Month: September 2018

I know I said this isn’t all going to be about The Labour Party, but…. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to saying that a lot. Maybe it’s what I should have called the site. Maybe not. I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of sites called that.

Oh well. Today’s exciting instalment is called “It’s all gone a bit Billy Bragg”. Now then, you’ve got to assume Billy’s a smart bloke. You might not like his politics, but you’ve got to assume he’s bright. And you’ve got to assume he knows about decent behaviour.

Decent behaviour goes like this. If you upset someone and you didn’t mean to upset them, you say “I’m really sorry for upsetting you. I didn’t realise what I said was so distressing and really the last thing I wanted to do was upset you and I’m really sorry”.

Decent behaviour does not go like this. “I upset you, but you’re wrong to be upset and let me tell you why”.

Billy has boxed himself into a corner, a corner so tight he can’t do that most basic thing. He can’t take a step back, look at what’s said from a bit of distance and think “Ah… I might have misjudged this one”. So he just digs and digs and keeps on digging.

“If I dig long enough, I might find the plot cos I seem to have completely lost it”.

A few days ago, Billy posted this:

There’s all shades of wrong here. What does it even mean? Am I more loyal to Israel than “to the interests of” England? Is this some kind of Norman Tebbit cricket test? I wouldn’t have thought that’s who Billy would want to associate with, but maybe that’s who he is now. It’s been said before that the Far Left and the Far Right aren’t so different. We all change.

Given that Israel doesn’t play Test cricket, maybe he means “Who would I vote for in the Eurovision Song Contest?” In fairness to Bill, I don’t know. I was happy Israel won the last one, but that chicken song isn’t going to appear on a Spotify playlist anywhere near me. I’m not sure how I would show “loyalty” to either Israel or England.

And what does it mean “the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide”? I genuinely have no idea what that means. I’m guessing it’s some kind of reference to a global Jewish conspiracy. And, by the way, when it comes to the global Jewish conspiracy, I’m not saying there is and I’m not saying there isn’t. The first rule of Fight Club, you know.

The whole thing looks a bit deranged. It sounds a bit mad. A little bit… like he’s stressed.

So yesterday Britain’s three leading Jewish weekly newspapers belied the old joke about “two Jews, three opinions” by all having the same leader and each other’s logos on their front pages. “United We Stand” was the head and in the copy they spoke of “the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government”.

Newspaper editorials are designed to make the reader think. They’re designed to make you question. That’s their job. An existential threat. Maybe. Who knows? Well, Billy knows.

and says, quite reasonably, “how are we supposed to conduct a reasonable debate about antisemitism in such a febrile atmosphere”.

To Billy, this is a reasonable question. But it’s only a reasonable question because of where you’re standing. From where I’m standing, it looks a bit different.

From where I’m standing… the thing is we’re not supposed to conduct a reasonable debate about antisemitism. We don’t need a reasonable debate about antisemitism. Billy – and his wing of the Labour Party – are the only people who want a “reasonable debate about antisemitism”.

No, we don’t need a reasonable debate about antisemitism. What we need is for you to just be quiet for a bit. What we need is for your party to try to remember it’s Her Majesty’s Official Opposition and start bloody opposing.

And if we’re going to have “a reasonable debate” maybe it should be about why you and your party are so obsessed with Jews.

Staying at Ruth’s was always going to be interesting. When did I last see her? 197something, maybe 1975. That was O level year, and I really can’t remember her past that point. Then again, I can’t remember much past that point. 1975. 1976. Don’t suppose it matters that much. I haven’t seen her for a long time.

She’s been here since 1982 and, part from a brief period in Belgium – no, me neither – she’s been here. It’s her story, not mine, but briefly, she felt the pull of the Jew. In England she felt a bit of an outsider and when she came here she didn’t. Her family, her parents, were / are left wing, active. She’s from Wembley, but this is now her home.

Like her family, Ruth is also left wing. She supports Meretz, a left-wing, social-democratic and green political party that was originally formed in 1992, and buys Ha’aretz, a left wing newspaper. Don’t even ask what she thinks of Netanyahu and the West Bank and all that. She loves Israel but she doesn’t love – or understand – all that. It’s not a contradiction here because living here you understand that you have to live life and deal with life, not write a social media post about it.

Ruth’s been on the Moshav since 2006. Together with her husband, Mike, she bought a plot of land – or rather, leased it from the government because that’s how it works, and built a house, a rather lovely three-storey, four-bedroom house with open plan kitchen and smart lighting and a nice black cat called Keenan. She’s invested time, effort and love. This is where the kids grew up and where their family became a family. Tragedy struck in 2014, when Mike died. Testicular cancer. This is the house Mike built, the house where Mike died.

Ruth’s got three kids. The two younger ones are doing national service in various ways. One is involved in a school project and the other, who’s big on sport, is doing something else. But there are also guns. Of course there are also guns. The oldest is 23 and has just finished all that and has just left for her gap year equivalent in Melbourne. The two that are here come home most weekends, but now mainly it’s just Ruth. Keenan makes his presence felt – the arms of the sofas bear witness to that – but it’s a big house with three storeys and three empty bedrooms and lots of echoes. But it’s home. And the Moshav is home.

The Moshav, we should say, is big. 250 families. It’s like a small town with streets and houses and a school, a shop and a synagogue. It has its own train station. The houses, it’s funny, it’s like Laughton Lodge. The original houses are small, wooden, modest. But then, a few years ago, the Moshav expanded and the new houses are a different demographic altogether. Big, self-builds. Impressive. And the people are obviously different. Not the pioneers of old, but kinda wealthy middle-class people looking for a lifestyle for them and their kids. And, of course, there’s the familiar hierarchy of whose been there longest and all that stuff.

There are a few of these Moshavs knocking around. Ruth’s Moshav backs on another Moshav which, unsurprisingly, isn’t as nice as hers. But you can see it’s a lovely place to live, a good place to bring up a family. It’s 20 minutes from Tel Aviv by train and the trains are good, curiously they come when they say they’re going to come. Not sure that’s ever going to catch on.

We spent most of the morning walking around the Moshav, people getting on with life, dogs running around, a little chat with the bloke in the shop. Just people getting on with life. It was, after all, Tuesday. I might be on holiday, but no one else is. The sound of kids came from the school. We stopped off in the library – oh, air con – and had a chat there, and passed projects in mid-build. To someone who spent a couple of years living on a community, it was sweetly familiar.

Then we saw a small, obviously old, wooden structure that looked like a wooden watchtower. Well, it was a wooden watchtower. It was only about 12 – 15 feet high, but it was what it was. There was a plaque on it talking about how the moshav was established, first as a Kibbutz, in 1938, and there were some grainy black and white pictures of men – men who looked like men. You know that famous picture of the construction workers of the Empire State Building taking their lunch sitting on a girder? They look grainy and grimy, proper men though they’re probably in their early Twenties. These people looked like that.

The first houses went up almost overnight, the watchtower making sure that they did. So, I asked. Apart from time, what’s the difference between what these blokes in the pictures are doing to what’s going on in the West Bank? It’s grim now, but in 80 years time will there be a Ruth showing a Jed around an established town there?

Ruth recommended a book – “My Promised Land” by Ari Shavit, a journalist for Ha’aretz. What I’ve read so far, it’s fascinating. “If need be, I’ll stand by the damned. Because I know that if it wasn’t for them, the state of Israel would not have been born… They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter and my sons to live.” About the West Bank he recognises a harsh reality “If Israel does not retreat from the West Bank, it will be politically and morally doomed, but if it does retreat, it might face an Iranian-backed and Islamic Brotherhood-inspired West Bank regime whose missiles could endanger Israel’s security.”

Finally… “What this nation has to offer is not security or well-being or peace of mind. What it has to offer is the intensity of life on the edge”.

Sitting in a roadside café in Tel Aviv – and more of that later – it doesn’t feel like a life on the edge. It feels like what it is – a lively, modern, cosmopolitan city. Coffee in a thousand guises, freshly squeezed orange and a croissant. In so many ways, it’s a city we’ve been in a thousand times.

But sitting there and thinking of Shavit’s last quote, it’s hard not to recall Orson Welles in The Third Man: “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock”.

Tel Aviv seems a familiar place, Buzzing, lively, cosmopolitan. Full of life. It’s like Paris with its cafes spilling out onto the pavement. Or New York with its loud, vibrant buzz. But it’s also got hot heat and, more importantly, it’s got the beach.

The beach is extraordinary. Deep and clean, fine sand. The sea is clear and lively. Waves breaking but nothing that’s going to scare the horses. The people fit the scene perfectly. Lots of people hanging out in the hot heat, all members of The Beautiful Body Club. The men don’t wobble, the women all look perfect in their barely there bikinis, all tanned and lithe. It helps that no one’s under 35. It’s like Logan’s Run.

And it’s a curious thing. When I was planning to come here, some people – the Jews who’d been – said “It’s amazing. Everyone you see is Jewish. It’s an extraordinary idea, we’re the people. We’re not a silent minority. The bloke driving the cab, he’s a Jew. The waiter. He’s a Jew. The people fixing the roads. Jews. The bus driver. Jew. Those people in the bar at the table next to yours. Jews. There’s a gang of young black lads, same as you’d see back home, but then you look again and two of them, on their heads… Jews.

At first it’s a novelty. Then it’s a bit confusing, because if these people are Jews – especially the beach Jews – they aren’t like any Jews I’ve ever seen. My Jew is still a bit Whitechapel, still a bit New York. My Jew has a paunch and is balding. The men, too. Maybe they’ve got a bit of hayfever, definitely an allergy. I’ve got two hernias and a torn cartilege in my knee. That’s supposed to be how Jews are. These Tel Aviv Jews are uber-Jews. Jew 2.0. Bigger, better.

Actually, I love the idea that everyone’s a Jew. It makes perfect sense to me that there’s this place and everyone’s a Jew. It’s like going to France and everyone’s French. “This is France and it’s where the French live. This is Israel and it’s where the Jews live”. Or should that be, “This is Israel and it’s where the Israelis live”? But that rather begs the question: who are the Israelis?

There are Israeli Jews and there are Israeli Arabs. The Israeli Arabs aren’t Palestinians, but are the Palestinians Israeli Arabs? I don’t know, but by the time I go home I will.

This much I have found out. I’m not sure about Israel being the chosen land, but I’m pretty sure Falafel is the chosen food.

It’s easy to get a bit romantic about these things. Look at this roundabout. It’s Dizengoff Square, one of the buzziest parts of one of the buzziest cities. All around the square are cafes that spill out onto the street, all full, all alive. Last night the square was a mess. They’d dug it up, the tarmac was ripped up, the bit below the tarmac exposed. Diggers and machines were running around like worker ants in a colony. This morning it’s almost finished. The road is made. The tarmac smooth. The work is done. Since we’ve been in Brighton they’ve been doing up the seafront road and it still isn’t finished. And we’ve been in Brighton since 1997.

I’m biased. Let’s be clear. I’m biased.

I’ve been here two days now and I haven’t scratched the surface, but all I’ve had are good experiences. A day and a night with Ruth, which was lovely and interesting. Tel Aviv, which is that familiar cosmopolitan city, plus the beautiful beach. People are very friendly, very smiley. There’s that American service attitude here, that “we’re here to help” thing. I don’t care if it’s all about getting tips, I like. And loads of people have got dogs. It’s my thing. I like places that like dogs. It’s my Lottery fantasy. You know those idle daydream chats you have with yourself abt what you’d do if you won the Lottery? Mine is dogs. If I won the Lottery, I’d set up a dog foundation. Well, I would after the travel thing was sated. So maybe about five years after I won, I’d get round to the foundation. But I like dogs. And here they like dogs. Walk on the street, loads of people are walking with dogs. You go in a café and, odds on, the people next to you have got a dog. The dogs are fairly laid back – it’s too hot for all that barking stuff, but then again, I haven’t seen any psychopathic geriatric spaniels.

What does Tel Aviv look like? It looks like a big, cosmopolitan city. Big wide streets – boulevards – with bright lit shops, lots of bars and cafes and restaurants. It’s a consumption city. Conspicuously. And it’s an outside city. The streets are alive with people sitting, eating, drinking, café-ing. Cars everywhere but the big thing here are the electric bikes and scooters. There are bike lanes all over and there are plenty of bicycles, but the electric bikes and scooters are everywhere – on the bike lanes, on the roads, on the pavements. And they go fast. They’re called scooters for a reason – they scoot. Silent and quick, whizzing around, people standing up silently scooting past.

I’ve walked around a fair bit of the city now, walked and, for the last couple of days, cycled. It doesn’t feel particularly big, already I’ve got a real feel for areas and districts, for different roads and routes. It helps that there’s the sea on one side because if you keep the sea in your mind, you always know more or less where you are. The sea feels a lot more present than, for example, Brighton. If you’re in Preston Park or Seven Dials you wouldn’t necessarily know that the sea existed, but here I’m aware it’s there. Is that because I’m a tourist and I’m viewing it through that prism? Probably. Sitting here in Dizengoff Square, we’re nowhere near the beach. I can’t smell it or anything, but I can somehow feel it. Maybe, and I don’t know, I’m thinking that because of how people are dressed.

T-shirts and shorts. Flip flops. I’m not sure how I’d cope here, no one’s wearing a suit. No one’s wearing a jacket even. It’s all t-shirts and shorts, singlets, not shirts. No one looked dressed up, no one looks like they’ve spent hours deciding what to wear tonight. The young girls – mid-teens, that sort of age – look like they’ve made an effort, but that’s all. But they all look good, cool and relaxed. Comfortable with their look, comfortable with their bodies. It’s a loud atmosphere, chatty, laughter – lots of loud laughter. And late. Writing this, it’s 12.20am and it’s the same as it was at 8pm.

Tel Aviv by night is as buzzy as it gets. The bars and cafes spill out on the streets, loud groups of people drinking, eating, being loud. They’re not afraid of being loud here. And again, everyone’s young, 35 max. They’re the same people who were on the beach – good looking, cool. The air is warm – it’s September, past the hottest time of the year, and there’s a breeze, but it’s still warm.

It’s so odd being here, writing this stuff while at the same time reading all the social media posts about Labour, Corbyn and antisemitism. There’s so much rabbit on here (as ever) about Israel, what it is, what it isn’t. It always amazes me that there are so many people from Hove and Stoke Newington and Wiltshire and places like that who absolutely know absolutely what it’s like. Well, I’m in Tel Aviv in a restaurant called Abu Hassan and if they were here it would blow their minds. They’d be like one of those robots in a 50s sci-fi film when asked the exact number of Pi. “Does not compute…. Does not compute” There’s so much certainty about what people back home say, and all that makes me think is of the disconnect.

I’ve written on three people’s threads – really politely and really respectfully – “Are you Israeli? If you’re not, when was the last time you were in Israel?” So far, none of them have responded. The more I see – and the more I see while I’m reading what I’m reading – the more I realise that a lot of it really isn’t motivated by anything going on here.

Meanwhile, back in Tel Aviv… I took a bike and had a good look around today. Away from the wide boulevards of Dizengoff because staying there, it would be like going to London and just hanging around Covent Garden. You’d have a great time, go to some fantastic places, meet really interesting people, but you couldn’t really come away saying you’d “seen” London. And so, even given that I’m only here for a couple of days…

There’s really some not so Covent Garden bits. There’s inequality here. Of course there is, just like there is everywhere. And it’s the same people who are getting schtupped up the tucchus as they do everywhere. I went to the bad area of town – well, that’s always the best place to score – and it quickly became apparent that it was a Sudanese enclave. Black guys hanging around. Women on the streets who I don’t think were waiting for a cab. It was a long way from Dizengoff Square and I’m not sure that I’d rush to take a night stroll there. But that’s no different to any other big city and it’s just a function of a big city in a melting pot immigration country.

Talking to some people last night, I was told that the Israeli arabs – not, note Palestinians – were moving into medicine and law, becoming doctors and chemists, curiously following the same pattern as Asians in the UK. Incidentally, it’s apparently a bit of a trend for some Israeli arabs to identify as Palestinians here, as an act of solidarity.

Actually those roadworks? That really is the romantic thing. Two days later and they’re still working. Maybe they’re not so different.

I’m sitting in an outside bar, having a drink and a smoke. It’s a beautiful evening, around 6-ish, and life is happening in a very Tel Aviv way. I’m reading a bit, thinking a bit, planning the next step – going to Palestine. Blimey, that’s exciting! – when…. My front tooth falls out. It’s a crown, I’ve had it since I was young – my teeth, don’t even ask – and I can feel it in my mouth, just not in the bit of my mouth it should be in.

Something like that happens, you think ”Bloody hell, this is the last thing I need” but then “I’m in Tel Aviv. This is the most civilised, advanced place in the world. If this had happened tomorrow when I was in Palestine…” I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got great dentists in Palestine – odds on, they’ve got better teeth – but still, I’m happy I’m in Tel Aviv.

About 30 minutes later, I’m with Avi, the 24-hour dentist, a lovely 59-year-old bloke who looks more like a proper Jew. So then we have the ritual that goes on at dentists everywhere. You lie there, on the dentist’s chair, mouth stuffed full of cotton wool and things and:

“So how long are you in Tel Aviv?”

“…………”

“You like it here?”

“………..”

It’s fine. Then, still as he’s drilling and prodding and dentisting, he says

“You said before you were going to Ramallah tomorrow. You might think about taking that out” and he touches my earring.

My earring. Hadn’t thought about that. Actually, haven’t thought about it either. In England I can often feel people looking at it. Sometimes people – Jews, usually – ask if I’m Jewish. Here, no one asks.

When Avi’s finished I ask him if he was serious about the earring.

“Sure” he says with a Jew shrug. “It’s not the same as here”.

The next day I’m in a cab in Jerusalem and talking to Adam, the cab driver. Adam’s from Syria, well his father is. Adam’s from Jerusalem.

I’ve thinking about what Avi said about my earring, and so ask Adam. He looked at me, half-smile, half-like he was talking to a child.

“In Israel it’s very nice” he said. “Here, maybe not so nice”.

Efrat’s about 20 minutes from Jerusalem, no further than Brighton is from Lewes. In the real world where politics collides with culture and history, it’s a lot further than that.

But first… I’ve got a podcast to do. Antony works for The Israel Project, an organisation dedicated to putting out good news stories about Israel, putting the other side of the story to the one you usually hear. Their main focus is on the American market, but things that are happening in Israel and things that are affecting Israel anywhere in the world are under the gaze – and right now they are, like everyone else, intrigued/interested/concerned about the rise in antisemitism in the UK and the whole Jeremy Corbyn business.

Anyway, for good or for ill, I’ve been quite vocal on social media about my feelings and fears about Corbyn and Labour and when I told him I was coming over to visit, Antony asked if I fancied doing a podcast for TIP and… yeah, why not? As long as it’s clear I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone, that I’m just a concerned Jew of the Left, why not?

“Sure. Love to”.

It’s not like it’s a subject I haven’t thought about and it’s not like the arguments aren’t ones I’ve had a thousand times, so I was kinda relaxed about the whole thing. I still haven’t listened to it back, but here it is anyway.

https://soundcloud.com/user-579725143/tipping-point-jed-novick

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Like the old saying has it, you can’t make new old friends.

Seeing Antony was very lovely. There’s something interesting about the bonds you put down at an early age. They set deep and they stay there and it doesn’t matter how long it is since you last saw each other, there’s something that binds you. It was there as soon as I saw Lovely Ruth and it was there as soon as I saw Antony. It helped that he hadn’t changed an inch.

Driving out of Jerusalem to Efrat – past the checkpoints, past the walls, past the fences, past the wires – takes about 20 minutes but it’s a lot further than that. You’re not only driving past fences, you’re driving past history and past agreements.

As we approached we went round a roundabout.

“You don’t go down that one” said Antony as we went past one of the exits. That way’s the Badlands”. He took another exit.

“This road is where three teenage Israelis were kidnapped and killed. You remember that story?”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/bodies-missing-israeli-teenagers-found-west-bank

“Stop trying to make me feel relaxed” I said, thinking it was bad form to smoke and drink in someone else’s car.

Efrat is a long way from that cartoon idea of a settlement. Think maybe a small English new town, a smaller Milton Keynes with streets, school, a shopping mall… a proper town with families living lives.

Sitting outside the house – a normal house with normal house stuff – having a glass and a smoke, a helicopter choppered overhead.

I remember when I was living in Tokyo and started working in a high-rise newspaper office. One day the building started shaking. An earthquake. Mild, but still an earthquake. I dived under the desk, but everyone else carried on working as if nothing had happened. A few weeks later and I was sitting next to someone who’d just started working. The building started to shake. He dived under the desk, while I just carried on working as normal.

This was me, Antony and his wife when the helicopter flew over. I was like “Fuck, we’re on a settlement and there’s a helicopter flying overhead”.

Antony’s wife smiled. “It’s when they come over in twos or threes that you start to worry”.

We had a few glasses through the night, but there was never more than one helicopter at a time. And if they weren’t worried… fine by me.

While I was there, we had a drive around Efrat and, in truth, it looks a nice place to live. Take away the fences, the wires, the checkpoint on the way in, the helicopters and the paranoia of your namby-pamby guests, and it’s a nice place to live. It’s easy to see why people go there. A two-bedroom flat in Jerusalem – and not in the Hampstead or Kensington bit of Jerusalem – costs about $900,000. And you can’t park. And you spend your life in traffic – all that usual city stuff.

But it’s still on the darkside and sometimes to feel the paranoia isn’t so paranoid.

On Friday morning we went to the mall – just off the roundabout where one road goes to the badlands and one road is where the three lads were murdered – and it’s just like a shopping mall anywhere. Car park, shops, soft kids play area, supermarket. Most of the faces are white, most of the accents American, but there are also local arabs – Palestinians – who come to do their shopping. Everybody rubs along.

We had a coffee in the cafe, did the shop, took the trolley to the car park, unloaded… the usual. But on Sunday morning, in that very car park, a local bloke – Ari Fuld, 45 – who was doing exactly that was stabbed – murdered – by a 17-year-old Palestinian. In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-critically-wounded-in-stabbing-at-west-bank-junction/

In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.

It’s been a long weekend here, first Shabbat, then Rosh Hashanah. Lots of family time, lots of eating and talking and more eating – everyone’s favourite Jewish pastimes. But now it’s back to work and time to move on.

The local train station is packed with kids, all going back to school after the holidays. Only they’re not going back to school, they’re going back to the army. They’re all milling around, these kids and they just look like kids, all fresh faces and larking around, except they’re wearing green army uniforms and mostly carrying guns. Odd doesn’t begin to describe it, but of course to them it’s not odd, to them it’s just normal life.

Most of the kids I talk to enjoy the army. They talk of learning skills, of the camaraderie, of instilling discipline, of being fit and sharp and becoming an adult. No one talks of front lines or killing or war. No one talks of the right or wrong of what they’re doing, but then again, I don’t suppose any armies do.

Everyone goes in the army. Most everyone The Haredi don’t go in the army, and that’s a cause of a lot of internal debate. The Haredi are always the cause of a lot of debate. What they contribute, what they do, how many kids they have and how much they take out of the social security system, how they don’t do the army.

I wish I could speak to the Haredi, but that’s not going to happen. It’s easier to speak to a Palestinian in a refugee camp than it is to break into a Haredi circle. Actually, I did have one conversation with one. I was on a train and a big, extended family, maybe four generations, sat down in my carriage and I found myself sitting next to the grandma. I smiled at her, she looked at me, saw my earring and smiled back.

“You’re Jewish?” she said with a surprised tone.

“Of course. Isn’t everyone here?”

And the rest of the journey was her talking to me – at me – about spirituality and the word of The Lord. It was like being cornered by a little old lady Jehovah’s Witness who was wearing a wig. “Everything you see, the sky, the land…” I thought about asking her about ‘the situation’ but… next time.

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Settlements. What do you think of when you hear the word “settlement” on the news? We watch the news every night and every night there’s some report about the West Bank “settlements” and there’s some hideous story, usually presented by Jeremy Bowen – the only bloke who I’ve made an official complaint to the BBC about. In one of his pieces, he referred to the “Jewish bombs” falling on some poor bastard place. Jewish bombs. Got to be careful there, Jeremy, you might just let that mask of impartiality slip. Anyway.

I had quite a romantic – possibly quite stupid – idea of pioneers, tents, wagons, like characters in a John Wayne film heading off West, looking for gold and a new life. The Israeli settlements I went to on the West Bank weren’t quite like that.

**************

I was going to meet an old mate I was very close with back in the old days, primary school days. We’d grown up in the same neighbourhood, gone to school together, our parents were friends, the whole thing. Despite coming from a similar background to mine – more a cultural Jew than a religious zealot – he left England when he was 18 and had gone to live in Israel. First, university, then just living. And now, 45-odd years later, we were back in touch.

Thing is, he lived over the Green Line, in a settlement. A place called Efrat in Gush Etzion.

The West Bank. I was looking forward to going there because, you know, it was a chance to see an old mate and because… it’s a settlement on the West Bank. This is front line living. Me and John Wayne. Westworld in the real world. I was also a bit trepidatious because usually my idea of front-line danger is cutting it fine getting to Waitrose before it closes. A settlement on the West Bank. That’s dangerous, no?

Lovely Ruth had also been friends with Antony at school, but wouldn’t come to visit because it’s over the Green Line. And she won’t go over the Green Line. Perhaps curiously, I didn’t feel conflicted about going. Do I feel that the settlements should be there? No, because the only thing I knew by now was that I didn’t know anything.

Gush Etzion is the name of the area, in English terms maybe the Sussex to Efrat’s Brighton.

“Tell me where you are. I’ll come to your place” I said to Antony on Messenger.

“It’s OK” he said. “Let’s meet in Jerusalem. It’s easier”.

Sometimes it’s just nice to have a day off. Enough of the politics and looking behind the curtain and talking to people about what they really think about life here. Let’s just have a day off. So, we do.

Lovely Ruth and her house guest (that’s me) headed off for a day playing tourist in Acre. Or Akko. Same place, just depends what map you look at.

Right up the coast, past Haifa, Akko is a historic port, all old city and fortified walls. It’s probably full of churches we should go to and ancient monuments we should see and there are probably pages and pages of “Things to do and see” in that nice Lonely Planet book My Fine Wife gave me just before I left home.

Well, the things to do that we did included sitting in a waterfront café, sitting in a waterfront restaurant where they did some great hummus with za’atar, sitting in another waterfront café and getting a speedboat ride around the bay. I can’t remember if we then found another waterfront café. To be honest, it’s entirely possible.

Akko was lovely.

Later that night, we took a ride to the beach at Netanya – a place name I remembered because my parents went on holiday there a couple of times. A beach resort near Ruth’s, just up the coast from Tel Aviv, there’s not a lot to see apart from Ruth’s hairdressers and a jumping beachfront bar. We swerved the hairdressers and spent the night at the bar. The air was warm, the sea looked lovely, the music was bought-by-the-yard bar techno. Lots of boxes ticked. And they served cold beer, red wine and hummus.

As they say in the old country, what’s not to like?

Another relaxing day at Ruth’s. I could get used to this. In the evening we went to some neighbours who were intrigued by my trip to the West Bank.

They were immigrants – of course – but seeing as they’d been here since the 1960s… we can forgive them that. They were intrigued because they define themselves as “Left” and in truth, probably “Very Left”. Everyone here defines themselves as “Left” or “Right” and the labels only seem to relate to their position re ‘the situation’. No one seems to talk about health care and the other stuff that we talk about when we consider whether we’re Left or Right. I got the impression that most if not everyone here agrees on that stuff, and everyone agrees on what we’d call a Left viewpoint. Of course there’s healthcare. Of course you look after the vulnerable and the elderly.

Maybe it’s just that there’s so much rabbit about ‘the situation’ that no one’s got any time or energy for anything else.

One of the reasons my friends are so interested is that, as Israelis, they’re not allowed into Palestinian places.

I remember a few days ago,I had a chat with a mate about how I couldn’t hire a car in Israel and take it into Palestine. Like the smartarse who thinks he knows everything, I made a joke about going from Stamford Hill to Bayswater. (Sorry – a bit of a London-centric joke) and said that I could go from Stamford Hill (very Jewish area) to Bayswater (very Arabic area) but “you can’t go from Bayswater to Stamford Hill”.

Kinda wrong on every level. I could hire a car in Israel and take it into Palestine. Insurance might be grief, but I could do it. And out here people from “Bayswater” can go to “Stamford Hill”, but people “Stamford Hill” can’t go to “Bayswater”.

Even in the space of a few days, the pre-conceptions get overturned and the assumptions are proved wrong. It made me realise that, while I hate using this word, if there is apartheid out here, it cuts both ways.

There are roads you can drive down. And there are roads you can’t. The Palestinians can drive down the roads the Israelis can’t drive down. And the Palestinians can also drive down the roads the Israelis can drive down. Mostly though, everyone stays in their patch, not through anything other than the fact that people are basically tribal. We tend to stick with our own. (I grew up in a Jewish “ghetto” in north London. That’s just the way it was). But also it pays to be sensible.

We spoke long and hard about what it was like out there, about what the future held (their prognosis wasn’t good), and about what could be done to help ‘the situation’.

Could there be a “two state solution”? They doubted it, not in the current political landscape anyway.

What about, as the guide in the Refugee Camp suggested, a “one state solution”? They doubted it, because while that might work, it wouldn’t then be a “Jewish state”, it would just be a country where Jews lived.

What about… I don’t know. They supported Meretz, the Left-ist party, and like most people I spoke to criticised every inch of Netanyahu’s being, but really there wasn’t a lot of positive knocking about. There was, however, some very fine plum cake. And where there’s plum cake, there’s hope.

People milled around the hotel lobby, looking at Banksy originals with their calculators out, paying bills and waiting for cabs to take them back to the light.

I had been toying with the idea of going to Hebron. The unease felt in Ramallah was long in the rear-view mirror and I was feeling I could handle anything. Probably. I’d already heard Hebron is a kettle of fish. There are Israelis and Palestinians both living there and both sets are, by repute, hard. And we’re not talking football hooligan ‘you-spilled-my-pint’ hard. We’re talking hard. There are, apparently, roads that are split down the middle. In the lobby I got into a conversation with a nice British couple – their daughter was starting at Brighton Uni this year – and he said “I really advise you not to go to Hebron. I work for the UN and….” It’s OK. Let’s not go to Hebron. I had another plan anyway. something much less challenging.

When I realised that maybe Hebron wasn’t the place for me or my plaster, I decided to go back to Ruth’s. It was the first night of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and they were having a big family mean – 19 people at the table – and I’d had an invitation to make it 20.

Getting back to the Promised Land wasn’t hard. The checkpoint was abut 100 yards up the road – the guys who got the cabs were maybe given more of a roundabout trip. Just follow the line of the wall and you can’t miss it. It’s a big thing with loads of wire and soldiers all around it.

Smile easily and keep on walking. A series of gates and turnstiles in what looked like a make-shift corrugated iron barn, the checkpoint was effective if not particularly intimidating and,

thanks to my magic passport, surprisingly easy. A few soldiers, not many visible, probably more behind the scenes, but none of them were interested in me. I got lost, they helped me. I made a joke with a cute looking Israel soldier and she played back. It was easy. One person looked at my passport, and even then didn’t open it. Being white British, it does have its benefits.

As I reached the end of the path out, I saw the exit, a gate which was swathed in bright sunlight and, really, it looked like you were walking into the light. Just to rub it in, glossy posters from the Israeli Ministry Of Tourism covered the walls.

The contrast between one side and the other was huge – and I mean the Arab West Bank, not just the refugee camp. Bright, shiny, posters that scream “Come on in, the water’s lovely” on the one side, hot and dusty and a bit down-at-heel on the other. This isn’t “the Israelis are really rich and the Arabs are really poor”. This is more a difference in culture. Israeli culture is Western and it’s all about consumption and making things look good. Arab culture isn’t like that. Or if it is, it’s less organised.

Still. It was nice to get the plaster off.

************

Being the luckiest bloke around, it’s a serious head fuck. On Saturday evening at 7pm, I was in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, one of the grimmest, most uncomfortable places I’ve ever been. People living on two litres of water a day, a school with bullet holes in the door, curfews, rubble and nothing. On Sunday evening at 7pm, I was in a lovely house in a Moshav just outside Tel Aviv, having been invited to a family Rosh Hashanah meal. A big table, 19 people from across the generations from a freshly unwrapped baby to an 86-year-old woman from Stamford Hill who’d been here since ‘48. Traditional Jewish food I remember from my childhood and enough warmth to light up the national grid. Really lovely people welcoming me into their home, feeding me, talking about life, sport (of course) and what’s going in back in England.

Football is always the way in to any conversation anywhere – what’s going on at Manchester United? Why is Mourinho so miserable? And – always my favourite – “You’re a Spurs fan, but you still like Arsenal?” Opinions about why Harry Kane looks burnt out vied for attention with plates of chicken being proffered. “Fried fish or boiled?” “He needs a rest”. “He’s young, when I was that age I didn’t need a rest”. “Have some chicken. I make this recipe every year”. What can I tell you? It was home.

They’re fascinated by the turn in our politics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not surprised. Antisemitism isn’t a shock here. It still is for me. Every time I turn on my laptop I read more extraordinary stories about life back home and Labour. The latest one involving a meeting where the Labour MP for Enfield North, Joan Ryan, was kicked out by her constituency party for expressing concerns about what she described as “naked, vicious antisemitism within the ranks”. Somehow Iran’s propaganda outlet, Press TV, which has been banned in the UK, had been invited to live broadcast the meeting. The same Press TV that Corbyn has, for years, been a studio guest for. Now it seems that Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury, is up for the chop. Her crime? Talking out against antisemitism in the Party.

It’s no surprise that the Israelis are interested in what’s going on here. There’s no sense of “Told you so”, no lectures about “Now you see the need for a Jewish state”. Just concern. A lot of the people here – the older people – have Holocaust stories and, while no one’s making comparisons, it’s no surprise to anyone that a seemingly safe country such as the UK is suddenly finding it expedient to single out the Jews. As I’ve probably said before here – and no doubt will continue to say – there’s never been a country that hasn’t, sooner or later, schtupped the Jews, and it’s historically ignorant or wilfully naive to think it won’t happen again.