ELKAN’S VIEW FROM NETANYA 26th August 2015

To the considerable relief of parents and grandparents, an emotion not shared in the main by the students, the Chofesh Hagadol, the long summer holiday in Israeli schools, comes to an end next week. This summer has been hotter than most, and although I normally like August in Israel this year has been an exception. Living on the top of the cliff overlooking the Mediterranean I rarely use the air conditioning because a strong breeze comes in from the sea, but to my horror I discovered when I most needed it that the air conditioning was not working. The air conditioning engineer of course was severely in demand. It was quite some time before the gas was replaced and the flat became habitably cool, by which time the very hot winds had disappeared and the breeze had begun again to flood in from the sea.

Rosh Hashanah is just over two weeks away, and the supermarkets are full of the goods of the season. Honey of course is plentiful, but for some reason in this country the consumption of gefilte fish is particularly high at this time of year, a culinary tradition of which Anglo Jewry is unaware. The shops also fill with weird and wonderful fruits, although you can find many of them in Israel for most of the year anyway. Special offers abound on everything, with the slogan “Rosh Hashanah kemo shetzarich – Rosh Hashanah as it should be”.

But Rosh Hashanah is also a time for refurnishing and redecoration, much as it is in December in Britain. The Ikea catalogue landed in my mailbox this morning, with all sorts of wonderful ideas for refurbishing my life. There are now three branches of the store in Israel, and since Israelis love shopping the Netanya branch is among the busiest in the world. They also sell the usual Ikea restaurant food, but Glatt Kosher for the Charedi clientele who eat there, and there is even a shul. I once went there wanting to know what a flat pack Aron Kodesh looked like, but to my disappointment the furniture appeared to have been bought in!

Yet another amazing experience in this amazing country!

ELKAN’S VIEW FROM NETANYA 19^th August 2015

Israel has been horrified internally by some of the events that have taken place in recent weeks, including the tragic murder of a young girl who was a spectator at the gay pride march in Jerusalem, and the stand-off that has developed in parts of the West Bank between settlers and police.

A Charedi, Yishai Schlissel, had just been released from a ten-year term for stabbing participants in a previous gay march, and had indicated his intention to do the same again. Evidently no notice was taken and no precautions were put in place. A report has now called for the dismissal of three senior police officers.

Another example of what has come to be religious conflict has been the torching of of two houses in the Arab village of Duma on the West Bank which is led to the death of an 18-month-old infant and his father. Those responsible painted on the outside the words “Tag Mechir – Price Tag”.

There has recently been a stand-off between police and settlers at Bet El, a settlement north of Jerusalem, where settlers were prepared to go to war with the Israeli army rather than permit them to demolish two half finished apartment blocks that had been erected on land that belongs to Palestinians.

I am aware that Orthodox Judaism is not responsible for this, but Jews are required to take into account the realities of the situation. “Lo Bashamayim Hi – It is not in Heaven” will shortly occur in our Torah reading. The prospect of Jew fighting Jew, or Israelis declaring war on their own army and State, is horrifying. Either there is the rule of law or there is anarchy.

There is much wrong with Israeli society, and although the government’s attention to the Iran situation is understandable, problems at home cannot be ignored. Violence must be stopped, and the desire of certain sections to create a state within a state must be terminated. Disturbingly, there are signs emerging that young Israelis are voting with their feet and going to live abroad because of the cost of living, but I will return to this theme on another occasion

ELKAN’S VIEW FROM NETANYA 12^th August 2015

Like most people of my generation I can remember when Panorama, chaired by the unfogetteble Richard Dimbleby, embodied all the qualities inculcated into the BBC by its founder Lord Reith. When my iPlayer offered a Panorama programme entitled “The Train That Divides Jerusalem” I assumed that the programme might be made with some integrity. “We Believe In Israel” (if you have not put yourself on their emailing list please do so right away) then asked me to protest to the BBC. I therefore watched the programme with both interest and trepidation, to discover that all my worst reservations were true.

The filmmaker is Adam Wishart who begins by saying that he is a British Jew who 30 years ago went on a Zionist educational tour of Israel and whose grandparents were Zionists. This evidently gives him authority to speak for British Jews and to have special knowledge about Jerusalem; neither is true. As the programme proceeds he presents distortions as facts.

Wishart claims that the purpose of the light rail is to enable Jews to travel more easily to the Arab parts of the city, completely ignoring that it also enables Arabs to travel all over the city, to its hospitals malls cafes cinemas etc. To represent the Jewish view he interviews Rivka Shimon, an activist on the political fringe. She claims that Jews will soon build the Third Temple “no matter that Muslim holy places are here already”. Wishart therefore adduces the light rail as proof of increasing Jewish domination of East Jerusalem, and even suggests that her views are “gathering support from within the mainstream”, a sensationalist hypothesis which has no basis in fact.

Wishart ignores the status of the city between 1948 and 1967 when it was occupied illegally by Jordan,  doesn’t mention the political educational and social benefits enjoyed by all Israeli Arabs, and finally deduces as proof of his distorted views the fact that the line finishes in Pisgat Ze’ev, an “illegal settlement” within the city boundaries. A little research would have shown him that the land was purchased by Jews before the Second World War mainly by those of whom nothing was heard after the Holocaust. What price the truth?

ELKAN’S VIEW FROM RADLETT 5^th August 2015

It’s getting nasty. Obama, trying to leave some sort of acceptable legacy behind him, has crafted the agreement with Iran in an attempt to achieve immortality as one of the great peacemakers, while he is actually more likely to be remembered as among the worst of American presidents. There is no shortage of non-Jewish non-partisan Americans who are saying clearly and loudly that this is a bad deal. There is insufficient inspection; one commentator said that a restaurant in New York was subject to more inspection than Iranian atomic installations. There is a rumour, not yet proved wrong, that the samples for examination by independent inspectors will be supplied by the Iranians themselves! There are certainly at least two side agreements with Teheran which have not been disclosed to Congress. If, as the president’s supporters claim, this is one of the most important agreements of the century, why cannot everything be revealed?

If anything goes wrong with this agreement, and the chances are that it will, then the Israelis will be in the front line. In an attempt to scare them in the time honoured and old-fashioned anti-Semitic way, Obama this week met with leaders of the American Jewish community and warned them that if Congress kills the Iran deal then rockets will fall on Tel Aviv. The logic of this American statement is that if the deal doesn’t go through then America will have to attack Iranian nuclear installations. If that was even remotely true, then why (as the Israelis have shown) did the Americans give in on every important point, and why didn’t they seriously threaten military action years ago? This seems to be another one of Obama’s “red lines” which are actually written in white flags.

Despite this, Netanyahu’s continuing to publicly attack the president of the United States and his policies is doing no good to Israel’s position with its largest and best ally. With a bit of sense he could translate what remains of America’s desire to placate Israel into real military and financial advantages. What he seems to be doing is just irritating everybody, including an increasing number of his own supporters in both Washington and Israel.

ELKAN’S VIEW FROM RADLETT 29^TH JULY 2015

One of the things about being Jewish is that we spend a great deal of time complaining. This is not a new thing; Moses suffered it when the children of Israel came out of Egypt. After 3000 years this particular tendency has if anything becomes stronger, and it is therefore not a bad thing from time to time to actually count up our achievements.

Seventy years ago we were beginning to understand the enormity of what had happened in the Holocaust. We had no army to defend ourselves, no state that would take us in without quibble or argument, no one who was prepared to stand up and speak for the Jewish people.

Since however that period is ancient history for many of us, the world since 1984 is a concept with which we can all grapple. In the last 30 years the population of Israel has doubled, living conditions have improved markedly, and the number of cars has gone from 157 to 364 per thousand inhabitants (and don’t we know it in the rush-hour). Gross national product has gone up by 900%, while the national debt has fallen from 280% of the GNP to 66%, a figure that might please George Osborne. Exports have gone up 860% and high-tech exports 3600%. Israel ranks higher than the UK in terms of health wealth and personal security, while life expectancy is very high and the country is reckoned to be the fifth happiest in the whole world.

Of course there are problems. Poverty is much greater than it ought to be, the cost of living is too high, the political system is chaotic, the religious parties have too much influence, bureaucracy is a national disease and fairly frequently the Israeli government speaks first and thinks long after. But occasionally we need to lift up our eyes and see how very much better off we are than the generations that came before us. Israel is nothing short of a miracle, and we are fortunate to be privileged to see and experience it.