“Shalom,” Helfein responded in Hebrew as he stood up.

Sahedi looked at him with a touch of annoyance that as a matter of diplomatic protocol Helfein did not have the courtesy to greet him in Farsi, or at least in English, the common language of diplomats. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit,” Sahedi said graciously as he offered his hand. “I must say, your request for a meeting with me was a complete surprise. But you Israelis are always full of surprises.”

“You have a very impressive office, Mr. Minister,” Helfein complimented him, pretending to be a student of antiquity himself.

“We’ve had a very long history, Mr. Helfein,” Sahedi responded. “Much longer than your…” he smiled with slight disdain, “…your latest 60 years,” referring to the birth of the State of Israel.

Helfein smiled back. “But we were here a few thousand years ago too. We left, but God saw fit that we should return to our Promised Land.”

"Oh, it was God who did it,” Sahedi responded. “He is the one who told your parents and grandparents to seize 8,000 square miles of beach front property on the Mediterranean that the Palestinians had dwelled on for centuries?”

Sahedi’s immediate and blatant animosity caught Helfein off guard. Yet, instead of following his instinct and arguing, Helfein maintained a conciliatory tone. “You have a beautiful historical tradition,” he commented, “and one of the most preserved.” He accentuated the word ‘preserved,’ causing Sahedi to look at him and wonder if there was any kind of implied threat.

“Thank you,” Sahedi said politely. Gesturing for Helfein and his assistant to sit down, he asked again, “To what do we owe this honor? And,” he asked pointedly, “why is this visit from the deputy director of the Mossad and not from someone in your foreign ministry?”

Helfein looked at Sahedi, not sure which question to answer first. “As you well know, Mr. Minister, I have been with our foreign ministry in the past. It was felt that my experience and knowledge would make me the proper person to have this conversation.”

“And…‘this conversation’? What’s it about?” Sahedi asked sharply. “You know that I’m aware that you are not with the Foreign Ministry. You are the Mossad, the real architects of Israel’s foreign policies.”

“We have reason to believe that your intelligence services were behind the recent bombing in Tel Aviv,” Helfein got right to the point.

“Is that what you came to talk about?” Sahedi asked sharply. “It seems to me that your Palestinians have their own reasons to be hostile. It has nothing to do with us.” He added sarcastically, “Perhaps you haven’t figured it out yet. When you oppress a million people for six decades, some of them get upset.”

“The Palestinians have many places they can live. There are hundreds of thousands of them who don’t live in Israel.”

“You mean the Palestinian refugees? The ones who were forced to leave?” Sahedi asked, looking at Helfein with undisguised disdain. “Well, I have to admit that you have been doing this to them for thousands of years, dating back to Abraham and his wife Sarah. Since Sarah was barren and Abraham had a child by his maid Hagar, Sarah made him send Hagar and her son into the wilderness.” He paused. “According to the scriptures they became Syrians—some more of the enemies you created.”

“Well, at least Abraham did not sacrifice Hagar’s son as he was willing to sacrifice his first born son, Isaac,” Helfein retorted with a smile.

“That was the first Hebrew disinformation campaign…which has lasted for several thousand years,” Sahedi retorted as he smiled back. “Hagar’s son Ishmael was the first born. He was the rightful heir. Isaac was Sarah’s son, the second born. It would seem that the lies began very early in your history, all the way back to the beginning of your faith.”

“Many things in history are blurred,” Helfein responded.

“This isn’t blurry,” Sahedi retorted. “It’s your own recorded scriptures. More to the point, it seems that Hagar and Ishmael were the first recorded Palestinian refugees. But Allah meted out justice to you Hebrews. The heirs of Ishmael were anointed with billions of barrels of oil, while you descendents of Isaac base your economy on selling weapons and soliciting handouts.”

Sahedi touched one of Helfein’s hot buttons, and the Mossad leader was enraged. He tightened his abdomen, froze his facial muscles, and replied firmly and coldly, “Despite your distorted historical views, Palestinian terrorism has to stop.”

“‘Terrorism,’ you call it,” Sahedi bristled. “It seems to me it’s merely a primitive form of ‘retaliation.’ Just because they do it with suicide bombers who have to walk to the target instead of with tanks and airplanes the way you do it to them. For 60 years you oppress or kill them, destroy their livelihood, close their schools, deny them jobs, imprison them by the thousands without a trial, destroy their homes with bulldozers and tanks whenever you choose, go into their houses in the middle of the night and confiscate their televisions and computers for sport.” His eyes flashed. “You are the terrorists. And when the rest of the Muslim world finally retaliates against you and your American benefactors…” Sahedi was staring coldly at Helfein and paused without completing his sentence. “When President Bush began his ‘war on terrorism’ he should have started with you. You’re the source of terrorism in the Middle East. Everyone knows that, except the hypocritical Americans who condemn oppression everywhere except here. Here they allow you to commit whatever atrocities you want because you’re Jewish. They needed you as a buffer after World War II to keep the Russians from becoming a dominant player in the Middle East when the British pulled out. But that part of history is over. This is a new chapter. The Americans won’t have the will to support your Zionist aggressions for that much longer.”

Helfein was furious. “We won’t permit our innocent civilians to be victims, whatever you say,” he shot back. “Mark my words.”

“And innocent Palestinian civilians don’t count. Is that what you’re saying?” Sahedi rejoined. “When an Israeli Jew gets killed, everyone knows his name because it’s printed in the New York Times, Le Monde and the London Daily Telegraph. But when Palestinians get killed, no one bothers about their names. They’re just expendable non-persons.”

“So, you want to talk about expendable non-persons?” Helfein countered. “What about the 100,000 children Iran sent to their deaths in the frontlines during your war with Iraq in the 1980s? Many of them as young as 12 years old! You needed someone to clear the minefields. And buy your military some time. So Khomeini created the Basiji, an army of children to send as ‘human waves’ directly into Iraq fire and mine fields with golden-colored keys around their necks so they could enter paradise as martyrs as soon as they were slaughtered.”