Noo Joysey, you ain’t seen nuttin’

Ra’anana’s answer to Tony Soprano was “whacked” in broad daylight yesterday afternoon, when a bomb exploded in his car as he was driving along a busy Tel Aviv street. He had just left a court hearing involving two of his sons, wearing a trilby à la Jack “The Hat” McVitie (the 1960s London mobster whose murder led to the downfall of the notorious Kray twins).

 Yaakov Alperon, aka “Don Alperon”, 54, was reputedly (I never had the pleasure) “boss” of Israel’s third largest “family”. A number of attempts had been made on his life, including a grenade attack on his home in 2001 and another car bombing in 2003. He was thought to be battling with the rival Abergil and Abutbul families over bottle recycling (a racket worth five million Dollars a year), and had an ongoing feud with another gangster, Amir Mulner, dating back to a 2006 arbitration summit gone awry – knives and guns were drawn, and Mulner emerged with a stab wound to the neck, widely attributed to Alperon.

Yesterday’s incident is one of numerous mafia-related to make the headlines in Israel this year. In June, Yoram Haham, a well-known criminal defence lawyer, was also blown up in his car in the heart of Tel Aviv. In July, a 31-year old woman was shot dead in front of her husband and two young children on Bat Yam beach, after being caught in the crossfire of a failed mob hit. And in September, in Netanya – very popular with English émigrés, seeking a peaceful retirement by the sea – local “boss”, Charlie Abutbul, was shot and critically injured in a café.

Repeated references to the Almighty, by Alperon’s brother on yesterday’s evening news, had me thinking of the monologue of Jules, Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction, before he carried out an execution: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Many of our local mafioso come from traditional north African families. One cannot help but wonder whether some rabbis, if not condoning their followers’ activities, turn a blind eye to them, in return for some personal or communal sweetener. Perhaps that is why we regularly hear such criminals invoking God – and, most nauseautingly, donning skullcaps for court appearances – whilst pursuing the most un-Godly of activities.

Unlike in The Sopranos, where one often even finds oneself sympathising with the characters (I must admit to my eyes welling up when Pussy got “whacked”), the local, non-fictitious variety inspire no such feelings of warmth – again, in the words of Jules, “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.”

Alperon’s nephew was less ambiguous on this morning’s news, than his uncle had been yesterday evening: “If he is not punished from Above, he will be punished by other means. We’ll find out who did it. It’s only a matter of time.”

Three innocent bystanders – including a 13-year old standing at a bus stop – were injured in yesterday’s blast. And even anti-tank missiles have been a favoured weapon of mob assassins in the past. So, sit tight everyone, while all hell breaks loose.

Oh, it’s never boring in Israel.

Using Yitzhak: The Rabin Trade

Last week witnessed a host of events and ceremonies, across the country, marking the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

An estimated 100,000 attended the main rally on Saturday evening, in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, the site of Rabin’s murder (at the hands of Yigal Amir on 4 November 1995). A friend asked me to accompany her. But I refused. I rarely attend such rallies. I tried explaining myself. But, other than telling her what she already knows (that I am contrary), I couldn’t.

The state memorial, on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl on Monday, however, reminded me exactly why – because they have been hijacked by too many opportunists and self-publicists, who milk the ‘Rabin brand’ for every drop of benefit it can provide their own agendas and careers.

The main culprit this year (you may not be surprised to hear) was Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. With his undistinguished tenure drawing to a close, and embroiled in allegations of corruption, he chose the memorial to show himself as a peace-loving visionary, following in the Oslo footsteps of Rabin.

Olmert has had three years to work on realising his claimed vision – of an Israel back at its 1967 borders, with a divided Jerusalem as its capital – but only now, as a ‘lame duck’, is he espousing it, thus burdening his successor in the Kadimah party (and also perhaps as Prime Minister), Tzipi Livni, with an unreasonable weight of expectation. Whether out of spite (Olmert and Livni are not best pals these days), or in an attempt to go down in history as a visionary rather than a criminal, only he knows.

Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, Livni’s closest rival for the top job, used the special Knesset memorial session following the state one to speak out against incitement. Yes, the very same ‘Bibi’ who took part in right-wing demonstrations – in which Rabin was denounced as a traitor, and portrayed in SS uniform (though Netanyahu distanced himself from both) – just a month before the assassination.

But it is not just Israel’s right that uses Yitzhak. Leftists continually prescribe the correct path for the country based on what Rabin would have wanted. No one knows, however, how things might have turned out were he still with us. Rabin himself went through so many transformations that it is not inconceivable that he might have returned, from the Rabin of the Oslo Accords, to his former hawkish self – as Defence Minister, he was quoted as saying “We will break their [the Palestinians’] bones” – had suicide bombers struck with as much murderous ferocity during his lifetime as they did after his death.

There are also a host of musicians who enjoy the publicity that the Rabin Square rally, in particular, earns them (though once can hardly blame them for accepting such an opportunity). Even if not entirely unsavoury, however, there is very little truly ‘Rabinesque’ about these events either, and I, for one, prefer to stay away.

Left-wing commentator and former politician,Yossi Sarid, put it far more eloquently than I ever could, in this weekend’s Ha’aretz: “Poor Yitzhak Rabin, whose memory was desecrated this week: Who hasn’t ripped off one of his limbs, amputated an arm or a leg of his heritage, and scurried off to his lair to gnaw on it? Suddenly, they were all his sons, all of them are the heirs to his way.”

Voting in Tel Aviv, Doggy Style

Today is local election day across the country.

When Zionists eagerly inform people that the Jewish state is the only true democracy in the region, what they no doubt omit to mention is that it is also one in which others tell you who to vote for, and one in which you can lose a potential partner by voting for the ‘wrong’ party.

“Who are you voting for?” you often get asked by near complete strangers. Suppressing the urge to reply “Mind your own f***ing business” – only close friends or family would ask such a question in the UK – you then get told who you should vote for. If you then have the temerity to challenge the advice, they often (especially if they are on the left) go on to imply how that choice makes you a bad human being (as an exercise for anyone who doubts this, try telling a left-leaning date that you intend to vote for Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] in the national elections, early next year).

Following a recent, extremely encouraging, first date, I was given my marching orders by Natalie, ostensibly (though perhaps not only) on the basis that I wasn’t a left-wing stooge (although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, this outcome has proved ideal, as we have become friends, and I can now mock her unrelentingly, in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to if we were an ‘item’).

I haven’t yet decided how I will cast my vote for mayor of Tel Aviv, this evening, though (being the capitalist reactionary that I am) it will probably be for the incumbent of ten years, Ron Huldai, a decorated former fighter pilot. Tel Aviv is a vibrant, flourishing city . . . and, if it ain’t broken, why fix it?

The ‘hip’ vote seems to be going to communist Knesset (parliament) member, Dov Khenin, supporters of whom point to the fact that Tel Aviv is becoming too expensive to live in, thus driving out students and young people. Khenin is advocating the introduction of rental subsidies and caps for such lower income groups, together with the setting aside of cheaper rental accommodation in every new building project. Apart from the fact that I oppose artificial tampering with the market, I don’t see the absence of students living around me as a necessary evil. In fact, since graduating from university, I have done my best to get as far away as possible from the buggers.

As for the election for councillors, I will be voting ‘doggy style’, for the party promising to improve facilities in Tel Aviv for Stuey and Dexxy, and which will hopefully do away with the rapacious, overzealous, ‘doggy police’ jobsworths – just a notch above paedophiles in my book – sending them back down the fetid holes from whence they came.

Perversions

Sheinkin Street, in the heart of Tel Aviv, is arguably the most common symbol of secular, modern Israel, with trendy youngsters from all over the country converging on its chic boutiques every Friday morning. Even Sheinkin, however, could not have been prepared for what it witnessed yesterday evening.

Whilst out with my dogs, I noticed a man of about forty slowly walking down the street in a pair of tightish, silky running shorts, while two teenage girls, sitting on a wall, laughed hysterically. I then noticed (one couldn’t help but) that – how should I put it – the man was in a heightened state of arousal. Having passed the girls, he turned around and walked past them once again. There was something so sickening about the display that it shook even me – with my background in criminal defence law (and the various perverts to whom I was unavoidably, excuse the pun, exposed) – to the very core. I looked for a police officer, but to no avail.

Following such a distasteful experience, I wouldn’t have imagined that anything else could have disturbed my equilibrium further yesterday evening . . . until I opened my copy of Ha’aretz, that is.

Ha’aretz is Israel’s equivalent of The Guardian – left-wing, (supposedly) highbrow, and often unjustifiably self-righteous. I read the English version rather than its right-wing competitor, The Jerusalem Post, not because I share its political and social leanings (I am somewhere in-between the two), but because it feels more genuinely ‘Israeli’. Reading The Jerusalem Post is often like reading Britain’s parochial Jewish Chronicle . . . and I didn’t come here for that.

The next perversion to disturb my post-work tranquility was the reason (as reported by Ha’aretz) of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader in Gaza, for the movement’s boycott of talks with rival West Bank faction, Fatah, scheduled to begin in Cairo yesterday. He is apparently protesting the 400 Hamas activists held in West Bank jails. Is this the same Ismail Haniyeh who has been holding Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, now 22, for 869 days?!

And did even one of the eleven European parliamentarians – including, I am ashamed to say, nine from the British Isles, among them former cabinet minister, Clare Short – who had sailed from Cyprus to Gaza, as a show of solidarity to Gazans, pick Haniyeh up on this? You can bet not. They probably just lapped it all up, the muppets that they are.

The final perversion, and somehow the most sickening, lay in wait, somewhat surprisingly, on Ha’aretz’s sports page. In a self-indulgent article on his participation (who cares?!) in last weekend’s Tel Aviv half marathon, Palestinian Affairs correspondent, Avi Issacharoff, juxtaposed Tel Aviv’s “beautiful and young” with those in “Jerusalem where everyone looks nervous, ugly and old”. In its mindless intolerance and offensiveness (not to mention stupidity) – in relation to the population of an entire city, no less (a third of whom are Muslims . . . I am sure he wouldn’t have wanted to offend them) – this resembled something out of Der Stürmer.

Where I do agree with you, however, Mr. Issacharoff, is in your conclusion – you are, indeed, “an idiot” . . . but not because you ran 21 kilometers.

The Tel Aviv Whites

Friday evening, 9:25. I arrive at Pub M.A.S.H. (ingenious acronym for More Alcohol Served Here), north Dizengoff, Tel Aviv. “Mad” Eddie (hands aloft in photograph below, I am in stripes) is sitting at the bar with (what I believe to be) a woman, who I don’t recognize, but who closely resembles the imagined product of a late-night tryst between Diana Dors and Les Dawson.

Eddie has brought “Les”, an Irish airline pilot, along from his previous drinking stop, but – when the selfish bitch makes it clear that she is unwilling to sit through Leeds United versus Northampton Town, in the first round of the F.A. Cup – Eddie makes the only sensible choice. “Sorry, Mike”, he mutters sheepishly, on his way out.

Michael, the “Mad Doctor”, joins me. The other handful of regulars have got more sense (or a life), and haven’t turned up. It’s just me and the “Mad Doctor”, who wastes no time in starting to whinge about how poor Leeds are (which he does for the best part of two hours). If Leeds were beating the Great Satan, Manchester United, 5-0 in the first half of a Champions League final, the “Mad Doctor” would still find something to grumble about. I often wonder whether he is watching the same game as the rest of us (or, in this case, as me).

Northampton go one-nil up. Why did I choose to put myself through this on a Friday evening? Ryan, nicknameless (for the time being), joins us. Leeds equalise, to earn a replay in Northampton. But nothing else happens to justify the nonsensical “magic of the Cup” cliché, or why I have just wasted two hours of my life (and on a Friday night) in a pub which has seen better . . . no, in fact, it hasn’t seen better times – M.A.S.H. is a sh*thole, and always has been. The evening is best summed up by Northampton’s nickname: Cobblers.

I am President (self-elected) – which might explain why I always feel obliged to attend games – of the Tel Aviv Whites, in essence an e-mail list (currently numbering 40) of Leeds fans in Israel. Amongst our motley number are one of Israel’s leading gynaecologists, one of its maddest psychiatrists, a clinical psychologist, a dentist, two national journalists, lawyers and accountants. We also have an Argentinian (who started supporting Leeds on his arrival from Buenos Aires during Leeds’ golden decade starting in 1965), an Australian, and a Dane. And they travel to M.A.S.H. from as far and wide as Jerusalem and Zichron Ya’akov to see Leeds lose.

I must also make mention of our President Emeritus, “Mad Jonny”, the best Mickey Thomas – he of the famous “Wayne Rooney’s on a hundred grand a week . . . mind you, so was I until the police found my printing machine” – lookalike this side of Wrexham. Until, that is, he found the ‘produce’ of Thailand somewhat more alluring than that of south Tel Aviv (funny that).

In the halcyon early days of the millennium, when Leeds were reaching UEFA Cup and Champions League semi-finals – and before the club’s dramatic demise (the result of farcical financial mismanagement) – meetings of the Tel Aviv Whites in M.A.S.H. were frequent and well-attended. The three “Mad Brothers” – Eddie, Jonny, and the Doctor – and I would vie for seats at the bar, and to see whose renditions of Leeds songs were loudest and most colourful. Five Tel Aviv Whites made the trip to Valencia, for the Champions League semi-final.

Having dropped into the third tier of English football (for the first time in their 89-year history) two seasons ago, however, Leeds are now only on the telly out here when they reach the promotion play-offs (they have lost the last two finals) or, as on Friday, when they feature in one of the more ‘glamourous’ domestic cup fixtures. For May’s play-off final defeat (at the hands of the mighty Doncaster Rovers) at the new Wembley Stadium, however, over a hundred Leeds fans crammed into M.A.S.H. (though the numbers were boosted by a contingent from Yorkshire, in Israel for a wedding).

I once heard a psychologist say that “Choosing a football team is one of the first decisions you make in life, and one of the longest-lasting.” It is hard to disagree with that. And that early, irrevocable ‘choice’ – together with the desire to preserve something from Blighty – is what, I believe, keeps the Tel Aviv Whites alive (although we have been on life support for some years now).

And that is also what makes the Tel Aviv Whites different from the vast majority of glory-hunting Israeli ‘supporters’ of Manchester United and Chelsea, whose ‘choice’ only came with the flood of silverware. They are there for the good times, and their ‘loyalty’ will not extend to their adopted clubs going through the hard times currently experienced by Leeds United.

The Israeli

A friend in London, who is in a perpetual state of considering Aliyah (emigration to Israel), e-mailed me again this week with questions about life out here: “I know it’s tough and Israelis are supposed to be rude and untrustworthy. Is that true?”

Keith’s blunt question goes to the heart of the paradox inherent in many new immigrants’ daily existences – they love living in Israel, but . . .

What one can say, with some certainty, about Israelis is that they, on the whole (and we are dealing in generalisations here), make a mark. With the exception of a few non-Jewish friends in England (most of whom I met at university, law school, or through following Leeds United), I simply don’t remember any other English people. You meet most Israelis, however, and you never forget them (however hard you try).

There’s Avi, for instance, a permanent fixture at ‘my’ café on Rothschild Boulevard. He has an opinion on everything. We threw cricket and rugby into the conversation, a few weeks ago, just to test him. He didn’t disappoint (even though he has never seen the game played, and wouldn’t know his backward square leg from his silly short one). The English (again, on the whole) don’t have much to say. They are renowned for talking about the weather (which, like them, tends to be grey).

And you are always getting advice in Israel (however unsought). I have heard from many a mother who, on walking around with their babies, would be accosted by other females telling them what they were doing wrong. And, when one of my dogs, Stuey, was limping quite badly a month or so ago, I would get 2 to 3 strangers – during the course of every walk – informing me of the fact and telling me that I should take him to the vet. “Really?” I would reply. “The vet? You really think so?”

My other dog, Dexxy, came with a vestigial tail (either that, or some sicko had cut it off). But no end of strangers still confront me about it, seeming to almost wish that I will finally come clean under interrogation, and admit my dark crime against canine. Last week, my patience finally snapped with one such busybody, deadpanning that “I cut it off and put it in the soup. You should try it. It is so tasty.” On another occasion, I got attacked by a rabid local as I was trying to forcibly remove a potentially lethal chicken bone from her mouth (Dexxy’s, I mean!)

The famous Jewish advice, “Don’t get involved”, was seemingly left behind in the Diaspora. And the English, in similar situations, would just look the other way (however strongly they felt inside).

There’s also the unfunny, Israeli wisecrack merchant. I went into a CD store in the Dizengoff Centre, last month, and asked a perfectly harmless question, only to be met by a pitifully poor, sarcastic response from the manager (who then, even more irritatingly, looked to the rest of his troop of monkeys for approval). Israeli men, especially, can be like that (but my theories on Israeli men will have to wait for a post of their own).

So, in answer to your question, Keith, yes, Israelis can be rude, arrogant and nosey. And they invade your space (that’s also a post of its own, as is the causes of such behaviour, along with many more on these fascinating creatures!) But, for good and for bad, Israelis make a mark. And, more importantly, they care.

Perhaps the words of Woody Allen best sum up the Israeli subgroup too: “Jews are just life everybody else . . . only more so.”

Virginal Meanderings

Hmmm . . . How the hell do you choose the first subject you are going to write about on your brand new blog? The first post that people are going to read when they stumble across melchett mike?

Well, what’s on my mind at the moment?

Ahmadinejad is up there (and has been for a while). But it’d be a shame to devote my first post to that poisonous Persian dwarf, spouting off about Jews in his M&S jackets (has no one told him?). His time will soon come (both on this blog, and in the more existential sense I hope).

I don’t fancy writing about next week’s municipal elections in Israel, especially after receiving, this morning, a link to one candidate’s video, full of ‘faltzani‘ (Hebrew, literal translation: farting) celebrities moaning about the preponderance of 4x4s in Tel Aviv and the fact that they can’t afford to live there anymore. The heart bleeds.

The national Israeli elections in February? Now, that‘s going to be interesting. But I’m not getting into the Livni/Barak/Netanyahu question now.

And what about Lewis Hamilton, who yesterday became the youngest-ever Formula One motor racing champion? And the first black one. Surprisingly, we haven’t heard much of that top line yet. My cousin’s cousin, an aspiring young driver himself, claims to have beaten him regularly when they were kids, but that the powers that were were keen to promote Hamilton because of his novelty value. Whatever will they think of next? A champion black golfer?

Which brings me on nicely to the small matter of some other elections, tomorrow, in the US. Somebody please explain: how does the most powerful and advanced country on earth, with a population of over 300 million, regularly manage to come up with such clowns as Presidential and vice-Presidential candidates? The jury is still out on Obama, but McCain and Palin . . . ?! McCain talks and moves like a character out of Thunderbirds. And as for Palin, what the hell were the Republicans thinking? When Ricky Gervais recently said that she reminded him of David Brent, I think he was being rather unkind to his preposterous alter ego from Slough.

I do worry about Obama’s stance on the Middle East – Israeli bombers will probably be warming their engines for an excursion to Iran before his victory is even confirmed – but, in every other way, there doesn’t seem to be a genuine alternative. Mind you, think what fun it would be having David Brent make speeches from the Oval Office (then again, has it been that different over the past 8 years?).

Well, I guess the problem – of not knowing what to write about – solved itself.

Come again.