The Viking/Judeo-Christian Conflict - Part 3

Today is Day 50842 of the Maintenance of the Immoral (and Illegal) West Bank Settlements and over 140 years since the start of the immoral (and illegal) occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Rabbi Akiva - “ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18) - this is the major principle of the Torah.”

MarbleSwamp June 25, 2107

Background (Continued)

Employment

Prior to the establishment of the state of Vinland, residents of what is now MarbleSwamp and the Naha Strip had owned businesses or been employed in technology, financial services and a wide variety of other industries. Others worked in the non-profit world such as healthcare and education. The location of their work ranged from the former Marblehead to Worcester and from Lowell to Boston.

The institution of the road closures and the checkpoints over the last 40 years has had a devastating effect on the employment situation in MarbleSwamp and Naha. Those needing to travel into Vinland were usually required to wait up to 2 hours each way to get through the checkpoint and since the majority no longer had a car or truck, they had to wait longer at the border crossing for the irregularly running Vinland buses.

The situation would often become unbearable each time there was a violent incident within Vinland and the government of Vinland imposed a 24 hour curfew within the territories On one occasion in 2102 for more than three months nobody was allowed to leave their home except for a few brief hours every 10 days to stock up on food. During that time, shops, factories, offices, everything was shut.

Eventually, many simply gave up trying to get to their workplace. At the present time, the unemployment rate in MarbleSwamp is approaching 30% while in the Naha Strip where there are few commercial establishments, it is closer to 50%.

With few employment opportunities, many of the JC residents of the occupied territory planted apple trees. Soon the export of apples and apple sauce was the primary source of JC income. Unfortunately, the fanatic Vikings who lived near the former Temple Israel continually harassed the JC farmers and their families by cutting down apple trees and screaming at them when they went to harvest the apples that the land had been promised to them by Odin and that the JC should leave. Most of the time the VDF did not intervene and stop the violence of the Vikings even after numerous complaints by the JC. In addition, the blockade of the ocean and the complicated paperwork needed to get through the checkpoints limited the ability of the apple farmers to export their product. The road closures within MarbleSwamp even made it difficult for the JC farmers of other products to bring them to the weekly market that was now in its 110th season.

Education

Before 2067, students who graduated from the high schools in the occupied territories went to colleges around the country from Boston College to UCLA and from the University of Michigan to Tulane. Since the beginning of the occupation, multiple restrictions on travel have limited the number of JC students who can enroll in colleges in the United States. Many JC have been able to attend East jeruSalem State College and North Shore Community College in Lynn since JC residents can walk to these campuses.

In 2080, however, after ten years of difficult negotiations between the Swampies and the Marbles, often with bitter recriminations about who was to blame for the financial disaster caused by the building of two separate high schools in the area over 100 years ago, the MarbleSwamp Charter College was founded. On a number of occasions, because of an act of violence, curfews have prohibited JC from getting to class inside or outside of MarbleSwamp and sometimes from taking an examination. Because of that and the usual checkpoint delays, the dropout rate is high and the graduation rate is lower than that of black athletes at the University of Texas – El Paso.

Deuteronomy 16:20 – “Justice, justice shall you pursue that you may live and inherit the land which God gave you” and the footnote in the 1980 Hertz Edition “(T)here is international justice, which demands respect for the personality of every national group, and proclaims that no people can of right be robbed of its national life or territory, its language or spiritual heritage.