with Apologies to Jonathan Swift
Some 280 years ago, the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift offered what he termed a modest proposal for the alleviation of the plight of the poor of Ireland 1. Noting that the children of these impoverished classes were an embarrassment due to their number, taking up both space and consuming food, he proposed that the parents should simply eat their children.
Having returned to their ancestral historic homelands of Judea and Samaria after 2000 years, the Jews have once again settled the land, creating fertile soil where there was wilderness, and towns where there was empty desert.
However U.S. Secretary of State Clinton has demanded that these settlements stop “natural growth”.
Clearly as far as she is concerned, the children of the settlers are, in Swift’s terms, a burden to the country – in this case the “country” presumably being the United States. Arresting natural growth seems a difficult feat to achieve, but perhaps not impossible, if one follows Dean Swift’s advice. Why is what superficially appears a drastic proposal necessary? Perhaps the Jews of these areas should cease to procreate? But as Tacitus, the Roman historian writing about the Jews of Judea some 1900 years ago, noted: “as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust”, such a proposal would seem unlikely to be greeted with universal approbation. And for the orthodox settlers, birth control and universal abortion would also appear to be unacceptable.
So we are forced to return to the good Dean’s modest proposal. However there is a problem here too. Following the strictures of Leviticus, while children are clearly animals, and although one may be uncertain as to whether or not they “chew the cud”, I fear that in spite of respectable medieval Christian sources to the contrary, they rarely if ever appear to have cloven hooves. So, with regret, we must abandon the good dean’s undoubtedly well-intentioned helpful suggestion.
Thus we can understand that, notwithstanding Bibi’s wish to acquiesce to Obama and Clinton’s every whim, this is one point on which he must, albeit regretfully, demur.
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1 A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland
from being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public. By Jonathan Swift (1729)
1 comment:
Well done Allan - you have hit the nail on the head and by the way as to Jonathan Swift's suggestion for alleviating the plight of the Irish poor - his proposal lacks just one more suggestion. How should the Irish Poor or indeed the Jews eat their children - FRIED OR BOILED?
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