“Vengeance” — A Personal Book Review

I usually just tweet my book reviews, but this one required more explanation.

XIX Olympiad

I was seven in 1968 when the Mexico City Olympics rolled around. They were the first sporting event I devoted myself to completely. I had been happy earlier that year when the first Super Bowl was played, proving once and for all the superiority of what is now the NFC, but with the Olympics I fell in love.

I bought the whole Avery Brundage/Chariots of Fire line: amateurs competing only for the glory of sport and the honor of their nation. I was happy to US athletes do well, but I was happier to see an athlete surpass his own limitations. Bob Beamon’s jump was remarkable not because he was American, but because it was such a remarkable performance. It was possible for people to become gods, if only for a moment.

Tommie Smith & John Carlos brought a discordant note to my proceedings with their medal stand protest. My father was outraged but I understood that they had a legitimate complaint and no better way to speak of it. Still, sport was supposed to be about sport, right?

By the closing ceremony/party my discomfort was washed away in a music-powered dancing unification of all humanity. Sport was the highest and best in us.

1968 was a confusing time to be seven: body counts on the nightly news, “duck and cover” drills at school (and we lived on the Moffett Field final approach, so this was an immediate, if futile, concern), hippies, and anti-war protests. At seven I had the intellectual capacity to understand a surprising amount of this, but no emotional tools with which to deal with it personally. Don’t worry, in sport I had a perfect refuge.

XX Olympiad

Four years later I couldn’t wait for Munich to start. At first everything was as I hoped it would be. There was even a rare note of international harmony in the house because my rabidly anti-communist father, then 140 kg, idolized Alexiev. There was Dave Wottle’s incredible kick–zero to hero on the final straight. Bruce Jenner, local boy making good on the biggest stage in the world.

Then came the reports of the massacre. All day we sat glued to the TV, stunned. I was eleven at the time, so my emotions were a violent tempest in an extremely small tea pot. Bitterly furious at the Palestinians, terrified for the hostages, utterly baffled at why someone would do this to sport, to me, blindly hopeful when the choppers took off, inconsolable when it became clear that everyone was dead.

The lasting emotion was rage, rage that someone would violently pervert sport to suit their own needs. In sport I had a refuge where the world made sense and that had been ripped from my hands and smashed on the floor. I was ready to drink blood.

Psychologists tell us that when a trauma happens, people often aren’t prepared to deal with the intensity of emotions in the moment, so they bottle it up. When this happens, emotional development pauses. The theory is that by working through those stored emotions later in a safe environment, emotional development can continue. I fell like I’ve experienced a bit of this effect thanks to the book Vengeance.

Vengeance

Vengeance tells the story of an Israeli hit squad put together to assassinate eleven high-ranking Palestinians involved in terrorism, one for each dead Israeli athlete. By the end of the book this attempt to balance the books has wrought a terrible vengence of its own on the surviving members of the team. In the end, the author/protaganist is estranged even from his own country.

Debate raged when the book came out: fact or fiction? good or evil? I won’t address any of these questions here. I also don’t intend to debate the ethics of the actions described or the preceding events. What I’d like to highlight here is what the book did for me.

While I was reading Vengeance, that furious little eleven-year-old that I’d put in a box was able to come out and read along. I got my wish–kill those responsible with my own two (borrowed) hands. What happens then? The human cost to the protaganists is horrifying, along with the effects on those close to the murdered. Yes, vengeance is physically possible, but at the end what has been achieved? I felt those long-ago emotions again and was able to let them go.

In the months since reading Vengeance, I’ve noticed that I am able to read about and think about Middle Eastern politics without the same surges of rage that I used to experience. I can see that both sides have unmet needs. I can see that many of their actions will not lead to those needs being met. At the same time I can have compassion for those making those decisions. If I was filled with rage for 38 years for something that happened five thousand miles away, how much more difficult must it be to move past personal experiences of terror, grief, and rage?

I’m sadder and wiser (I hope) in my view of sports now. Sport can’t solve problems, but, at its best, it can remind us that we can solve our problems, we can overcome. Shalom. Salam.