In a sense, its ridiculous to even respond to the anti-Semitic babblings of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who today reiterated his call to exile the Jewish state to Europe or Alaska. Both the places are rather nonsensical locations for a Jewish state -- the former because that's the location Jews were fleeing from (should we put our new capital in Dachau?), and the latter because there is absolutely no link between Jews and Alaska (why wouldn't that be every bit as colonial?).
But the Jewish historical and communal links to Persia and Babylonia, on the other hand, are centuries old. And given President Ahmadinejad's ever-so-sincere concern for the well-being of Jews and Palestinians, and his absolute serious commitment to ending the conflict, I'm sure he wouldn't mind sacrificing a nice little chunk of his own fiefdom to donate to the now-homeless Jews. Certainly, it's much fairer than forcing the Inuit to do it. And it would be such a great gesture of good faith, too!
Any day now.
Have you read Michael Chabon's latest novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, in which he does imagine a Jewish state in Alaska?
ReplyDeleteAs for the imposition on the Inuit, there seems to be an awful lot more of Alaska than of the Holy Land, so there's probably room for everyone.