A Tasteful Answer to the Settler Problem, by Barry Silverberg

Unemployment, despondence, truancy, divorce, subsistence incomes, inadequate and dwindling compensation: Every dispossessed Gush Katif family is plagued by one or more. It is a melancholy object to those who were acquainted with those lovely towns through pictures or personal visits to see the heaps of twisted rubble that once were our most beautiful neighborhoods.

Today, these hapless mothers and fathers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time campaigning for their most basic rights: the decent homes and jobs which were promised them in exchange for the peaceful evacuation. It is evident that some of our most industrious and successful citizens are on the way to financial ruin and will eventually be supported by the state, not only by payments of welfare, but in the programs of rehabilitation and therapy that will be needed to deal with the problems that are being created as these words are being poured onto the page.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and having followed in minute detail the description of these people by the media and the intellectual elite of our great country, and having shamelessly swiped it from the writings of the esteemed Mr. Swift, I have come up with a solution to this knotty issue which will be satisfying to all.

The number of evacuees from the recent campaign is usually reckoned 8,000 and I calculate there may be about 400,000 head of settler in future evacuations, inward folding, dispersions and exiles, from which number I subtract 30,000 couples who, despite their habitation in the aforementioned areas are prepared to lease their maternal grandparents in order to move back to Tel Aviv.

The question, therefore, is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, as they suffer from an overblown sense of morality. Nor will they be willing to staff the massage parlors and escort services of Tel Aviv and Haifa, and thus free us from the plague of foreign workers and the stain of trafficking in Slavic slaves; the young because of their rigid antiquated moral code and their elders for reasons of aesthetics.

I have been assured by a very knowing Persian of my acquaintance in Teheran, that a young, young healthy settler can be converted into a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food,

Gaza evacuation, 2005 © David Furst/AFP/Getty Images

whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a cholent. With a wide variety of gravies available, every settler will simmer in a solution, final and palatable. Cholent
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that the eight thousand evacuees computed be herded into simple plasterboard huts which can prepare them for transformation into practical protein units.

As to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary demonstrations, boycotts and petitions, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging the United Nations. Our country has long been known as one that devours its settlers, although I could name several countries that would be willing to devour our entire nation, as soon as they perfect a nuclear microwave oven.

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Reaction to Plan Generally Warm

Tsippi Leaveme, Minister of Interior Digestive Tract: "We have to be open to change. Once we called him a meatnahel [settler]. The disengagement cut away the nahel leaving just the meat."

Yuli Tamer, Minister of Education, Sport and Nutrition, was even more optimistic: "This may help us find the way to deal with the two major difficulties in the way of educational reform: overcrowded classes and aging, leftover teachers. Our new 'eduburgers' will also provide a hot, nutritious lunch at minimal cost."

Spokesperson for Gush Shalom: "When we organized local and worldwide boycotts of Gush Katif products, we felt we were putting a slow noose around the necks of the settlers. This has resulted in the improved mellow flavor without that fatty taste.

Restaurateurs all over the country have filled orders totaling tens of thousands of shekels already. And no wonder! Settlemeats – the company that has acquired packaging and distribution rights — claims: "Our products are strictly kosher. Settle your stomach with Settlemeats!"