the originator knew) could have done me very serious professional damage.

He had heard, it turned out, for I had not mentioned it, it being nothing to do with my professional life whatsoever, that I had a certain sympathy for the Palestinian cause from that same neighbour, who had then thought nothing of what had been a casual aside.

Why should he have indulged in such a petty act of revenge? I know no reason except that he must have decided, presumably, that views abhorrent to him or opposed to his (I speculate) deserved some kind of retribution. And certainly, the one he chose could have had disastrous consequences. Except that he could not have known (and only will now if he reads this) that since my phone had been tapped off and on for many years*, whatever rumour he started would hardly have interested Special Branch.

We passed in the street occasionally after that, but he never acknowledged me. Perhaps that was because, somewhat provoked, I put a Palestinian flag in my window where I knew he would be able to see it.

Revenge, however petty, is always bitter, never sweet. And it is particularly bitter, and unforgiveable, when it is targeted on a whole people.

(*How do I know that? I cannot tell you, but it is not based on paranoia or mysterious clicks and buzzes . . .I was tipped off by what we journalists call “an unimpeachable source”. And should Special Branch or MI5 read this and consider calling round to ask who that was, I take the ethics of my profession seriously and I’m not going to reveal it to them either.)