Land of Promise

by James Wesley, Rawles

  The next day they had a scheduled meeting with Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) in Hashron. The factory was a spinoff of a kibbutz. IWI primarily produced Tavor bullpups in several variants, but they still had a stock of the obsolete Galil rifles, which by the 2040s were mainly purchased by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The reconditioned Galils had been re-barreled with 1-turn-in-7 twist barrels, Picatinny rail topcovers, forends with integral infrared lasers, and fresh tritium night sights. Rick negotiated a purchase of all the reworked rifles that IWI had in stock, and he requested another 5,000 Galils or R4s, built to the same specifications, whenever they might become available. They also ordered a large stock of spare parts, magazines (12, 35, and 50- round capacity), magazine pouches, slings, cleaning kits, and armorer’s tools. They had lunch with some balding, well-tanned IWI executives who were clearly fascinated with the advent of the Ilemi Republic. They had lots of questions about the enigmatic Harry Heston, some of which Rick had to politely rebuff. After lunch, they concluded their contract negotiations and provided the obligatory End Use/End User certificate and letter of credit. Hearing that they were planning to take a cab, one of the executives had his personal assistants give them a ride back to their hotel in Tel Aviv. After showers and a change into more casual clothes, Rick grew visibly nervous about what was to come: Meeting Meital’s parents.

  Chapter 11: Trepidation

  “Fear cannot take what you do not give it.” -- Christopher Coan

  Tel Aviv, Israel -- January, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

  The Landstuth family’s house was on Moshe Mukdi Street in the upscale coastal neighborhood of Ramat Aviv, where many of the Tel Aviv’s high-tech millionaires lived in gated seclusion. Their house was just a short walk from the beach and immediately north of the site of the former Sde Dov Airport. The old airport closed in 2018 and its operations moved to Lod airport, thus making way for the construction of several huge blocks of apartments, which the Ramat residents hated even more than the noise of the old airport. Their main complaints were that the apartment blocks spoiled their view of the coast and that the swarms of new residents from the 16,000 apartments crowded what had formerly been a fairly secluded beach.

  They stopped by the big shopping mall (kenion or “canyon”) on Einstein Street and bought one final gift for her parents: a bouquet of mixed flowers. This was one of the Austrian traditions still strong in her family. Meital had been brought up with the admonition: “Never show up as a dinner guest without a bottle of wine or a Blumenstrau, or better yet, both.”

  Via e-mail Meital learned that her sister Liel was at Palmachim Airbase attending a course about a new model radar, so she could not get away to be with them for the dinner. It saddened Meital to know that only her mother and father would be there.

  Rick would always remember walking up to the front porch of the Landstuth family home, ringing the doorbell, and waiting to hear the approaching footsteps of Meital’s father as a few of the most terrifying moments in his life.

  They were both relieved when her father answered the door with a smile on his face and pleased that he shook Rick’s hand before he crossed the threshold of the door. “Come in, come in,” he urged.

  Meital’s mother stood two steps farther down the hall and greeted Meital with a hug. She made all the right noises when her daughter handed her the bouquet of flowers, and that broke the ice. Rick was pleased at the sight of Meital’s mother: She was still slender, and although graying and slightly wrinkled around her eyes, she had a timeless beauty. Unlike her husband, she seemed to be of Middle-Eastern ancestry without the Western European features -- perhaps her parents had come from Lebanon or North Africa. Rick thought of this as an opportunity to see what Meital might look like in 30 to 35 years, and he liked what he saw.

  The front hall of the spacious, airy house was lined with fine artwork; their taste seemed to run toward landscape paintings. There were also several bronzes of birds, pleasing to the eye, and the whole house exuded an air of refinement. Absent anything crass or garish, by the furnishings and artwork it was clear that the Landstuths had significant wealth.

  They sat in the living room, where a pitcher of iced tea was already waiting for them, beaded with condensation. The room furnishings were eclectic: modern couches and a large beveled glass table, but the walls were lined with antique mahogany dressers, cabinets, and display cases filled with collected rarities. The divider between the living room and dining room was dominated by a large, dimly LED-lit smoked glass temperature-and-humidity-controlled wine case, which in Israel’s Mediterranean climate was the only way to keep their wine collection at the proper storage temperature. To Rick it looked as if the large case could hold 250 bottles, and it was nearly full.

  While Meital’s mother busied herself at the kitchen sink getting the bouquet of flowers in a vase and then positioning them on the dining room table, Meital poured glasses of iced tea for her father, Rick, and herself. They sat nervously for a few moments, wondering who would speak first. It was tense and awkward moment for all three of them.

  Finally, just as her mother was coming back to join them, Meital’s father said, “We got that case of wine that you sent us from Austria -- all safe and sound. We’ve already enjoyed two bottles of it, but we are rationing ourselves. The bouquet of that vintage should be at its peak in 2052 or 2053, so we will be saving most of the case until then. But of course, we could open a bottle tonight. Yes?”

  Rick answered, “I must confess that Meitali and I don’t drink much wine, so I’m afraid that the qualities of that Grüner Veltliner would probably be lost on us. We wouldn’t be able to tell it much from vin ordinaire.”

  Her father chortled. “By your selection of that wine, I had expected you to be a wine expert. It was a very well-chosen wine, and I’m quite grateful.”

  Meital replied, “If I’ve learned anything in the art world, Father, it is to defer to the judgment of experts. We took the wine merchant’s word for it. But I did first make sure that he had a great rating on the Net.”

  Rick added, “Speaking of wine, I also bought this for you when we were in Switzerland.” He handed her father the Swiss Army knife.

  He opened the box and smiled. He flipped up the knife’s corkscrew and let out a chuckle. Looking up, he said, “Thank you, Rick. This is a great knife.”

  Then her mother changed subjects. “I’m so sorry that Liel could not be with us here tonight.”

  Meital and her father said in unison, “Duty calls.” And then they all shared a little laugh.

  Meital’s father put on a more serious expression and said, “I don’t even want to discuss your worship of Yeshu and this concept of a New Covenant, which began with him.”

  “No, Father, the New Covenant was first mentioned in Yeremeah 31:31, where the prophet Jeremiah revealed a New Covenant for the Remnant of Israel -- and that was written in the sixth century B.C. But I don’t want to get into an argument with you. You are right: We can probably never reconcile our very different views of Yeshua HaMashiach. So please let’s just set that difference aside and concentrate on family.”

  Her father sighed and then said, ‘So be it. You have been a Yeshu follower for too many years, and now you have married a Christian Gentile. Realistically, I do not expect you to ever return to our faith. So, to keep peace in the family, let us just ‘agree to disagree’ and get on with our lives.”

  Meital reached out to clasp her father’s hand and said, “Thank you, Aba.”

  He let out a short laugh and then pivoted toward Rick and asked, “My question to both of you is: How soon do you think that I might expect to hear the good news that I am to be a grandfather?”

  Meital answered, “Rick decided to let Ha-Shem plan our family, and I agreed.”

  “Aha! So then I can expect many grandchildren?”

  Rick replied, “Yes, many, if He wills it, and soon, if Ha-Shem wills it.”

  The rest of the evening was pleasant. Meital’s moth
er served a dinner that included potato cream soup, schnitzel with noodles, broccoli, and cheesecake. Their conversation continued through dinner, and Rick learned a lot of Landstuth family history that Meital had never mentioned, including the story of how her great-grandparents had emigrated to Israel in the 1930s, but how some others in the family had stayed in Austria and perished in Nazi death camps. Meital’s father also recounted his service in the Israeli Defense Force and his work as an artillery Forward Observer in the Third Lebanon Invasion, working with laser target designators.

  The mention of the laser target designators piqued Rick’s curiosity, so he asked, “Do you remember which model, after all these years?”

  He answered, “Yes, I do, but I can’t tell you.” The Israelis were obsessive about military secrecy, and most of them applied that throughout their full lifetimes.

  Meital’s father died of a heart attack just seven weeks later. Meital was glad that she and her father had reconciled before his death, but she was saddened that he had not become a completed Jew in Yeshua. When she and Rick traveled to attend the funeral service, Meital was suffering from morning sickness: She had learned fifteen days earlier that she was expecting a baby. Meital brought with her a fist-sized piece of green Serpentine stone that had been tumbled in the bottom of an Ilemi wadi to place on her father’s gravestone.

  Chapter 12: Grazing Rights

  “When goods do not pass borders, soldiers will.” -- Frederic Bastiat

  Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- January, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

  For hundreds of years, many cattle-herding tribes ranged into the Ilemi Triangle. These included the Shangilla and Oromo (Borana) of Kenya and Ethiopia, Turkana of Kenya, Nyangatom (also known as the Merille tribe), Dongiro, Dassanetch, and Anyuak of Ethiopia, the Toposa of Sudan and Uganda, and the Jie and Karimojong of Uganda. But less than 1,000 people could be considered permanent residents in the Triangle. And of those, about 80% of the populace lived in a two-mile radius of the low elevation villages of Karotho, Kibish, Kokuro, Koyasa, Lokomaringo, and Lotoibok — all in the eastern half of the Triangle. Some of these villages remained viable only because of a steady stream of funds and food from NGOs.

  They found that the former villages of Kaiemothia, Kamachia, and Naitatitok, still marked on many maps, had been abandoned for years.

  The border agreement carved out a rectangular notch that granted the small border villages of Kokuro and Loruth to Kenya, because the local tribesmen strongly considered themselves Kenyans and they were closely aligned with other villages in the East Turkana region.

  The Ilemi Republic’s border agreement with South Sudan and Kenya was later expanded to include Ethiopia. The border village of Gnaculamo (also known as Nakua depending on the background of the mapmakers) was just 3.5 kilometers east of the Ilemi boundary. This was in Ethiopian territory and would remain that way. But because some Ethiopian herdsmen were long accustomed to seasonally grazing their herds on the Ilemi side of the river, a free-grazing treaty allowed the local herdsmen to continue to herd their cattle into the Ilemi, but only if they instituted cattle branding within two years and agreed to never steal cattle from other tribesmen. Branding prevented cattle thefts and assured recompense for breaches. Although branding was done at private expense, several charitable funds donated branding irons, both open-fire irons and propane-heated, as well de-worming paste.

  Part of the border agreement called for the creation of border crossing cards in lieu of passports for the four border nations. A cooperative agreement promoted the development of highways and guaranteed the right of transshipment without duties for all four nations. The West-East axis Lagos-Mombasa Highway 8 and the North-South axis Cairo-Capetown Highway 4 were the closest existing highways, sporadically developed since 2010, under the Trans-African Highway network.

  Caliph’s Palace, Riyadh, Arabia, -- January, Four Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

  The Caliph was furious when he heard the announcement of the establishment of the Ilemi Republic. He first turned his wrath on his own intelligence agency, the WIS-MOIS. He was deeply angered that they had not warned him of the impending announcement. When the WIS-MOIS Director was summoned to Uthman’s War Room, the Caliph roared, “I trusted you to watch and see everything, and yet you are blind! If your agency ever has another lapse of this magnitude, it will not go unpunished.”

  Next he summoned his Secretary of State and his Chief of External Operations. He ordered them to do everything in his power to stop the development of the Ilemi Republic. “Assassinate their leaders, punish any nation that supports them, tie up their logistics in bureaucratic knots, freeze their assets, strike fear in the hearts of anyone who dares to emigrate there or ‘purchase’ citizenship. If we do not squash this little would-be nation quickly, then it will become another Israel -- a constant thorn in our side.”

  In addition to purchases from manufacturers and middlemen, another source of weapons was South Sudan. These were mostly war trophies taken from captured or killed Thirdist insurgents and sold on the open market by South Sudanese soldiers. Most were AK-47s and AKMs. There was also a trickle of firearms, mainly HK G3 rifles in poor repair that had belonged to herdsmen from Kenya and Ethiopia. They were often eager to trade their nearly ten-pound G3s for seven-pound AKs. The AKs also had a shorter overall length, which made them more desirable to the herdsmen who carried them daily. Oddly, even when offered slings, they preferred to carry their rifles resting horizontally over their shoulders, held by their barrels.

  In contrast, the Ilemi militiamen preferred the ballistically superior G3s and carried them slung across their chests with modern nylon slings. Once they were rebuilt with fresh barrels, these 7.62×51mm rifles were much more accurate than the 7.62×39mm AKs. By the middle of the 21st century, HK G3s were considered obsolete and nearly antique. But AKs of all varieties were considered old technology but timeless, although the 5.45mm AK-74s were finally beginning to outnumber the older, larger-caliber AK-47s.

  A substantial supply of new spare G3 barrels and assorted G3 and HK91 parts was found in Maputo, and soon smuggled into the Ilemi by TAT. Optics for the G3s proved more difficult to find, since G3s used an unusual scope mounting system that clamped onto their receiver tops. Eventually a supply of Hensoldt scopes was located in Germany, retrofitted with modern LED crosshair illuminators, and brought into the Ilemi by way of Israel.

  Establishing a field uniform for the IRDF was fairly simple. They adopted the Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) which had recently been discarded by the U.S. military after more than 30 years of continuous use. Because it had been standardized for such a long time, large quantities of surplus uniforms, hats, and matching pattern field gear were available. There were also still very good supplies of commercially-made Multicam clothing and gear in the open market, which were close enough to OCP to use interchangeably. Rifles, machineguns, mortars, and artillery would be painted to match using airbrushes. All of this painting developed into a cottage industry, especially in tribal villages.

  Short pants and short-sleeve shirts were allowed for peacetime, but every militia member was expected to own at least two sets of long sleeved Multicams for a wartime reserve and for wear at ceremonial parades, weddings, and funerals. The IRDF had no “dress” uniform – long-sleeved camouflage fatigues supplemented with tan and green striped Stable Belts were their fanciest uniforms.

  A local modification of the Canadian Army Multicam rain poncho, lining it with a Mylar space blanket, made it double as a thermal sight spoofing camouflage garment.

  IRDF military vehicle camouflage used the same colors from the Multicam pattern, but with most of them, except gray, scaled up to much larger blotches.

  Immigration to the Ilemi Republic was spurred by more than just the desire for religious freedom or safety from religious persecution. Many people in Western countries simply chafed under governments that were repressive and had confiscatory tax structures. Alan Pil
cher’s staff kept track of immigrant surveys. The most revealing ones were anonymous. For Israelis, “taxes, inflation, and high cost of living” were cited as the number one reason for immigration to the Ilemi. For South Africans, “taxes, racial discrimination, property crimes, poor water and sanitation infrastructure, and scheduled power outages” were mentioned. Americans cited “taxes, gun laws, nanny state bureaucracy, police abuses, DHS roadside checkpoints, and vehicle restrictions.”

  The vehicle restrictions that came in under the euphemisms “vehicle standards normalizing” and “travel metrics” had become recognized as insidiously evil. Starting in the early 2010s, Detroit carmakers began installing Event Data Recorders (EDRs), commonly called “black boxes,” that recorded a vehicle’s speed, throttle position, brake pressure, and RPM of the engine. This, they said, had been done “for research purposes.” Next, rear-view cameras became mandatory for new cars. Then came mandatory dash cameras. This was soon followed by the requirement that both cameras be continuously operating whenever the car’s engine was on. Then came a new generation of black boxes that kept track of location, speed, and other data at all times. Originally instituted under the excuse of “crash safety,” this data was eventually used by various agencies for taxing road use and for an automated system of fines for exceeding speed limits. In 2025, bridge and toll road payment booths were removed, because all toll monitoring and collection had become automated.

  In 2028 the Washington D.C. bureaucrats mandated that all new cars have a “limp home” feature that limited a car’s top speed to 40 kph. What would happen if you drove too fast past or between readers/transponders? Then you would be forced to limp home and get an automatically billed traffic violation fine deducted from your bank account. Government fines had top priority for bank debits, immediately after each monthly payroll deposit. The limp home/fee mode was systematically expanded to a wider and wider variety of “infractions,” including unpaid parking tickets, late payment for car registration fees, and even making excessive lane changes or other signs of “aggressive driving.” There were harsh penalties for anyone caught altering any of these design features. Then, the bureaucrats went “Full Orwell” and programmed the traffic monitoring system to detect anyone showing “a driving pattern consistent with drunk driving.” This resulted in remote vehicle slowdown and shutdown, and an officer was dispatched to conduct a breathalyzer test. If a driver left their car before an officer arrived, their license was suspended for six months with the presumption that they had been driving under the influence and had “evaded testing.”