Month: September 2018

It’s Friday and Friday here is the first day of the weekend. You spend the daytime preparing for Shabbat, getting the shopping in, doing the weekend chores that need to be done.

“You know what I miss most about living in England?” Antony says to me. “Sundays. We don’t really have a weekend here. There’s no time to relax and do Sunday stuff, the gardening, hanging around, relaxing, whatever. Friday is all about preparing for Shabbat, then there’s Shabbat and then Sunday we’re back to work”.

“It’s ironic” I say. “Shabbat is supposed to be all about stopping working, switching off the phone and relaxing. Taking some time to think and consider, to breathe. But because of Shabbat, there’s no time to relax”.

We both laugh, and make the joke about Jews not doing irony.

Just outside Efrat in Gush Etzion is a shopping centre. A regular normal recognisable shopping centre like out-of-town shopping centres everywhere. A car park, supermarket, shops, and it’s the same as any shopping centre on a Saturday morning except that to get there we go through the security gate and across the roundabout where you can’t turn right because that’s the way to the Badlands.

There are wire fences all around and what looks like a small watchtower just outside the car park. To me it looks so oppressive, so intimidating but I think I’m the only one who can see it. These things now are so normalised that it’s just there. Stopping at the security gate is just like stopping at a traffic light. Or at the security gates in any gated community.

Take away the fences, the wires, the gates, the guards, the watchtower, the guard with gun at the entrance and it’s just like anywhere else. Inside the supermarket people do supermarket things.

Everything is here in, more or less, the same place as everything in every other supermarket. The fruit and veg at the front, the meat and fish counters at the back, aisles of goods from jars of pesto to nappies to row after row of red and white wine. In the spirits section, there’s a bottle of gluten-free vodka.

Most of the people in the supermarket are from Efrat, and from the accents most seem to be either Brits or Americans. Noticeable – to me – are an Arab couple with their kids.

“They come to shop here like everyone else” says T, “But we can’t go to their villages or even drive down their roads because it’s not safe”.

Why you’d want to go to their villages, I’m not sure. But I get the point.

It’s such a strange place, the mundane normality of the supermarket and the crashing oppression of the fences. We’re in their place and they can come to our place, but we can’t go to their place. On the way back, we turn out of the car park.

As we stop at the give way lines, T pointed to the left.

“Just there, that’s where the three Israeli boys were kidnapped and murdered in 2014”.

“Yes, I know” I replied as Antony turns right to go home.

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

Later, I met a group of old schoolfriends who live here, people I haven’t seen for over 40 years. Names from the past, people whose names I remember but that’s all. They all live here, some since 1982, some a little later and it’s a curious thing, but they don’t see each other, they haven’t stayed in touch. We’re all here, all Jews, Jews with history in common but little else. Just like everyone else in this country.

Like I seem to do with everyone I meet these days, I asked them how they found living here, how they justified it, whether they felt vulnerable.

Lovely Ruth – who I’ve spoken to about all this a lot – with her Leftist pleas for justice and equality, talks about the need for a Jewish state but tops it off with a liberal dose of Jewish guilt. The view nearest to mine.

“We’ve got to have a Jewish state but it has to be democratic. We’ve got to be fair to the Palestinians”. Ruth tears herself up with the twists and contradictions of her position, but is also sure that peace is possible, compromise is possible, a way forward is possible, if only there’s the desire. No one I’ve spoken to here, regardless of where they’re from, is a Netanyahu supporter. The Palestinians all hate or distrust Abbas (motherfucker). As ever, we say things like “It’s the politicians that get in the way” and “People just want to get on with their lives”. Ruth and I talk like we’re on the way back from our evening class in “Liberalism For Beginners”.

Someone else is much more the pragmatist. He also comes from the left-ist viewpoint, but then when his daughter moved to a disputed part of Jerusalem that’s over the green line, he moved to be near her. Family comes first. Another one has long gone religious. Seriously religious. There’s no questions here, no uncertainties. It’s Israel. What do you mean how do I justify it?

That view is undoubtedly the clearest, the cleanest and the most straightforward. It’s also the view furthest from mine. It’s unquestioning and absolute.

There is, as ever, a middle ground. Or, if not exactly middle, a nuanced position. As Facebook so smartly figured out way back in 2007, you can be “In a relationship” or “Not in a relationship” – but nothing is quite as interesting as “It’s complicated”.

This land is ours. It always has been and always will be. Far from being colonial invaders, we’re the indigenous people. Our history is here, our heritage is here, our home is here. It’s our land and it was stolen from us and now we’re back. All the chat about 1948, 1967, 19whatever, it doesn’t matter.

So take that and add a degree of real world pragmatism and human understanding. It says “We have to live with the arabs, we have to get along. We can share the land, but we have to accept each other’s existence, each other’s presence.”

It’s a religious view in the sense that it says the Bible is a historical document rather than the Andrew Lloyd-Webber songbook – you know, something a bit more meaningful than Joseph and his technicolour dreamcoat and all that. It’s a more thoughtful view than the ‘seriously religious’ friend because it understands that, while the roots of life are back then, the actuality of life is the here and now.

We talk about Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem and he really cares about Rachel’s tomb. Rachel is part of the story of his life, she’s the reason why he’s here. She’s the reason why he is. If he can’t live in the land of Rachel’s tomb, what left is there? His belief and faith is pure and unassailable.

“That’s the crux” I say to him. “People like you have this belief coursing through your veins. It is the stuff in your veins. People like you can’t see things any other way. And people who don’t see things that way, can’t and won’t ever understand”.

Later, I say to Ruth “You can’t argue with that. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I don’t care about Rachel. She’s dead. She won’t mind. If we want to move forward we have to stop looking back”.

She agrees. We agree. And we order another glass each.

But right here, right now, my liberal attempts at pragmatism don’t make any sense. I wouldn’t dispute for a minute that the Jews need a place to call their own. History has shown time and again – and again and again – that sooner or later the Jewish population of any country is going to get schtupped. They’ll get blamed for something, persecuted, attacked and thrown out. If they’re lucky. It’s simply naïve to think otherwise. It doesn’t matter how secure they feel, how established they are, how integrated and assimilated they are, sooner or later it’s all going to go tits up. It’s never not happened. And what’s going on in the UK with the Labour Party and Corbyn and all that shows how precarious it all is, how it could happen again.

If Corbyn gets in, we’re going to get schtupped. It’ll make 2014, when people got attacked on the street for “looking Jewish”, when kosher sections in supermarkets got destroyed, look like a hiccup. And if Corbyn doesn’t get in, we’ll get blamed like we’re already getting blamed for every story that shows him up to be the antisemite he clearly is.

If you’d said to me five years ago – two years ago – that there’d be a debate in the House of Commons on antisemitism, I’d have said you were mad. If you’d have said that there’s be demonstrations in Parliament Square, if you’d have said that one of the two major political parties in the UK would have spent all summer – all summer – talking about antisemitism, I’d have said you were mad.

So I wouldn’t dispute for a minute that the Jews need a place to call their own. But if I don’t care about Rachel’s tomb, if the Bible doesn’t speak to me, how can I justify that place being here? Why shouldn’t it be somewhere far away from everything like Paraguay? It could be a nice island, Ibiza maybe.

When the conversation about the establishment of Israel first came up, there were – seriously – two other locations suggested: Uganda and (my favourite) the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in USSR in Birobidzhan, deep in the heart of Siberia, near Inthemiddleoffuckingnowherestan . Really. Birobidzhan was, apparently, Stalin’s idea – the ultimate Jewish ghetto. The Nazis apparently suggested a bit of Madagascar…

It’s all nonsense. If the Jews are going to have a homeland, it’s got to be Israel. And, as the by now old cliché has it, the more the Corbyn Left complain about Israel, the more they demonstrate the need for it.

So, about this anyway, the religious guys are right – all shades of them. If there’s going to be an Israel, it has to be here. It’s Rachel who has brought us here. This is our land. Our spiritual land, our physical land, our historical land. And if we accept that, surely we’ve got to be where Rachel’s tomb is. But that’s in Bethlehem. And that’s in the West Bank. And we’ve seen what that’s like. if we accept that, surely we’ve got to be where Abraham is. But that’s also in the West Bank, in Hebron, the most dangerous place in the whole place.

If this is our historic land, all of it is our historic land. As much Gush Etzion as the cosmopolitan cafes and cool beaches of Tel Aviv. If we don’t invoke the Bible, if we don’t care about Rachel’s tomb, why are we here at all? If it’s just land we want, a land for the Jews to feel safe from a world that has historically persecuted them, does it matter where it is as long as it’s safe and secure?

But it is here. And already I can feel myself going round in circles. Just like everyone else.

Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon is half empty, and the half that’s not empty is busy packing up, closing shops, pulling down blinds and going home. Shabbat is coming and on Shabbat everything stops. The shuk – the market – where last night it was seriously rocking, was still busy, but this time the busy was all about closing in time.

More than anything (so far) this is when it hits that Jerusalem is not so much a different place to Tel Aviv as a different planet. It marches to a completely different beat. There are Haredi – the Hassids – everywhere. A big presence. The people look less cool, less tanned, less beautiful. And there are tourists by the bus load.

Still though, you’ve got to eat. You’ve got to have a drink. It’s Friday night in the second biggest city in a developed, Western(ish) country. There’s got to be something open. We see a supermarket and, well, it’s got to be worth an ask.

“You’re looking for bars now?”

“Yeah, you know, something to eat and something to drink”

“It’s Shabbat, you know”

“Yes, we know”

“Well, you could go to Rivlin. There are some bars and restaurants open there. It gets quite lively”

We make it to Rivlin and supermarket bloke was right. There are some bars and restaurants open. Three bars and two restaurants. Outside of the centre life might be more lively, but this is supposed to be the kicking triangle, the area between Jaffa and Ben Yehuda and it’s eerily quiet. At 6.30pm a siren goes off. The stupid tourist looks around wondering what’s going on because, let’s be honest, it’s not going to be a car alarm after someone’s tried to nick the car. The siren, it turns out, is Shabbat.

We choose one of the bars, have some food and drink and stay there a few hours till it gets too cold to stay outside. Israeli cold, not English cold, but still a bit cold.

It’s about 10.30, maybe 11, by the time we call for the bill – Ruth’s got to drive back to Tel Aviv – and have a bit of a walk. Her car’s here, somewhere. The curious thing is that although there are a few more places open now, they’re still mostly empty. It’s a big city, this is the lively area and it’s Friday night. Where is everyone? Jerusalem really is different to Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile back at the hotel, even the tumbleweed is staying indoors. Somehow I’ve managed to book myself into a Haredi (Hassid) hotel and there’s more chance of Poch getting on the phone asking me to replace Harry Kane than getting a drink at the bar. Not least because there isn’t a bar. I hadn’t even noticed when I checked in. Oh well, I’ll go up to my room and watch the porn channel on the telly….

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

If I thought Friday night was quiet, it was only because I hadn’t yet experienced a Saturday. Breakfast was a bit of a washout – “Can I toast the bread please?” “Toast? It’s Shabbat” – so I thought I’d get some breakfast out. Right.

The streets are deserted. In one way, it’s kinda nice. I remember talking with Antony about Shabbat and, religion aside, the feeling of switching off, of turning the phone off and putting it away. No internet, no nothing. We never do that at our place and it’s probably no bad thing to do.

I walked down Jaffa Street, the wide hustling bustling heart of the city. A wide boulevard with hi-tech tram tracks down the middle, shops, bars and restaurants on either side. Only there are no people and no hi-tech trams and the only people are groups of tourists, all languages and shades, following a leader who walks holding a sign for them to follow. The sun beats down and I walked down the middle of the road heading to east Jerusalem, the Old City.

Reading about the Old City and the history drips off the pages. It’s not just Rachel, it’s everyone’s Rachel. If you’ve got a religion, you’ve got a seat at the table. The star turn for me is The Wall, but there are more churches than in a church exhibition and there’s Temple Mount, maybe the epicentre of the conflict. For Jews, the first and second Temples were built here, for Muslims the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque were here. If I were the picky type – and, really, I’m not – I’d point out that the first Temple was built in 957 BCE and the Dome was built in 692 CE and if I were the picky type I’d point out that means we were here first. Just as well I’m not the picky type.

The Old City. Well, that answers all the questions about where everyone is. It’s packed. Rammed. Mostly with tourists still playing Follow My Leader, but also the Haredi. How do they do it? They’re wearing black clothes, black frock coats – you know the drill – and the most magnificent fur hats and they still look cool. I’m wearing a t-shirt and shorts and I’m schvitzing like a vunce. How do they do it? The old boys do, in fairness, look hot but the young lads and middle aged men just look like they always do.

In through Jaffa Gate and down into the narrow alleys and side streets and you can barely move. Tiny alleys all crammed with shops selling religious artefacts, schmutter t-shirts with schmutter slogans, phone cases… just like a street market. And people are shopping, seriously shopping. (This is the bit where traditionally we put in a line about shopping being the new religion). The tourist leaders stand around while their flock shop and shop. The architecture’s different and there are more menorahs and mezuzahs on sale, but I can’t help but feel it’s like Camden Market on a busy day.

I follow the signs to The Western Wall and, somewhere inside, there’s a sense of trepidation building. The Wall. How can we say? Its reputation precedes it. The nearer you get the higher the concentration of Haredi, and they’re all in a hurry, rushing down the alleys, their coats flying open, the fur hats not moving. How do they stay on, these huge lumps of head furniture?

It’s a sight The Wall. The scale, the people, the people praying, the massed Haredi, the variety of people, people from everywhere in all manner of religious costume. I walked around and tried to breathe it all in.

I’d been really thinking about Antony and his faith and Rachel and her tomb and I’ve realised that if I want to understand Israel it’s as important to understand the religious pull as it is to talk to Palestinians or “settlers” or drink in sidewalk bars in Tel Aviv or anything else. And the curious thing is that of all those things, the religion was always going to be the hardest thing for me to get my head around. People’s suffering, people living nice lives, people living on settlements, these things are easy to put into some sort of framework.

I walked by The Wall. I sat by The Wall. Leaned against The Wall. Put my little written note in The Wall. I put the ring I bought in the refugee camp on The Wall and took a photo. I know a good photo op when I see one, but missed the opportunity for a Facebook gag about giving Him a ring. I looked at The Wall and waited for The Wall to look back.

It’s an extraordinary place, The Wall, extraordinary on every level, and your heart can’t help but be swept away by the weight of history and meaning, but I’ve got to be honest. I didn’t feel it and while I know that the last time I was in shul was for my barmitzvah, it was still a bit disappointing.

Hours later, I still don’t know. Part of me hoped that when I went to The Wall I’d find Rachel, but I didn’t. She wasn’t there. Maybe she was on the other side of the barrier where the women are allowed.

I knew on the way back to the hotel I’d pass last night’s bar and if they were heathen enough to be open last night, then maybe they’d be open today. And it was open. And it had the football on the screens. And so I ordered a lager and sat down and watched the football and immediately felt much better.

The last day. It’s been a bit of a ride, but there was only one place to go on the last day.

Yad Vashem is an extraordinary place. It doesn’t matter how many people are there, it feels empty and silent.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. I was in the main hall when a small group of kids burst through, all noisy laughter and not taking it bloody seriously. I got really pissed off with them and it was only the English reserve that stopped me from telling them what I thought. But just as I was getting properly grumpy, there was a big display of some godforsaken kids in some godforsaken camp and I suddenly I flipped to thinking how refreshing it was to hear kid’s laughter, to see kids doing what kids should be doing.

Architecturally, it’s striking. You walk through the darkness and literally into the light and, while you might think that you’ve seen the pictures before, it still makes no sense.

What hit me was how quickly it happened. How quickly people turned from ordinary folk to absolute monsters. How they went from being a bloke who went to the shop to get a coffee and croissant to mass murderer capable of the absolutely unthinkable. I still have no idea and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know.

It didn’t take long to go back to Jerusalem.

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

I’d got to know Jerusalem – well, the three roads round Ben Yehuda where I lived – reasonably well, so headed back to the jazz cafe I’d spent most of my time in.

There was a old Hareidi bloke sitting in the corner by a chess board and beckoned me over. I’d seen him play last night while the band were on, maybe he was still here.

Being Hareidi, there wasn’t much in the way of small talk, but he seemed nice enough, chain-smoking and pointing at the board to get a point across.

As the club filled, cool young things came and went, and we all chatted and laughed and listened to jazz. And we all lost to the old Hareidi bloke who, from 5 till about 11.30, didn’t move from his chair, smoked around 3,000 fags and didn’t seem to take much notice of who he was playing or the band, who were good and played a folky, gypsy-ish jazz.

And then it was time to go back to the hotel and pack up. A 5am start is no one’s friend.

So I’m back in England, it’s grey and drizzly. I’ve been back a few days and so far Lou has left for a new life in Falmouth, I’ve been trying to catch up on the work stuff – just the 4535 e-mails I’ve missed by going away, and I’ve got to arrange a funeral for a cousin I was looking after. Real life. It all feels a long way from the late night heat of Dizengoff Square.

Still. I wanted to do something special for my 60th and that’s that box ticked. But, a lovely time aside, did going to Israel change the way I think about things? Was it, as My Fine Wife asked, still so black and white?

That’s more a book proposal than a question but, in short, yes.

Firstly, I’ve got to say that my interest is much more in the response of the Left in the UK than in the geo-politics of the Middle East – largely because I am woefully under-qualified to speak meaningfully about that.

I have no depth of understanding and the situation is, almost inevitably, much more complicated and nuanced than anyone here knows.

Seems that the old joke – two Jews, three opinions – applies to Palestinians too.

The Palestinian position is more complicated than I realised. While the notion of “the Palestinian land” is flawed because there wasn’t ever really “a Palestinian land” in the simplistic way that people here talk about it, the reality is that loads of people were, post 1948, dispossessed and did lose their homes. I can’t imagine what that’s like. Homes, communities, lost. Your surroundings, your life, everything that’s familiar… gone. And to what? To where?

That the Palestinian’s were used as collateral damage in the post-war period is tragic and criminal. Were they swept aside by the international community caught up in the collective post-war guilt about what had happened in Germany and beyond? Possibly. But remember that “the Jews” had been in Israel long before that – and I’m not talking Biblical times.

Does the international community owe the Palestinians? Absolutely (in my view)

Is Israel solely to blame? No (in my view)

Is the current Israeli govt doing anything to help? No (in my view)

But – and saying this isn’t to absolve Israel or defend recent Israeli govts – what’s happened to the Palestinian people is as much the fault of the Palestinian Authority as anyone else. It’s been said that there’s never been a people so badly led as the Palestinians – and that seems true. What’s happened to the aid? What’s happened to the money? Millions, maybe billions, and the people haven’t seen a sniff of it.

Similarly, the surrounding Arab states don’t support or help the Palestinians. Everyone’s using them like footballs. But, again. To just blame Israel isn’t either logical – or indeed fair – and it isn’t going to be productive. It will just make the Israeli govt feel even more boxed in and protective. As it is, every country that surrounds it is dedicated to its destruction.

As the old joke has it “They want to kill us, we don’t want to be killed, and neither side is prepared to compromise”.

I don’t like Netanyahu’s govt, but then again, I’m struggling to think of a government I do like. I didn’t meet any Israelis who supported Netanyahu, but I live here, and I’ve never met anyone who supports Theresa May (let alone Rees-Mogg or Johnson).

After I came back, I wrote to my friend who lives in Efrat, telling him how lovely it was to see him and thanking him for his hospitality.

“To be honest, I’m still conflicted about it all and, in truth, about where you live”.

“As for you feeling conflicted” he replied “Welcome to the club. Most of us do, one way or another”.

Maybe in a land where there’s conflict, it stands to reason that everyone’s conflicted.

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

I’m still deeply suspicious of the Left here. Too many people have a curious obsession with just Israel.

You can look around the world and make an argument that this country is bad or that country is bad, and there are certainly enough countries – in the Middle East alone – that treat people badly, abuse human rights etc. But to only talk about Israel which, having been there, I would happily argue isn’t even in the Top Ten Bad Countries, is just silly and, yes, racist. There are internment camps in Chechnya for gays – anyone want to talk about that?

It’s the same as that picture taken at the TUC conference in Manchester where all the delegates are holding Palestinian flags.

Leaving aside the question of “Really? The TUC conference is talking about Palestine?” Something like this, it’s orchestrated – you think they all turned up with flags, turned to their neighbour and “Blimey, you too, huh?” – and odds on, most of these people wouldn’t know their Abbas from their elbow but still, you’ve got to ask “Why only Palestine? Why aren’t they talking about Tibet, South Sudan, Kurdistan and on and on?”

What is it about Israel that so energises people? It’s great that they’re concerned about human rights, justice, human dignity and suffering, but why are they only concerned about Israel? You can look around the world and make an argument that this country is bad or that country is bad, and there are certainly enough countries – in the Middle East alone – that treat people badly, abuse human rights etc. But to talk about Israel and only Israel which, having been there, I would happily argue isn’t even in the Top Ten Bad Countries, is wrong and, yes, racist.

And it all comes back to the Labour Party. Whichever way you look at it, it must appear odd that Labour is so concerned about Israel. This whole summer they should have been being an Opposition, should have been talking about Brexit. But all they did was discuss antisemitism. Seamus Milne, Corbyn’s chief advisor, said that the antisemitism issue would be “the hill I die on”. Not the NHS. Not care for the elderly. Not public utilities. Redefining antisemitism.

I’ve got a friend – he’s Jewish – who is very anti-Israel because he thinks that it makes Jews look bad, and that feeds into the insecurities and paranoias of the immigrant, those immigrants who want to assimilate, who want to not cause waves and not be noticed. “Leave us alone, we don’t take up much space and we don’t make a fuss”.

It comes down to a fear of being kicked out again, and while I don’t agree with it, I understand it.

What I don’t understand is why the far Left – a section of society that’s supposed to be dedicated to helping people and of being on the side of the underdog – clearly and really doesn’t like Jews.

Corbyn, through his actions, associations and allegiances, has allowed the Labour Party to become the waterhole, the place where the various anti-Israel / BDS / racists meet. And it’s the waterhole because he’s shown that Labour is a safe house for those people.

Every day, seemingly, there’s another example of Labour’s obsession. Today (Sept 24) is Day One of the Labour Party conference and a ballot was taken by the CLP of the most important things to debate:

There are 40,000 more votes for Palestine than Brexit.
There are 67,000 more votes for Palestine than the NHS
There are nearly 100,000 more votes for Palestine than the welfare system.

There are nearly 115,000 more votes for Palestine than climate change

This is the Labour Party. They need to have a word with themselves.

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

Our society has a curious relationship with Jews. Mostly it goes like this. Your immediate circle doesn’t care. You’re just you. Wider society mostly likes Jews – the humour, the wit, the warmth. But historically – and this is a contradiction but it’s seemingly undeniable – countries don’t like Jews.

This period – post WW2 – is just about the longest period we haven’t been kicked out of some country or other. Historically, the Jews in any country will be kicked out. As unlikely as it seems, as ridiculous as it sounds to me with my English rose wife, two perfect kids, house in the country, Audi convertible… it always happens.

The only people who say things like “That could never happen here” or “But we’re not like that here” are not Jews.

Those people, those NotJews – and it doesn’t how close they are or how sympathetic they are – will never understand the fear. In the same why that, however sympathetic, I’ll never really be able to know what it’s like to be black, I’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman.

And that’s why Jews – even Jews who don’t know why they’re Jews but just know that they are – will never feel 1000% secure. That’s why there’s that “always sleep with a suitcase under the bed” line on the front page of this blog.

So if the real question is “Do I still stand by Israel?” then the answer is unequivocally “Yes”. If the question is “Will I still stand up and support Israel?” then, again, “Yes”. Do I support the existence of a Jewish state? Absolutely, because simply the existence of these questions makes it clear that we need an Israel. And until I can unpack that suitcase, we always will.

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

I’d like to go back. I don’t think I could live there – I’m culturally too English, I’d miss the gigs, the cinema, that sort of stuff – but I’d like to go back. Anyone fancy it?