Random Thoughts on Everything

"To life, to life, l'chayim ..."

Western media, educators, women’s groups and the Red Cross are not keen on jews. Not unless they're dead.

They would be feeling more comfortable had our demise been total in the holocaust. Free to gradually erase us from history. Happy in the knowledge we could no longer complain about bias, about mistakes made, false accounts given, the demonising of a legitimate, democratic State in favour of proscribed terrorists. More fool them. I’ve no doubt that someone would have wheeled out the last living Jew. A proud but frail Londoner, who would have given Jeremy Bowen the dressing-down from hell that he has long deserved. 94 year old Rebecca of Finchley, a natural in front of the camera, would speak up on our behalf, brutal in her honesty, and admirably fearless.

For at least a whole minute after WW2, the world wrung its hands and acknowledged their failure to act. To help ease their guilt they set up the UN intending to prevent such terrible events from ever reoccurring. Not, it seems, with great success.

Why is it that Jews are so often defined by the holocaust? It’s not as if we didn't exist before Hitler murdered us in the many millions … a true genocide. We are not frozen in amber, and yet, in literature and memoir we are still mostly depicted as victims of nazi horror. Howard Jacobson aside, where are the British novels celebrating our contemporary lives, fictional stories about success and failure with a modern, Jewish twist? Surely I can’t be the lone voice questioning this peculiar absence from Waterstone’s shelves?

Wherever we have settled we create vibrant, hard working communities. Our contributions to medicine, to research, technology, industry and the arts are huge. So it hurt on the day when we should, and do, look back at history … Holocaust Memorial Day … that Angela Raynor made the unforgivable error of lighting her candle of remembrance to 'the people' who died. Her bland words did as she intended, they deleted 6 million Jews. An act of virtue signalling that will not win either friends or votes for Labour. Speaking as a British jew, Ange is off my Chanukah list. The labour party, and many, many others have been duped by Hamas propaganda. Their lack of intellectual curiosity, the easy acceptance of lie after lie from a brutal bunch of terror merchants is shaming.

They can make fun of Trump, snigger at his swaggering politics. Turn their backs and instead take a British begging bowl to the struggling europeans with their matching mindsets, outdated ideas and a mostly bankrupt morality. When it comes to the middle-east and antisemitism Trump apparently does have a grasp of right over wrong. UNRWA is now defunded, antisemitic university students will be removed and their visas revoked. Love or hate him, unlike Starmer, the man thinks fast and big. Do I believe in his vision for Gaza? A golden riviera seems highly unlikely. Not for want of trying. But look what happened to Lebanon. They once had a beautiful, hedonistic riviera, now they have Hizbollah instead. There is a deep and violent sickness in the Middle East that destroys progress. A clash of cultures and values, a victimhood that embraces death over life.

Trump appears crazy to many, and whilst that may be true, he has certainly jump-started a much needed conversation.

Perhaps British politicians seeped in decades of apathy should stop congratulating themselves for achieving very little. Often keen to make apologies for historical mistakes across the world, perhaps our government owe one to the Jewish community. In 1948 the Arabs refused the land they were offered. They didn't want to live in peace alongside Israel. They wanted then as they do now, ‘from the river to the sea.’ All or nothing. The British Mandate, wriggling under the commitment they had made to the Jews, played both sides off against each other. They expected (hoped?) the fledgling state of Israel would break under Arab attack. Big mistake.

The indescribable violence of Hamas on October 7th cannot be rewarded. Starmer needs to stop whining over failed ideas, get himself a pair of balls, become a statesman and contribute something meaningful to the future conversation. For 16 months, pro Palestinians have been allowed to chant on our streets and in our universities, demanding the relocation of Israel’s 7.7 million Jews. Their freedom of speech has cost £54 million pounds and normalised antisemitism. Yet, when Trump turns this suggestion on its head and reflects it back at them, people shout genocide and sob at the unfairness.

Let’s stick to the truth … Hamas are a vile terror group, they rape, they murder, they kidnap, they steal aid, they revel in violence, they hate homosexuals, they store weapons in hospitals and schools, they degrade women and use their own people as human shields. And last but not least they lie. There never was a genocide in Gaza.