ELKAN’S VIEW 25^th February 2015

Israel is building itself up for the elections on 17 March, and like the electoral perspective in the UK, the situation in Israel gives no clear indication of what might happen.

There is undoubtedly a strong feeling against Netanyahu. He is perceived to have been in office for too long, possibly to have damaged relations between Israel and America, and a fresh mind is needed at the top.

As in England, politicians make mistakes especially approaching an election, but the behaviour of the Israeli police is curious. One might almost imagine that there is a department which stores up political peccadilloes for release as soon as an election is called.

But who to vote for? Israel has had a number of Prime Ministers (such as the very successful Menachem Begin) who have come into office without previous experience, but it could be dangerous at the present time.

The main opposition to Bibi (as he is universally known) is Buji – Israeli politicians acquire strange sounding nicknames! Buji, or Isaac Hertzog to give him his real name, has a superb pedigree (his father was President, his Grandfather was Chief Rabbi of Ireland and Israel) but no track record whatsoever and lacks charisma. Another uncertainty will be the 12 seats that the united Arab parties are expected to hold; 10% of an elected legislature in a so-called apartheid state! This Arab bloc might be the key to a coalition, also including one or more of the religious parties – very strange bedfellows!

But will anything change? Israelis are worried about Iran and the bomb, coupled with the inability of most Western governments (and especially the American disaster) to face up to what is really going on. The two state solution is not an issue, because the status quo is bearable, the Palestinians who live in the West Bank by and large do not want an independent state (conditions in Israel are much better than anything that Abbas has been able to produce) and realistically there is no Arab leader who can sign a peace agreement on behalf of the Palestinians and make it stick.

And you think politics in Britain are complicated at the moment!

ELKAN’S VIEW 18^th February 2015

I am writing this after two amazing weeks in Hong Kong and Thailand. I had never been East of Israel and the interaction with other cultures has been quite fascinating.

Hong Kong has some very interesting Jewish features. The community developed in mid Victorian times when Great Britain took over the territory from China, and Jews mainly of Indian or Baghdadi origin settled there. The very beautiful Ohel Leah synagogue was built by the Sassoon family and opened in 1901.

The development of Hong Kong as a whole progressed greatly when Sir Matthew Nathan was appointed Governor in 1904. He was an identified Jew, a member of the New West End Synagogue who had been trained as an engineer in the British Army and employed his training in a number of postings. He held four foreign governorships during his career and was in charge of Ireland at the time of the Easter Rebellion in 1916.

Nathan was keen to develop Kowloon, just across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong Island. He was interested in town planning and was also responsible for the development of the Kowloon-Canton railway into China itself. When Kowloon was laid out the main thoroughfare naturally bore the name of the Governor. Nathan Road, today often nicknamed “The Golden Mile”, an amazing experience of neon lighting and shops selling anything and everything, is named after Sir Matthew. Nathan died in 1939 and together with his brothers Sir Frederick and Sir Nathaniel is buried in Willesden Cemetery.

I had the unusual experience of going to shul up the public escalator to the Mid-Levels area where the Ohel Leah synagogue is situated. Because the Shul is surrounded by skyscrapers, and for a vast figure sold off some of its spare land for development, it has an almost mythical reputation among Jewish communities. Among its recent rabbis have been both Rabbi Jackson and Rabbi Van den Bergh (both of whom will be known to many of my readers), and Chief Rabbi Sacks visited there every year. After the service the whole community is invited to a sit down Kiddush which is really a sumptuous two course meal.

Bangkok was not so fascinating from a Jewish point of view, although I am interested in the relationship between Judaism and the gentleness of Buddhism. Chabad has a presence in Thailand and helps many of the Israelis for whom a backpacking visit to the Far East is a rite of passage after finishing their army service.

But the most amusing memory that I bring back is of two little boys wearing Kippot playing in the Ohel Leah Synagogue, and talking to each other in Chinese!

ELKAN’S VIEW 11^th February 2015

Returning to last week’s topic; one of the problems as Melanie Phillips saw it, and I believe she is absolutely right, is the breakdown of respect for religion, especially in the United Kingdom. In former times the Church of England, broad and tolerant though it be, and possible to be almost all things to all men, was the glue that held the fabric of society together. The influence of the church has waned, especially in the second half of the 20^th century, and the net result has been a vacuum which has been filled by a secularism which has no particular moral compass.

The church appears to have been affected by the same deep fear of Muslim extremism as the rest of society. Christians in Islamic countries are being persecuted on a level that has never happened before. In Nigeria and other African countries, in the Moslem countries of the Middle East, Christians live in fear of their lives. Churches have been burnt down with their congregations inside them. Fear stalks their congregations. The silence of the church is both amazing and disgraceful.

The reluctance to criticise the Muslim world, and to stand up for their Christian brethren, is a dishonour upon the behaviour of the church. What is it of which they are afraid?

There is a way of resisting Muslim extremism, and that is by force. Expensive though it may be, it is still cheaper in terms of human freedom than sleepwalking into allowing the creation of Muslim republics throughout Europe. Standing up to Islam is regarded as strength; silence is interpreted as weakness.

The recent statements by leading politicians in both Britain and France, attempting to reassure the Jewish communities of their safety and of their place in the society of the host countries, may be too late. Are we, as Sharansky said recently, witnessing the beginning of the end of European Jewry?

ELKAN’S VIEW 4^th February 2015

I belong to the Jerusalem branch of the Jewish Historical Society of England. This has some very good and extremely interesting lectures, and last week we were treated to an address by the well-known columnist Melanie Phillips. Her subject dealt with the breakdown of relations between British Jews and the Left Wing in politics, and in a wide ranging survey she traced how the left had gradually begun to make common cause with the extreme Islamic movement. As she put it quite succinctly a group that supported gay rights, women’s rights, human rights and freedom of speech has become closely associated with a group that violently opposes all of these things.

Both groups look forward to the creation of a utopian world and it does not occur to them, especially to the left-wing who are prepared to be used by Muslim extremists, that the two versions of Utopia are diametrically opposed.

There is in the left-wing, despite its theoretical embracing of religious tolerance, a deep vein of anti-Semitism. This comes out in unexpected ways. Melanie Phillips disclosed that when she was a leader writer for the Guardian Newspaper (and how far that newspaper has travelled – when it was the Manchester Guardian under the legendary C P Scott it was the main protagonist of political Zionism) she was not a Zionist, had never been to Israel, and had no desire to do so. A number of things clearly shook her badly including a view that since the Jews claimed to be morally superior they could be judged by impossibly high standards, and that any considerations of logic or factual accuracy were not important. When one of the editors described an Israeli incursion into Lebanon as “your little war” she realised how deep this is, and her political position gradually moved to the right.

ELKAN’S VIEW 28th January 2015

Over the last few days I have been watching “The Eichmann Show” the docudrama on BBC television about the filming of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. You will remember that Eichmann was regarded as being the brains and the organisational skill behind the Holocaust which required a great deal of logistical expertise and administrative planning. In 1937 he had spent a day in Haifa, and is also believed to have acquired a smattering of Hebrew and Yiddish.

On the basis of this he had become “an expert” in Jewish matters. When the war broke out he took over the Bnai Brith offices in the middle of Berlin and from there began to organise and administer the systematic murder of millions of Jews.

The story of how the Israelis tracked him down in Argentina under the assumed name of Ricardo Clement, how they captured him and smuggled him back to Israel, and his trial in Jerusalem in 1961 is well-known. He was found guilty and in due course executed and his ashes scattered out at sea.

This brought back to me a lot of memories. I was in Jerusalem in 1961 on my gap year, and obtained a ticket for one afternoon of the trial. Eichmann was an insignificant looking man sitting in a bullet-proof glass box. Gideon Hausner was cross-examining him about the details of a deportation – how the transport was arranged, when and where it left, what was its destination. Eichmann answered in a matter-of-fact voice, denying some of the accusations and correcting some of the details. The thing I do remember very clearly was listening to a simultaneous translation of the proceedings – Hausner spoke in Hebrew and Eichmann answered in German – and hearing him plead as justification that he was merely following orders.

The trial caused enormous interest both in Israel and around the world. It was relayed live all over Israel – I remember hearing it broadcast on a bus in Tel Aviv. Suddenly details of the Holocaust became public knowledge. Without the filming and broadcast of the trial events such as International Holocaust Day might never have happened.