I wish I'd written this, but it's by my fellow Kesher Talk contributor Van Wallach.
D.P. Camp Gaza, July 4, 2006: Initially, the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections last January caused some nervousness among Palestinians. They heartily agreed with the plan to throw the Jews into the sea, but the other aspects of Hamas' platform didn't sound so pleasant.
By March, the Hamas program began to take hold with Shari'a, sex-separated schools, an end to all Western music and cinema, mandatory burkas for women and the confiscation of all shaving equipment for men. The daily beheadings of hold-out Fatah members further heightened unease. Some Palestinians secretly called for joint U.S.-Iraqi intervention to stop the killings. And not a single Jew had been thrown into the sea.
The great revolt began the night of April 12, as Jews celebrated the first seder of Passover. Gazing at dynamic, tolerant Israel so close but unfathomably far away, tens of thousands of Palestinians spontaneously rebelled against Hamas' plague of blood in the most dramatic way possible. They decided they would become Jews.
Later, many people swore they saw the "Angel of Life" sweeping through the refugee camps. Within days, thousands of Palestinians fled to the borders of Israel and declared they were willing to immediately convert if they could then be admitted to Israel. The move enraged Hamas, which attacked the new refugee camps, but heavily armed Fatah members repelled most of the attacks.
One of the new converts explained his determination to become Jewish despite the furious assaults: "Better to die a Jew than live like a schmuck under Hamas."
Accustomed to sudden surges of immigration, the Israeli government reacted with calm efficiency. Absorption and security officials fanned out through the camps, such as D.P. Camp Gaza, to interview families to weed out infiltrators and determine the sincerity of the conversion. Engineering crews built emergency mikvahs to handle the wave of conversion ceremonies.
By May, hundreds of Chabad's most seasoned shluchim appeared throughout the camps to organize and instruct the new Jews. Before long, stickers saying "We Want Moshiach Now!" written in Arabic appeared, along with blue tzedaka boxes.
By June, with ulpan and religion classes proceeding smoothly, the Judeo-Palestinians were definitely getting the knack of their new faith and culture. For example, the first synagogue in D.P. Camp Gaza bitterly split into two opposing factions over the issue of gay rabbis. The first bar mitzvah was a big success, disrupted only when a Kalashnikov rifle accidently discharged during the kiddush (no injuries were reported).
Notaries public throughout D.P. Camp Gaza are busy helping the converts legally change their names. Most of the converts adopted Hebrew names as part of their plan to enter Israeli society. Some, however, opted for names associated with American Judaism as a way to distinguish themselves and perhaps garner more support from the U.S.
One couple for example, went from being Ali and Yasmina to Harvey Fierstein and Barbara Streisand. Barbara told Kesher Talk, "Ali -- excuse me, I mean Harvey -- and I are huge fans of Broadway musicals. And, believe it or not, 'Yentl' has always been incredibly popular at Palestinian video stores. So it seemed natural to honor these Broadway legends." Harvey added, "I've already got us tickets to see 'Spamalot' when it plays in Tel Aviv. Barbara's plotzing, she's so excited."
An informal survey found that other Judeo-Palestinians are now calling themselves Philip Roth, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tony Kushner, Ron Jeremy, Madonna, Kinky Friedman, Sara Michelle Gellar, Alan Greenspan, Fran Drescher, and Montel Williams.
Informed that Montel Williams is not, generally speaking, considered a Jewish name in the U.S., one man replied, "Montel, Shmontel, as long as they let me in."
[Cross-posted at Kesher Talk]
Still deciding whether this represents a dream or a nightmare...
True, but it made me laugh, that's something...
What fun!
I wish the peice hadn't descended into farce. The first two paragraphs are pretty much exactly how I expect things to play out.
The thing about Islamist theocracies, is that though - to an Moslem at least - implementing the 'true laws of Allah' sounds good in the abstract, in practice its a nightmare to live in a state governed according the the sort of laws actually put into place by Islamist theocrats. This has historically made strict Islamic societies really unstable, vacillating between self-endulgent corruption and self-destructive purges in a seemingly endless series of social collapses. So in places like Afghanistan, where they've actually had strict Shar'ia observance (as interpreted by Wahabbist trained or sympathizing clerics) in the recent past, they are very very unlikely to adopt it again any time soon - at least not until they get fed up with the drug culture and start casting around for some solution. But in Egypt, where they've never had such traditions, millions of people are all fired up to begin them and probably will whether we like it our not eventually give Sharia a try (with predictable results).
The same is going to prove to be true in Palestine. The ideal of an Islamic state as described by the Islamists - equality, justice, community, security, spiritual fulfillment, victory over one's enemies, and so forth - is one thing, but the reality of it just won't match up to the idealized vision. It never has before. How many years after Mohammed's death do you have to go to find Islamic society at war with itself? Hamas in power will mean even stricter and harsher enforcement of thier idea of Islamic law, until eventually people are going to notice that Hamas spends more time discomforting its own people than it does spend discomforting thier percieved enemies. Or, if not, sooner or latter the metaphorical equivalent of the Caliph's fondness for young boys, wine, and hashish is going to be noticed - or even just that Allah is not in fact rewarding the Caliph with victory after victory - and cognitive dissonance will tear the society down.
Whatever merits Islam may have had in the 10th century, 10th century Islam will always be unable to produce the promised golden age of prosperity and strength when competing on a 21st century stage. Heck, you wouldn't have even had to wait too many centuries after the 10th to have been able to say something like that. Islamic jurispurdence in all its convuluted forms acts as the great bulwark against Islam's own inadequacies and excesses, and what the Sharia as the fundamentalist sees it does is pull that great edifice down thereby destroying what was the very basis of success during the past golden ages that the fundamentalists yearn for and imagine that they are striving for.
For all the terrors Islam has visted on neighboring cultures, I think no one has suffered under Islam more than the believers.