A Right Royal Piss-Take

What just happened there then?

Why were friends and acquaintances I had always found to be entirely sane and discerning now displaying more grief at the demise of a woman they had never met than they had on the death of their own parents? And why were some taking so personally my calling out the Queen’s funeral pomposities as I saw them, as excessive, ridiculous, even obscene?

“There is a time and a place,” I was repeatedly told. But I reside in a place that was never on the Queen’s map, and — seeing as I had just endured ten days of mawkish tosh being trotted out from every UK media outlet (including by journalists who I knew did not believe a word they were saying) — the time seemed just fine too.

The deification of the Queen this past fortnight — culminating in an OTT, stage-managed funeral that made Speer’s rallies look like a 70s NF march down Eltham High Street — appeared to me like collective hysteria bordering on mental illness.

So what is it all based on then, this monarchy thing? The divine right of kings?

If you have spotted the “divine” in our adulterous new King, who throws tantrums over leaking fountain pens, then please do let me know where. Or if you have seen it in his brother — reportedly the Queen’s (one-time, at least) favourite son — who at best fraternised with a notorious sex trafficker and paedophile, and at worst raped an underage girl. Or in his younger son, whose idea of a lark was dressing up as a Nazi . . . though perhaps this one should not entirely surprise, seeing as all manner of uncles and aunts actually were Nazis, married to them, or a little bit partial to a soupçon of Nazism.

I mean just how gullible can people be about a family of such preposterous, unearned and undeserved wealth and privilege? And who in their right mind would actually look up to such a largely dysfunctional lot? Now that the Queen has left us, I can’t think of a single role model amongst them. Indeed, to come up with a family as unsavoury, I have to think back to some of those I came across during my training in Criminal and Family Legal Aid.

The supersensitive friend (now ex-) most enraged by my “obscene” observation — and that is pretty much all it was — on Facebook is a fellow Leeds United fan who once Sieg Heil-ed in my presence in a Madrid bar. (Nothing to do with me, you understand, rather the unannounced playing of a U2 song . . . they are Irish, you know!) I suppose different things offend different people.

The Queen always came across to me as a decent human being. But that was all she was . . . a human being, if with a heightened sense of duty and moral rectitude, who performed an essential “check and balance” under the curious British Constitution.

Growing up, I would look at Mrs Hart — our lovely “daily” on Edgeworth Crescent, who worked tirelessly for her family on the local estate — and ponder the unjust randomness of things. To me, as a boy, she and Elizabeth Windsor even resembled one another. Pat Hart, though, had not been born into a family anointed by an absurd fiction. “Good morning, Doctor Isaacson,” Mrs H would always merrily call out to my father. But on the occasions that Prince Philip visited him at King’s College Hospital, my father, a brilliant consultant physician, was not even permitted to initiate conversation with the Duke.

The main conclusion I draw from the sometimes surreal past fortnight is that people are looking for meaning that organised religion — including my own (I was simply aghast at how many Jewish friends bought into the mass hysteria) — cannot provide. I mean even an avowed apikores (non-believer) like me would rather hedge my bets with a Higher Being, with credentials stronger and a reign longer than those of a family characterised by at least as much bad as good.

Queen Elizabeth II (credit: Julian Calder for Governor-General of New Zealand)

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 . . .

Vedding?! . . . Ye call dat a vedding?!

Having ignored invitations to various Anglo-Israeli Royal Wedding bashes – quite apart from my already admitted davka-ness, why would I chance having to share such a uniquely British occasion with Israelis, Americans and, worst of all of course, French? – I watched William’s chasseneh, in Netanya, in the company of the person with whom I witnessed that of his parents, thirty years ago: my mother.

The Duke of Hazard

To be totally honest, I feel rather above such gatherings . . . which of course I am, my late father having served as physician to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Though, for the benefit of the commoners who read this blog, a soupçon of life with the Royals: On the evening before his first visit from the Prince, dad received a telephone call at home informing him of the correct protocol, essentially not to speak until spoken to. This was ironic, really, considering that dad had a very strong sense of propriety, while the Prince, on the other hand, is famed for putting his foot in it at every given opportunity. “If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat . . . are you going to ban cricket bats?” was his contribution to the gun control debate following Dunblane; whilst his welcome of the Nigerian President (who was in traditional robes) – “You look like you’re ready for bed!” – was what perhaps precluded a return invite to Abuja.

Anyhow, as for the wedding and immediate aftermath, I was less worried about Will’s and Kate’s rather pursed lip kisses on the Buckingham Palace balcony than I was relieved that Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wasn’t caught – for the few seconds that the TV cameras were on him in the Abbey – joining in with Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah (more commonly, though erroneously, known as Bread of Heaven).

Neither royalist nor republican, I recognise the stability that the monarchy brings to the British political process, and believe that the nation would be a great deal the poorer for the loss of occasions such as Friday’s.

"Lionel who?!"

That evening, however, Hanna, an Israeli friend (of Moroccan parentage, if you are reading, Isaac), told me that the excesses of the wedding confirmed to her just how ridiculous the British really are. But it fell on deaf ears, seeming as it did to be akin to Bnei Yehuda’s finest, Pini Balili (right), telling Lionel Messi that he wastes too much time dribbling.

But it was not just Hanna. Sunday morning’s Haaretz was full of cynicism and sneers. On its front page, ‘journalist’ Shai Golden could only sum up the wedding as “a classic case of “Why didn’t you tell us your sister was prettier than you?”,” following that with an equally moronic reference to the newlyweds as “successors” to “the couple regarded as international British royalty,” David and Victoria Beckham.

"Victoria, there's a massive fruit gum on yer 'ead!"

As well as displaying the quality of (what my father used to call) being “well-balanced . . . having a chip on each shoulder,” many Israelis have an infuriating habit of pretending to understand – like they do ‘proper’ football (see Moti, you ain’t no Motty!) – other traditions and cultures (older, if not superior) . . . when, really, they know nothing about them. Golden no doubt watched the wedding on Israeli TV, and, probably only recognising Elton John and “Posh and Becks” amongst the invited guests, had to write about one of them.

“The monarchy has long been dead in Europe,” Golden, now the brilliant constitutional theorist, concluded, seemingly on the basis that “there will never be another like [Lady Diana].” Who could argue with such logic? (Though why am I still expecting anything other than ignorance and arrogance from the writers and pages of Haaretz? See Haaretz: Always hitting us when we’re down.)

As for “trash pop culture and empty celebrity hedonism” – of which Golden brands the Beckhams (of whom, incidentally, I am no fan) “the ambassadors” – he need look no further than his own doorstep for these, so sadly obsessed has this country become with crap reality TV and its inane participants. Indeed, who could expect your average Israeli, whose idea of a “spectacle” is the last night of Ha’Ach Ha’Gadol, to appreciate the magnificent pageantry that we witnessed on Friday?

It is impossible to even imagine Israelis, like the tens of thousands of Britons who lined the wedding route, camping out for days on end with such patience and stoicism: they’d finish their Yediot and garinim, get bored, spread the newspaper over the largest possible area – perhaps, if no one is looking, stealing a few extra inches – and then demand that neighbouring campers save the space until they return in three days’ time! (Anyone unfortunate enough to have shopped in an an Israeli supermarket will know exactly what I mean.)

Who wouldn't want the opinion of this man?

Another report in Sunday’s Haaretz, from the Tel Aviv party attended by the British ambassador, saw fit to quote Israeli singer Tzvika Pik (right), a ridiculous, ageing hippy who once wrote a few catchy pop songs: “I would have had him [Elton John] sing again in the church the way he sang in Princess Diana’s memory. You don’t need more than that.”

And, whilst you’re at it, Tzvika, why not also, after the service, bus all the guests down to the Blackwall Tunnel for a re-enactment of the Paris crash?

Most Israelis just don’t get it. One of the very few who seemed to was actor, Rami Heuberger: “we appreciate the British sense of humor . . . inviting us to an event like this has a lot of humor in it. Because what do we have to do with this? The only blue blood in our veins is the water from the Frishman beach.”

But to my fragrant English Rose, Pippa . . .

Would I . . . !!

Quite apart from your boyfriend (or, rather, momentary aberration) clearly being an absolute dope – who retires at 27 from an extremely promising career as an international cricketer . . . to go into finance?! – I think you will agree that “Pippa and melchett” has a beautiful ring to it.

And you need not worry your lovely legs about what my mum and her Netanya ladies will think/say . . . just the thought of all those hats again – and in real life, this time! – will win ‘em over.

So, Pippa sweetness, you know where to find me. And I am willing to wait if necessary . . . unlike my adopted countrymen, I am extremely patient!

A Dishonourable Knighthood: Why Shimon Shouldn’t Have Gone

During my first couple of years in Israel, I used to take my shoes to be repaired by a cobbler on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road. The lovely old gentleman was born and grew up under the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948). When I first told him I was British, far from throwing my shoes back in my face, his eyes lit up as he reminisced, with no little nostalgia, how wonderfully polite the British soldiers were during that period, almost as if wishing them back.

This is not the reaction one would expect from a cold study of the history books. Even if the British could have explained away the 1939 White Paper – severely restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine – as political necessity, the turning back of ships packed with survivors of German death camps smacked of unimaginable cruelty.

But the deferential Israeli attitude to everything British prevails to this day. When the English football team and fans visited Tel Aviv for a European Championship qualifier, in March of last year, the authorities bedecked the Tel Aviv promenade in the flag of St. George, turning it into a Middle Eastern Southend-on-Sea. And the annual British Film Festival, at the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa Cinematheques, is more popular than any other.

But there is something more than a little patronising about Britain’s attitude towards Israel. And it defies logic.

Whatever his many detractors in Israel might say about him, no one can deny that President Shimon Peres has devoted much of his life to masterminding the survival of Israel and its citizens, through unremitting wars with Arab neighbours to daring operations like Entebbe (of which he is widely considered to have been the brains). The Queen and Prince Philip, on the other hand, have spent much of theirs gallivanting around the Commonwealth, gazing at natives’ bouncing dangly bits, in one “Bongo-Bongo Land” or another (let’s face it, I’m sure that’s how the wonderfully un-PC Prince would view them) .

Not a single member of the Royal Family has ever been on an official visit to Israel. During her 56-year reign, the Queen has undertaken over 250 official visits to more than 130 different countries. Her total abstinence from Israel is all the more remarkable when one considers her constitutional role as Head of the Church of England. Has no one ever informed her that some pretty heavy Christian sh*t has gone down here too?

A leaked email exchange between his aides, last year, suggested that Prince Charles – who has visited Israel once (for the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin) – was unlikely to do so again, as Israel might use any such visit to bolster its international image (God forbid). And the heir to the throne did not respond to a fresh invitation, last week, from President Peres – in town to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace – despite having said that it was his lifelong dream to visit the grave of his grandmother (Prince Philip’s mother), on the Mount of Olives (I suppose that cash flow could be an issue for the Prince, in these recessionary times).

In view, especially, of Britain’s deep, problematic involvement in the history of this Land (the effects of which are still felt here), the Royal reticence towards Israel does the Family a disservice and Israel a dishonour.

With the man’s penchant for international recognition, it was never going to happen, but President Peres should have politely declined this dishonourable knighthood.