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Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles based analyst on the board of directors of the West Coast Region of the and the chairperson of its Middle East committee.
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By Rachel Neuwirth
August 29, 2005
The following is a satire in the spirit of Jonathan Swift.
America could be facing a potential catastrophe from nuclear weapons that may have already been smuggled inside this country by al-Qaeda. Sleeper cells may already be positioned inside as many as twenty major cities.
The danger is real and awareness is increasing. World Net Daily has reported on revelations contained in the upcoming book The al-Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse, by former FBI consultant Paul L. Williams. Edited excerpts from a World Net Daily report of July 18 follow:
Osama bin Laden is planning what he calls an "American Hiroshima," the ultimate terrorist attack on U.S. cities, using nuclear weapons already smuggled into the country across the Mexican border along with thousands of sleeper agents. The series of attacks is designed to kill 4 million, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history.
Al-Qaida's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents.
The cities chosen as optimal targets are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington, D.C. New York and Washington top the preferred target list for al-Qaida leadership.
Our own security officials have also told us repeatedly that it is not a matter of "if" but rather "when" the next major attack will occur. An update on this threat was published by World Net Daily on 8/18/05.
Many American lives could be at stake here, and what is needed is bold thinking on how to avert such an attack, or to at least reduce its likelihood. In that spirit this article presents "A Modest Proposal" for a two-part response to this threat. Part I proposes to reduce the attractiveness of the potential targets. Part II proposes to make the targets additionally undesirable and to also reduce enemy hostility. Both parts are inspired by the recent bold actions of the Israeli government in Gaza and northern Samaria.
Part I. Nine large, American cities are prime targets because of their size, importance and their concentrations of Jews. If the presence of Jews in these cities increases their appeal as targets then logically the absence of Jews would decrease that appeal by a comparable amount. The security of three hundred million Americans must not be kept at risk merely for the sake of not inconveniencing Jews who comprise barely two percent of our population. Because the potential danger is so immense and so imminent, the relocation of American Jews must be expedited.
Removal of Jews should not be too difficult. Jews want to be seen as loyal Americans. Most would cooperate, if reluctantly and emotionally, in their removal as their patriotic duty to increase the safety of their fellow Americans. Jews are accustomed to relocating and have done so repeatedly from biblical times. In recent times, nearly a million Jews were expelled from Arab countries and more than a million Jews have also left the former Soviet Union. Even inside America, Jews often move for purely personal reasons. Relocation is a familiar Jewish experience.
Then there is the question of propriety. Is it proper to compel Jews to relocate -- especially after they have become so comfortable in this country? Fortunately this question has already been answered. For security reasons, and for the greater good, none other than Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is even now in the process of expelling eight thousand Jews from their homes in Gaza and is using the Israeli army and police to do it. And more than ten times that number of Jews are likely to face expulsion from the West Bank later on.
The number of Israeli Jews targeted for expulsion in both Gaza and the West Bank is proportionally equivalent to America relocating about five million American Jews. This forced relocation has been ruled to be a perfectly legal action taken by the Israeli government, and President Bush, who is considered to be a great friend of Israel, supports it.
Relocating American Jews will be far easier than expelling Jews in Israel. American Jews tend toward pacifism, are highly law-abiding and non-confrontational -- except for the highly vocal Jewish leftists who, in this case, would likely support Jewish expulsion. Furthermore, the American Jewish leadership has already endorsed the principle of forced expulsion of Jews in Israel as the legal right of that government to act in the interests of security and the greater good. Thus American Jews cannot now object to being subjected to the same requirements in the interest of U.S. national security.
Necessary expertise in Jewish relocation procedures can be borrowed from Israel. The Sharon government knows how to recruit, screen and train thousands of men and women from the Jewish community to form police expulsion units and cope with the related logistics and media management. As in Israel, these expulsion police would be well paid, not be required to identify themselves to the expellees, and the courts will go easy on any charges of police brutality.
Any manifestation of Jewish protest will be quickly put down. Protesters, including teenagers, would be placed in administrative detention and held without charges for up to six months. Unlike in Israel, there are no Palestinian Arab equivalents in America to rain down rockets on the expulsion process and requiring army units to protect the evacuation. As in Israel, there will be at most peaceful, completely non-violent protests, perhaps combined with a little civil disobedience of the most harmless and easily suppressed kind. Since most American Jews will peacefully board the busses and trains carrying them to their new homes, whatever protests may occur will be conducted by evangelical Christians -- the most law-abiding segment of the American population, who will easily be dissuaded from violence or seriously disruptive behavior by their ministers.
We cannot deny that 1.3 billion Muslims comprise a formidable world force that is in the ascendancy while Jews are a tiny minority that is in decline, especially in America. America has suffered politically from the general perception that the interests of Israel and Jews are favored over the interests of Muslims and Arabs. This is an opportunity for American policy to become more even-handed and to gain the respect of the Muslim world.
As in Israel, U.S. Jews who voluntarily sign up early for expulsion will receive extra benefits while those who object or delay could face fines or even prison. The American Jewish leadership must demonstrate their national loyalty by signing up early and encouraging their followers to do likewise.
American Jews wield influence far exceeding their numbers which is viewed as a provocation to many in the Muslim world. The expulsion must include all Jews, including elected officials and those of influence.
We do not know how much time remains before a possible attack is launched by al-Qaeda. Therefore this evacuation must proceed quickly in the interests of national security. Naturally, it will be necessary to compile lists of Jews and Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations must be required to furnish such information. Unaffiliated Jews must also be identified and included on these lists.
It will not be possible to properly liquidate all property and assets in a short time, so the Jews will have to select whatever they can transport in limited-size vehicles and forgo the rest. Their European forebears and Israeli cousins have followed these procedures on numerous occasions in the past. As a result, few American Jews will be unduly alarmed or angered by this element of the American-Islamic peace and reconciliation process.
In the interests of national security and of fairness it should be a crime for any non-Jew to harbor a Jew. This procedure must be executed thoroughly and without favoritism so that the Muslim world will see that we Americans are sincere.
Jewish institutions, including hospitals (along with their Jewish patients), colleges, schools, synagogues, museums and the like must be emptied of Jewish personnel and content and prepared for evacuation.
Jewish expertise, or as some say dominance, in the film industry could be put to good use in ensuring the successful and smooth operation of the relocation program. For example, the distinguished Jewish American filmmaker Steven Speilberg could produce and direct a film showing the happy and successful adjustment of a sympathetically portrayed American Jewish family to their new home community in rural Alaska. The classic film made by a distinguished German Jewish director 62 years ago, documenting the happy and prosperous Jewish community in the relocation center of Thieresienstadt and filmed during the difficult period of Jewish relocation in the Second World War, could serve Spielberg as a useful model.
Spielberg (or any number of other justly celebrated Jewish filmmakers) could also be tasked to compile a film record of how Jews lived in America before their relocation, which would serve as a nostalgic memento for the relocatees in their new homes, as well as a useful educational tool for the whole population. The film could be shown in schools across the country, as well as in Jewish museums and Holocaust centers, in order to encourage ethnic and racial tolerance and multiculturalism.
Jews would be relocated to relatively uninhabited places, away from any potential target area. Their new homes should be in currently under-populated areas like Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Alaska.
The Jews should be assigned specific areas that will be reserved for Jewish occupancy, in the same manner as the reservations for Indian tribes. Since Jews are essentially a tribal group, they are sure to appreciate having tribal homelands of their own, outside the strife-torn Middle East.
New housing and other facilities should be paid for largely by the Jewish community, in exchange for the value of the land they would receive from the government.
Jews should be given the option of digging up their dead and transporting the remains to the Jewish reservations. Abandoned graves would then be bulldozed.
Those few Jews who are unwilling to resettle on the reservations will be encouraged to find new homes in other countries.
Part II. This part is designed to create an active disincentive for al-Qaida to strike our major cities.
To further enhance American security, the vacated homes and properties of America's five million Jews should be turned over to Muslim immigrants from Arab countries. They must promise to show respect for the former Jewish homes they are being given and must not dance on the roofs of their new homes in a show of celebration or victory.
Muslims should also acquire synagogues and other Jewish facilities but must promise not to burn them down in celebration but to quietly convert them into mosques.
Al-Qaeda would then have to think twice before attacking cities with significant Muslim populations and their newly acquired mosques. Osama Bin Laden may feel grudging respect to America for having outsmarted him -- and doing it with style and class.
The entire Muslim world would then have to reconsider their anti-American animosity. We will have demonstrated that we are reasonable and respectful toward our Muslim brothers and sisters. We will have shown our willingness to be even-handed in redressing the old imbalance where Jews, being but two percent of America, had wielded such disproportionate influence in the culture, in the business sector and on its policies. Relocation of Jews would be a very small price to pay for the prospect of avoiding a devastating attack which would consume Jewish lives as well as those of other Americans. We could then open a new chapter in Muslim-American relations and together strive for a more peaceful and just world.
Bertram Cohen and John Landau contributed to this column.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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