Author: jednovick

Another day, another outrage.

Who is this woman? She’s been on some demo, marching against Brexit or Trump or some other gluten-free cause. She’s probably nice. I probably know her. Definitely seen her. Odds on, a Facebook friend.

Looking at her idly tapping on her phone. What’s she doing? Making a list of things to get on the way home? Making an arrangement for later tonight? Doesn’t matter. She’s been on the demo, made the effort. She means well. Or, she thinks she means well. She’s on the side of the oppressed, the victims, the down-trodden, the poor people. She’s probably a nice person, trying to do the right thing.

On the other hand, she could be an anti-semitic racist. Who knows. I doubt even she knows. She doesn’t know cos she hasn’t engaged her brain. She hasn’t stopped to think what it – what any of it – means. All she knows is “Palestine, good. Israel bad”. It’s part of the essential package of being concerned: anti-racist, anti-corporate, anti-colonial, anti.

Last week it was about Monsanto. This week it was Jamie Oliver and “cultural appropriation”. A few weeks ago there was a “Stop Trump” march and in amongst all the placards and posters about Trump, there were the Palestinian flags, the “Free Palestine” placards, all that. Probably placards about stopping the Judaisation of Jerusalem. This woman was probably there too. Stopping Trump and freeing Palestine.

“Stop Judaisation of Jerusalem”. What does it even mean? You couldn’t stop the “Judaisation” of Jerusalem any more than you could stop the Frenchification of Paris or the Englandification of England, but I’m not sure that’s the point. It’s a slogan. It looks good from a distance and has the word “Stop” in bright red letters. (It’s essential for a slogan to advocate stopping something).

Every day there’s stuff in the papers about the Left and about Corbyn and the Corbyns. Laying wreaths at the graves of murderers. Sharing platforms with right old scumbags. Whatever. And I get annoyed about it and upset by it and say to myself “Oh, I must write a blogpost about that” and by the time I get around to it there’s another thing. The vicious, vicious stuff that was thrown at Margaret Hodge by the caring, concerned Left. But this picture stayed with me.

It’s that word. Judaisation. They’re not messing about any more saying it’s Israel. This is about Jews. The poster is about Jews. There’s no pretence about Israel or Palestine or any of that other bollocks.

I spent long enough working on newspapers, writing headlines, to know that in a headline the most important word is the first word, the biggest word. That’s the one that catches the eye. And that word here is Judaisation. That’s what catches the eye.

This woman, idly tapping on her phone. I find it so hard to believe she has an idea of what she’s carrying and what it says, that she’s given it a minute’s thought, that it’s anything other than essentially a fashion accessory. And maybe that’s what I most resent about this incarnation of Labour and the Left. They’ve made hating us fashionable.

So I was thinking. If I ever say that Corbyn is an antisemite, I generally get one of three responses. 1) Yeah, but Palestine. 2) He can’t be. He’s a man of principles. He’s fought racism all his life. 3) Lalalalalalalalalala can’t hear you. We need to get rid of the Tories.

And I generally say the same thing. Actually, I don’t care about him. I care about him about as much as he cares about me. It doesn’t matter whether he’s antisemitic. It doesn’t matter cos he’s an enabler.

What does that mean?

I am, what My Fine Wife calls, an enabler. I support her in her endeavours. I provide support. I help create an environment where she can be what she wants to be. It’s a lovely thing to be called.

The reason I mention this isn’t just to point out that I’m a lovely bloke – though possibly talking about that would be more interesting than banging on about Corbyn again, but… What can I do?

So far what we’ve learnt is that seemingly every day there’s another thing, another racist crawls out of the pit Labour’s descended into. Today is the turn of Peter Willsman, the secretary of The Campaign for Labour Democracy, and this is the story that greeted us today.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/bombshell-recording-proves-corbyn-ally-blamed-jewish-trump-fantatics-for-false-antisemitism-clai-1.467802

So, swiftly moving on from the question of whether or not I’m a Trump fanatic in the pay of Mossad, what does it mean? And how does it relate to the question of whether or not Corbyn is an anti-Semite?

Well, it doesn’t matter what Corbyn thinks. And we don’t know what Corbyn thinks because he never actually says anything. Or if he does say something, he doesn’t follow it up with an action, so the words are empty and meaningless.

But by saying nothing and doing nothing, Corbyn has become an enabler. He enables people like Mary Lockhart (yesterday) and Peter Willsman (today) to be in a safe environment where their rubbish racism to flourish.

By the way, the answer to the three responses is 1) You’re also a racist, 2) I’m not so impressed by principles. Thatcher had principles, wasn’t too keen on her either, 3) Hang about a minute. I’m just going to ask that turkey what he thinks of Christmas.

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.

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.

Can you imagine what it’s like living in Corbynland? There can’t be enough hours in the day to discuss Israel and Palestine and Jews and Zionism. Daytime meetings. Evening meetings. Meetings about anything – the Left love meetings – that turn into meetings about Israel and Palestine. Everyone you know is talking about it. Everyone is responding to it. Lines are drawn. Where do you stand in relation to it? And when that happens, it’s easy to lose perspective.

I had a bit of re-think after that last post. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t believe that Billy Bragg actually was antisemitic. I know which side of the fence he’s on, that he’s a proper Corbynite and I know he said all that stuff about Jews “having work to do”, but still it didn’t really make sense. A man steeped in Woody Guthrie, why would he turn into a racist?

It made me think about the world he lives in and how you can get immersed into a world, how you can get consumed by it. And when that happens, people like Billy can say things like Billy said.

And it made me think about the world I live in, and in particular the social media world I live in. We all know words like “bubble” and phrases like “echo chamber” and we’re all aware that stuff. But still.

I’m still a Facebook-head. I know most other people have migrated to Instagram, but I still prefer a bit of a rabbit to pictures showing what I had for dinner last night. Facebook’s an odd place these days, it’s like a bar that most people have left and it’s just now just a few old blokes moaning. But that’s fine. I’m an old bloke and I like moaning.

So in Facebookland, I’ve got 1,481 friends but I only ever hear from about 10 people and now they’re the most familiar names in my world. They’re mostly people I’ve never met. Friends who I chat with most days, but I wouldn’t know them if I sat next to them on the train as it apologises its way up the track.

Every day I tune into these people and read their threads, see what they’re thinking, let their thoughts seep into mine. Who are these people? What are they doing in my world? And how did they come to be in my world?

Mostly my friends comments are forthright, their opinions strong, their views rigid. And mostly they’re angry. Or if not angry, then upset. They – all the people called David and all the people who read the Davids – write a lot, make a lot of comments about politics and life, about what’s right and what’s not. They’re all very pro-Israel and anti-Corbyn. And that’s fine by me because I’m very pro-Israel and anti-Corbyn and in the land of algorithmic opinion, this is where I’ve landed.

I’m fine with that, and even if does seem that Facebook is a diminishing world and now people prefer a world where the most political it gets is if you post an Instagram picture of your main course from an oblique angle. Actually, I can’t blame them for that. Politics these days is a fairly miserable place.

But what it means is that in my social media world, everyone is talking about Corbyn and antisemitism and (last week) Billy Bragg and (the week before) Margaret Hodge and no one is talking about food or where they went for dinner last night. And if everyone you know is talking about X, it’s easy to think that everyone else is talking about this stuff, that everyone cares about this stuff. Truth is, they’re probably not and they probably don’t.

If I was living in my social media world, I’d probably say something like “Exactly. That’s what Corbyn is counting on. He knows no one really cares about Jews and because there’s not enough of us to make an electoral difference he can do what he likes. So he’ll keep offering new Bank Holidays for things like not winning the World Cup and everyone will think he’s marvellous”.

If I was living in everyone else’s social media world, I’d probably be more interested in this

Postscript: I was reading this morning and one of the Davids had had a Twitter-chat with Billy Bragg the upshot of which was

Good for Billy. People don’t often apologise and he did and hats off to him for that. Still don’t like his music.

Shortly before I left England, I’d been approached by another old face from the old country.

“Hi there. I heard you were coming over. Do you fancy a trip up north? We can meet up and I’ll show what life’s really like up here”.

It was a three hour drive up from Efrat and that was lovely, spending some quality time with Antony in the car, just chewing the fat, just being mates. I found out some stuff about why he was here, tales of getting bullied, beaten up for being a Jew (the familiar “Fuck off back to where you come from” stuff), tales of family in the Holocaust… The sort of stuff that makes the words “a Jewish state” sound very reassuring and very appealing.

We were supposed to meet in “my village” Kfar Veradim in the Galilee, but Kfar Veradim is far from a village. Another new town, bigger than Efrat, Kfar Veradim was established in 1982 and is green and well-laid out with big wide streets and statues. It looks curious, an affluent oasis in the hills of the north. There’s a vibrant industrial estate where SanDisk has its HQ and hi-tech companies share space with car companies. The car park’s full and bright young things walk around looking cool and hip. The potted plants gleam and the glass and chrome shines.

Natan had said he’d introduce me to Lt. Col. Sarit Zehavi, CEO and founder of the Alma Research and Education Center and, listen I’m up for anything interesting but this is where it got a bit weird.

We had coffee and chatted about the old days and what we were doing now, about Spurs – like all proper Spurs fans, we had nothing but disappointment and negativity in the new season – and just chatted like mates. Then he said “Come, let’s go and meet Sarit”.

So we drove to the industrial estate where there was an office block – all atrium and light, lots of those potted plants and cool looking people – and went up to the Alma offices.

Sarit was – and I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this – fit in every sense. She was very attractive, but clearly sharp as a tack and bright as a button. She was also very clearly not to be messed with. Let’s put it this way. No one was going to be making glib sexist comments to Sarit.

“So Natan tells me you have a blog. Tell me, what’s the reach and who is your audience?”

What’s the reach and who is my audience? “Well, I sometimes put it on Facebook, got 15 likes once. My wife thinks it’s very good…”

I think it took Sarit about…. hmmm, a couple of seconds to work out the lay of the land, but – bless her – she’d allotted me the time so I was going to get the treatment.

Actually, she was a sweetheart and we got on great. Up north is right by the border with Lebanon and up here the story isn’t Palestine, it’s Hezbollah and Iran. There’s also

“Jed, tell me. What’s going on in England? Is everything I’m reading true?”

Everyone here loves that story.

The situation in the north is very tricky and very real. Not that you’d know it from the press in the UK which seems to think that Israel is the root of all evil in the Middle East, but Iran is a serious threat and has very dangerous expansionist ideas – dangerous not just to Israel but to the whole region and therefore the world. That Corbyn has appeared on and taken money from Press TV, Iran’s state TV propaganda channel… Oh, don’t start me. You see what you’ve done now?

We spent most of the day with Sarit and she was a sweetie. Despite pretty quickly figuring me for what I am – a nice bloke whose wife sometimes likes his blog – she was a sweetie. We went up to a lookout point where she gave me a pair of proper army binoculars and she showed me the border, where Hezbollah have their weapons, where the rocket launchers are and she explained what they could do.

It’s beautiful up there, the hills, the clean air. But I’m not sure I could live up there with all the bomb shelters and the rockets aimed at me and my family. As we drove back to Kfar Veradim and to lunch, the thought occurred – and not for the first time – you’ve got to really want to live here to live here. The people up here have a certainty and a there’s very little in the way of introspection. They were properly lovely to me – well, OK, I’m an influential social media influencer with a hard core, devoted readership and I was going to speak to her later – so maybe it’s not surprising they were nice to me, but they’re properly proud of their place, of what they’ve achieved.

We went to lunch at a local Druze cafe, and as we sat there eating a substantial meze, I mulled. It takes a special kind of person to build communities like Kfar Veradim and to live there – really, a bijou flat in the centre of Brighton is much easier – and so full power to them.

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.