TEL AVIV – The thirty-centuries-old internecine strife
between Arab and Jew came to a grinding halt today as what is hailed as the
greatest peace agreement of all time was brokered – by a fourteen-year-old from
Brooklyn. Only a few weeks after the storied IDF Major General and former
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 87, died not far from his boyhood home in the
citrus groves of Kfar Malal, and a decade after the death of the Sharon-styled
“irrelevant” PLO leader Yasir Arafat, the heads of state of Israel, Syria,
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and ten other Middle Eastern powers covenanted for
peace this past week in this Israeli town whose name means ”Hill of Spring.”
Succeeding where a dozen presidents, prime ministers, and kings have failed for
66 years, the most incredible part of the unprecedented peace agreement is its
broker, who is neither lawyer nor soldier, politician nor statesman. Instead,
he is an honors student at P.S. 96 who works at a JCC Laundromat three times a
week.
“I think it was the motivational tapes that gave me the
strength to see it through,” said Carlos Linstrom, 14, of Brooklyn Heights. “I
never really used to be the assertive type, but since I got this deluxe Do
it Now! Package for kids, things have really turned around for me.”
Lindstrom is referring to self-help guru Shallini Cox’s explosive video, audio,
and print series, which have been styled as a medley of positive-thinking and
behavioral modification popularized by David Hasselhoff, Anna Nicole Smith,
Florence Henderson, and Sherman Helmsley. “I got them initially as a Christmas
present,” Linstrom said. “I didn’t think much of them at the beginning, but
after listening to them for five or six thousand hours, I started to see
things,” he said. “Obviously the first steps were to pick up Arabic, Hebrew,
French, Russian, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashtun,” he said. “That took me almost a
month, because I had a science project due. Then I had to create a brief sketch
of the major military conflicts of the region, all the way from the 1948 War of
Independence to the era of Sharon’s noctural reprisal raids, and then on
through the Yom Kippur War, the Oslo Accords, and the Netanyahu era,” he said.
“Finally came the ultimate test of statecraft: getting the attention of the
leaders of these fifteen powers, as well as the United States,” he said. “My
dad sort of works with the government, so I thought I might start there,”
Linstrom said. “His company does the plumbing for the UN building.”
Realizing he’d need more of an edge to get the peace process
rolling, Linstrom decided eventually it was time to play hardball. “I decided
to start a weblog of my own,” Linstrom said. “I called it www.heyletsstopfightingandstartlovinginthemiddleeast.com.
Then I started posting all of my ideas, and finally I got hold of some high
officials in the Israeli Ministry of Defense. At the same time, someone in the
royal kingdom of Saudi Arabia bit, and I knew I’d gotten a minyan for my
Mid-east coffee klatch,” he said. “Using an algorithm to link to
Shar’ia-approved swimwear sites didn’t hurt either, I’m sure,” he said.
What about the origins of the agreement itself? ”My buddy
Harold Pinsky is good at English – he gets As on all his papers,” Linstrom
said. “I had him write the agreement, and his mom looked it over. She’s a
paralegal,” he said.
Linstrom isn’t sure what his next project will be, although
he indicated an interest in the world of high finance. “I did tons of espionage
research, and I did come across some cool stuff,” Linstrom said. “For example,
there’s this book called Tradecraft: What Spymasters Can Teach us About
Investing. I thought it would be filled with shoe escape kit, 007-type
stuff, but it’s mostly filled with accounting and securities fraud cases,” he
said. “There are some decent spy stories in it, though, and the author connects
them to the financial fraud cases. I might need money, so I’m going to start
playing with this stuff, I think,” he said. “Even if I win a Nobel Peace Prize,
I think my mom has to watch the money until I’m 18, so I’m not done taking care
of towels at the JCC just yet,” he said.
Tradecraft can be found here: www.unlimitedpublishing.com/redmond.
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