general.
“These difficult events remind us of the tragic case of Hannah Cohen,” he said, turning to Danny Benizri. “In your opinion, can matters deteriorate as dramatically in this case as they did then?”
Benizri, too, glanced sideways toward the glass partition. “If you ask me,” he answered slowly, emphasizing every word, “mismanagement by the police could once again bring about tragic—”
The Finance Ministry’s director general shifted in his seat and waved his hands. “Ex cuse me, I am terribly sorry,” he insisted, “but when a small group of individuals decides to take the law into its own hands, the police have no choice but to—”
“They don’t have any choice either!” Danny Benizri shouted.
In the newsroom, all eyes were on the monitor. “Whoa, has Benizri totally flipped out?” Elmaliah the cameraman asked, his mouth full.
He laid the rest of his sandwich on the edge of the table and said,
“What’s he arguing like that for?”
A look of absolute loathing on the face of the director general shone through the television monitor. “Excuse me,” he sputtered angrily at Benizri, “with all due respect, you are the correspondent for labor and social affairs, are you not? Not a spokesman for the workers. It seems to me you are meant to remain neutral, don’t you think?”
Danny Benizri started to say something but Nehemia, after touching the transmitter once again, laid his hand on the reporter’s arm.
“Just a moment, sir,” he said to the director general, and to Danny he said, “Danny, please, I’m asking you … let’s watch for one moment a documentary film you made about Hulit one year ago, for Arye Rubin’s program The Justice of the Sting …”
But the director general refused to remain silent. He pointed an accusing finger at Danny Benizri and exclaimed, “This is outrageous, sir, simply outrageous the way you are speaking to me here!”
Salvation came from the control room, where the director cut into the discussion to run the film showing events that had taken place at the Hulit bottle factory one year earlier. Before Nehemia had a chance to say a word or announce the transition, on the screen there appeared a woman on a roof, shouting. Only someone who had been completely attuned to the program would have known that this was not taking place live.
Utter silence fell on the newsroom, until Hefetz went to the telephone, dialed, and said into the mouthpiece, “Pass me to Dalit.” A moment later his shouts could be heard everywhere: “Why are there no captions? People will think this is happening now! I want him to announce again that this is footage from the archives! Take care of it, you hear me?” He turned to Niva, his face red with anger, and shouted at her. “See? You wanted a woman to be news editor?! Screwup after screwup! Am I the one screwing up here? No! Did you see who’s screwing up? Did you or did you not?!”
But Niva remained unflappable. She smiled slightly and said, “Oh, yeah? And a man would have pulled it off better?”
In the meantime, Hannah Cohen could be seen and heard on the factory roof; at the bottom of the screen ran the caption, FROM OUR
ARCHIVES, an overlay to an earlier caption: HANNAH COHEN, HULIT
BOTTLE FACTORY, SOUTHERN ISRAEL. “Every morning for six months I’ve been coming to his office like a dog, I say, ‘Pay us our wages, this isn’t charity, it’s for the work we’ve done,’ and he, he says, ‘Come back tomorrow, come back tomorrow.’ Well, that’s it, there are no more tomorrows! They sit in their villas, they drive Volvos, and we don’t have food for our kids. No more tomorrows—what am I supposed to give my kids to eat?” People could be seen at the foot of the building, gazing up at the roof. Next, the screen showed policemen knocking at the door to the roof and threatening to break it down if the protesters tried to block it with their bodies, until finally the policemen did break the door down and the protesters were pushed backward. Some were shouting, “Don’t you dare come closer,” and others were hollering,
“We’ll burn down the factory,” and in the ensuing tumult Hannah Cohen could be seen being shoved backward with the rest of the protesters, trying to maintain her balance as two policemen pressed toward her; in the next frame she was shown falling from the roof.
“Sir, would you like to comment on what we have just seen here?”
Nehemia asked the Finance Ministry’s director general, whose eyes were downcast.
There was silence in the newsroom for a moment until Elmaliah the cameraman, who was standing next to the water dispenser pouring sugar into a Styrofoam cup of coffee, said, “What are they showing this stuff now for? Always trying to stir up a scandal!”
“What do you want?” Niva said. “I think it’s actually good that they’re showing it!” She glanced at the large clock on the wall, stuck her hand into her black leather bag, and thrashed around inside it, without looking, until she succeeded in fishing out her mobile phone.
“Mother,” she chided after a quick automatic dial, “why didn’t you call me? When did you get home?”
“As if it’s going to have some effect on someone,” Tzippi said from her post in the doorway. “No one gives a damn.”
“So don’t go out anymore,” Niva chastised her mother loudly, “do you hear me? Mother, I am asking you: do not leave the house.” She returned her phone to her bag, sighed, looked around to see whether there had been witnesses to this conversation, shook her head, and raised her eyes to the monitor.
“Hey, hey, look what’s happening there!” Erez shouted, pointing at the Channel Two monitor. A policeman standing at the entrance to the tunnel was shouting into a megaphone. “Shimshi, I’m coming in alone, just me. Look at me.” In the background stood an older, bearded man peering from behind the trucks parked near the tunnel entrance. The Channel Two correspondent was broadcasting in a whisper, as if he were filling a few dead moments in a soccer game, since the strikers had just explained that they had nothing more to lose and if the police entered
they would blow themselves up along with the labor minister, her driver, and her car. “To quote him precisely,” the correspondent reported,
“strike leader Moshe Shimshi told police that if they enter the tunnel,
‘the only thing they’ll find is dead bodies,’ and, uh, just a minute,” he said, his voice rising. “It appears there are new developments.” Suddenly the studio interview on Channel One was interrupted, and Zohar appeared on the screen, shivering in a military parka, a scarf wrapped around his neck. He was standing at the entrance to the tunnel, pillars of black smoke in the background, and speaking into the microphone. “As you can see, the strikers are burning tires at the opening of the tunnel. They are demanding to meet with Danny Benizri, the Channel One correspondent, whom they wish to make their representative during negotiations. They are burning tires and threatening to blow themselves up. The life of the minister for labor and social affairs is still endangered.”
“What was that? What was that? What did he say?” Hefetz shouted, astonished. “What is it they want?”
“Exactly what you heard: they want Danny Benizri to represent them in negotiations with the government,” Erez said.
“I’m going down to the recording studio,” Hefetz said as he dashed out of the newsroom. Zadik opened his mouth to say something, but in the end merely followed suit after Hefetz.
Hefetz stood behind the control panel, looking into the studio through the large glass partition, Zadik at his side. Both saw the look of astonishment on Nehemia’s face as the three men watched and listened to Zohar. “Did you hear what he said?” Nehemia called out to the partition. At the same instant Danny Benizri rose to his feet, quickly disconnected the microphone from his shirt collar, and stood at the doorway of the studio.
“Danny,” Nehemia said, alarmed, “where are you going?” Benizri did not respond as he removed his jacket from a hanger at the door to the studio. “Danny,” Nehemia called out to him, “you can’t just pick up and leave in the middle of a broadcast!” On-screen the policeman with the megaphone was calling Shimshi. “Don’t break contact with us. If we bring Benizri, will you let him come in?”
Danny Benizri left the studio and passed through to the control room.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Hefetz asked him, but—unbeknownst to Hefetz—Zadik had already confirmed it with a nod of his head and Dalit, the editor, had left her chair and was running after him with a monitor and lighting. “You’re not going anywhere!” Hefetz bellowed, but Danny Benizri was already on his way out. Just then the phone rang with a request that Zadik return to his office, since the department heads were already waiting to begin their meeting with him.
