A Modern Never-Ending Story

I think you’ll want to read this story even if I warn you at the beginning that I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.

This is the story of a family––let’s call them the Yids, who decided to move back to a place they’d left some time before. It just so happened when they arrived back in their old stomping ground that a 20-acre farm went up for sale at a price that suited their pocketbook. The farm had been repossessed due to lack of tax payment and although it had been woefully neglected, the Yids thought it had potential.

Yet, when they started moving onto their new farm, the Yids discovered the old tenants had not moved out. They were squatting there, and they put up quite a fight when asked to move on. While they had no reason to be mad at anyone except themselves, the Rabs (short for rabble rousers) decided the Yids were to blame for their plight. As a result, they started doing lots of nasty things, like poisoning the Yids’ wells, killing their animals, and stealing farm equipment and crops. To protect their land, the Yids had to put up fences and send out night patrols. They also contacted the sheriff who said he couldn’t do anything because there was no evidence that the Rabs were at fault.

When the Yids tried to discuss the matter with the Rabs, they were told to get off the land, refusing to accept the fact that the Yids had paid for it fair and square. The Yids tried to be sympathetic. They even offered to hire Rabs to help at harvest time, but the Rab leaders announced that anyone who went to work for a Yid would never live to spend his pay check.

Because the Rabs refused to give up their claim and the Yids refused to back down, the mayor came out and tried to talk them into finding a way to live as neighbors. The Rabs were living on the Yids’ border on poor quality property owned by relatives, but the relatives weren’t willing to give the Rabs a decent place to live and encouraged the Rabs to try to get their old place back.

When the mayor told the Yids it was up to them to compromise, the Yids decided to give the Rabs three decent acres that were on the other side of a road and thus hard to farm anyway.

The Rabs didn’t even say thank you. They moved onto those three acres and continued their harassment activities. Since the patrols and fences stopped them from going on the Yids’ land, the Rabs tried to tunnel under the fences, but they got caught. Then they tried to toss poisoned bales of hay over the fences at night to poison the Yid’s animals. They just wouldn’t stop.

Then Hussein Barak was elected sheriff. One day, the new sheriff came out to the farm and told the Yids that they would have to give the Rabs more of their property. “We’ll sell them a few more acres, if they promise to stop harassing us,” the Yids’ leader said, “but why should we give it to them?”

The sheriff said the Rabs were homesick for the land they used to live on and as a result, they should be allowed to move back on it without payment. The Yids refused. Then Sheriff Barak said he was going to give the Yids a deadline to move their belongings off a valuable strip of land that the Rabs wanted. The Yids had some houses on that land and if they gave it up, their property would be cut in two, making much easier for the Rabs to do more damage to their crops and animals and people, but the sheriff wouldn’t listen. It didn’t matter that the Yids had lived in that area years ago or that they’d paid for the property or that they took what had been neglected and made it productive or that they saved the life of a young Rab who’d been almost gored to death by a bull he was trying to steal. None of that mattered to Sheriff Barak. “I don’t want to have to come out here every week to investigate another incident,” he told the Yid leaders. “Give them what they want and I’ll have more time to work on my golf game.”

That’s where things stand today. Will the mayor let Sheriff Barak have his way? Will the United Nations judge rule that the Rabs have a right to the land based solely on the fact they wanted it? Will the Yids who would rather not fight, give in in hopes that the Rabs will be satisfied? Stay tuned to find out the rest of the story.

5 thoughts on “A Modern Never-Ending Story

  1. Sensing an underlying political theme here, Pete! We stand with Israel too! What a beautiful day here in Albany! jean


  2. Good grief.

    I just watched a very interesting show on PBS, “1913: Seeds of Conflict.” It is a balanced representation based upon historical writings, including diaries of some of the more significant participants and observers, regarding the (adverse) impact of the influx of Ashkenazi Jews and other Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, into Palestine in the early 20th century.

    Prior to their arrival, under the benevolent rule of the Turkish Ottomans, Jews, Muslims and Christians, lived and worked together in relative peace. The European Jews and their self-serving Zionist ideology including a well-documented land-grabbing agenda, as well as, an unabashed racist attitude toward the local Arab population, would eventually destroy all that.

    One thing that I was unaware of was to what extent WW1 interfered with efforts to bring about a reconciliation between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine at that time. Being preoccupied, the major powers at the time had little interest in acting as mediators in a dispute which they, no doubt, did not consider important to their own nationalist agendas.

    Too bad because…here we are…


    • Unfortunately, the premise–that things were fine until the Jews of Russia started arriving–is incorrect. Here’s a short summary clarifying the situation: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/seeds-of-conflict-could-sow-confusion/. A further error is to describe Arabs as farmers. Most Arabs were peasants working land owned by rich men who resided outside Palestine in places like Turkey or Egypt. These “farmers” didn’t own their own land. Also, early Jews settlers purchased land and then hired Arabs to work it. The kibbutz concept doesn’t come into play for decades. Opposition to Jewish settlement came in large part from religious leaders. That said, many of the settlers came with the notion that they were returning to an unoccupied homeland and they were contemptuous of the Arab population. So let’s say the conflict was inevitable and both sides contributed to it.


      • Living in “…relative peace” is not the same as saying, “…everything was fine.”

        But you might watch the show when you get the chance.


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