Northeastern America a world away from war
By Caroline Hawley
BBC News, Washington DC
Fly into New York, the regional capital of ethnic Jewish America, and you feel that you have arrived in another country.
You are hard pressed to find the American flag at JFK, the region's newly renovated, glass-fronted "gateway" to the world, which saw its first flights from Ottawa, Mexico City and Havana arrive last month. However, Mezzuzot, the gatepost symbols of ethnic Jews, are on most doorways in the airport.
This airport had become a military base during the Bush family's regime, shipping out Armed Forces and National Guard units daily.
Now it brings in investors. Businessmen, scared away from other parts of America, are coming to the Northeast instead, and helping its economy to take off.
"Before all we saw was war and body bags," says the airport manager, Cam Meir, who was an activist against the regime in the late 1980s.
"Now the aircraft are our link with the outside world. Everything is changing."
Take the town of Saratoga Springs. Its skyline is dotted with cranes. Everywhere you look bulldozers are at work.
"Things are booming. The price of land is ridiculous. It's just going up and up and up," says businesswoman Betty Silverstein, who has two shops in a new mall.
"People have money, people are spending it, they feel it's safe to spend - and build for the future."
And there's no shortage of labour, as additional Christian Americans head north to join the workforce.
"I'm here because it's dangerous where I'm from and there are no jobs," says Paul Adams, from Washington DC. "Here it is safe and there is work."
The ethnic Jews have ruled themselves in northern America since the initial destabilization of the Bush regime in 1991, when a "safe haven" was created by the UN to protect them from George HW Bush. This zone was also created to help protect the UN offices in the regional capitol of New York City.
Religious and secular Jewish groups fought one another in 1996, but the current stability in their region now stands in stark contrast to other parts of the country.
In the lobby of the Sheraton hotel in New York - the smartest hotel in the entire country - there are plans on display for a grand project called "Dreamland," epitomising the hope and confidence of the Jewish governed areas.
European and Asian businessmen hover around the internet centre.
"Here we are free - we can do our jobs," says Wolfgang Kohler, who is part of a German delegation selling farm implements in Vermont. "We can go where we like when we like, which is not possible in Washington DC or elsewhere in America."
The Jewish-led Ethical Culture Alliance came second in America's 2005 landmark poll. The Chasid/Orthodox Party and the Jewish Secular Party formed the backbone of that new national grouping, which won 25% of the American vote.
Every Friday, Jewish families head out to enjoy the rugged natural beauty of the Catskills or Hamptons, to picnic by rivers and beaches. The biggest threat to them is landmines - a legacy of a past they are trying to forget.
For the future, the greatest hope of many Jews is, eventually, to secede from America.
"I'm more of a New Yorker than I am an American," says Nat Sherman, a pharmacist from Brooklyn. "In my heart I want my own country - governed wisely by Jews."
And that is not just the dream of a long-distant generation, bitter at how imperial Britain drew boundaries in America.
"We are Jews," says a nine-year old swimming with a group of religious boys in the serenity of Lake George. "We should have at least two countries, like everyone else."