Selected Detective
BARUCH HAR - ZION

The old city of Jerusalem, with its confusing labyrinth of streets and squares, shrines and shrines, spice markets and souvenirs, when the night is so quiet and empty as a ghost town.

The hustle and bustle that filled the area during the day, especially the Muslim part where you can hardly move because of the buyers and sellers of fruits, especially the Muslim part where you can hardly move, as well as the children running around slowly disappearing as the sun set, leaving a hopeless scene from the shop front window, gloomy, and echoing, like veins from which all the blood of life was pumped. A small percentage of people who remain resilient appear lethargic and restless, looking around nervously, walking faster and more purposefully than they would do during the day, as if threatened by the dreamlike silence of the place, and the corrosive orange rays of the street lamps.

It was almost 3am when Baruch Har-zion and his two friends arrived through the Jaffa Gate and made their way to the bright world, the most abandoned time of the night, when even the cat had gone to his greatness and the loud clanging every fifteen minutes of the church bells in the city was dull with a gripping silence.

A short fat man, about the same height as his, had gray hair, a face with square jaws and a beard, and carrying the Uzi weapon with one hand covered in gloves and a large leather bag with the other hand. His companion also held the weapon of Uzi, one of them thin and pale like milk, the end of his string hanging from behind his jacket; the other was tall and somewhat black, with a haircut to the skin of his head, his arms and neck were full of muscles. He was wearing a yarmulke on his head.

“How about the camera?” asked the pale man as they walked, nodding at the security monitor installed within regular intervals along the way.

“Forget that,” said har-zion as he moved his hand unconcerned. Certain stiffness in his movements seemed to be due to his warm clothes that intersected roll-neck and almost reached the jawline too tight for him. “I have some friends in David's control center.they will open the eyes of people who have not seen.”

“But, how about...”.

“Forget them,” reset har-zion, this time more firmly.

“Everything is prepared.” He threw a glance at the man, his gray granite eyes narrowed slightly as if to say “I don't want you here if you're scared,” then look forward again.

The three walked forward, following the neighboring plains from David's road to the Jewish quarter before turning left towards one of the markets that went deep into the center of the city's Muslim quarter. The walls of the windowed front of the shop stood along their left and right, colored

gray and uniform, the metal plate is covered with graffiti in Arabic, criss-crossing here and there with an odd word or phrase in English: FATAH, HAMAS, JEWISH BANGSAT.

They passed by a Coptic priest who rushed to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and a pair of tourists, drunk men who were trying to find their lodging in a narrow winding street. After that it was just them. The bells chiming showed the clock, his voice echoing

meet the roof of the building.

“I wish we were seen,” muttered the flabby hair as they left, while patting his Uzi. “This is our city.get the Arabs.” Har-zion smiles thinly but says nothing, only pointing at a small alley flanked by a high stone wall, the wooden door from behind which they could hear the sound of television was lit, and the gate of the small mosque before it appeared into the empty street perpendicular to the path they had just descended. On its right side, the road disappeared under a series of low stone arches, which lined the Western Wall; on the left, the road went up towards the Via Dolorosa and Damascus Gate. On the sign in front of them was written Al-Wad Street.

Har-zion examines both roads, then gropes his groin again with the rigidity of movement as if something was holding him back and unzipping his leather bag zipper, which he was wearing, he took out two crowbars which he then gave to his two friends, and a can of spray paint that he kept for himself.

“Come, we start!” He led them to a tall, slovenly-looking building typical of an old town house lined with heavy stones, wooden doors and arched windows, studded and leafy windows.

“You sure it's empty?” ask the pale face nervously.

“Come, start working,” says har-zion. He shuffled the paint can, the sound of the balls in it echoing in the street, then began to spray, drawing menorah with seven rough and careless branches on the wall on any side of the door, the paint splashed on several places so that in the dim light it looked like a huge fang that was clawing at the stone and causing blood to come out.

His friend began to get engrossed with a crowbar inserted into the cavity between the door and the frame, which was, loosening it by about two inches then inserting the crowbar again to enlarge the fault and pushing further until the door opened with a sharp sound.they looked around the street, then into a dark room. har-zion finished spraying a second menorah, grabbed a large leather bag and followed them into a room, then pushed the door behind him.

They had heard about the house from a friend in the Jerusalem Police Department. The owner, an Arab, was performing Umrah and left this empty place, the perfect target to occupy. har-zion would prefer something closer to the Temple Mount (The Mounth Temple), something more confrontational, more hurtful and insulting to Muslims.

But for a while, this was enough.

He reached into the leather bag and pulled the heavy metal incandescent lamp, turned it on and played the light beam around them.

they were in a large room filled with furniture, with a stone staircase at the inner end and a pungent smell of polish and tobacco in the air. The poster hanging on the wall above one of the sofas contains nine lines of Arabic writing, with white on a green background. The Quran.har-zion observed it in the light of a torchlight, then stepped forward and lowered it.

“Avi, you check the back. I'll check the top. Schmuely, you're coming with me!”

He gave a second torch to the hairdo, then climbed the stairs with his leather bag, looking around the various spaces he visited. The pale-skinned man followed behind him. Above he opened the metal door and stepped out of the flat roof of the building with a wire-wracked TV antenna. Satellite equipment and solar panels are milling around. In front of it are the domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the towering tower of St Saviour's Church. At the back lies a vast courtyard which is an extension of the Temple Mount. At its central part, illuminated by floodlights, stands the majestic golden crown of the Dome of the Rock (Dome of The Rock).

“Because you will expand to the right and to the left,” said har-zion slowly, “your descendants will have this nation, as well as those in remote places.” How often he imagined these moments: during the dark days of torture in his native Ukraine; at the Army Hospital where the fire was so painful and agonizing that he felt his deep soul had been snatched from him. they have seized land elsewhere in recent years outside Nazareth, near hebron, along the Gaza coast but this means nothing if Jerusalem itself does not belong to them. That Mount Moria, even Shetiyah, where Abraham had come to sacrifice his only son Isaac, where Jacob dreamed there was a ladder to heaven; where Solomon built the first Holy Temple... that all these places should be in Muslim hands is something that hurts him physically, like a gaping wound.

And now, at last, they will reclaim it, reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. Yerushalyim the Gold, Eretz Israel's capital ha-Shlema, the Jewish home town. That's the only thing they ask for. They must have a home village. But Arabs and Jewish haters will reject it. Nasty them all. Cockroaches are the ones that need to be put in the gas chamber.

Slowly he turned around, looked again at the scene, then reached into his large leather bag and took out a pile of clothes with two strands of rope tying him.

“Do!” he said he gave the pile to his friend. The man moved forward to the front side of the roof where he knelt and began tying the end of the rope to some steel holes emerging from the concrete floor. har-zion pulls out his cell phone from his pocket and punches the number on the pad

the numbers.

“We are ready,” he said when the phone was answered. “start to tell others too!” He turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. When he did that, his friend just finished weaving the rope and dropped the scroll to the side of the building. The rope unfolded with a hissing sound, letting a long blue white flag unfold in front of the rock wall like a waterfall, with the Star of David thick at the center.

“Praise God,” he said with a smile.

“Hallelujah,” Words har-zion.