The HEJERA PLOT

by Y. I. Hy (C) The Hayut Foundation, P.O.B. 8115, Jerusalem 91080, Israel.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1:
1.1 In the Beginning
1.2 When Logi-Loony told Reagan's people
Chapter 2:
2.1 On June 6, 1982 , the Israeli army moved into Lebanon
2.2 One morning, a distressed Begin told his closest friend
2.3 When Begin went to the new laboratory that had been outfitted by Logi-Loony
2.4 Begin, already strangely captivated by the behavior of the bizarre solutions
Chapter 3:
3.1 Dr. Theodore (Benjamin Ze'ev) Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism
3.2 Begin; A courageous man by birth as well as by long training
3.3 It was now quite late. The night before, Begin had had a horrible nightmare
3.4 Protocols Of The Lovers Of Zion #1 - Begin And Herzl
Chapter 4:
4.1 The next night, Begin again found himself alone
4.2 Rabbi Akiva, Akiva ben Yosef, the famous Tanna
4.3 Protocols Of The Lovers Of Zion #2 - Begin And Akiva.
Chapter 5:
5.1 Begin had started his HEJERA session with Akiva late in the evening
5.2 Returning from the prayer, Begin started his public campaign to invite the PLO to the World Zionist Congress
Epilogue:
... Which of the following re-solutions would you vote for?

This item is part of the Academy of Jerusalem proceedings. If you wish to comment or receive further related material, contact us by email at yrusalem@actcom.co.il


1.1 In the beginning


In the beginning Logi-Loony's name came up when the President and his advisers were despairing of new peace initiatives for the Middle East. No chemistry formed between the parties, Prime Minister Begin was gripped by fears of holocaust, and any proposed basic solutions got more acid reactions in reply; and any proposal seemed to Begin as endangering the Jewish people and courting disaster.

The president thenmade a break in the talks so that his problem -solvers could come up with some really radical solution to get things flowing. The experts reviewed all the previous proposals ever made, and when they could not find any ways for a breakthrough - they put the computers to search all the catalogs of publications in the various sciences - for any article that mentions the Middle East (the M.E.) and which offers a hold on Begin's outlandish world view.

It was these computers that eventually came up with the names of Logi-Loony and of two articles he wrote on some cybernetic device called the HEJERA. Although none of the experts thought earlier that an article in an obscure journal of radio-astronomy or organic chemistry could possibly be relevant to the matter at hand - yet the Arabists at the State Department were drawn to the name "HEJERA", and the psychologists from the Department of Human Resources were drawn to "Logi-Loony".

The two articles offered a practical response to a proposal published in a Taiwan-based journal on Cybernetics and Policy (which, it was later discovered, was owned and edited by the very same Logi-Loony). The author - an Israeli called "Y.I. Hy" - proposed to build the "HEJERA " - an acronym for "the HEavenly JERusalem Agency" - as "a man\-made flying saucer in which the mentation of various ME leaders are raised", and which was to work in conjunction with "MECCA ", an acronym for "the Middle-East Conflict C omputation Automaton". The entire MECCA-HEJERA concept was rather complex and shrouded in obfuscation. It was quite apparent that the author had no idea of how the device could be built. But in his two papers Logi-Loony suggested he could build it.

As little and strange as the information obtainable on HEJERA was, that on Logi-Loony was even less and stranger. He apparently owned a Korean university where he had not been seen since moving to Taiwan years before. He was rumored to be the younger brother of the Rev. Sun Young Moon, whose Unification Church claimed to unify Christianity with Taoism. Moon of course refused to comment on the rumors, or on anything else for that matter.

What was found about Logi-Loony was that he wrote on every possible subject, and many impossible ones; and that his papers were invariably published in the professional journals in fields which had nothing to do with the contents of his articles. The article in the journal of radio-astronomy proposed the HEJERA as a communications and education satellite for the M.E. The article in the journal of organic chemistry, however, titled "Repercussions of the Zhabotinskii reaction", was mainly a psychological portrait of Mena hem Begin, the Israeli premier (that is how the computers picked this article up).

When the editor of the journal was contacted and asked why he had accepted such an article for publication, he admitted that he was a Jew and had accepted the article while drunkenly celebrating the Purim holiday (a commemoration of the Jews of their redemption from an ancient plot to annihilate them). The editor felt that the paper was enigmatically relevant and that publishing it was a gratifying defiance of professional and political bonds.

Another finding about Logi-Loony was that he must have been very rich; and apparently also very greedy. The wealth came from royalties rights he had in several companies producing electronic gadgets that were supposed to enhance psychic abilities. All other facts about Logi-Loony's life remained shrouded in mystery.

When Reagan's people tried calling Logi-Loony's Taiwan office, they were told that he had left for Washington the previous day. Just as they were putting down the phone in their secluded White-House operations center - a strange and enigmatic man walked in unannounced, saying that he was Logi-Loony, and that he presumed they would want to consult with him. He also said that he could build the MECCA-HEJERA system without problem, but the price he quoted \-- eighteen million dollars - certainly posed a problem for the president's agents.

To their protestations that such a sum could not be allocated without the knowledge of the Treasury and the House; which would jeopardize the needed secrecy; Logi-Loony kept answering with a straight face that this is just what a supersonic fighter costs, whereas his device would serve the cause of peace more effectively. After some protracted horse-trading Logi-Loony set his minimum price to "twice six hundred and thirteen ten-thousands of dollars" for the job - which turned out surprisingly to be the entire reserves of the Covert Operations budget.

Logi-Loony thus proceeded to organize a company called YRU Inc. (which he explained as "Yerushalem Reconstruction Underwriters"). He hired dozens of scholars to travel around the world recording everything ever supposed to have been said by or about twelve people, no longer alive, whose names he supplied.

He also hired many technicians to build the individual components of the Automaton, which he assembled himself in great secrecy. When finished it was a black-yet-translucent box shaped like a cube inside which was a polyhedral star made of two crossed tetrahedrons touching the vortices of the cube. When asked what its strange shape signified, Logi-Loony replied that its shape was synthesized from those of the Ka'ba in Mecca and "the Dome in the center of the Twelve-Gated City, the First of the Two Directions". One of the Arabists from the State Department recognized the latter expression as an ancient Muslim name for Jerusalem.


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1.2 When Logi-Loony told Reagan's people


When Logi-Loony told Reagan's people that the system was ready, they assembled in a darkened room with the Automaton at its center. Logi-Loony touched one of the corners of the box. It then turned out that the smooth black surfaces of the box were actually display screens of some sort, for on each of the object's many surfaces short and well-known sentences, such as "Workers of all lands, unite!", "Allah is Most Great!", "If you will, this Legend would be real" and "I Am my Brother's Keeper", suddenly appeared. The sentences were written in points of light which reminded some of the Reaganites, outdoors men and Western-fans like the president himself, of stars shining in the night sky. When Logi-Loony touched one of the sentences - the whole picture changed: the sentence just touched appeared to be a sort of a centerpiece of a conversation, with a constellation of other sentences clustered around it, reminiscent of people in a conversation. Logi-Loony then pressed twice consecutively, all the sentences currently appearing on the facets of the MECCA disappeared at once, and in place of each, one saw the name of the person to whom the sentence was usually attributed; these twelve persons were:

1) the son of Adam known as "Cain" (and "Idris" in the Koran).

2) Abraham, the legendary patriarch of the Arabs and the Jews.

3) Ishmael, son of Abraham.

4) Rabbi Akiva, a chief author of the mishnah and Talmud.

5) The Apostle John, also known as Saint John of the Apocalypse

6) Augustine of Hippo, also called Saint Augustine.

7) Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.

8) Rabbi Isaac Luria, also called "the Holy Lion" of Safed.

9) Karl Marx, Ph.D., a social philosopher.

10) Theodore Herzl, D. Jur., journalist and play write.

11) Sigmund Freud, M.D., psychoanalyst.

12) Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Palestine.

Logi-Loony told Reagan's experts that these twelve could be viewed as "the founding fathers of the Heavenly Jerusalem", and he thus employed them in the device as the Advisory Board of the HEJERA.

The president's people pointed out that neither Reagan nor Begin would be enthusiastic about a machine which spouted quotations from, say Marx, who expressly opposed heavenly utopias and religions in general. But Logi-Loony assuaged them that all expressions of the historical personages had even been radically modified to have coherence among the HEJERA board. Thus, for example, Marx' private confession to Engels "I am not a Marxist", had been un historically emphasized, as well as other expressions which portray him essentially as a penitent.

The Americans also complained that the sum they had paid was an awful lot for a system of imaginary conversations among twelve famous people and one living interlocutor, but Logi-Loony insisted that the Automaton was much more than that, as they would soon see. He then touched the name of Freud as an example and a three-dimensional image of Freud's head appeared at the apex of a pyramid of laser beams radiating from the corners of the box. Logi-Loony then started conversing with the image of Freud, who proceeded to analyze the anal roots of miserliness.

The Reaganites still complained that even with the dubbed motion-picture holography and natural-sounding conversation, the machine was still basically an ordinary computer. But the more they conversed with the various twelve figures, the more they were impressed that these figures often seemed to have "a sixth sense", even about the unexpressed associations of the person they were speaking to, and they were becoming convinced.

Though Reagan's people had by this time stopped complaining - they still didn't understand how the MECCA-HEJERA system was going to soften what they privately called "Begin's constipation". Logi- Loony told them to simply give Begin the Automaton and show him how to operate it, with only one condition: that he keep his conversations and the existence of the whole system secret.

On the last moment something so strange transpired that stunned the Reaganites. Logi-Loony said he would accompany the HEJERA to Jerusalem, this time - and this was the surprise - at no extra charge.


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