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 ports, 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.
Someone opened it, and Rafi stepped into a room with an eight-foot-long table and straight-backed wooden chairs. There were two metal desks, battered but large, each with a computer. There was also a pair of old, mismatched file cabinets. A man sat leaning back in a swivel chair, his jacket open, exposing a white shirt, and a shoulder holster with pistol. Facing him, five men and two women sat at the table. No one greeted or questioned Rafi. He, too, took a place at the table. Rafi was the newest member, but like the others, sat looking semicomatose, saying nothing—a function of institutional paranoia, giving the impression of profound boredom.
The New Mossad lacked not only the mission, focus, and sense of limits of the old, it lacked its camaraderie, sometime enthusiasm, and any trace of humor. What it had in abundance was ruthlessness, dedication to violence, and broad-spectrum hatred, the ugly products of defeat, frustration, bitterness, and psychosis.
They sat like that for several gray motionless minutes, waiting. Then a buzzer buzzed, and reaching, the man in the swivel chair pressed a button on an ancient intercom. "What is it?" he asked in Hebrew. The answer was cryptic, two initials. "B and B," the voice said.
The man reached again, and pressed a switch that unlocked the office door. A minute later another man entered, tall, powerfully built, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He might have been thirty-five years old; perhaps forty. He looked to be and was the joint product of a martial arts academy and a military academy. Radiating charismatic ruthlessness, he performed as well as lived his role. Being conspicuous was his primary weakness; he stood out in any crowd as dangerous. Rafi feared and hated him for things the man had done in the last weeks of their homeland: Moishe Baran had been in charge of interrogations.
By contrast, the man who'd come in with him was more inconspicuous than any of them—and more dangerous than even Moishe Baran. In the New Mossad, he was the leader, "the first among equals" in the ruling threesome calling itself "the Wrath of God." Another borrowing from the true Mossad that offended Rafi deeply in this new context.
He despised all three leaders, but hid it well. On the day it showed, he would die.
The meeting was businesslike. Local projects were summarized, their problems enumerated. Assignments were made or changed, new projects proposed and discussed. No action decisions were made. Decisions were a function of the Wrath, and made in private.
Nothing was said of teams elsewhere in the country. Rafi knew nothing specific about them. But appropriately, Riverside held the central command—
Near the end, it was proposed that all reputed "messiahs" be assassinated, as an affront to God. There could be only one messiah, and he could only be Jewish.
My God, thought Rafi. These people have graduated to murdering the deluded.
It was decided that the Mahdis and Maitreya did not pretend to be the actual, true Messiah. Only "messiahs" in the Jewish and Christian traditions qualified for execution, and the only one with a meaningful following was Ngunda Aran. To Rafi it seemed likely that a project would be set up to kill the man.
Finally, miscellaneous observations were called for and shared.
Rafi would remember all of it, nearly verbatim and in detail: that was his unique talent. He'd write it down in the privacy of his small apartment, then leave his report in the "letter box" of the week.
When all the rest had finished, Moishe Baran made a final announcement. "I have succeeded in obtaining a Ninja Junior, a highly accurate, ground-to-ground cruise missile with a five hundred-pound warhead, a speed of zero point eight mach, and a range of nine hundred and fifty kilometers. At our next meeting, we will discuss possible uses for it."
The meeting was then adjourned.