The Diamond Jubilee: A right Royal piss-take

There is a long list of things beyond my feeblish comprehension. Close to the top of it, however, is how so many Britons – a people renowned for its healthy scepticism and refusal to blindly bow to authority – buy into the bollocks that is the Royal Family.

“Anyone else consider these jubilee celebrations obscene?” I posted to Facebook from my phone in the early hours of last Tuesday, at the end of my tether following days of Sky News sycophancy.

“Only the mentally ill” was the first response I woke up to – though, it should be clarified, it came from a teacher at Hasmonean High School for Boys – and it was followed by a chorus of disapproval, topped by a clearly peeved private school and Cambridge educated cousin:

“People who misuse the word “obscene” in circumstances like this are always attempting to express extreme, usually puritanical moral disapproval of some activity enjoyed by others, in which they are not included.”

True, I had not been included in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities, but the “extreme . . . puritanical moral disapproval” was, in this case, clearly not mine. I had merely posed a question.

In Hendon, I would often stare at our “daily” (my mother’s doublespeak for cleaner), who cut a not dissimilar figure to the Queen, and ponder how very different her life would have been had she only been born a Windsor and not a Hart.

I know which one my money’s on!

And I still imagine that the Queen must laugh herself to sleep at nights, not quite believing her luck. The woman is unremarkable in nearly every respect. And Mrs. Hart, to the best of my knowledge, did not have (to varying degrees of allegedness): an adulterous husband and son, and  another son and a grandson (with a penchant for dressing up as a Nazi) who were illegitimate.

Should we even respect this dysfunctional, inbred clan, never mind look up to it? It is fitting that Madness played so central a role in the Diamond Jubilee Concert because, if anyone is really “mentally ill,” it is surely those who believe that the Family are actually deserving of their status, privileges and patronage.

Moreover, those of us who live in – or at least care about – Israel cannot overlook the fact that Her Majesty has visited more than 130 countries over the past 60 years, but – in spite of being Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith – never once the Holy Land. She must not, of course, offend those darling Arabs so beloved by her Foreign Office.

But seeing all those upper-class twerps bawling “God Save the Queen”  from their Epsom boxes last week just made me long for Johnny Rotten. God save you, Ma’am . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBo0LLlKu5Q

Shavuos Caption Competition

Following the success of my Rosh Hashanah (5771) Caption Competition, I thought it would be nice to host a new one for the upcoming festival of Shavuos.

And look what a lovely photograph (click on to enlarge) – taken yesterday on Brent Street (just off Goodyers Gardens), Hendon, of all places – just landed in my Inbox . . .

The most amusing caption submitted by comment below will – and I am feeling even more generous this time – earn its author two halves of Goldstar* in the Jaffa or Jerusalem drinking establishment of his/her choice, together, once again, with a free lifetime subscription to melchett mike.

As Chich used to say, “Uh want nems” [English translation: I want names] . . . because – whilst I would never, God forbid, condone any activity contrary to the law – there is nothing to stop melchett mike readers bringing the delightful bearded participants some cheese cake for the chag.

Happy Shavuos!

* at Happy Hour, of course

Hasmo Legends XXVI: Upper Sixth, 1978/79

Following my request, at the end of Hasmo Legends XXV: Lower Sixth, 1962/63, for more photos of the nuthouse, I was inundated with precisely two – and then both from the same reader (though even that was an improvement on the precisely none who responded to my appeal for donations in Hasmo Legends XIX) – but boy did Danny Amini come up with the goods!

The photographs below – click on to enlarge (you will then be able to zoom in) – were taken a few minutes apart, circa June 1979, the first (“With Willy”) official and the second (“No Willy”) rather less so. They both, however, give rise to the same burning question . . .

What the bloody hell happened to Hasmonean in the mere 16 years between 1963 and 1979?!

The former’s Lower Sixth (see photograph) comprised 36 immaculately turned out boys, each one with uniform blazer, shirt and tie (done up), neat hairdo, appropriate smile, and general demeanour of derech eretz.

The following, on the other hand, display a collection of scallywags – or, as Rabbi Cooper would refer to us, a “rotten lot” – who look as if they had been given ninety seconds to run into Oxfam and throw on whatever they could find (because they would then draw attention away from the state of the building and window frames behind them?)

Back row (left to right): David Silber, Simon Maybaum, Jeffrey Glausiusz, Daniel Amini, Simon Lawrence, Shimon Goldstein, Zvi Israel, Jonny Solomon, David Josse, Mark Neuberger, Daniel De Lange, Harvey Perlmutter, David Miller, H.P. Cohen, Eric Dangoor, Manny Ezekiel, Michael Churn. 2nd row from back: Shalom Orzach, R.D. Cohen, José Frohwein, Yossi Davis, Elliot Stefansky, Daniel Drukarz, Martin Freedman, Danny Roper (obscured). 2nd row from front: Meir Jacobson, Yechezkel Hepner, Jonathan Abt, Benjy Dorman, Jeremy Davis, Laurence Foux, Julian Rose, Shmuli Orenstein, Manny Nissel (arm on shoulder), Ronnie Joseph, David Sagal (back), Brian Cohen (front), Jonathan Kovler, Yisroel Chalk, Naftali Reiss, Ricky Kahan, Stuart Gnessen, Ian Shiner, Adrian Warren, Mark Engelman, Mr. S. Posen, David Dunitz. Front row: Solomon Cohen, Arthur Weller, Jonny Silver, Martin Reich, Mr. W.W. Stanton, Rabbi P. Greenberg, Dr. L. Finkelstein, Mr. C. Johnson, Mr. A.H. Bloomberg.

Take David Miller (back row, fifth from right), for obvious instance. “This boy” – seemingly not satisfied with his lack of blazer, white v-neck, and shaggy black pooch perched on his head – was allegedly referred to, long after his departure from Holders Hill Road, as the “wretch with the Ray-Bans.”

Talking of the Legendary Welshman (front row, extreme right) – who, sadly, passed away last Thursday, aged 88 – he is clearly longing for just a few minutes’ peace with his Telegraph; while Michael Churn (back row, extreme right) is, judging by the pained expression, even more desperate for some privacy. A dodgy (as if any weren’t!) slice of Mrs. B’s meat loaf?  Whatever the cause, “Churn by name, churn by nature” doesn’t hang around for No Willy . . .

Back row (left to right): R.D. Cohen, José Frohwein, Yossi Davis, Elliot Stefansky, Daniel Drukarz, Danny Roper, Manny Ezekiel, David Sagal, Eric Dangoor. 2nd row from back: Shalom Orzach, Shmuli Orenstein, Ronnie Joseph. 3rd row from back: Zvi Israel, Meir Jacobson, Jeremy Davis, Laurence Foux, Martin Freedman, Jonathan Kovler, Simon Lawrence, Brian Cohen (obscured), Yisroel Chalk, Stuart Gnessen, Harvey Perlmutter, Mark Neuberger, Mr. S. Posen, Daniel De Lange. 2nd row from front: Adrian Warren, Arthur Weller, Jonathan Abt, Jonny Silver, Martin Reich, Shimon Goldstein, Simon Maybaum, Daniel Amini, David Silver, Jeffrey Glausiusz, Ricky Kahan, Manny Nissel, Naftali Reiss. Front row: Benjy Dorman, Julian Rose, David Miller, H.P. Cohen, Solomon Cohen, David Josse, Yechezkel Hepner, Mark Engelman, Jonny Solomon, Ian Shiner (on lap), David Dunitz (crouching), Rabbi P. Greenberg.

I invite Ian Shiner, perched on the lap of Rabbi Greenberg (of all people) – and looking as if he is rather enjoying himself, too – to explain himself . . . especially since, with this single, seemingly voluntary, act, he undermines the various allegations of teacher impropriety made by commenters to Hasmo Legends. (It is traditional, or so I am told, for lap dancers, after they have done their stuff, to have a little something slipped into their underwear. Let us only hope for the boy Shiner – who looks somewhat disappointed, in With Willy, that neither Mr. Bloomberg nor Mr. Johnson were up for a dance – that this custom was honoured merely in the breach.)

Conspicuous by their complete absence from these photographs are future pedagogues, and co-authors of Hasmo Legends VII: “Woody” Woodthorpe Harrison, Daniel Marks and Nick Kopaloff. The former is said to have been expelled from Hasmo just days earlier – for mimicking the subject of his aforementioned tour de force in the act of picking his nose – while the latter, I am reliably informed, was most likely to be found in Starkey’s Turf Accountants down the road.

And what about the eponymous TonyW? Can it be that the son of a future President of the Board didn’t make it into the Hasmonean Sixth Form?! Surely not . . .

Your responses are welcomed.

In memory of Alan Hyam (אבא חיים בן משה) Bloomberg, born 12 November 1923, died 17 May 2012 . . . the ultimate Legend.

[Thank you to Danny Amini. Also to Graham Summers – who had left Hasmonean for Kilburn Poly (now, no doubt, Edgware Road University) – for identifying all patients/inmates. And, again, the address for old photos/memorabilia: melchettmike@gmail.com]

Next on Hasmo Legends, Part XXVII: Liselle Bailey – The Revenge of the Willy

Grooming in the Green: Just imagine it

A gang of nine Jewish males from Golders Green – eight English-born and one Israeli – has been convicted of grooming underage non-Jewish girls for sex, the vulnerable teenagers having been lavished with salt beef sandwiches (on rye) and latkes, and plied with Palwin No. 10, at kosher restaurants across North-West London.

One can just imagine the response of the BBC and Guardian etc “PC Brigade”, springing to the defence of Anglo-Jewry, protesting that the crimes had nothing whatsoever to do with race or religion . . .

Yeh, right!! We’d have a modern-day blood libel on our hands! And we wouldn’t even get to Nick Griffin. We wouldn’t need to, with . . .

• A now happily (for us) retired former MP and Mayor of London accessing his impressive stash of Zionist/Jewish/Israeli – they are, after all, interchangeable – stereotypes to “make sense” of the case;
• A weekend magazine feature on the ultra-Orthodox Jewish male’s attitude towards The Shiksa, with, among the interviewees, perhaps, a Haaretz ‘journalist’ who once saw some charedim kerb crawling in the Diamond Exchange district (as he was exiting a strip club);
• A Saddam-saluting Jock, foaming at the mouth, claiming the guilty verdicts should surprise no one, seeing as Diaspora Jewish males merely follow the example set for them by the IDF, with their war crimes against the poor, peace-loving Palestinians;
• A half-page Guardian ad taken out by an assortment of self-loathing writers, actors and other luvvies (vying, perhaps, to become the UK’s new Number One Self-Hating Jew), pledging to have circumcision reversals (foreskin regrafts) to distance themselves from a religion that “allows” such crimes; and
• The dishonourable (and dishonest) Member for Manchester Gorton once again cynically exploiting the memory of his poor late grandmother (see here), telling the House of Commons that “she did not die at the hands of the Nazis for Jews to do a thing like this.”
  

  Who needs the BNP?

But a gang of nine Muslim men – eight Pakistani and one Afghan – grooming, abusing, assaulting and/or raping up to 47 (that is forty-seven) vulnerable girls in Rochdale, every single one of whom was white, has, we are being told (though not, thankfully, by the only UK newspaper to consistently tell it as it is), nothing to do with Islam or its followers, or with its or their attitude towards females and, especially, non-Muslim females.

Nothing whatsoever.

[Related posts: World Trade Center set for suicide bomber memorial and The lesson of 9/11: Don’t dare upset the Muslims.]

John McCarthy: Now where’s that radiator?

I forgot to turn off my Internet radio, last night. It’s a fantastic piece of gear, that can broadcast BBC Radio 5 Live to Jaffa . . . if you want to hear it, that is.

Having dozed off to debate about Roy Hodgson’s suitability as new England football manager (horrid that the media and ‘fans’ are already getting on his case), I half woke up, at 5 a.m., to a 30-minute conversation with former Lebanon hostage, John McCarthy, about his new book, You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Israel and Palestine.

Now, McCarthy – held by Islamic Jihad for over 5 years, longer than any other Briton in Lebanon – comes across as a perfectly decent and reasonable bloke, without agenda or malice, the type of English ex-public schoolboy with whom you might strike up a pleasant conversation over tea and scones in the Kenwood House café. The journalist and BBC Radio 4 presenter is certainly not – on the face of it, at least – the type to “salute” Saddam, to make “concentration camp guard” jibes to Jewish reporters, or who “might just consider becoming [a suicide bomber].”

The pages in his Haileybury twentieth century history book referring to the 1948/49 Arab-Israeli War, however, must have been torn out by a previous student, because McCarthy, this morning, referred to it as a “civil war” – i.e., between civilians of the same country – when it was, of course, fought between a ragtag Jewish army and a military coalition of seven Arab states and foreign volunteers (of whom McCarthy made absolutely no mention), in addition to native Arabs.

Indeed, McCarthy’s ridiculously one-sided account of 1948/49 made Jewish soldiers sound more like Bosnian Serb and Croat ethnic cleansers than fighters against an alliance sworn to the destruction of their nascent state (mandated by the 1947 UN Partition Plan).

McCarthy’s interviewer, Up All Night presenter Rhod Sharp, didn’t once challenge his account. Perhaps he knows no better. But why couldn’t I imagine the same happening had his guest, instead, been Benjamin Netanyahu or even Shimon Peres?

As it turns out, the only tea I will be sharing with McCarthy is the contents of my pot, over his head . . .

Towards the end of the conversation, describing a card game that he stumbled across in the northern city of Acre (Acco) while interviewing Israeli Arabs for his book, McCarthy told of his surprise at discovering that an Iraqi-born Jew, keen to use his mother tongue, had been accepted into the group. This “common humanity,” McCarthy said, gives him some hope for the future.

“The trouble is,” the Arabs told him, “he takes our money from us every day.”

Indeed. Those clever Jews.

When his agent advises him that Michael Parkinson only interviews people who have actually done things, David Brent, referring to McCarthy, replies:

“He had that guy in Lebanon who spent years chained to a radiator. What did he do? Nothing! He was chained to a radiator!”

With all McCarthy’s shameful disinformation about Israel and Jews, we can only be sorry that he is not still there.

You can listen to the Up All Night interview with John McCarthy here (2:05.48-2:32.45).

Hasmo Legends XXV: Lower Sixth, 1962/63

Ex-Hasmo Stewart Block (1957-64) has come forward with the following photograph, of the 1962/63 Lower Sixth, which I feel is worth posting . . . and not just because it contains a certain Stephen Posen.

Seymour Popeck and Alfie Hecksher (you can’t get any more kosher than that) must both – along with my old mate Pinchos Chalk – be strong contenders for the most original Hasmo name of all time.

And is that Keith Fisher of Brent Street hairdressing ‘fame’? An ex-Hasmo?! If you are reading, Keith, I would like to thank you (if somewhat belatedly) for Morelle, who provided invaluable “food for thought,” if you get my gist, in my frummie adolescence.

Back row (left to right): Seymour Popeck, Gabby Handler, Ronald Hoffbauer, Mark Schimmel, Keith Fisher, Stewart Block, Anthony Finn, Stephen Leveson, Robert Josse, Peter Bloomberg, Samuel Abudarham, Richard Feinmesser, Stuart Plaskow, Anthony Goorney, Leon Storfer. Middle row: Robert Lewy, Robert Coe, Howard Bluston, Alfie Hecksher, Monty Frankel, Michael Neuberger, Mr. Z. Greenbaum, Ronald Feutchwanger, Barry Schechter, Michael Schine, Steven Greenman, Geoffrey Gilbert, Lucien Jacobs. Front row: Stephen Posen, Jack Berger, Menachem Persoff, Ivor Mindel, Eliezer Grunwald, Nathan Schiner, Esmond Goldfield, Paul Cohen, Moishe Tesler. (Absent: David Eckhardt, David Lopian, Malcolm Lewis, Michael Harper.)

To view a larger image, click on the photo; or, for a clearer pdf, on the following link (and, if you ask one of your children nicely, I am sure that he/she will show you how you can zoom in) . . .

Lower Sixth, Hasmonean Grammar School for Boys, 1962-63

Thank you, Stewart (and for taking responsibility for name misspellings). If other readers are in possession of old Hasmo photos, or related memorabilia, the address is melchettmike@gmail.com!

Next on Hasmo Legends, Part XXVI: Upper Sixth, 1978/79

Luzon my religion: Israel’s not-so-beautiful game

“No need for excuses,” quipped a fellow Anglo-Israeli on the phone, as I was attempting to explain why I was at Maccabi Tel Aviv vs. Rishon Le’tzion (and thus couldn’t hear him). And Ron had not missed the irony. There was, indeed, a need for excuses!

While going to football in England is an Update status-worthy event – “At the Emirates,” “the Lane,” etc (though less, it must be said, “Elland Road”) are oft seen on Facebook – only the most secure will own up to attending games in Israel, or even to watching them on telly.

All of which makes it all the more curious that everyone here is up in arms about the mass brawl at Hapoel Ramat Gan vs. Bnei Lod on Friday afternoon (Haaretz), surely the most entertainment ever witnessed on an Israeli football pitch . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIFz0uf2I-o

I had been trying to tell Ron that, as the (not-so-proud) owner of a Maccabi Tel Aviv season ticket, I had no choice but to go to games. If there is some way of measuring such things, however, I am confident that the ticket represents one of the worst ever returns on 1,200 shekels (around two hundred pounds).

The excuse for my moment of madness was that I had just moved to within a few hundred metres of Bloomfield Stadium, the home of Tel Aviv’s biggest clubs, Hapoel and Maccabi (I chose the latter because I am forbidden from wearing red). And it is a measure of the wretchedness of the Israeli soccer experience – the football is crap, the officials are worse, and the spectators are largely odious, knowing nothing about The Beautiful Game – that, when I am at Bloomfield, I find myself daydreaming about wet, blustery evenings at Hendon FC.

“There’s only one Itzik Zohar . . .
one too many.”

While it is not only Israeli footballers who are knobs, they don’t have the excuse of the Bests, Gascoignes and Cantonas, or even of the Collymores, Di Canios and Balotellis, i.e., that they can play. Strutting, play-acting tossers and prima donnas like the ars’s ars, Itzik Zohar (right, now a TV pundit) – widely considered by Crystal Palace fans (this one, for instance) to be one of the club’s worst ever signings (no mean feat, I can tell you!) – and my own personal bête noire (having had to suffer him all season), Maccabi captain Barak Itzhaki, don’t have any such excuse.

What I have, however, gained from my season ticket is an understanding of why Israeli football fans leave piles of garinim (sunflower seed) shells on terrace floors – it gives them something to do for 90 minutes (I, too, have now adopted the custom) – and familiarity with a wide variety of Hebrew songs, from Mi shelo kofetz adom (Whoever doesn’t jump is red [i.e., Hapoel]) to Ima shelachem zona (Your mother is a whore), nearly all sung to the identical tune. Indeed, 90 minutes at Bloomfield makes a visit to the nearby Ramat Gan Safari entirely unnecessary.

“If they were at all capable of reflection, the monkeys who booed [Ran] Ben Shimon out [of Maccabi Tel Aviv] – following Saturday’s home defeat to Kiryat Shmona, ironically his former charge that got him his position – will come to regret their mindlessness. A 38-year old coach who, last season, took the relative nobodies from the northern border to 3rd place, in their very first season in the top flight, will obviously go on to greater things. His successor, Avi Nimni – however great a player for Maccabi – probably won’t.”

I published the above – in Ran Ben Shimon: A Deeper Malaise – on November 3, 2008. Earlier this month, Kiryat Shmona clinched its first ever championship – the first to be won by a club outside Israel’s three major cities in nearly 30 years – under Ben Shimon (who rejoined the club as coach in April 2009). And, no, Avi Nimni didn’t.

While it is poor taste to say “I told you so” (but I’ve started so I’ll finish), the malaise to which I referred in that second post to melchett mike was not just of players and fans, but of Israeli football as a whole. It starts at the very top, with Israeli Football Association chairman Avi Luzon (and family) – more dodgy than Ken Bates after a little tamper with the wheels of his Zimmer frame – and is encouraged by media coverage of the most moronic kind, giving Zohar, Eyal Berkovic and Eli Ohana, the dickheads of the “double pass,” free rein to puff up their already over-inflated egos (see Moti, you ain’t no Motty!)

. . . and there is only one "Special One."

Ohana (right) was wonderfully lampooned in a recent Yediot Aharonot article – showing that it is not only snooty English olim who are fed up with the know-it-all local football coverage – for his studio criticism of the tactics of Real Madrid coach, José Mourinho:

“As the inhabitants of Blah-Blah Land, we have got used to the idiotic nonsense of blabbermouth commentators, but there is a limit even to chutzpah. Sitting there is [Ohana] the coach of the Israeli youth team, the big shot who succeeded, in his last examination in the league, in relegating Kfar Saba to the second division – of a calibre that, even in the Maccabiah (against Jewish teenagers who looked more likely to win a bible quiz), had to make to do with the bronze medal – and he is giving a lecture on football to the coach who has won the Champions League twice, taken six domestic championships in three different countries, with a seventh in a fourth on the way. It is almost like [Israeli singer] Avihu Shabat criticising John Lennon or [comedian] Shahar Hasson slagging off Jerry Seinfeld.”

The bottom line is that most Israelis (including TV and media pundits), however much they love the game, don’t – for a reason that I cannot quite fathom – truly understand it (or, at least, not in the same way that we do). This was most apparent, yesterday evening, watching Barcelona vs. Chelsea with half a dozen natives, who were constantly whingeing about the West Londoners playing “boonker” (i.e., defensively). How exactly did they expect them to play, protecting a lead against Lionel Messi and Co. at the Nou Camp, with a place in the Champions League final at stake? With expansive football?!

Needless to say, I won’t be renewing my season ticket.

And there isn’t any proper cricket here, either. Still, there are the women. There is the weather, too. And the food. And golden memories of footballers who could both “mix it” and play . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8kxMnc5KUs

To all readers of melchett mike – whether Maccabi, Hapoel, or even Bnei Yehuda – happy barbecuing!

Buying in Bet Shemesh: Let the freier beware!

I had to laugh just now, perusing The Jerusalem Post’s Passover Real Estate supplement (passed down to me, JC-style, by my mother).

On page 10 of the magazine, Jerusalem and environs real estate agent Shelly Levine lists a 51-cottage project in Sheinfeld, Bet Shemesh (see Spitters and splitters: what have the charedim ever done for us?) as one of her “five best picks” in and around the capital, giving more than a little credence to my contention – in Be a wise buyer, not a foreign freier: a guide to the world of Israeli real estate – that agents “will sell their own mothers to do a deal.”

But the opinion of Levine, President of “savvy agency” Tivuch Shelly, is seemingly held in high regard. “Not a day passes,” she informs readers, “when real estate buyers or investors don’t ask me, ‘What’s THE best place to buy now in Jerusalem?'”

Bet Shemesh, December 2011: THE best place to buy now, Shelly?

And you will never guess who we discover, a mere 22 pages later, to be conducting “Exclusive sales” of the Bet Shemesh cottages . . . yes, it’s our Shelly!

In describing Sheinfeld as “the internationally acclaimed pace-setting community . . . with full spiritual facilities,” Levine must have had in mind “one-of-a-kind” scenes and neighbours – a mere stone’s throw/spitting distance away from her project – like these, these and these.

Even if you still believe, however, that in Bet Shemesh you will find “top quality of life in a value-driven environment,” I suggest that, when sitting down to talk money, you make the vendor watch one of the following reports: in Hebrew or English.

[In the Rosh Hashanah 5773 edition of Real Estate: Grad deals in Sderot! Only a few homes remaining.]

Brothers and sisters, stop yer wailing!

Tomorrow marks 50 days since young Ethiopians set up a protest tent at the top of my street.

I walk Stuey and Dexxy past the tent – situated outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, on the same spot that the Shalit tent stood for three and a half years – with its “Stop Racism” and “Apartheid 2012” signs, most mornings. And, if you ask me, there are just some people you can never please.

Admitted, Israel’s 120,000 Ethiopians suffer institutional racism and discrimination, and enormous economic, employment-related and educational hardship – unemployment is over double that in the Jewish population as a whole, nearly three-quarters of Ethiopian families live below the poverty line, and their children are forced to attend separate kindergartens and schools – but, hello-o, would Ethiopians prefer to still be living in Africa, with its famines, droughts, human rights abuses and civil wars, rather than in Israel, with Big Brother and The Voice?!

Many passers-by clearly also have difficulty understanding what it is exactly that that the tent-dwellers want . . .

“My parents and their 17 children walked here from Morocco in 1955,” one woman told me. “We lived on leaves and grass,” she continued, “but we didn’t complain.”

And an elderly gentleman, born in Yemen, said: “We are also black . . . I mean, lighter than them, but still black. And it wasn’t easy with those bastard Ashkenazim, I can tell you! But we succeeded. And we did it through hard work, not charity.”

And, while we are on the subject, my aliyah wasn’t easy either. I had to share the ulpan/absorption centre with at least two dozen French, and – with the exception of the half-wit who walked around screaming “You fuck my wife?” (the only sentence that he knew, having apparently spent all of his high school leçons d’anglais memorising the script of Raging Bull) – the swines refused to speak a word of English.

And not all the new olim came with cash in the bank. Indeed, one of the Russian lasses was even said to have run a knocking shop from her bedroom (tragically, I only tend to discover such things when it is too late).

So, Ethiopian brothers and sisters, in the prophetic words of (your) Bob, you’ve gotta be “iron like a lion in Zion”: see your Israeli cup as half full . . . and stop yer wailing!

From Jew-obsession to the mechanics of murder

“The Muslim faith has nothing to do with the insane acts of this man.”

So opined the French President, last week, following the latest acts of cold-blooded murder by a hate-filled Muslim, including once again – almost a year to the day since the Itamar infanticide – of three Jewish children, this time aged 3, 6 and 8.

“Nothing to do with”? Are you sure, Mr. Sarkozy?

How much Islamofascist terror must we endure before we stop having to listen to such PC bollocks, and before we stop putting ever so delicate Muslim sensibilities before the hard truth? When, instead, is the Muslim community and its hate-inciting imams going to be told to put their murderous, bloodthirsty house in order?

Respect, my arse: Ken & George

And, while telling things as they are, it is not only Muslims who are to blame for such atrocities. Much of the Islamofascist’s fuel, and the climate in which he is allowed, even encouraged, to operate, is provided by the Israel-only bashers – the George Galloways, Ken Livingtones, Jenny Tonges, even the sad, bitter nothings like Gert Meyers (see previous link), of this world – who, by relentlessly demonizing and attempting to delegitimize the Jewish state with their hateful, hypocritical agenda (while remaining largely silent, for most recent instance, about the slaughter in Syria), provide fertile ground for the murder of Jews.

Don’t even dream, however, of calling the Israel-only basher an anti-Semite. He, of course, has nothing against Jews (some of his best friends . . .), merely opposing Israel, which –  by pure coincidence only – just happens to be the Jewish state. Neither is it by virtue of their conflict with the Jews that the Israel-only basher gives the Palestinians his sole, undivided attention (to the exclusion of Syrians, Kurds, Iranians, Coptic Christians, Sudanese, Eritreans, Equatorial Guineans, Zimbabweans, Burmese, Tibetans, North Koreans, Cubans): it is just that the Palestinians are, intrinsically, far lovelier and cuddlier than every other persecuted people.

Having lunch in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market, a couple of weeks ago, I struck up conversation with a nice non-Jewish couple from Colorado, visiting Israel for the first time. “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” said Jim, while we were still on our soup, “but why do so many people hate the Jews? I just don’t understand it.” I went through the list – jealousy and Jesus being the only reasons that seemed to make any sense (and, then, not much) – before concluding with my own view, that it is just part and parcel of, though a sickness in, the human condition.

In the week that saw John Demjanjuk go to meet his diabolical maker – the very same, no doubt, as of his fellow auto mechanic Mohammed Merah – I couldn’t help but wonder whether the millions spent on attempting to bring an incontinent Ukrainian peasant to justice would not have been better earmarked for more effectively countering the deadly lies of the Israel-only bashers, and for providing proper security for Jewish communities around the world.

Toulouse victims z"l: (clockwise) Rabbi Yonatan Sandler (30), sons Gavriel (3) and Aryeh (6), Miriam Monsonego (8)