Bricklayer's Wisdom

An old friend of mine - a periodontist (you and I might ignorantly call him 'a dentist') from the US - dropped by chez treppenwitz yesterday and shared a story that he'd heard from one of his patients... a story with potentially far-reaching applications in the middle east.

It seems this patient - a master brick-mason by profession (you and I might ignorantly call him 'a bricklayer') - weighed in with a simple solution to the ongoing land-for-peace scam that has left Israel holding the bill as each of the entities receiving our precious land has refused to pay up with even a little of the promised peace.

In typical old-world style, instead of speaking directly to the topic at hand, this elderly brick-mason shared a lesson from his trade experience that could (and IMHO, should) be applied at the international level.

It seems that this master brick-mason has built hundreds of chimneys in his career.  Now, each chimney obviously represents a sizable investment in both time and materials for a brick-mason.  Yet, because the typical arrangement in the home-building industry is that money often doesn't change hands until after the entire house is completed and sold, the humble bricklayer is forced to expose himself to considerable financial risk with each chimney he builds.

Apparently this conundrum occurred to enough of his fellow tradesmen over time that a widespread practice came into being that offered security to the brick-masons without negatively impacting honorable contractors and home-buyers.  The way he explained it (presumably around a numb mouthful of cotton wadding and dental instruments) was as follows: 

As a matter of routine, when a chimney reaches approximately half it's required height, the brick-mason morters a pane of glass across the flue and then continues laying the subsequent courses of bricks until the chimney is completed. 

If the contractor/homeowner pays the bill on time, the mason returns to the job site and surreptitiously drops a brick down the flue, breaking the pane of glass that obstructs the chimney.  If payment isn't forthcoming, the bricklayer goes on to the next job secure in the knowledge that at some point a complaint will be lodged about a smoke-filled living-room and his payment will have to be arranged before he will agree to come back and 'solve' the problem.

The beauty of this security arrangement is that it is as iron-clad as it is undetectable.  Anyone running a scope around the jag in the chimney above the fireplace will see only an unobstructed passage to the sky.  Yet until payment is made (and the pane of glass is broken), the chimney will remain completely non-functional.

I don't think I've made any secret of my staunch opposition to the land-for-peace formula by which Israel has become the only nation in the history of the world to have won its wars and then been forced to sue for peace by offering up sizable chunks of land to the vanquished (or worse, to parties that had no legal standing whatsoever in the conflict).  So you can imagine I was initially dazzled to hear such a brilliant way of ensuring that large investments won't be made in vain.

However, like much of the wisdom gained in taxicabs and barber chairs, the secret of how to apply this 'bricklayer's wisdom' to the real world was left for the listener to work out.

Think about it... if only Israel could come up with a similarly fail-safe way to ensure that we were actually buying something with these parcels of land we keep giving away, I might actually become a grudging supporter of this whole land-for-peace concept. 

But until we can find a way to properly insure ourselves against the potential intransigence of our various 'peace partners', I think Israel needs to get out of the peace business altogether.  There's simply no viable future in continuing to build anything with/for someone who can't be forced to pay their bill.