Much as I would like to report a somewhat different scenario, I have to say that all the indications are that within a matter of days, or at the most a couple of weeks, Israel may well be at war again with Hamas in Gaza.

A barrage of nearly sixty rockets launched indiscriminately from Gaza into southern Israel a week ago has ratcheted up the tensions on our southern border giving the hawks in the Israeli government ample reason to insist that the ‘Cast Lead’ operation of a few years ago should be acted upon again, but this time to the point where Hamas will no longer be in a position to launch strikes deep into Israeli territory. Israel’s Iron Dome defence system has been moved into place in the south in readiness for action.

It is essential to always remember that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran and is nothing less than a proxy Iranian militia on the doorstep of this country. They continue to insist that Israel has no right to exist and that its inhabitants should be disposed of and driven into the sea. That said, I believe that now is not the right time for Israel to head off on another military intervention, even if there are more than reasonable grounds for acting in self-defence. The fact is that the recent dramatic increase in attacks on southern Israel has come at a time when Hamas is more unpopular than ever according to polls of of its own people in the Gaza Strip.

Following the wave of revolutions and regimes changes in the region, the downtrodden, exploited, and neglected people of Gaza have been rising up and demanding a change to the status quo. They are fed up with the lack of freedom, the corruption, the cronyism and the repression in the fundamentalist Islamic enclave and, (as was suggested in this blog some months ago), they look across to the West Bank and see their families and Arab brethren appearing to be prospering under the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that the Ramallah-based PA is providing a ‘Garden of Eden’ for its subjects, but when compared to the brutal regime in Gaza it certainly appears a better place to live for the overwhelming majority. Due to the severe restrictions on reporting in Gaza imposed by Hamas, (remember, they only let the world media report what they (Hamas) want to be reported), the true authoritarian and extreme Islamist nature of the Gaza Strip is rarely accurately reported, allowing a free rein to those who seek to use their perceived suffering as a stick with which to beat Israel.

But on March 19, it was revealed that international news media crews attempting to film the uprisings in Gaza were viciously attacked, their offices were ransacked, and in one case a journalist feared for his life after being suspended out of the window of the high-rise office block in which he worked, by a gang of up to 10 armed men who had forced their way into the building to confiscate cameras, equipment and film of the anti-Hamas demonstrations. The reporters from Reuters, CNN and the Japanese station NHK were all reportedly traumatized by their ordeal. The Foreign Press Association commented: “This is the latest in a string of chilling attacks on reporters in Gaza.”

Those who demonstrate outside Israeli embassies and scream ‘Free Gaza’ are barking up the wrong tree. The Gazan people are under occupation at the hands of Hamas, not Israel. Get rid of Hamas and the situation will be similar to that in the Palestinian Authority where Palestinians are making tremendous progress in building worthwhile lives for themselves, despite the not insignificant problems presented by a corrupt government. I don’t see too many demonstrators screaming ‘Free Ramallah’, or ‘Free Bethlehem’! They don’t need to, as they already have their freedom. Again, it is Hamas and the Islamist Palestinians who are occupying the Gazan people, not Israel.

Hamas is on the ropes. They know their grip is slipping over the territory and this is why they have reached out to Fatah, their sworn enemies, in a desperate attempt to forge a Palestinian peace deal. But Abbas of the PA is not rushing to throw Hamas a lifeline. He hasn’t forgotten how Hamas slaughtered more than 100 of his men, publicly executing them shortly after they came to power back in January 2006. So how can Hamas cling on to power? Well, the most obvious way is by engineering another conflict with Israel that would rally even those who don’t support them to suspend their opposition to the Islamist regime and focus on the struggle against the old enemy.

There’s an old Yiddish saying “Shlog zich kop in vant” which translates more or less to ‘let them bang their own heads together’. Although it goes against so many defensive instincts, I believe now is the time to sit back and be patient and let the Gazan people bring down their own tyrannical government. Patience truly is a virtue. It would be a massive lost opportunity if Netanyahu authorizes a major military offensive even though there is plenty of justification in the trauma being endured by people as far removed as Be’er Sheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon and, of course, Sderot. Schools were closed for a number of days and public bomb shelters were in regular use as the barrage of rockets rained down.

I know there are many people within Israel who disagree with me, who say that the power of Hamas and the arms supply they regularly receive from Iran will not easily be overcome, and Israel has to take matters into its own hands and rid itself of these predators on our doorstep before they inflict serious damage on us and take a significant number of Israeli lives.

They say that Hamas needs to understand that they can’t start lobbing potentially lethal missiles into Israel, then suggest a ceasefire (as they have now done) when it suits them, when they realise Israel is getting ready to respond. And if Israel does respond, the Hamas policy of launching missiles from the centre of their civilian population will result in many casualties from Israeli fire, but as a direct result of Hamas cowardly and cynically using their own people as human shields.

If Israel does go in to try and destroy the smuggling tunnels, the arms factories, and the rocket launching sites, the anti-Israel media will have its usual field day, saying Israel rejected a ceasefire and is only intent on war. That is absolutely not the case, as I have already outlined. But I return to my central point that Hamas is on the ropes. They really are wobbling. They have not received the helping hand they expected from Fatah, their closest allies Syria and Iran have major internal problems of their own to deal with and surely place that as their priority. It is not out of the question that both Syria (whose entire cabinet resigned on Tuesday in a desperate bid to stave off an Egypt-like revolution), and Iran, could eventually be brought down by their own people.

A final point. I believe that nothing would unite Arab factions across the Middle East at this time and throw a lifeline to the under-fire regimes in Syria, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere, more than an Israeli conflict with the Palestinians. Probably more than they hate each other (and that’s really saying something), they hate Israel more.

Let’s not be hasty. Let’s be pragmatic, and let them ‘Shlog zich kop in vant’.

 
 
When Red Rum won his third Aintree Grand National in 1977 I was nine years old, but I can still vividly recall watching that surely never to be matched sporting achievement described in wondrous terms by the legendary Sir Peter O’Sullevan.

For more than 20 years I was lucky enough to make my living as a horse racing commentator and journalist in Britain, travelling from racecourse to racecourse, sometimes staying away for the Festival meetings, commentating from studios, and doing a job that many sports fan can only dream of. I was very, very lucky.

After much soul searching I decided to move with my wife and young daughters to Israel for a variety of reasons, but one in particular was to try and help establish a professional racing industry in the Holy Land, a sport that would include all religions, all creeds, men and women, rich and poor. It would help reach across the divide, channelling the love of horses and of racing that is shared by Jews and Arabs, Palestinians, Israeli, Bedouins, Druze and many more.

On a visit prior to emigrating my spirits soared to see Jewish jockeys riding for Arab trainers and vice versa. The facilities were very basic, ‘flapping tracks’ as they would be called in the UK, but the same sporting spirit was there and I was fired up to try and drag the sport from its Wild West (or should that be Wild East) levels, up to even the most modest of international standards. Amongst the Israeli Jockey Club, (whom I joined as Media & Communications director), only a couple of people really knew what they were doing. The rest were all noise and show, but little substance. Gilad Ram and Itti Moshiach, had already been involved in Israeli racing for 30 years, whilst outside of the Jockey Club, leading Israeli breeder Ilan Vered, was one of just a couple of people who are genuine professionals in thoroughbred breeding, and all three proved a tremendous support for me.

But sadly, that wasn’t enough. Due to a lack of rules and regulations and an influx of criminal characters who cared little for the welfare of horses, the sport here was an embarrassment. With my three good friends I attempted to try and clean things up but we were fighting a losing battle. Rather than have our names associated with the unseemly local racing scene, we withdrew from running the races and quickly the limited number of racing events disappeared.

There is now no racing in Israel, and the very limited breeding programmes have collapsed. A lack of government support, short-sighted politicians happier to leave sports betting overwhelmingly in the hands of local crime syndicates than legislate in favour of legal betting (which could be taxed and much of the profits returned to the grass roots of the sport), meant that without funds the sport was doomed.

You can count the good men of Israeli racing on the fingers of two hands, and having lost our own racing I decided we should maintain contact with each other by celebrating the outstanding horse racing events around the world. Meeting on occasions such as the American Triple Crown, the Derby, Royal Ascot, the St Leger, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Breeders Cup or, as with this Saturday, the Dubai World Cup, we gather together in the company of like-minded genuine racing fans, have a barbeque, watch the events live and feel, even from our dusty corner of the Middle East, that we are somehow still involved. To its shame, Israel is one of the very few countries in the world unable to organise a racing industry worthy of the name but we would much rather watch on from afar than be without any racing.

How ironic that on Saturday we ten men, (being joined for the first time by one British ex-pat woman, an equine physiotherapist and rehabilitation specialist), will be doffing our proverbial caps to Sheik Mohammed and the astounding racing dream he has turned into reality at Meydan in Dubai. The $10 million Dubai World Cup might well be won by Britain’s Twice Over, trained by Henry Cecil - (we certainly hope so as we adore the master trainer, a legend of the British turf) - but whoever wins, the food will be great, the jokes will be plentiful, and the cheers will be loud as we greet the latest international racing hero.

It can be particularly hard being so far away from the British racing scene I adore, especially when I’ve been tipping a horse for four months (including on this blog), and since before his win at Kempton in the King George VI Chase, I’ve been convinced that Long Run, ridden by the Jewish amateur jokey Sam Waley-Cohen, would win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Tucked away in my office cum broom cupboard, I was working on a video piece when I realised the big race was ‘off’, so hurriedly scrambled around to catch it live. In my haste I forgot to switch the camera off and now you can see for yourself just how thrilling backing or tipping a winner can be, even when you are 2500 miles away from the action. If I don’t make it as anything else in life, maybe I can make a living entering gurning competitions!

That’s all for this week. Thanks a lot, ‘Shalom from Israel’, and I leave you with a rather excitable former horse racing commentator in his solitary moment of glory...(see video blog)

 
Staying vigilant 03/17/2011
 
For all his faults and the many significant flaws in his dictatorship in Egypt, one thing Hosni Mubarak did achieve was the isolation of the extremist Islamic regime in Gaza, knowing full well that they are a proxy militia for the Islamic Republic of Iran. With Mubarak now consigned to history the western border in Sinai and with Gaza is a potential achilles heel for Israel.

Two incidents in recent days have served to remind us of the inherent danger to Israeli lives that this instability has brought to our doorstep. On Tuesday, the Israeli navy acting on intelligence reports, intercepted a Liberian registered cargo ship called the ‘Victoria’. The ship had set sail from the port of Latakia in Syria before docking at the port of Mersin in Turkey. It is understood to have been bound for Alexandria in Egypt.

On boarding the vessel the Israeli military soon found a 50 tonnes arms cache that had been hidden behind legitimate freight (and of course was not listed in the ship’s manifest in direct contravention of international maritime law). The weapons were bound for Gaza, having originated in Iran. The captured weaponry included:

2,600 mortar shells,  6 anti-ship missiles,  2 radar systems manufactured in England (a not insignificant finding),  2 rocket launchers,  2 hydraulic mounting cranes for radar system, and nearly 67,000 Kalashnikov bullets

These weapons, had they arrived in Gaza, would have extended Hamas’ missile firing capability to the periphery of Tel Aviv itself. This capturing of the munitions on board the ‘Victoria’ is not an isolated incident and those that question the naval embargo of Gaza should bear this in mind before being duped into sending flotillas to ‘liberate’ Gaza as was the intention of the Mavi Marmara last year. They should also be aware that even the UN accepts that most overseas aid sent to Gaza is immediately confiscated by Hamas who then sell it and profiteer from it to line their own pockets.

When trying to understand the political direction of Hamas it should always be borne in my mind that this oppressive regime is paid for, sponsored by and answers to Iran. Gaza is effectively an Iranian satellite state. The fanatical hatred engendered by the indoctrination of Palestinians youth, amongst whom a minority are prepared to willingly do the most unspeakable things, was revealed in the most horrific of forms in the terrible murder of the Fogel family in Itamar last week.

Whilst I oppose the developments of settlements such as Itamar and disagree fervently with the presence of the Jewish settlers in that area, there are few words that can possibly do justice to the shocking murder of five members of one family as they slept; the stabbing to death of the parents, then of the three children, the youngest a baby girl aged just three months, has left people on both sides of the divide in utter shock.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that is far from innocent of degrees of incitement and indoctrination against Jews and against Israel, did however make the following statement to Israel radio in light of the horrifying incident.

Abbas said: “A human being is not capable of something like that. Scenes like these - the murder of infants and children and a woman slaughtered - cause any person endowed with humanity to hurt and to cry.”

I am certain that most Palestinians would echo those thoughts, but those words fall on deaf ears amongst the fanatical, Islamist minority who agree with Iran and with Hamas, that Jews should be eliminated from the face of the earth and the State of Israel obliterated and removed from the map.

Then yesterday Egyptian officials seized five vehicles heading for Gaza having originated in Sudan. The trucks contained a significant number of rocket propelled grenades, mortars, rifles and explosives. Whilst the find is very disturbing, it does at least indicate that there are those in control in the new Egyptian authorities that also appreciate the need to keep such weaponry out of the hands of Hamas and their fanatical, jihadist supporters.

It remains is in the interests of both Israel and of the burgeoning democratic Egypt, to ensure that Islamic fundamentalism doesn’t take root right on our mutual doorstep.

 
 
After a month of mainly dwelling on the chaos going on in so many Arab countries of the region, I thought this week I’d concentrate on one or two more off-beat stories to come out of Israel over the last week or so.

We’ve been hoping for plenty of rain this winter to try and replenish the Sea of Galilee, and although there have been some rainy days the amounts received fall well short of what is required. That said, it has been noticeably chilly over the last few days (indeed it’s hailing outside my window as I write!), and an hour-and-a-half north of my home town of Zichron there has been significant snowfall in the Golan and especially on Mount Hermon where Israel’s very own skiing resort has reported 70cm of fresh snow in the last couple of days.

I’ve only been skiing once, and that was on a dry slope at Harrogate in North Yorkshire when I was a teenager. You skied on artificial matting (as there was no snow), and the whole experience rather put me of the winter game after getting friction burns on my arse following a series of high speed falls on the coconut matting. Nasty!

I’m told by those that do enjoy slapping two planks of wood greased with chicken fat to their feet and hurling themselves down a mountain at a rate of knots, that skiing in Israel is – well, different. There’s little of the cool chic seen on the slopes of Chamonix or Kloisters, it’s more the case that folks turn up in their old jeans, some leg warmers, and great-grandpa’s old coat that he wore during a winter campaign in the Crimea, pay the necessary, and often with only a minimum of instruction 'push off' from the top of a very steep hill and hope for the best. It all sounds like fun though.

As a post-script to the skiing story, I think I have found a new claim for Israel to enter the Guinness Book of Records. Is there a category for the lowest level ski slope in the world? If there is, then the newly constructed artificial slope at the ‘Gateway to the Gilboa’ must merit an entry. The ‘brainchild’ (in the very loosest sense of the word, of the local mayor, one Dani Attar), they have actually built a short skiing slope (complete with mini-chairlift), at a point that is actually below sea level! If that’s not completely balmy, then I don’t know what is!

Humus is to Israel what fish and chips is to the Brits, or should I say what curry is to the Brits these days as Pakistani cuisine has overtaken the traditional British favourite. (By the way, in case you didn’t already know, fish and chips were introduced to Britain by Spanish Jews in around the 1880’s. They brought the idea with them from the Iberian Penninsular, where they fried in olive oil. (Not themselves, you understand, the fish!) The British soon developed a taste for the dish, but due to the lack of available olive trees in Britain they chose to fry in lard, for the most part.

So back to humus. I was gutted when my favourite humus cafe at nearby Karkur closed last year, (apparently due to the proprietors refusing to cut the landlord’s son in for a share of the business; this is the third world, you know). But redemption has arrived in nearby Pardess Hanna with the opening of Yossi’s Humus Cafe (or ‘humusiya’ as we locals refer to them), where they have introduced a new twist on the old recipe.

It’s called ‘Mashuasha’ and is a far coarser version of regular humus, the chickpeas not ground to a pulp but left somewhat crunchy. It still has a very appealing texture and when the extra virgin olive oil is drizzled over the plate together with tangy lemon juice, then hard-boiled egg and pine nuts added, it is absolutely delicious. With a side serving of homemade pickles, and fresh pita bread, it is a must. You have been told. Remember the name. Mashuasha.

It’s the festival of Purim next week, the celebration of the Jews of Persia some few thousand years ago not having been slaughtered ‘en masse’ as had been the express wish of the Prime Minister, Haman. After it was discovered that the king’s beloved wife Esther was actually Jewish and had hidden her ethnic background to avoid prejudice, the King realised that the Jews couldn’t be monsters as his anti-Semitic PM had insisted, and promptly decided to turn the tables and had the PM executed instead. I love a happy ending.

Purim is a festival dedicated to children. Lots of yummy cakes are scoffed in horrifying quantities and kids the length and breadth of Israel and in Jewish communities across the globe spend the day in fancy dress. I hope I’m not giving too much away when I tell you that my two girls are already kitted out to reflect more modern times. My ten-year-old daughter Tami is going as a hippie, whilst eight-year-old Maya will appear at school dressed as a sushi roll. I promise to post some photos next week on my website.

And finally...I had a fright last week when it was announced that Israel’s entry for the 2011 Eurovision song contest is called ‘Ding Dong’. For one moment I thought that everyone’s favourite British cad Leslie Phillips had been persuaded to represent Israel in the annual embarrassment that is Eurovision. Sadly, over here they take the matter very seriously, and have turned once again to everyone’s favourite transgender entertainer Dana International in the hope she can reproduce her winning performance of 1999 when she swept the board with her hit ‘Diva’. For me, far more memorable, was the following year when she presented the prize to the Swedish winner and duly lost her balance in her six-inch heels and crashed to the ground, still clutching the trophy. A comedy classic.

I’ll leave you with Dana International’s latest Israeli ‘hit’ (in inverted commas) a shadow of her previous winning song of more than a decade ago, and look forward to your company again next time. Thanks for listening, and ‘Shalom from Israel’.

 
 
I’ve been deeply troubled in recent days at a spate of incidents of that have made me wonder just how little the attitudes of many have changed since the end of the Second World War and the revelations of the atrocities of the Holocaust. 

Three separate incidents in very disparate parts of the world have coincided with my completion of a novel based on the memoirs of the husband of the only relative from my family in Lithuania who actually survived the Holocaust.

Miriam told me that 41 of our extended family died at the hands of the Nazis and their more than willing local Lithuanian collaborators. That is an awful toll on one family, but is in no way out of the ordinary when measured against the experiences of other Jewish families from mainland Europe during those terrible years of madness and the ultimate example of man’s inhumanity to man.

When Miriam herself tragically died in 1996 as the result of a traffic accident whilst visiting our family in England, she was the last link with Lithuania save for a collection of family photographs taken at various times leading up to the war that were handed to me by her devastated friends in her adopted home town of Stockholm where she was finally laid to rest. It was a very difficult time for me as I loved Miriam very much and, after the death of her husband, she had planned to join me in the move to Israel. Having survived the worst that mankind could throw at her it was the cruellest of ironies that she never made it to end her days in Israel with me.

On the homepage of my blog I have published a gallery of those family members. I’ve published them so that those people that visit the site can at least bear witness to the fact that these tragic figures once existed in a European country that was overtaken by craziness and evil, by deranged people who deemed them unworthy of remaining alive any longer. From the grandfather figure to a baby carried in the arms of Miriam’s brother, (one of the few people I can identify), to uncles and cousins and more. They were all gassed, or shot, starved to death, or died in any other number of unspeakable ways.

My family was not one of means. They were a simple peasant class family living in a poor village called Vilkija, and in the surrounding area. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, then it’s probably fair to say that until 20 years before they were exterminated the family had lived a similar life to Tevye the Milkman and his brood. Indeed, Miriam’s family name was Milchikeh, which means ‘milkman’, for that had been the trade of one of her grandfathers.

If my great-grandmother (Miriam’s aunt) hadn’t had the presence of mind to leave home at the age of 16 (after yet another pogrom - slaughter of Jews -in the area), and board a cattle ship to England in 1899 to escape what she rightly foresaw as a desperate future for Jews in Lithuania, then the probability is that I and my small family in England (as I know it), would never have survived to this day.

And yet only this week, even though everyone knows of the certainty of the death of the six million Jews of Europe, we have had three appalling incidents to remind us that many people have learned nothing and still hold those same prejudices.

At the start of the week the UNHWA reported that they have been forced to remove even the mention of the Holocaust and the lessons to be learned from it, from the syllabus of UN schools in both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and more predictably, in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Even though I am a staunch advocate of the peace process with the secular Palestinians in the West Bank, it saddens me deeply that this week (and not for the first time) the Palestinian leadership had declared that “the Holocaust was a big lie” and described the teaching of the Holocaust as “a cultural crime”. The UN-sponsored schools appear all but certain to remove the Holocaust education so as not to offend their hosts and cause antagonism.

It was also revealed this week that Germany’s largest insurance company Allianz, are still finding ways not to pay out on the life insurance policies of the many hundreds of thousands of Jewish policy holders who saved with the company prior to WWII. Relatives of the murdered Jews have been campaigning for over 60 years for compensation, but so far only a pitiful 3% of all claims have been settled and it is reported that the German insurance giant is refusing to hand over $20 billion that they were obliged to pay under the terms of the policies they sold to German, Austrian and other Jews from central Europe. Clearly they are hoping that if they continue to stall for another 30 years or so the immediate relatives of the deceased will themselves pass away and the matter will fizzle out. I certainly hope not.

Then there was John Galliano’s drunken Parisian diatribe, apparently (it now seems) the third time in recent months that the fashion guru has made terribly offensive anti-Semitic statements and expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler. The chief designer for French fashion giant Dior was surely going to have to go anyway after his comments were filmed and displayed on YouTube, but it appears the stand taken by Israeli American Oscar winning actress Natalie Portman was the final blow to the reprehensible Galliano and forced Dior to move quickly and show him the door.

Portman, one of the few Jewish Hollywood stars who has the guts to speak out in support of Israel and Jewish causes, regardless of the effect it might have on her career, immediately made it clear that she was disgusted by Galliano’s comments. The Dior model said, “In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr Galliano in any way. I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices.” A few hours later Galliano was fired and could now face criminal charges for his vile outbursts.

I shalln’t even comment on the Iranian insistence this week that the recently revealed 2012 Olympic logo is a subliminal Zionist message and should be changed.

I hope next week to talk about something rather more uplifting, but felt that these three incidents were more than worthy of comment.