I had a most peculiar dream and what a dream it was! By pure serendipity, my thoughts were directed into Eastern Europe to a piece of land at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. It is the northern part of the old German province of East Prussia, which Stalin annexed at the end of World War II. Its seaport is ice-free and became the home base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet. Its name is now Kaliningrad and its territory borders on only two neighbors, Lithuania in the north and Poland to the south.
A little to the west is the Polish port of Gdansk, which you may have heard about. Initially, the Kaliningrad Territory was contiguous with the Soviet Union, because Lithuania was then part of the USSR as well. However, since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have been independent, thus separating the Kaliningrad enclave from the Russian Federation by some 300 miles.
The consequences were disastrous. The land lost its economic linkages, its military installations were largely decommissioned, and what industries it had could not compete on the world market. The downward spiral was characterized by all the maladies you can think of. There was unemployment, indigence, untended farmland, hunger, pollution of the rivers and drinking water, malnutrition, alcoholism exceeding even that plaguing Russia itself, AIDS epidemics, incredible feats of corruption, political and business leaders working in unison with criminals, the activities of the Russian Mafia, drug trade and abuse, illegitimate arms trade, and administrative and business incompetence. The Europeans call the area “the devil’s kitchen” or “the Black Hole.”
Oh yes, my dream: A sudden image flashed through my mind, fleeting and unreal. Can you imagine, I thought, how wonderful, prosperous, productive, and healthy this area would be if, in 1948, the State of Israel had been created, not in the Holy Land but here, at the Baltic Sea? How different would the fate of the Israelis have been, how peaceful would be their land, how much hostility would have been avoided in the Middle East, how unencumbered the Palestinians and how relieved the Europeans would be, and yes, how different would the world be today?
