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. 🇮🇱

Thank you, Pete . . . a Libertine in every sense

Bouncing home in the early hours of Friday from a second wonderful night of Pete Doherty at Barby Tel Aviv, I am ‘greeted’ by depressingly familiar facebook discussions about Roger Waters and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) . . . aka the ‘respectable’, twenty-first century boycott of Jews.

I got into indie rock/post-punk revival band The Libertines thanks to a religious-gig-going mate. And something about its maverick co-frontman Doherty, whether his talented songwriting (my favourite example, from his subsequent group, Babyshambles) or even some of his offstage excesses, immediately struck a chord with this ‘nice’ Jewish boy from Hendon (I guess because of Jonny, I have always been drawn to the outsider/misfit/rebel). And soon thereafter, my then boss, duty soliciting, picked up Doherty as a client following one of his not infrequent drug-related indiscretions. So you can imagine my excitement when I spotted, on facebook, that Pete was actually coming to Tel Aviv . . .

Springing out of the Central Bus Station last Wednesday evening, I at once purchased a few tins of Sudanese-strength lager for the walk through south Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighbourhood. They soon did the trick, also helping to make ma’ariv and kaddish in the local Beit Tefila somewhat less routine than usual.

Pete’s opening “Shalom” immediately warmed the heart. Sometimes it is hard living here. Not the day-to-day. Just the constant feeling that we are on our own and the regular reminders that “they” don’t like us, siding instead, quite incomprehensibly to us, with the brutally oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamofascist terror ‘state’ nextdoor.

“I like Tel Aviv!”

So when artists like Doherty refuse to go along with the campaign of hate, speak their first few words of Ivrit (even if, like Pete, confusing their “tov me’od” and “toda”), swig from a bottle of Goldstar, draw on their first Israeli joint, and even relate their experiences from the Carmel Market that morning – see the clip (of Thursday night’s opening) at the bottom – it just means so indescribably much. Well it does, at least, to me.

Pete sussed the locals immediately. “You have to negotiate everything here,” he exclaimed, on emerging for his encore. “I just asked this bloke back there for two minutes [rest]. “No,” he goes, “you can have one”!” Tel Aviviot, too. “You’re a little optimistic,” he told one of them, on unfurling and reading out her rather forward proposal for after the show.

I have always liked to believe that I possess a good instinct about people. Even famous people. When I first saw Morrissey swing those gladioli on Top of the Pops, I knew that here was a man . . . and, sure enough, some 25 years later, he also ignored the anti-Semites to come and play Tel Aviv (see And we’re still fond of you, Moz!)

BDS represents nothing less than ‘respectable’, post-Holocaust, anti-Semitism. The obsessives who today demonise the Jewish state by calling for its economic isolation are the same types who, in centuries past, demonised Jews with caricatures, boycotts, and far, far worse; or who, in return for longed-for Gentile recognition and acceptance, were prepared to sell out their fellow Jew.

BDS’s Israel-only bashing and self-hating-Jewish proponents are not folk you’d particularly want to share a beer with . . .

“Why does he call me that?”

Let us begin, for horrible English toff example, with old horseface Emma Thompson (who, at an international theatre festival to feature productions from, inter alia, Iran, Turkey and China, saw fit only to call for the boycott of the Jewish one!) Her daughter attended the same Hampstead school as children of friends. And, while other celebrity parents – including Sean Bean, Damian Lewis and Bill Nighy – gave of themselves in a fundraising campaign for a sick pupil, Thompson just gave excuses (via her publicist, of course). She was, on the other hand, excellent at making lots of luvvie/“look at me” noise outside the school gates. A horrid woman, by all accounts.

And talk to anyone unfortunate enough to have known Gerald Kaufman growing up in Leeds. They will tell you what a singularly repellent individual he was, even then (see “Dame” Gerald: Our very own “Uncle Tom” and Kaufman: Enough to make your Rabbi anti-Semitic). And one hears similar things about most others in the List of Shame, headed by the (thankfully) late Harold Pinter, the abhorrent Miriam Margolyes (see here . . . though not on a full stomach) and, sadly, two artists whom I once very much admired, Mike Leigh and Alexei Sayle.

“Suits me, ja?!”

I have little doubt that Waters is another fabrenter (as my parents used to refer to such people). He has had more than enough time to explain why he picks on Israel, and suspends Star of David-emblazoned inflatable pigs over his audiences. To my mind, there is only one explanation. (And I feel vindicated in my lifelong disdain for the clinical dirges of Pink Floyd – if Hitler had come to power forty years later, guards at Dachau would have alternated Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with The Dark Side of the Moon.)

Thompson and Waters clearly couldn’t give a Fliegenschwein about human suffering. If they did, they would be working tirelessly on Syria, Saudi Arabia, Darfur, Eritrea, North Korea, China, etc, instead of tirelessly obsessing with the only democracy in the Middle East (and one that has been embroiled in an existential, 66-year war on terror). Their issue is with Jews.

The boycotters did try to get to Pete. “They told me it was dangerous here,” he quipped, after stumbling, one (joint-injected) Goldstar too many, into the audience. And while his suggestion for resolving the Middle East conflict – “You might as well just have a drink and listen to some music” – may be a tad facile, it comes from a love of all people, not the hatred of one.

Clean-liver he may not be, but Pete Doherty is clearly just an everyday good bloke. And he is the very antithesis of the arrogant, hypocritical, self-righteous, morally dishonest Thompsons and Waters of this world, who hide beneath veneers of decency, while rabidly pursuing racist agendas of the most pernicious kind. What an upside-down planet we live on, where public persona and choice of lifestyle, rather than fundamental goodness, accord that pair of cunts – apologies, but sometimes it’s the only word that’ll do – more standing than him.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a “libertine” as “a person who freely indulges in sensual pleasures” – as a Queens Park Rangers fan (Doherty once penned a club fanzine) puts it so tastefully here, “any chap who’s rearended [melchett mike: allegedly] Moss gets my applause!” – but also as “a freethinker”.

Throughout his litany of troubles, there is one Yiddish word that has almost certainly never been used in association with Pete Doherty . . . but for us, Pete, you will always be a mensch.

[For more photos/videos of last week’s gigs, search YouTube and see here.]