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Amnesty Lied About Israeli ‘Genocide’ — the Media Gladly Joined In
Amnesty International’s latest significant report, “‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,” is in keeping with the organization’s long history of hostility towards Israel — and accuses the Jewish State of genocide in Gaza.
According to Amnesty, its report:
documents Israel’s actions during its offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip from 7 October 2023. It examines the killing of civilians, damage to and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcible displacement, the obstruction or denial of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, and the restriction of power supplies. It analyses Israel’s intent through this pattern of conduct and statements by Israeli decision-makers. It concludes that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Amnesty’s conclusion, however, is categorically wrong.
Amnesty Redefines Genocide
Having already resorted, in 2022, to formulating a totally new definition of what it calls “the crime of apartheid,” Amnesty has changed the definition of genocide to suit its predetermined conclusions.
Perhaps knowing it doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, @amnesty has resorted to manufacturing its own definition of ‘#genocide’ against Israel, by claiming in their report that the universally established – and sole accepted legal definition – as outlined in the Genocide… pic.twitter.com/cUTDliObR5
— Arsen Ostrovsky
(@Ostrov_A) December 5, 2024
Despite this, the coverage of Amnesty’s genocide report demonstrates how too many journalists are not prepared to exercise their own critical thinking.
The media commonly suffer from the “Halo Effect,” whereby journalists cite non-governmental and so-called human rights organizations like Amnesty, treating them as beyond reproach and assuming their information is authoritative.
This effect is exacerbated by the need for the media to get the story out quickly. It’s unlikely that a journalist would spend their time properly reviewing the substantial 296-page Amnesty report. So, Amnesty’s talking points in its six-page press release summary or statements at a press conference will be what appears in the media.
And the news cycle moves quickly. By the time those who wish to respond to the report in-depth will have finished reading it and issuing a response, the Amnesty story will be over. The impact of the report, however, and the genocide charge, will last much longer, becoming part of the media narrative, as Israel comes under sustained assault from multiple sources seeking to delegitimize its right to self-defense and even its right to exist.
NGO Monitor did manage to obtain the Amnesty press release in advance, noting in its preliminary analysis that the six-page, 2,500-word embargoed summary “highlights the absence of substance and the dominance of slogans and myths. Following previous practice, the press release declares Israel to be guilty of genocide, regardless of the reality in Gaza. This basic paradigm is evidenced by Amnesty’s highly selective use of ‘evidence,’ including fundamental omission of facts that do not support its political line, and the blatantly manipulative discussion of civilian casualties.”
This discussion of civilian casualties is taken up by Salo Aizenberg, who notes Amnesty’s avoidance of addressing the combatants killed figure and the resulting civilian/combatant ratio would have shown evidence of the IDF’s precision targeting, thus eviscerating Amnesty’s report.
I noticed on page 59 Amnesty cites an IDF claim from Jan 2024 saying they killed 8,000 fighters. I searched for the recent estimates of 17,000-20,000 (I searched several numbers) and read the entire section 6.1.2 “Scale of Killings and Injuries” where casualties are discussed in…
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) December 5, 2024
NGO Monitor also noted that Amnesty had “made an embargoed text of the report and a lengthy press release available to select journalists in an attempt to ensure favorable media coverage. Although under no obligation to adhere to Amnesty’s embargo, journalists who cover Amnesty’s report should avoid this manipulation and incorporate detailed critical analysis.”
It appears that ship has already sailed as media outlets, including Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, AFP, BBC, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Sky News, jump on the story.
Amnesty Israel Rejects the Report
So, it’s unlikely that any international press will do the extra legwork to question Amnesty’s malleable definition of genocide. It’s also unlikely that any will sit up and take notice of the press release (Hebrew) issued by Amnesty’s Israel branch.
While still highly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Amnesty Israel states it “does not accept the claim that genocide has been proven to be taking place in the Gaza Strip and does not accept the operative findings of the report.”
Haaretz, meanwhile, which is followed religiously by foreign media, reports on a joint statement from several members of Amnesty Israel and Jewish members of Amnesty International who:
argue that report’s “artificial analysis” — especially with regard to the widespread destruction in Gaza, which allegedly indicates a genocidal intent — suggests that the authors “reached a predetermined conclusion — and did not draw a conclusion based on an objective review of the facts and the law.”
“From the outset, the report was referred to in internal correspondence as the ‘genocide report,’ even when research was still in its initial stages,” the Jewish employees reveal.
“This is a strong indication of bias and also a factor that can cause additional bias: imagine how difficult it is for a researcher to work for months on a report titled ‘genocide report’ and then to have to conclude that it is ‘only’ about crimes against humanity. Predetermined conclusions of this kind are not typical of other Amnesty International investigations.”
The joint statement further stated that the report “is motivated by a desire to support a popular narrative among Amnesty International’s target audience,” and that it stems “unfortunately, from an atmosphere within Amnesty International of minimizing the seriousness of the October 7 massacre.
“It is a failure — and sometimes even a refusal — to address the Israeli victims in a personal and humane manner.” According to the Jewish staff, the international organization also “ignored efforts to raise these concerns.”
But will Western and foreign journalists take any notice?
Holocaust Appropriation
It says much about a journalist’s mindset when the Holocaust is appropriated to subconsciously associate Israel’s actions in Gaza, which Amnesty is claiming to be genocide, with the very real Nazi genocide against the Jewish people.
Sadly, both the Associated Press and The Guardian went down that road in their stories on the Amnesty report.
Whatever is happening in Gaza, it is categorically nothing like the Holocaust.
So why does @AP need to mention it other than to subconsciously plant an offensive and inappropriate parallel? pic.twitter.com/81VWL1LaPZ
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 5, 2024
Accusing Israel of weaponizing antisemitism even in advance of a reaction to an Amnesty report.
We see you, @guardian. pic.twitter.com/n9u4LXP6Uu
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 5, 2024
The Guardian even went as far as to preempt Israeli reaction to the Amnesty report, claiming it would “generate accusations of antisemitism,” effectively accusing Israelis and Jews of weaponizing antisemitism in bad faith.
AFP didn’t even bother to include any Israeli reaction to the report beyond the boilerplate line: “Israel has repeatedly and forcefully denied allegations of genocide, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.”
The Washington Post quotes Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA who says: “What the law requires is that we prove that there is sufficient evidence that there is [genocidal] intent, amongst all the other complex intents that are going to exist in warfare.”
And this is the crux: The death toll and destruction in Gaza can be explained as an inevitable and tragic outcome of a war where Hamas have done everything possible to put Gaza’s civilian population in harm’s way. And Israel has taken every precaution to avoid civilian casualties, while still allowing humanitarian aid to cross into Gaza.
The inevitable result of Amnesty’s approach is to turn every war into a genocide, thereby stripping the word of its true meaning.
Israel’s actions are not those of a state that shows intent to commit a genocide, and to charge Israel with such a crime shows just how divorced from reality Amnesty International and its cheerleaders are.
Sadly, the international media have given an unquestioning platform for this libel.
The author is the Managing Editor of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Amnesty Lied About Israeli ‘Genocide’ — the Media Gladly Joined In first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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An organ divided a synagogue. The fallout helped create Reform Judaism.
A new musical traces the origins of Reform Judaism to a question that, on paper, seems more likely to produce a subcommittee than a schism: Should a synagogue have an organ?
In 1840, a synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, voted 46 to 40 to install a pipe organ in the sanctuary to accompany services.
The vote triggered a scandal: Organs were commonplace in American churches, but unheard of in synagogues, since rabbinic law traditionally holds that musical instruments should not be played on Shabbat.
The instrument caused such an uproar that those who opposed its installation started a breakaway congregation and fought for control of the synagogue in civil court. The case paved the way for a Reform Jewish movement that would embrace music as a key element of religious life.
Happyland, a musical based on those events, will debut Thursday at the same congregation where the real events took place, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim — today, still an operating Reform synagogue with an organ in its sanctuary. As the musical progresses, the organ becomes a vehicle for exploring broader questions of progress, including the uncomfortable reality that many Jews owned slaves in the antebellum South.
“It really embodies this tension in Reform Judaism, which is how much do you adapt to the wider culture around you, versus how much do you maintain your identity and your tradition?” said Elijah Siegler, co-producer of the show. “There’s no easy answer, and the organ is a perfect example of that.”
Charleston as happyland
The idea for Happyland came from an unusual pair in the theater world: a former synagogue president and a professor of religious studies.
Rob Turkewitz, a civil litigation attorney who had led Kahol Kadosh Beth Elohim, and Siegler, a synagogue member who teaches at the College of Charleston, thought that their congregation’s dramatic history had theatrical potential.
The duo set out to write historical rap songs emulating the Broadway show Hamilton. But they discovered they were out of their depth.
“We realized pretty quickly that we probably are not the right people to be writing a musical,” Turkewitz said. “Because we have no musical talent.”
Instead, they recruited Toby Singer, the congregation’s former music director and a Brooklyn-based composer, to write the script and songs.
The resulting show follows the arc of the real-life Kahol Kadosh Beth Elohim cantor, Gustavus Poznanski, who had been hired by the congregation in 1836 partly for his traditionalist bona fides.
But Poznanski ended up aligning with those who sought to modernize the synagogue. He supported the installation of the organ, conducted services in English rather than Hebrew, and advocated for observing just one Passover Seder instead of two.
Born in Poland and educated in Hamburg, Germany — where a Reform Jewish movement had already taken root — Poznanski saw the New World as a place where Jews could shape a distinctly American Jewish life.
That vision was captured in a famous speech Poznanski gave in 1841 — the inspiration for the title of the show. “This synagogue is our temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine,” he said, later adding, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.”
But not everyone in Charleston shared his vision. Appalled by the reforms championed by Poznanski, a group of congregants took the dispute to state court.
A judge ruled in favor of the organ’s installation — not because he necessarily agreed with playing music on Shabbat, but because the synagogue had voted for it. According to Turkewitz, it was one of the first appellate rulings in American history that affirmed the separation of church and state.
“The court basically held that judges can’t determine for a religion how to practice,” Turkewitz said. “How could the judge tell the Jewish community how to practice their religion when the Jewish community doesn’t even agree?”
Reckoning with slavery
For Singer, the organ controversy was only part of the story. As congregants argued over what progress looked like inside the sanctuary, the nation outside was hurtling toward civil war.
“I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a story about religious freedom couched within a larger story about not freedom, because this was taking place in antebellum Charleston,” Singer said. “I needed to write a story that dealt with that and sat with the fact that the Jewish community of the South was complicit in the slave trade and was involved in it.”
Many of the founding members of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim came to Charleston to participate in the slave trade. And after the congregation’s first synagogue was destroyed in a fire, enslaved people built the replacement in 1840 — the grand Greek Revival structure that still stands today.
That history is woven throughout Happyland. In the musical, Poznanski grapples with the fact that his wife, Hetty, owns slaves. The second act takes place during a Passover Seder on the eve of the Civil War, as the characters confront the hypocrisy of celebrating Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt while slaves labor in their own home.
“Some people in the audience are going to see their great, great, great grandparents depicted on stage, because we still have Charleston Jews who are descendants of those Jews of the 1840s,” Siegler said. “I think some Jews don’t necessarily want to watch a musical about their ancestors owning slaves.”
Poznanski eventually resigned from his position, unable to bridge the divide between the traditionalist and reformist factions of the synagogue. A century later, in the 1960s, Rabbi Burton Padoll was forced to resign from the congregation after members objected to his support for the Civil Rights movement.
Today, the synagogue has made efforts to acknowledge that painful past, erecting a monument outside the congregation commemorating the enslaved people who built it.
For Siegler, the conflicts over slavery and religious reform share a common thread: how communities respond when long-held practices are challenged.
“One is a public fight over the organ, and then the other is this kind of family argument at the Seder table about owning enslaved people,” he said. “They actually are narratively linked by this idea of, what do we do to feel safe and secure?”
The post An organ divided a synagogue. The fallout helped create Reform Judaism. appeared first on The Forward.
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A conference in Warsaw focuses on Jewish languages
דער ייִדישער מוזיי „פּולין“ אין וואַרשע האָט לעצטנס דורכגעפֿירט אַ קאָנפֿערענץ וועגן ייִדישע שפּראַכן, אין שײַכות מיט דער צײַטווײַליקער אויסשטעלונג אויף דער זעלביקער טעמע, „דער כּוח פֿון ווערטער“.
כאָטש די קאָנפֿערענץ, וואָס איז פֿאָרגעקומען פֿונעם ערשטן ביזן דריטן יוני, האָט אין פּרינציפּ באַהאַנדלט אַלע ייִדישע לשונות, האָט דער מוזיי אין וואַרשע — די אַמאָליקע הויפּטשטאָט פֿונעם אייראָפּעיִשן ייִדישלאַנד — באַשטימט, אַז די פֿאָרשערס זאָלן רעדן מערסטנס וועגן ייִדיש. 14 פֿון די 27 רעפֿעראַטן האָבן באַהאַנדלט די ייִדישע קולטור אויף ייִדיש; 3 וועגן העברעיִש; 2 וועגן לאַדינאָ; 2 וועגן פּויליש, און נאָר 1 וועגן אַנדערע שפּראַכן: דזשוהורי (די שפּראַך פֿון די באַרג־ייִדן אין די קאַווקאַזן), עספּעראַנטאָ, ייִדיש־אַראַביש אין מאָראָקאָ, דײַטש, רוסיש און סערבאָ־קראָאַטיש.
אַלע רעפֿעראַטן האָט מען געהאַלטן אויף ענגליש.
לויט מײַן מיינונג וואָלט געווען אינטערעסאַנטער צו הערן וועגן ייִדיש דווקא אין אַ ברייטערן קאָנטעקסט, ווען מע נעמט אויך אַרײַן אַנדערע ייִדישע און נישט־ייִדישע שפּראַכן און קולטורן. עס זענען פֿאַראַן אַ סך פּאַראַלעלן און קאָנטראַסטן, וואָס וואַרפֿן זיך אין די אויגן, ווען ייִדישיסטן קוקן אַרויס פֿון די אייגענע דלתּ אַמות.
די הויפּטרעדע האָט געהאַלטן חנה פּולין־גלאַי (אוניווערסיטעט פֿון אַמהערסט), וועגן דער טעמע פֿון איר נײַ בוך: חורבן־ייִדיש, ד״ה די נײַע ווערטער און אויסדרוקן וואָס זענען אויפֿגעקומען אין די געטאָס און לאַגערן. כאָטש די לעקציע איז געווען אינטערעסאַנט האָט זיך מיר געפֿילט אַ ביסל אומהיימלעך צו הערן וועגן די דאָזיקע ווערטער אין „פּולין“־מוזיי, וואָס געפֿינט זיך ממש אויפֿן שטח פֿון דער אַמאָליקער וואַרשעווער געטאָ.
עס איז נישטאָ קיין אָרט צו דערציילן וועגן אַלע רעפֿעראַטן, אָבער וועגן עטלעכע לוינט זיך אָפּצוגעבן אַ באַריכט.
מאַטשעי ראַטאַיטשיק (פּויזנער אוניווערסיטעט) האָט גערעדט וועגן עטלעכע פּרוּוון במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע צו שרײַבן העברעיִש מיט לאַטײַנישע אותיות. איתּמר בן־אַבֿי (בן־ציון בן־יהודה), דער זון פֿונעם גרויסן באַנײַער פֿון העברעיִש, אליעזר בן־יהודה (אליעזר יצחק פּערלמאַן), איז געווען דער ערשטער געבוירענער רעדער פֿון העברעיִש אין דער מאָדערנער תּקופֿה. אין די 1920ער און 1930ער יאָרן האָט ער אַרויסגעגעבן עטלעכע ביכער און זשורנאַלן אויף טראַנסליטעראַציע, אַרײַנגערעכנט אַ באַנד זכרונות, „אַבֿי“ (ד״ה „מײַן טאַטע“; געשריבן „Avi“). זאבֿ זשאַבאָטינסקי, דער באַרימטער פֿירער פֿון די רעוויזיאָניסטן, האָט אין אַ געוויסער תּקופֿה געשטיצט די רעפֿאָרעם — אָבער צום סוף האָט זיך עס נישט אָנגענומען. העברעיִש איז געבליבן העברעיִש — מיטן ייִדישן אַלף־בית.
הילה שלם בהרד (תּל־אָבֿיבֿער אוניווערסיטעט) האָט דערציילט וועגן די שפּראַכן פֿון די „מעברות“ (די פּליטים־לאַגערן), וווּ עטלעכע הונדערט טויזנט נײַע עולים קיין ארץ־ישׂראל האָבן געוווינט, ווען זיי זענען ערשט אָנגעקומען אין לאַנד אין די יאָרן 1948־1951. אַזוי ווי די ייִדן זענען געקומען פֿון אַ סך פֿאַרשידענע לענדער, האָבן זיי אָפֿט נישט געהאַט קיין בשותּפֿותדיקע שפּראַך. אַ מאָל האָט איין געוויסע שפּראַך דאָמינירט; למשל, אין איין לאַגער איז די הויפּטשפּראַך געוואָרן בולגאַריש, דערפֿאַר ווײַל עס האָבן דאָרט צופֿעליק געוווינט אַ סך ייִדן פֿון בולגאַריע. אין אַנדערע לאַגערן האָט מען גערעדט אַ מין העברעיִש. אַ מאָל האָט זיך אַנטוויקלט אַ מין פּידזשין, אַ געמישטע שפּראַך, אָדער ייִדן האָבן גערעדט מיט די הענט.
חיה־רחל נאָווע, אַ לינגוויסטקע בײַם פֿאָרדהאַם־אוניווערסיטעט, האָט פֿאַרגליכן די עפֿנטלעכע שילדן אויף ייִדיש און לשון־קודש אין די חסידישע ייִשובֿים אין מאָנסי און קרית־יואל. קרית־יואל איז געשאַפֿן געוואָרן ווי אַן אָפֿיציעל חסידיש שטעטל און די עפֿנטלעכע שפּראַך און אַ סך שילדן זענען פֿון תּמיד אָן געווען אויף ייִדיש. מאָנסי, ווידער, איז אַ געמישטע שטאָט; פֿריִער האָבן דאָרט געוווינט אַ סך „מאָדערנע“ ייִדן, נישט קיין חרדים, זענען אַלע שילדן במילא געווען אויף ענגליש. צו ביסלעך איז די שטאָט געוואָרן וואָס מער חסידיש, און אין די לעצטע 10־20 יאָר האָט מען אָנגעהויבן הענגען שילדן אויף די געשעפֿטן און אויף די ווענט אין ייִדיש און לשון־קודש. דאָס איז אַ סימן פֿונעם נײַעם שטאָלץ פֿון די חסידים דאָרט, וואָס פֿילן, אַז זיי דאַרפֿן זיך מער נישט באַהאַלטן הינטער ענגלישע שילדן. די געגנט איז געוואָרן זייערע.
שפּעטער האָט נאָווע באַמערקט, אַז אין דער ייִדישער געגנט אין אַנטווערפּן, למשל, זענען כּמעט נישטאָ קיין שילדן אויף ייִדיש אָדער לשון־קודש. דאָס ווײַזט מסתּמא אַרויס די אומזיכערקייט פֿון די אַנטווערפּענער חסידים, וואָס ווילן זיך נישט וואַרפֿן אין די אויגן.
שירה פֿריד, וואָס האָט נאָר וואָס פֿאַרענדיקט אַ דאָקטאָראַט בײַם העברעיִשן אוניווערסטטעט, האָט געלייענט אַ רעפֿעראַט וועגן די „בית־יעקבֿ“־שולן פֿאַר פֿרומע מיידלעך, וואָס שׂרה שנירער האָט אָנגעהויבן שאַפֿן אין קראָקע אין 1917. שנירער האָט איבערגערעדט די גרויסע רבנים פֿון איר תּקופֿה, די פֿירערס פֿון דער „אַגודה“, די נײַע אָרטאָדאָקסישע פּאָליטישע פּאַרטיי, און זיי האָבן באַשלאָסן צו שטיצן „בית־יעקבֿ“. שנירער און די לערערינס אין די שולן האָבן די גאַנצע צײַט באַקעמפֿט די לינגוויסטישע אַסימילאַציע, ווײַל אַ סך פֿרומע מיידלעך האָבן דעמאָלטס שוין גערעדט צווישן זיך אויף פּויליש. אין זייער קאַמף פֿאַר ייִדיש האָבן זיי אַדאָפּטירט דעם „אָרטאָדאָקסישן אויסלייג“ פֿון שלמה בירנבוים, דעם באַקאַנטן בעל־תּשובֿה און ייִדיש־פֿאָרשער פֿון ווין, וואָס איז געוואָרן דער ערשטער ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר אין האַמבורג אין 1922.
קלמן ווײַזער, אַ היסטאָריקער און ייִדישיסט בײַ יאָרק־אוניווערסיטעט אין טאָראָנטאָ, האָט ווײַטער גערעדט וועגן בירנבוים און וועגן זײַן אויסלייג. נאָך דער מלחמה, איז בירנבוים געוואָרן אַ ביסל אָפּגעפֿרעמדט פֿון זײַנע אַמאָליקע פֿרײַנד אין דער אַגודה און „בית־יעקבֿ“. די אַגודה האָט געפֿירט אַ מער פּראַגמאַטישע פּאָליטיק לגבי מדינת־ישׂראל און עבֿרית. די אַגודיסטן זענען געווען צופֿרידן זיך צו באַטייליקן אין דער ישׂראל־רעגירונג און צו נעמען די מלוכישע געלטער פֿאַר זייערע אינסטיטוציעס. דערפֿאַר האָט ייִדיש גיך פֿאַרלוירן זײַן חשיבֿות בײַ זיי און דער יונגער דור איז גיך אַריבער אויף דער לאַנדשפּראַך: עבֿרית אין ישׂראל, און ענגליש אין אַמעריקע. בירנבוים, ווידער, איז געבליבן אַ שאַרפֿער קעגנער פֿונעם ציוניזם און פֿון עבֿרית. אָבער צוליב עפּעס אַ סיבה האָט ער נישט געזוכט קיין קאָנטאַקטן מיט די אונגערישע חסידים (למשל, סאַטמאַר), וואָס האָבן געהאַט אַן ענלעכע שטעלונג און וואָס האָבן ווײַטער גערעדט ייִדיש.
הגם די רעפֿעראַטן זענען געווען אויף אַקאַדעמיש ענגליש, נישט אויף קיין ייִדישער שפּראַך, האָט מען די שמועסן אין די קאַווע־הפֿסקות געפֿירט אויך אויף עבֿרית, פּויליש און אַוודאי — ייִדיש. שלמה בירנבוים וואָלט געווען שטאָלץ.
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In David Baerwald’s epic tale of espionage and wartime horrors, family history is stranger than fiction
“When I started out writing this book, my model wasn’t James Clavell,” David Baerwald said with a laugh, as he paused for a smoke break at a waterfront picnic table in his current hometown of Kingston, New York. “It was more like Bernard Malamud, or something; it was this kind of interior, depressing thing about a family coming to grips with its crimes — the hazards of epigenetic traumatic memory in a family, and what it does to people. It was a much more personal tale, you know? I wasn’t really thinking of this huge, swashbuckling thing.”
The Fire Agent, Baerwald’s debut novel, is indeed a huge, swashbuckling affair, an epic, massively entertaining and often gut-punchingly horrifying tale of international espionage spanning four continents, two world wars and countless collisions between heartfelt idealism and the harsh realities of human behavior over its 600 pages. Though some of its characters and most of its conversations are fictional, The Fire Agent is firmly grounded in actual historical events and figures both well-known and obscure — some of which are truly stranger than fiction.
“I would not have dared to make up most of this,” Baerwald said with a shrug. “Some of the characters are so over-the-top, they’re like super-villains from a Bruce Lee movie or Get Smart. The Black Dragon Society? Treasure hoards of Chinese gold? That all sounds ridiculous, like something out of Terry and the Pirates, or fucking Indiana Jones. But it all happened! I really wanted to provide people with clues, so that they could look into the actual history, because I found it so interesting.”
Much of The Fire Agent’s plot is based around the life and career of Ernst Baerwald, the author’s actual grandfather, a German Jew who spent several decades in Japan — ostensibly working as a liaison for the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, though the position served as cover for his extensive and deeply impactful espionage activities on behalf of the German (and later the United States) government. Long dead by the time his grandson was born in 1960, Ernst rarely came up in family conversation. “He went largely unrecognized in his lifetime,” said Baerwald. “Nobody ever really talked about him, and from what people would tell me about my grandfather, I had the impression that he was this kind of bum that sold ink on the streets in Tokyo. I had no idea that he’d led this crazy life!”
It wasn’t until about eight years ago, when Baerwald was cleaning out his parents’ wildfire-threatened West Los Angeles home, that he got an initial glimpse at Ernst’s actual occupation. “There were two boxes with a bunch of his papers that were in his office when he died,” Baerwald said. “They’d just been packed up and put away and buried under, like, 1960s-era skis and gardening equipment. In fact, I was gonna throw them away without looking at them; I was like, ‘Well, I’ve lived long enough without them.’ But this woman that was working with me, archiving the things in the house, she was like, ‘Well, let’s have a look.’”
Along with Ernst’s diaries and letters, Baerwald found maps and photographs of Japan, a Samurai sword and a miniature spy camera from the 1930s, and a speech that his grandfather had given to a U.S. government-run spy school in San Francisco in 1943. “I realized that there was, in fact, a huge story here that I needed to uncover,” Baerwald recalled. “That speech to the spy school was really the map to a huge portion of what I was soon to be researching. I didn’t know where it would take me, I didn’t know what it was for; I just knew that that was what I had to do, and suddenly that became my only thing in life.”
Baerwald is singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and film and TV composer best-known for Boomtown, his platinum-selling 1986 album by David & David, his duo with musician and producer David Ricketts, as well as his Golden Globe-nominated song “Come What May” from the Moulin Rouge! Soundtrack. His songs have been recorded by such disparate luminaries as Waylon Jennings, Sheryl Crow, Susanna Hoffs, Fishbone and Olivia Newton-John, but Baerwald said that writing a novel felt surprisingly natural for him.
“My first role was research, not writing,” he said. “But I did write some scenes just to see if I could do it, to see if I could actually write longform without meter or rhyme schemes, and it was like stepping into a warm, welcoming seat. You can get to feeling pretty claustrophobic as a songwriter; I’d accumulated a lot of rules for myself over God knows how many decades of doing that, just to survive — practices that I had acquired, mindsets — and I was happy to let them go, frankly. And I realized that there were a lot of things that I learned from not just lyric writing, but composition, that applied to writing a novel. When you’re composing for monophonic instruments like flutes or strings, they play the chords together as a group, but they’re each playing individual lines; and when you’re structuring complicated human interactions, that kind of muscle memory is really handy.
“To me, plots are like chord changes,” he continued. “They’re signifiers for change, but the real change is happening within the chord. It’s actually like a thousand minnows swimming in vaguely the same direction, rather than these monolithic events that proceed one after the other; there’s always a certain individuality in their movement. So if you think about characters like, ‘Here’s the cello section, and here’s the percussion,’ or whatever, it enables you to structure these sort of complicated scenes where everybody’s got some agenda, and everybody’s got their own melody that they’re singing.”
And as Ernst’s improbably cinematic life gradually unfolded for Baerwald through the diaries and correspondence of his grandfather and other family members (including Baerwald’s father Hans, who taught political science and Japanese studies at UCLA for 30 years), the plot of The Fire Agent fell into place. “I didn’t really need to outline the plot, because I already had the outline. It was his life — and it was like, ‘Wherever he goes, I go,’” he said with a laugh. “I just did research along the way to find out what he was doing and what was happening around him. Whether there’s a huge earthquake or whether there’s a plague or whether there’s a war, it kind of gives you the plot point, right there.”
Far more challenging for Baerwald was dealing with the “emotional rollercoaster” of researching the many soul-crushing horrors that his grandfather witnessed (and, in some cases, was directly involved in) as a soldier, citizen and spy. “I would find myself just weeping more than once,” he said. “You just find yourself coming across these artifacts that really take you into the historical moment, and it’s really powerful. I remember I was in the rare books library at Columbia, looking at my uncle’s papers, and there was a letter from one of the soon-to-be-dead fighters during the Lublin Massacre, and it’s 28 pages of just savagery. So I’m sitting there, reading the details of this doomed-yet-heroic effort, and I feel this little tap on my shoulder, and this girl says, “Excuse me, Sir, I’m sorry — there’s no crying on the manuscripts.’”
Indeed, one of the major themes running through The Fire Agent is mankind’s innate ability to solve a major problem while creating even worse ones with the solution. Early on in the story, Ernst is present at the unveiling of the Haber-Bosch process, the revolutionary industrial development which enabled man to produce synthetic ammonia on a grand scale — a discovery which then allowed the industrial synthesis of nitrogen fertilizers, which were desperately needed by farmers across the globe at the beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately, while this discovery saved humanity from worldwide famine, the industrial-scale production of ammonia and ammonium nitrate also resulted in tremendous carnage on the battlefield and elsewhere.
“I knew that there was going to have to be some reference in the book to the transformation from life-giving fertilizers to life-taking gunpowder and phosgene gas,” said Baerwald. “The Haber-Bosch process has made the lives of the probably 7 billion people alive today possible, but it’s bleached the coral in the ocean, and the high-pressure tests that emerged from it ultimately fueled the Nazi air force and tanks and trucks…
“There are a lot of scientists in my family,” he said, “and one of them said something to me once that I put in Albert Einstein’s mouth in the book: ‘Look at us — we’re in the dreamiest of sciences, astrophysics, and what are we doing? We’re making missile trajectories and warheads.’ And that’s been a kind of a refrain in my family for my whole life, this awful feeling of being trapped in a sociopathic system that takes everything beautiful and turns it into a weapon somehow, that takes brotherhood and camaraderie and turns it into teams and armies, and takes love and turns it into prostitution.
“One of the reasons I chose the music business was that I didn’t want to be part of all that. I thought, ‘Even at its very worst, at least I’m not making weapons!’” Baerwald said. “But apparently, I am! Ultimately, the record companies started merging with multinational corporations who made fucking nuclear weapons, and now Spotify has gobbled up all my friends’ livelihoods and is investing in AI weapons. You can’t get away from this shit!”
Though he’s currently busy promoting The Fire Agent, Baerwald says that a sequel is already in the works, one which will include material cut from the first novel. “I’ve been like a guy chasing a piece of paper across a windy field for like seven years,” he said. “The full story was always just slightly out of reach — for the 600 pages that I ended up with, I wrote probably 1400. I wanted to take The Fire Agent up to 1980, but I realized that there was no way I’d physically able to do it; I honestly thought I was going blind by the end of it. But now I’m really looking forward to working on the next one.”
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