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Popular Culture Review
Some of the acrimony leveled against le Carre may be due to interviews he
gave promoting the novel and denouncing the Israeli military actions against the
Palestinians in Lebanon. In an interview with Melvyn Bragg for British television,
le Carre described Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat as genu
ine, touching, and interesting. He also termed the PLO chief as “extremely moder
ate,1” suggesting that in the final analysis his moderation might be his undoing.
(The novel never mentions the PLO or the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad by
name.) In his meeting with Arafat, le Carre recounts that he told the leader he was
trying to put his hand on the Palestinian heart. Arafat then grasped le Carre’s hand
and placed it on his breast, proclaiming, “Sir, it is here, it is here.” Le Carre also
spent time with common Palestinians in their Lebanon camps, developing friend
ships and an appreciation for the Palestinian perspective on Middle Eastern poli
tics. The author concluded with what he called a simple perception generally un
acknowledged in the West:
That one can, indeed, as I am, be greatly in favor of the state of Israel and
wish for its survival, but that in the making of Israel a great crime was
committed, not numerically commensurate with the crime committed
against the Jews, but appalling all the same. Millions of people displaced,
others subjugated with total alien types of rules, turned into second-class
citizens. The image of the Palestinians, largely invented, as crazies carry
ing guns and so on, was so far removed from the reality of the majority of
the Palestinian people that it needed saying, it needed demonstrating—
and not by some maverick Trotskyite, or something, but by somebody
like myself who has written extensively, with great passion I like to think,
about Jews in the past but found in this situation an injustice which needs
reporting.”10
Le Carre followed up his novel and interviews with a series of journalistic
accounts denouncing Israel’s actions in Lebanon. Writing for The Observer, le
Carre called the Israeli invasion “a monstrosity,” chiding Israeli citizens who sup
ported the actions of Prime Minister Menachim Begin and his Defense Minister
General Ariel Sharon. In his piece “Memories of a Vanished Land,” le Carre wrote,
“Too many Israelis, in their claustrophobia, have persuaded themselves that every
Palestinian man and woman and child is by definition a military target, and that
Israel will not be safe until the pack of them is swept away. It is the most savage
irony that Begin and his generals cannot see how close they are to inflicting upon
another people the disgraceful criteria once inflicted upon themselves.” In a fol
low-up piece entitled “The Betrayal,” le Carre told the story of one Palestinian
family during the summer and fall of 1982. Le Carre also chronicled the massacre