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The new Promised Land

In 1948, the British gave up trying to "control" their little corner of the Middle East, capitulated to both reality and the United Nations’ proposal, and the state of Israel was born.
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In 1948, the British gave up trying to "control" their little corner of the Middle East, capitulated to both reality and the United Nations’ proposal, and the state of Israel was born. For those of you who have forgotten or never knew, the date was May 14.

To celebrate, on May 15, five of Israel’s Arab neighbours – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq – threw a housewarming party. They invaded the new country.

Also in 1948, U.S. physicist George Gamow postulated the Big Bang theory to explain the origin of the universe. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel and its neighbours’ inability to get along. It’s just one of those ironic coincidences, one might almost say cosmic coincidences if one wanted to torture an obvious pun.

New discoveries in cosmology, astronomy and physics have changed our understanding and modified frontiers of the Big Bang theory every couple of years since 1948.

New skirmishes – okay, new wars – between Israel and various neighbouring states, among them the Sinai campaign, Six-Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, have changed the frontiers of Israel every couple of years since 1948.

Those two coincidences have nothing to do with each other either except that our understanding of the universe, primitive though it is, far outweighs our understanding of how to bring about peace in the Middle East.

Our neighbours to the south were pretty certain they had the inside track on that whole peace in the Middle East conundrum. They invaded Iraq to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East. I think the theory was that all the Arab nations, labouring under monarchs, dictators, Islamic whackos and second sons ready and able to lead the region gloriously back to the 13 th century, would see the shining beacon of democracy thrive in Iraq and rise up and smite their very undemocratic leaders. Sort of a democratic domino effect.

Peace still seems as elusive as ever in the Middle East but democracy has spread like wildfire. Hamas was democratically elected to lead the Palestinians and Hezbollah was voted seats to help govern Lebanon. And now one of the architects of the current Iraq war, Secretary of Offence Donny Rumsfeld, has dusted off the domino theory as a last-ditch excuse to stay the course in Iraq, invoking the spectre of Islamofascist states from France to the Philippines. Having exhausted weapons of mass destruction, regime change and fighting on to honour those killed in the fighting(?) as reasons for this misadventure, why not the domino effect? Mission accomplished, dude!

Of course, the astute reader of history – and I know there are many of you out there – recognizes that peace in the Middle East, or the lack thereof, can’t be traced back to the creation of the modern state of Israel although, arguably, it does have a lot to do with the events that led up to that event. One could, just as easily, point to the very radical 17 th century BCE belief in One God, capitalized to avoid confusion with the website www.onegod.com which I think has something to do with celebrity worship.

The One God theory was espoused by the acoustic band, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when they were playing to the original Israelites during a gig in the Promised Land.

It wasn’t until the 13 th Century BCE, when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, where they’d gone when a famine in the Promised Land kind of undermined the whole name of the place, that things really started to heat up. Moses, being a guy, got lost in the desert for 40 years because he was too proud to stop and ask directions. Along the way, he wandered up Mount Sinai to try and figure out which way the Promised Land was. Instead of pointing out the way, the finger of God gave Moses the Torah, including the chapter on the Ten Commandments, and pretty much confirmed the One God theory.

The Israelites spent the next two centuries fighting for what can loosely be called Israel. They’re still fighting today.

Chances are good they’ll still be fighting tomorrow. Except that the whole fighting in the Middle East thing is getting weirder and weirder. It keeps replaying itself like a warped eight-track tape, looking and sounding different with each playing as the distortion and friction wears it down toward its ultimate destruction.

Personally, I think it’s time for some new thinking on the whole Israel-Middle East conflict.

I don’t think it’s really important at this point who’s to blame. With almost 19 centuries of history, what does it really matter? No, this whole fighting thing has gotten to the point, kind of like kids whaling on each other in the back seat of a station wagon, where Dad has to pull over, give everyone, innocent or guilty, a good smack and separate the combatants.

There will be no peace in the Middle East until Israel moves out. I know, that’s harsh. The Israelis have a, well, God-given right to live peacefully there but with neighbours like theirs, it just isn’t going to happen. Oh sure, you can take one or another of the neighbouring Arab states and hammer out a tentative truce like was done with Egypt or Jordan a decade ago, but it doesn’t matter. There’ll always be some whack job like Iran to threaten nuculer Armageddon.

Clearly the only path to peace will be to create a new Israel, painful though that may be.

And I think I’ve got just the place.

Florida.

Give Israel Florida. As long as they agree to free trade in orange juice and tourism, what does it matter whether Florida is one of 50 states or a sovereign nation? The climate’s similar, better even. There’s coastline galore. Hurricanes can be a problem but they’re a lot easier to tolerate than neighbours who are vowed to wipe you off the map.

Sure, Florida lacks the biblical/historical significance of the Holy Land but with Disney and Universal Studios smack in the middle of the new Israel, how hard would it be to recreate the Holy Land? Given the power of propaganda and the propensity of people to believe anything they read, it would only take a generation or two before everybody believed Moses led his people to Orlando, renamed Jerusalem.

The U.S. government ought to be easily persuaded to give up Florida. With peace in the Middle East – or at least just Arab fighting Arab – the flow of oil would be less easily interrupted. The U.S. would have a convenient, and well-armed buffer between itself and Cuba. Hell, the new Israel would pretty much solve the U.S.’s Cuban problem.

And best of all, Florida would stop screwing up U.S. presidential elections.