Author: jednovick

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 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”.

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.

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”.

“Standby for action. We are about to launch… Stingray. Anything can happen in the next half hour”

How many times do you get an opportunity like this? The time – and thank you to my employers for that – the money, which came through two unexpected PPI repayments. Yeah, I know. PPI repayments. After years, literally years, of it being a standing joke, this year’s Nigerian prince scam, it came good. Two grand out of nowhere. It didn’t belong to the family, it didn’t take any resources out of the family coffers, it didn’t mean anyone lost out. Money out of nowhere. Free money. Then there’s My Fine Wife, without whose blessing this wouldn’t have worked. And yes, I know there’s all the “Of course she should be like that” and I know that if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t think twice, but it’s still rare. There are – I know – not that many couples who’d give this particular green light.

Maybe that why there’s a curious sense of pressure. Will it be good enough? Will I have a good enough time? Will it be interesting enough? Will I meet enough interesting people? Will I meet any people? Will I come back with enough stories?

It sounds mad but after all the chat, all the rabbit, all the talk about how brave I am… what if it turns out to be nothing? A nice little break in the sun.

Then there’s all the “Well, what are you going to find out?” The chances are I’ll find out Israel is hot. Maybe that’s as sophisticated as the analysis will get. “I went to Israel on a voyage of discovery and found out that it’s hot”. Well, thank you for that, Dr Livingstone.

What if I land and have that moment? That feeling of “I’m home! This is my place!” and I sign up.

What if I find out that they’re right, that I’m wrong, that Israel is a racist endeavour.

Going to Corfu was easier.

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.

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.

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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?