This is an idea I explored a few years back. It drew some ridicule then, but as time passes and the problem looks more and more insoluble, it might be worth examining again.
If there’s one thing that always bothers me, it’s banging my head against the wall again and again looking for a solution to a problem that has no solutions.
Enter the Middle East.
There is no possible way I see a peaceful solution to Israelis and Arabs fighting over whose land it is. And since there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and 16 million Jews, it looks sort of bleak.
Well …
A few years back, some Saudi official said the solution was that there was plenty of room for Israel’s Jews in the United States.
So here’s my solution:
There are about 6 million Jews in Israel, 75 percent of its population. Israel should sell its land to Saudi Arabia for a sum large enough (somewhere north of $100 billion) to compensate all Jewish Israelis for their lost property.
The Israelis can then choose whether they want to relocate to New York, Florida or Southern California. (Other sites would be OK too, but I would think they might want to go “Where the Jews Are.” Can you imagine Connie Francis singing that?
We would be gaining citizens who would be well-educated, industrious and God-fearing. Not much downside there.
The Muzzies would have the entire Middle East, but as David Ben Gurion once said, Moses wandered the Middle East for 40 years and settled in the one place with no oil.
Yes, so-called Holy sites for both Jews and Christians would be under Muslim control, but really, you can be religious and observant without living near the Holy sites. It’s really only the most Orthodox who care so deeply about the places, and only the Muslims who require followers to make pilgrimages.
And if we let the Arabs have the Middle East to themselves, my guess is they would love to make tourist money off Christians and Jews who want to visit.
This is not a joke or a “modest proposal.” Something along these lines might just be the only way to bring peace without millions of deaths.
There’s really only one loser in this — American anti-Semites.
Thousands of Jews died in the Holocaust because of American anti-Semitism. Maybe we could try to make up for that.