10
California’s Riverside County has another new incorporated city, Hefa. It is named for Haifa, one of the Israeli cities devastated by nuclear attack in the One-Day War. The new Hefa lists a population of 7,583, of which 99 percent are said to be Jewish, and 85 percent recent Israeli refugees or their children.
Hefa is the seventh new Jewish settlement to be incorporated in Riverside County since the war. Numerous other refugee housing developments are springing up in the county’s dry hills, greatly straining county services and water resources. This has already resulted in new action on the proposed seawater desalinization plant near Laguna Beach.
The establishment of Hefa is expected to increase the pressure for a new county to be carved out of eastern Riverside County, which now has a refugee population listed at 321,718. The proposed new county would be named Khadash Yisra’el, New Israel.
Most non-Jewish residents object strenuously to the proposed Khadash Yisra’el, the laws and government of which would inevitably reflect Israeli and Hebrew culture and values. (And there is essentially no prospect at all of a new county being formed in which any substantial number of residents object to the proposal.)
Most of the refugees have settled in already-established cities, or in unincorporated areas with substantial non-refugee populations. This has drastically changed their ethno-religious mix, and incidentally stimulated a surge of neo-Nazism.
One Khadash Yisra’el proposal would establish the new county in the form of eight geographically separated rural and urban townships, an administrative and service nightmare which, however, could probably be gotten to work. Unofficially, Riverside County itself is said to be open to the proposal. Especially since, in those eight areas, non-Jewish, along with numerous long-time Jewish-American residents, are rapidly selling out to newcomers, speculators, and their agents. Booming real estate prices will no doubt entice many other owners to sell.
Numerous refugees packed into rental housing, in cities such as Riverside, Elsinore, and nearby towns in Orange and San Bernardino Counties, say they would eagerly move into the proposed Khadash Yisra’el if they could afford to. And the recently formed Fund for a New Israel is accruing and expending funds for their resettlement. If the proposed eight-part Khadash Yisra’el is formed, it seems quite possible that subsequent land purchases will result in its enlargement, and perhaps amalgamation into fewer parts, or even a single unit.
U.S.A. Today
Arlington, VA
October 11
The parking lot and warehouse were surrounded by a corroded eight-foot chain link fence topped with accordion wire. The gate, however, had been left open as if no one cared; as if there was little inside worth looting. It was night, and only four cars and a step van were parked there, all more or less old, possibly even abandoned. A single, aged delivery truck stood beside the loading dock, like a tramp steamer tied to a wharf. On its side was painted Shefner’s Used Furniture.
Rafi Glickman parked his ten-year-old, soot-grimed Honda, locking the door before leaving it. He’d have preferred it washed and waxed, but dirty, it didn’t draw the wrong sort of attention.
Beyond his choice of loyalties, personal preference played little part in Rafi’s life. He was a veteran of the proud Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, defunct since the Exodus. Recently he’d become an operative in the New Mossad, named in honor of the old. Rafi considered this no honor, but an insult to the original.
Unknown to the New Mossad, he was also a member of a New Israel anti-terrorist conspiracy so secret, it had no name. A conspiracy that undertook to reduce terrorism in any form in the Americas, Israeli as well as anti-Israeli. A conspiracy whose special weapon was the quiet phone call, normally to the FBI’s public informant number. They wanted no credit—anonymity was security—and so far the FBI seemed not to have uncovered them.
Rafi crossed the graveled lot, climbed concrete steps to the loading dock, and pressed a button by a door. Inside, he knew, someone was examining him on a screen. There was a brief buzz; he turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside, the place was poorly lit. He deliberately did not look around, simply walked down an aisle between stacks of furniture, turned right, entered a hallway, stopped at a door and knocked.