How to turn chicken***t into chicken soup

Dear president Abbas. I am about to reveal The Secret on how to attain a Palestinian state. No doubt my fellow Zionists will be angered by this, but The Secret is for all, and my mission is to share it.

I was once a rabid left-wing, self-hating Jewish liberal. I attended rallies, went to help Palestinians pick olives. I wrote terrible scathing articles about my government, even in this publication. I could not help myself from attending peace protests and eagerly showed my face together with B’Tselem agitators and Breaking the Silence quislings but since revealing The Secret I have found a new way.

Rather than you go out and spend money by buying a book and then having to read the whole thing, you will now learn how to get a Palestinian state by the law of attraction – free of charge and in the space of a short blog post.

This is about making lemons into lemonade, chicken***t into chicken soup, a kneidel into a ladle, ice into ice cream. In your language: turning worry beads into Mesabeha.  In brief I am giving you a rod and showing you how to fish – and even though you guys don’t get much access to the sea, simply by thinking fish and acting how to fish, you will catch fish!

Here’s how it all began. I was in the middle of a Machsom Watch tour when an epiphany struck me like lighting from the sky. Clearly a medium-income parent can’t afford to acquire an apartment for his child, let alone his children in Israel. So after much thought I figured I would change sides and try the ultra-nationalist route for a while. Reality set in and it was clear that with a little help from the Settlement Division of the WZO, the Judea and Samaria Council, the Government of Israel, the Minister of Housing, who knows? Maybe an apartment will appear on the hills. I could always change my opinions later.

And so it was that I left the bus and wandered off into what I once called the Occupied Territories (and now call the Complete Israel). Somewhere between Tubas and Fara, I walked off the road looking for a spot of Mawat, namely unregistered Palestinian land, to place a container on and figure things out later. But here’s the strange thing: As I turned onto the dirt road, I noticed beyond the mist in the valley, a small town, unlike any other I have seen except in pictures of prewar Lithuania. A crooked sign on the winding path featured the words: Welcome to Al Majneen.

The Elders of Al Majneen came out to greet me saying “As-Salamu Alaykum”, (though I could have sworn it was “Sholem Aleichem!”). I was immediately invited to sit at a table on the pavement of the local Café and served a plate of what appeared to be Lokshen and Knafeh.  As the locals are frail and unable to leave the confines of their dream town, they asked me to deliver their message to you as soon as possible.

For years the Elders of Al Majneen had been thinking how Palestinians can get a state, when one day they read in Haaretz that the settlers follow the philosophy of Chelm, a town of wise Elders from Eastern Europe. They sent a message to Chelm asking if someone there would come over to Al Majneen and give them strategic advice. For a small fee of course. A professional is a professional and money is money so both Haim and Yankel came for a two-week think tank which produced important results  about which you need to know and immediately implement.

Firstly you must accept retroactively the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo conference resolutions, Article 22 of the League of Nations and the British Mandate of Palestine. You will no doubt ask: why should Palestinians should accept the legal kernel and logical basis of settlement and occupation? Well there are two reasons. One is that neither the Balfour Declaration, nor the San Remo resolution mentions a “Jewish State”. The second reason is that there is no indication of borders of a theoretical Jewish State. Indeed all of these benchmarks of occupation logic ensure the civil rights and political rights of all the citizens of Palestine. The words “Jewish State” are not mentioned even once in these resolutions and at no time was there ever reference as to the borders of such a national home for Jews or an attempt to demarcate them.

Next, you must, like the settlers, reject resolution 242. This U.N. resolution refers to the Green Line as a border. What border?! Who needs a border? We all want as big a territory as possible, possibly even Jordan which was a British invention contravening the San Remo resolutions and their own mandate.

Thirdly, like the settlers you must start talking about the “Oslo Disaster” and the “Oslo Criminals”. You should use these terms a lot and get them into the national discourse just like it’s done in Israel today. What did Oslo bring? Only trouble right? It makes you guys do all the policing for Israeli security. Oslo for Palestinians is the legal structure that enables the division of the land into Bantustan-type cantons without any promise of statehood. Who needs areas A, B and C? Nablus is Shechem and Shechem is Nablus, not so? Hebron and Al-Khalil are the very same, are they not? We need all the people to be in all parts of the land. Without walls, without checkpoints.  Let us put an end to the Oslo accords for once and for all. We shall all walk this land between the Sea and the Euphrates as free people “B’Ezrat Hashem, Insha’Allah!”

I think that by now you are getting my message: it’s the law of attraction. Be like settlers, think like settlers, love the settlers. They are your ticket to emancipation.

The next thing that’s important is that instead of making cheap propaganda of returning to Jaffa and Haifa, simply propagate higher birth rates. You want your birthrates to be in line with birth rates in the settlements. As it is, it appears that Arabs and Jews are on a demographical par between the Sea and the Jordan River.

Finally, stop opposing settlement. Settlements bring you roads, infrastructure, development. Rather than get all upset about new settlements, invite them into the heart of Nablus and Jenin.  Let them build and build and build. Do you have any idea how much betterment-tax your cities could make out of this? Remember too what de Klerk said about South Africa: in the end it was one big omelet and we just couldn’t separate the eggs.

Aim for the rainbow nation. We are almost there.

One word before I end this missive of secret knowledge. Even our president thinks like this. It is rumored that he is a direct descendant of the chief elder of Chelm.

They tell me that you always have a plate of Mesabeha when reading your morning correspondence. A word of advice, if I may? Rather than dip a bland pita into it, why don’t you try putting in some Kreplach and scooping it up with Perogen. I guarantee you, a meal like that comes directly from Heaven. Or Chelm. Or Al Majneen.