Just Hating Jews More

The long six months since October 7 have been the most melancholy, unsettling of most of our lives (definitely of mine, and I have known a few). And not just because of the savagery inflicted on our brothers and sisters that horrid day. Nor the knowledge, every day since, that unimaginable horrors were being perpetrated on the hostages in Gaza. No one imagined that, in our lifetime, we would witness barbarism anywhere close to — never mind, as the October 7 atrocities arguably were, worse than — that meted out by the ubiquitous Nazi monsters we all ‘grew up with’. (They were still ‘alive’ for us ‘second generation’ decades after the liberation of Auschwitz.)

What has made the last six months so singularly awful, at times close to unbearable, has also been the reaction of so many in the West, who were seemingly just waiting for an October 7 in order to rejoice in Israeli — and, yes, Jewish — misery and suffering, and to then criticise, with sickening hypocrisy and double standards, the prosecution of an entirely legitimate war of self-defence, of survival even.

Since October 7, weeks before the incursion into Gaza, the great and the bad have been crawling out from under every fetid rock. And not just the usual Israel and Jew obsessed toerags. Roger Waters, Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway have now been joined by ‘celebrity’ Israel-only bashers like Gary Lineker, Greta Thunberg, John Cusack, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, and, most recently, Charlotte fucking Church. The social media activity of the ex-England footballer turned BBC presenter (and prize, virtue-signalling wanker), in particular, has been biased in the extreme, leaving most of us in little doubt as to what he is.

Even a friend (now former) from law school, who has always been at pains to paint himself as the humane, fair-minded socialist, defended Lineker’s call for a boycott of the Jewish state from international sport to me with: “Well, Russia was banned? Why not Israel?” A Dutch one, too, has, since October 7, like a Tourette’s case with no other vocabulary, been unable to stop posting about “The Zionists…”.

Most of us are simply bewildered by all of this. (More so, even, than by our shameless, self-serving joke of a Prime Minister — and, yes, I did once vote for him — still being in office.) I mean how can any right-thinking Westerner and so much of the media back a regime and populace (which voted that regime in) associated with a sadistic, murderous death cult — one so repugnant and anathema to its way of life, and that has sown nothing but death and destruction — over Israel?

The sad fact is that Jews are, and have always been, Enemy No. 1. They just hate us more.

“Never stand too close to the tracks on the Underground,” we were once warned at Hasmonean High School for Boys, “there could always be someone looking to push you on.”

That came as quite some surprise to a teenager whose interactions with non-Jews, though few, had always been on the genial side. Neither Mrs Hart nor Mrs Smith (employees in 70s and 80s England didn’t have first names) — the Isaacson household ‘daily’ and babysitter, respectively — showed any obvious signs of wanting to do us in. Nor did any of the consultant radiologists — my father’s colleagues at King’s College Hospital — or their wives, guests at the lively Saturday evening dinner parties in Edgeworth Crescent. My mother used to insist that one or two of the womenfolk were not really too keen on us Hebrews, but it was more a way of baiting my father — she was always more comfortable amongst her own — and I definitely don’t recall mention of any cunning proposals for an X-Ray Department Day on the Underground.

What I do recall, though, is exactly where I was seated as Rabbi Schmahl uttered those earth-shattering words. They impacted my early-teenage noggin with no less force than Mr Marks‘s various literary tomes did, on misbehaving occasion, the nape of my neck. It sounded like sheer Golders Green narishkeit at the time. But it no longer seems quite so nonsensical.

Our world was turned upside-down that first Saturday in October. Israel is now in a battle for its very existence. But our trauma stems equally from the realisation that there are hordes of Westerners who despise Jews so deeply that they prefer a future of Islamofacist savagery — including the roasting of babies in ovens whilst gang-raping, then mutilating and ripping apart their mothers — to one merely including a Jewish state.

The ridiculous irony of all of this is that none of the vile individuals so vociferous in their hatred of all things Israel would last a single day under Muslim rule. Just take away their pub — Lineker wouldn’t even be able to wash down his Walkers with a half a shandy — and they’d immediately start wishing that they hadn’t been born such farshtinkener antisemites. You can’t live a free life as a non-Muslim — not to mention as a female, LGBTQ+, or even lover of animals (the IDF has rescued thousands over the last six months) — in an Islamic state, never mind one governed by barbarians like Hamas.

A fact that I have always thought to be self-evident — one of the things that I just know (as a Philosophy graduate, there aren’t many) — is that folk who harbour a hatred towards Jews share it with one for the rest of mankind. Name a single positive role model in the pantheon of history’s ‘great’ antisemites. No, I thought not.

If, in planning October 7, Hamas considered that Israel would merely surrender because defending itself would entail killing non-combatants, it miscalculated badly. However tragic the civilian losses in Gaza, Hamas, in perpetrating the atrocities of October 7, bears moral responsibility for them. If the Palestinians don’t care about their own — Hamas could put an end to the suffering in Gaza by immediately releasing the hostages — why should Israel be expected to? Hamas picked this fight, rejoiced — with ‘ordinary’ Gazans (as evidenced by video footage from October 7) — in its savagery, and is entirely responsible for its foreseeable consequences.

I would very much like to end this post on some kind of positive note. But, aside from the heroism of our soldiers (fighting in unimaginable conditions) and the brave voices of individuals like Douglas Murray, Lee Kern (who tells it exactly as it is on X), David Collier and Colonel Richard Kemp, I can’t find too many to sound. I am not sure what the future holds. What most of us are sure about, however, is that we have no choice but to crush Hamas. We will certainly not ‘surrender’ like so many in the UK already seem to have done.

Back in October, Phil, a friend from Halifax, wrote to me as follows:

“Good luck with the struggle mate, it is a stand you HAVE to make. Right now is probably the first time in my life I wish I was Jewish and under 40. They fucking couldn’t keep me away! This place is fucked mate, don’t expect much public support from here. Trouble is the ‘noisy’ folk here all on the left. Anyone taking even a moderately right of centre view faces being branded fascist. The Police, Government, BBC etc are so petrified of any swing to the right that nothing is ever discussed openly with both sides of the argument. It’s a fucking disgrace mate. There is nothing to feel proud to be British about. I hope you guys and the Americans do everything it takes. Fuck em.”

Israel is fighting for the Western values and Judeo-Christian tradition that we take for granted, but cherish most dear. It is a fight of Good vs. Evil. Pick your side. Pick the wrong one, though, and you will be judged by history.

And ask yourself this: What will the world look like if Israel doesn’t succeed?

Am Yisrael Chai. 🇮🇱

The Witriol Diaries, Part IV (Hasmo Legends XXIII)

CHICH, BOSOMS, AND A BEARDED COCKNEY: HASMO, THE NEXT GENERATION

Monday, 4th September 1972, 7.35 p.m.

Rentreé. Many new faces in staffroom; bearded rabbinical, mostly. I have no form this year. Rabbi R said I was being given a “respite”. Is this because Stanton is not sure that he can rely on my being available full-time this year, or because he thinks I was a lousy form-master? Ivan Marks said the latter inference was not necessarily drawable; he himself had not been given a form this year. Nor have I a Fifth Form this year. 5C has been given to a Miss Krollick, a dumpy, bosomy bespectacled girl who, I am told, took a degree in philosophy and Italian in U.C., has spent a year in Italy and a year teaching in a comprehensive school in Upminster. It may well be she will have them just where she wants them. All the same it seems wrong to give a young woman – and the only woman on the staff – a class with a high proportion of oafs in it. The only compensation for my ego, is that I have been given an “A” form, 2A.

In front of me at Mincha was David Marx [see 30th June 1972 in Part III]. I had a presentment, which proved correct, that he would say Kaddish. I wished him long life, for which he thanked me.

Monday, 2nd October 1972, 8.25 p.m.

School resumed to-day after a week’s Succos break, itself occurring after we’d been back only three weeks. One Peter Thomas, a local M.P. and a Cabinet Minister (“member of the cabinet” on the invitation cards – is there a difference?) spoke on Foreign Affairs to inaugurate the new hall. He was the typical Conservative Q.C.: well built, hair brushed back, plummy voice. However, he spoke well for half an hour, reading cleverly from his script. In spite of Schonfeld’s bumbling, there was a sense of occasion, and as usual Mitchell Taylor organised very competently.

Tuesday, 7th November 1972, 6.10 p.m.

I got up, if anything, a little earlier this morning, it being Rosh Chodesh. I arrived at school as usual, looking forward to my pre-Assembly siesta, only to find there was some marking I hadn’t done. I spent fifteen minutes on the marking, and had about five minutes shut-eye. I anticipated disastrous consequences, but the morning passed off peaceably. In the break, Chichios, the new P.E. man, a Cypriot, asked me if I would supervise the table-tennis club in the lunch hour. I agreed, and so forewent my lunch hour siesta. Again, the afternoon went off without incident, I was impressed by the fine fettle I was in. I was shouting of course, but in one of the lessons, at least, I had a distinct impression of possibly teaching someone something. When I came back [home] the reaction set in.

Saturday, 13th January 1973, 7.45 p.m.

Albert Meyer, a Yekke, who was in at the start of the Hasmonean Boys’ School and is in charge of the Modern Hebrew, Classical Hebrew and, jointly I believe with another Yekke, Leonard Cohen, of German (he does the A level literature), also music, after threatening a number of times to resign – all before my joining the school six years ago – “finally” resigned last term, only to turn up again on the first day of this term. I had been given his German O level and A level language class on the assumption that he would not be coming back. Having made the necessary emotional adjustment to giving up these classes, and having told myself that at my time of life I couldn’t care less whether I took the Upper Sixth or a second year C stream, so long as I got the money, I found myself retaining AM’s ex O and A level German classes. The latter consists of two lads, one a German boy, the other a Sabra who came over here when he was three, and who has no German background at all.

It is humiliating that I should have to owe any improvement in my teaching load to “Buggin’s turn”. Thirty years ago I would have enjoyed the “yichus” of a sixth form, but now, in my last year of full-time teaching . . .

AM’s case is peculiar. All right, as he once said, is it any wonder I’m “difficult” after all I’ve been through, but Cohn, presumably, and others, went through as much – and Cohn served in the forces and went on to get a degree at Birkbeck and yields nothing to AM in Orthodoxy. It appears that AM couldn’t stand certain things that went on in the school. I don’t know what things – he did start mentioning the subject to me in the last few weeks of last term, then had to go off to take a shiur. Apparently he complained about Stanton to Schonfeld, in a letter. The latter passed the letter to the former, who was understandably incensed.

I couldn’t understand how AM could afford money-wise to carry out his threat. He’s 58. I’d heard that he’d sought a post, unsuccessfully, at JFS. He hasn’t a car, so even if he’d got a job at JFS he’d have to face an irksome journey. As it is he’s always cadging, with scrupulous politeness, lifts to Golders Green. Rabbi Roberg said the financial side was not important, he’d got Wiedergutmachung, but Wiedergutmachung hier, Wiedergutmachung her, one doesn’t chuck up £2,700 a year or more. It should be said that although he is a man of fine culture, he has no English teaching qualification, so that I doubt whether he could get a job in a non-Jewish school.

Tuesday, 6th February 1973, 9 p.m.

Back to school today [dad’s beloved older brother, Sam, had passed away on 28th January].

Monday, 26th February 1973, 4.45 p.m.

First day of two-day mid-term holiday.

Letter from Stanton. He’s unable to commit himself to re-engaging me on the “39/55” basis I had requested. Sod. In many ways I’d like to teach elsewhere, but it would almost certainly be out of the frying pan into the fire. And I’ve got into the “observant” groove. I’ve tried to pin him down to offering me at least three full days, any days, but I doubt whether he’d even do that.

Tuesday, 8th May 1973, 7.10 p.m.

I had avoided making further entries till now [Max, my younger brother, had been in hospital for three weeks with peritonitis].

Stanton recommended Philip [me!] to do a reading at the Yom Atszmaut service at St. John’s Wood Synagogue on Sunday. Willy came into the Staff Room and said Philip had done very well, “nice boy”. Well, well, well. Anyway, as I told him, it’ll do him no harm to keep in with Willy. I can’t see him being Head Boy, I think this might go to a froom lad, but it will help with his UCCA form.

Am feeling generally virtuous. To-day was an easy day, it is true – only four periods teaching. Even so I spent the first of my two free periods marking, contributing to my feeling of virtue. I have three free periods to-morrow morning, with no marking to do, so that I could, and probably will, spend them preparing my afternoon lessons – whether the preparation will have any effect I don’t know.

Thursday, 13th September 1973, 8 p.m.

Started school last Friday. The rentreé was on Thursday [dad was now on a three and a half day week].

Thursday, 4th October 1973, 6.30 p.m.

Have been timetabled to do games with the 4th. I don’t think I’m really necessary. Chishios the P.E. man goes down together with Hacket, the one-day-a-week bloke, and Rabbi Schmall, ample staff for even eighty boys, which is the number who should attend. In point of fact, as a number of boys, including Philip, do art, we’ve only been having about sixty. When the sub-standard artists, including Philip, are weeded out, no doubt there will be 70-80 boys turning up.

Still, I have been joining in. Yesterday, I pulled a muscle? sprained? my thigh endeavouring to tackle Rabbi Schmall, who is quite an athlete – plays every Sunday at Stamford Hill. Actually your humble servant did not do too badly, for a sexagenarian; I managed to kick the ball well and truly at least twice, averted a dangerous situation by correctly kicking the ball to my own goalkeeper, and once charged nebbich, a dangerous forward, knocking him over. [Dad played for Birkbeck 3rd. Had it had a 4th, he always said, he would have played for it.]

Saturday, 27th October 1973, 9 p.m.

A Mrs Jones has taken over my fourth year French B group and I have been given a second year MH class and an Upper 6th MH group, consisting of Doron Segal, whom I took for German last year, Eli Joseph (the boy whom I invigilated in hospital [see 12th June 1972 in Part III], he’s a Revisionist, or Herutnik as I think they are these days) and Adrian Frei, a froomer, but whose MH is extremely good.

Tuesday, 12th March 1974, 6 p.m.

Poor Max in trouble. Found him facing the wall this morning. As Meyer pointed out to me “facing the wall” has terrible associations for Jews. I have in the past told kids to do so, but won’t again. Apparently he has a detention to make up. He complains that two other boys were let off but his J.S. master, one Roston, who seems, I must say, a very decent sort of chap – no beard, no protruding tsitsitt – not that these are stigmata of course – you know what I mean – said he would see that Max did not get off. Unfortunately, too, at registration this morning, he piped up with some facetious remark and Cyril, the —, gave him an eight-page essay.

Wednesday, 16th October 1974, 8.35 p.m.

On Monday evening I felt queer, though never actually reaching the point of vomiting. Yesterday was a ghastly day. Fortunately I had only four periods of teaching. (On the Monday morning I genuinely, but conveniently, forgot I had a 3rd year German lesson to take; Stephen Posen stepped in and said he enjoyed himself!) To-day, however, I was in brilliant form, taking everything in my stride, paternal, benevolent all through seven periods straight off the reel (the last period I stood in for the master who should have taken the first year and “did” a passage in their history books with them).

Sunday, 3rd November 1974, 6.15 p.m.

I am beginning to doubt whether I shall find much consolation in [my] kids. Of course, of course, health for them above all, but I am becoming less sanguine about their “making good” conventionally. Neither of the boys strike me as Oxbridge, certainly not Oxbridge scholarship material. Philip natters about doing A levels at Barnet College, he’s not interested in the idea of becoming a prefect (which might count in his favour). Max has no ideas about a career. Perhaps the simplest answer might still be to turn Philip into a solicitor and Max into a Chartered Accountant, and bugger Harrison’s mickey-taking of our Philistine (from his viewpoint, they’re not interested in King’s College, Cambridge – from the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint this is the last thing the Yeshiva Stream Boys are) “Char-erd Ekuntant.”

Saturday, 11th January 1975, 11 p.m.

In the event [dad had had a tooth extracted at an evening surgery during the week, having been unable to get it seen to during school hours] I was glad; I went into school and didn’t miss any lessons. I did go into the office to see if they had any aspirin, but Klein, the school officer, kindly gave me some of his own “Panedeine”, which I found analgesically effective. Though, as I always do when I’m a bit under the weather, I find it impossible to avoid laying it on in the classroom (“Of course, I know I’m a fool to come in”). What is interesting is that on Wednesday morning I was a bit late, so I took my coffee with the Panadeine, into my German class and, in an endeavour to המחיש “concretise” the lesson I drank the coffee (ich trinke den Koffee – was tue ich?) in front of the kids. I couldn’t remember whether I had taken the tablets.

Sunday, 9th February 1975, 7.50 p.m.

Walking home from school on Friday, I found Maxie seated on the bench by the bus stop near Kinloss. I assumed he’d “bunked” – I had left early – but he told me he’d fallen on to the concrete and bumped his head while playing football in the P/G.

Thursday, 27th February 1975, 4.20 p.m.

Boobba’s [dad’s mother’s, our grandmother’s] Y/Z to-day. I stayed on at school last night for maariv, and went to school today for mincha. On the way to school I noticed a boy getting on to a bus, one Lorrimer, in the second year. He lives with an elder brother, having lost both father and mother. While I was in the staffroom last night the caretaker came in and said the brother was worried because the boy hadn’t arrived home – this was at about 5.30 p.m. As he was getting on the bus today I asked him why he got home late, and he said it was just the usual delay.

I was thinking, in my capacity of vigilant schoolmaster, of reporting the matter so that the kids could know that Big Brother is always watching (he may have had a legitimate excuse, of course). But Big Brother was watching. B.B. was Stephen Posen who caught Maxie bunking. The kid panicked and said he had a dental appointment and wants me to cover up, but I don’t see how I can really. Agreed, some kids can omit some lessons with advantage. Agreed the two periods of J.S. he missed are counter productive, but I have always stood for the principle that kids cannot just take time off when they feel like it. In Maxie’s case, no harm would have been done, as it’s unlikely he would have derived any benefit from the missed lessons, and he was productively or at any rate harmlessly occupied at home, but one can’t run the risk of hordes of schoolkids roaming all over the place between the hours of 9 and 4 p.m.

A few days ago Maxie fell on his nut again – he came home early then, too, whether with or without permission, I don’t know. It’s all a shame, I received complimentary remarks from Dr Gerber, who takes him for maths – he said Maxie was the only one who could answer a question he put to the class, and it’s a good class – and from Ivan Marks on his English.

I saved the cigar we received [at a wedding] and, ministered to by Philip, took one or two puffs at it, whereupon I was told enough! Philip was violently sick in the night. He too bunked on Monday last, but he wasn’t caught.

Wednesday, 30th April 1975, 9.30 p.m.

Yesterday went with 70 3rd year boys to Leith Hill on Lag B’Omer outing. In charge was one Paley, a bearded Cockney character who is froom. Strange combination. He is obviously an experienced orienteerer, if that’s the word I want [footnoted correction, over a year later, to “orienteer”]. He had prepared a number of neat route-maps. His intention was to send the boys off in groups, each group to find its own way cross country with the aid of the “drawrin”, a procedure which to me seemed very insouciant. He did in fact do some to-and-fro-ing getting everybody together. We did a fairly stiff scramble up a slope at one time in the course of which one boy, very much overweight, panicked and was unable to dodge some stones dislodged by boys in front. He was bleeding a little and was generally in a bad way. However, I told Paley he was “covered” as – he said – he had told the boys there was an easy way up (though I hadn’t heard him). Moreover, he was to have had Chishios (the P.E. man) with him, as well as Rabbi Angel and myself, but Chishios was unable to come as he had sprained his back. Incidentally, full marks to Rabbi Angel. I saw him gallantly worming his way up the slope. He is a tall, saintly-looking man, and I’ve no doubt he could have avoided going with us had he wished – but perhaps he didn’t envisage the terrain being so difficult. As I said, Paley is rather a curious combination. He had all the boys up by the tower at Leith Hill and said that “in our religion we attach great importance to nature” and that “God is redeemed from the ground over which a Hebrew prayer is spoken” and so perhaps God might be redeemed from this spot where perhaps for the first time the sounds of Hebrew had been heard. We benshed, led by a bruiser called Brown who I fortunately don’t take but whose reputation had preceded him – he benshed excellently. A very enjoyable day, it was gratifying to find that the jaunt seemed quite mild to me [dad was a keen rambler]. On the way back a boy, Solomon Cohen, engaged me in fluent French conversation. His accent is impeccable, but other boys in his group are better at the written work he tells me.

Wednesday, 25th June 1975, 10 p.m.

A somewhat heartening incident yesterday. I take 3C for French. There are about 35 boys on the register of whom about 32 – eventually – turn up. I should say at least ten boys are without text-books, as I am (if one asks Sam Balin to do something about it he will discourse on the iniquities of Roger Gothold who “looks after” stock, on his (S.B.’s) multifarious responsibilities – so I don’t approach S.B. on the subject). Ten chairs, at least, have to be brought in. One or two of the kids have behavioural problems, a dozen are completely uninterested and natter, fidget with complete indifference to the teacher. Some of the boys, it is true, are very keen and exemplary in behaviour, though very, very weak. To cap all, we have been minus a door. The last few days an elderly carpenter has been fixing up a new one for us.

At the end of yesterday’s lesson, he said: “I’d like to be one of your pupils.” Why? Because I had spoken interestingly about French deriving from slang Latin (tête < testa, cheval < caballos, etc.). “Of course,” he said, “I shall soon be 79, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t carry on learning.”

This morning I tried to exploit the tale in class, without much success (“If he’d been doing his job, he wouldn’t have heard what you said”). You can’t win.

[Next on Hasmo Legends: The Witriol Diaries, Part V: Goodbye Joe. For The Witriol Diaries, Parts I – followed by A (Hasmo) Son’s Introduction – II and III (of V), click here, here and here.]