There’s been so much going on over the last week that this will have to be a whistle-stop round-up of events both local and international, on a variety of subjects. 

Last night US President Barak Obama rewarded the Palestinian Authority’s decision to join forces with the terrorist entity that is Hamas for their push for statehood at the UN in September, by declaring America’s support for a return to the 1967 borders - with a few nips and tucks here and there. It’s not often you’ll hear me speaking with the same voice as our Prime Minister, but I think  Bibi Netanyahu is right to be furious with Obama.

Only a matter of weeks after he authorised the ‘rubbing out’ of the world’s most wanted Islamist terrorist as part of his avowed intent to never let these evil creatures rest in comfort, Obama then hands a gift-wrapped publicity coup to the Palestinians which even stunned the powers that be in Ramallah and Gaza City, (where they still insist Israel has no right to exist and intend to wipe us from the face of the map). Surely the Palestinians' own shocked reaction to Obama’s statement speaks loud enough of this desperate faux pas as US foreign policy becomes ever more obtuse and confused. I expect that Bibi will have a few strong words for Obama when they sit down to Friday night dinner tonight in Washington!

As if proof were needed of just how badly the US is barking up the wrong tree, the Jerusalem Post reported only yesterday, (according to Palestinian Media Watch) that the Palestinian Authority proudly voted to award every convicted bomber and terrorist a monthly salary from the state - however they drew the line at extending their generosity to car thieves and petty criminals. Only murderers of Israelis and those who attempted to murder Israelis are worthy of receiving a state salary!

The anniversary of the attempt by the IHH flotilla to break the blockade of Gaza is fast approaching and it looks as though Turkey is once again planning to stir things up by supporting another effort to reach Gaza. The Turks have more faces than Big Ben, and whilst trying to cosy up to Europe in their attempt to gain entry to the EU they have been at the same time actively courting both Syria and Iran in trying to create an axis to pressurize Israel on a range of issues. They have gone noticeably quiet however since their kind-hearted colleague President Assad gave the orders for his army to murder more than a 1000 of his own people, but Turkey remains a steadfast supporter of the IHH, the (organization on a number of international terror lists) who finance the flotillas and who recently (together with Hamas) condemned the killing of Osama Bin Laden as “an act of American terrorism”.

Hopefully those who believe the IHH to be ‘peace activists’ will bear this in mind before jumping quickly to conclusions and condemning Israel as they did so unreasonably last summer.

The Nakba demonstrations last weekend which saw breaches of the Israeli border in the north and south of the country by Arabs from Syria and the West Bank, were meant to highlight the perceived injustice of the Arab flight from Israel. It is rarely mentioned in news coverage that the Arabs were offered the opportunity to share the land and have a state of their own alongside Israel in 1948, but chose instead on a tactical withdrawal whilst the armies of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and others were sent in to wipe out the Jews and hand the whole land back to the Arabs.

Unfortunately for those who have spent the last 63 years outside of Israel, their support of these armies in attempting to bring about another Holocaust of the Jews only three years after the last one had been concluded, proved surprisingly misplaced, with the newly established Israel putting the Arab armies to flight. The Arabs argue they should be given their land back now, but it is interesting that they don’t draw the same conclusion of the millions of Jews who were forced to leave their homes in Arab lands and were ordered out without being able to take any of their possessions, or risk being killed, only because they were Jewish.

If, as I would very much like to see, a Palestinian state is created that is at peace with Israel and accommodates some Palestinians currently living in neighbouring countries, I think it is also about time that Arab countries such as Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and others face up to the ‘Nakba’ they committed on the Jewish populations of their countries, and, like Germany, compensate the survivors and the families of those forced to flee for the loss of their homes, land, businesses, and bank accounts in what was a disaster in so many ways for international Jewry.

And now, something completely different...

Whilst I was away in England earlier this month the Knesset passed a bill allowing Israel’s sports betting board (ISBB) to receive a licence to bet on live transmissions of European horse racing. Hurrah!! At last I should have a chance of making a few shekels working in the industry I know best. Of course, nothing in Israel is quite so straight forward, and already the ‘horse trading’ (if you’ll excuse the pun) has begun on just how much of the expected profits from the racing cake each ministerial department and good cause claims for itself. At the last count that adds up to something around 280%!

One sign that this new development is being taken ever so slightly seriously is that Israel’s sports channel, Channel 5, has purchased the broadcast rights and asked yours truly to co-present and commentate on the Oaks and Derby races that will be run at Epsom on June 3 and 4. So, I’ll be back behind the microphone, explaining (in Hebrew) the nuances of the British racing scene, (both the sport and betting), to a doubtless baffled Israeli public who will be wondering why thousands of men have turned up to watch some horses run round a field whilst looking like collective extra’s from the Ascot Gavotte scene in 'My Fair Lady’.

The Queen, who is more animated about horse racing then absolutely anything else (see the superb video clip on my home page), owns the favourite for this year’s Derby in Carlton House, a good winner of the Dante Stakes at York last week. She’s been trying to win the race for over 60 years and there will be massive media coverage of her latest attempt to break her hoodoo. I understand that Her Majesty recently went along to visit her star racehorse at the stables of her trainer Sir Michael Stoute, and as usual, she brought a carrier bag full of chopped carrots for her steed to munch on.

A very nervous groom was holding the half tonne creature while the ‘Jelly Bean’ fed him some of the meticulously prepared vegetables, but one piece fell from the horse’s mouth to the ground. being unaware of the protocol for such an occurrence, the groom didn’t know quite whether or not he should pick up the errant ’orangey bit’, and after a slight pause when no-one moved a muscle he decided to bend down and pick up the rogue carrot, only to find himself banging heads with The Queen who had spontaneously decided to pick it up for herself!

There was an ‘audible silence’ for a few moments as the groom wondered if he might be whisked ‘off to the Tower’, then apparently, The Queen burst out laughing and told the red-faced groom not to worry. She was fine.

Best of luck to the royal runner Carlton House, (7/4 favourite, if you’re interested) who I believe will win and give his owner the thrill of a lifetime.

That’s all for this week. Shalom from Israel

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I flew back home from England on Thursday night after a busy visit to family and friends and a vain search for a potential ‘investment property’. 

Those unfortunate enough to follow this blog on a regular basis might well recall my advice at the turn of the year to sell up and take a profit out of the Israeli property market. Well, we decided to ‘go for it’, placed our house ‘For Sale’, and concluded a deal some weeks ago. We’ve rented a house in the same area of our lovely town of Zichron and plan to re-invest the money in the British market.

‘Mmmm’, I can almost hear you thinking. The premise behind this big gamble is my belief that the local market may well be close to its peak having jumped around 50% in the four years since we made the move over here in 2007. With massive instability in the region, threats by our former partner in peace Egypt to cut off the oil supply, (or at best charge us double for the same), interest rates having risen ½% in the last couple of months with the promise, (not a threat, a promise), of a further 1% rise by the end of the year, and many people finding house prices in Israel completely beyond even hard working middle income families, I’ve taken the view that (rightly or wrongly) the market here has reached a similar position to that in which Britain found itself at the start of 2008; the beginning of the end of the good times and beyond.

It seems on paper to make perfect sense. Take your money out of a high market and place it into a low market, but as we all know, finance and economics are very complicated matters and anything could come along to throw a spanner in the works. That said, nothing I saw during my recent visit to Leeds suggested to me that the housing market in West Yorkshire is going in any direction other than down in the foreseeable future. As such, I’ve decided to bide my time a little longer and look to buy at the start of the winter when possible interest rate rises in the UK, the full force of ‘Cameron’s Cuts’ hitting home, and at a season when sellers are desperate, (knowing that few properties change hands between November and the end of March), might well play into the hands of someone like myself, keen to ‘make an offer’.

In the meantime there’s the little matter of moving house, never a pleasure wherever you live and always a daunting task. Packing boxes will arrive soon and then begins the periodic process of attempting to scale down and get rid of so many of those things that we have absolutely no use for or tuck away at the back of the wardrobe and forget we even had. The new house will have a separate studio for Paz to do all her cake baking and decorating, and a classroom for her to give her master classes in sugar sculpture and cake design. If you haven’t had a chance to see her latest works of art you can check them out at www.cakeiteasy.co.il – and she does deliver anywhere in the world! That’s my quick plug for the week, one which should keep me in her good books for a day or two.

And what significant events have been occurring here whilst I was away? Well, the usual politicking has been going on between parties, and Ehud Barak has launched his own pale shadow of a political entity called ‘Independence’. I reckon it’ll be about as popular here as a pork chop at a barmitvah!

One very exciting thing has however moved a step closer, and that is the launch of Israel’s electric car network, something that if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed. In a few months time around 50 electric stations (like a gas station, but with the obvious difference), will be fully operational and ready to charge completely electric cars the length and breadth of the nation.

The idea is that of Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi, who with the support of Israel's veteran president Shimon Peres has succeeded in overcoming the sceptics and putting in place a network of stations that can recharge Agassi’s own design of battery that sustains a charge for up to 300 miles at a time.  Agassi tried for ages to persuade major car producers around the world to produce a fully electric car that would perform the same as a petrol engine and was laughed out of town on a number of occasions. That was until he met the chairman of Renault, who it transpired had already come up with a working model but didn’t dare hope that there could be a network anywhere in the world that could make the car even remotely viable. All of a sudden these two disparate parties became a match made in heaven. Better Place, Agassi’s company, will (I believe), become something akin to Google or Microsoft as the biggest success story in the world by the year 2020.

Already Hawaii and Denmark have begun the electrification of their road systems under the guidance of Better Place and using the Better Place technology. The system is perfect for small nations, in particular those island nations with a little foresight. The costs of running the electric car are far less than a petrol engine, and a fully charged battery costs significantly less than a tank of petrol. Reviews of the performance of the new Renault Fluence have been very encouraging and the French company is so confident Israelis will be queuing up to buy their electric car that they have set up a test drive circuit on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. I’m planning to give it a whirl some time soon.

For a change the Israeli government is also jumping on the bandwagon and to its credit is reportedly knocking 90% off the purchase tax normally imposed on a petrol or diesel car in an attempt to persuade would-be buyers to purchase the all electric Renault Fluence. I believe this will be a massive success story and one that will dominate the business world for decades to come. Wouldn’t Britain also be a perfect site for this new system? 

That’s all from me for this week so ‘Shalom from Israel’.

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There’s only one thing that Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah hate more than Israel, and that’s each other. So, when the two branches of Palestinian politics suddenly announce that they are going to become the best of friends, the deal should be treated with a great deal of caution and, in reality, be seen for what it really is; a sign of utter desperation on both sides. 

Not that I wouldn’t be the first to celebrate if indeed Palestinian politics had moved on from the past and would see Hamas renounce violence and their intent to wipe Israel from the face of the map and drive the Jewish people into the sea. If this coming together were to prompt a declaration of peace with Israel, a genuine peace that would allow the people of the Jewish State to live securely within their own borders whilst at the same time giving freedom to the incarcerated people of Gaza (and to those in the West Bank still living under a relative repressive regime), I would be one of the happiest men alive. I want to see peace in our land and I believe all people are entitled to live free and have the chance to prosper.

But, sadly, the announcement of the cosying up of Hamas and Fatah offers none of those likelihoods. Indeed, in allying themselves with Hamas without the terrorist government in Gaza retracting one word of their doctrine of obliterating Israel, Fatah have soiled themselves (yet again) with the vile rhetoric and intent of their fundamentalist new partner. They should be judged by the company they keep, a point that those who may well have the opportunity to vote in the UN in September on the potential recognition of a Palestinian state should bear very much in mind. What would it say about any country voting in favour of such a decision that they give the ’green light’ to statehood to an organization that is officially a terrorist entity, is sponsored by Iran and Syria, flagrantly abuses human rights, and wishes to impose Shariah law on its people?

When you form any sort of an alliance or coalition you can only be judged to be as strong as your weakest link. In trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community, Fatah, the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, has performed the most ill conceived case of collective political ‘hari kari’ that I can recall. Fatah had been receiving masses of support from the EU, the US, the IMF and many other major international bodies, financial and logistical support that has seen their economy grow in leaps and bonds in recent years despite the unfortunate stalemate in peace negotiations with the present Israeli government.

Whilst the eyes of the world were on the hugely impressive and genuinely joyous wedding of the year at Westminster, this shotgun Palestinian ‘wedding’ of the most ill conceived partners possible, will begin with the US set to withdraw funding from the PA, and the EU and others hurriedly reconsidering their position.

This is a disaster for the Palestinian people, a people who have suffered for long enough through the corruption and incompetence of their leaders over the last 40 years, and who, (certainly in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank), had at last been on the verge of seeing their lives improve, only for their latest incompetent corrupt leadership to drop them right back in it just when there was a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. It is understood that Israel’s Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has ordered that taxes normally passed on to the PA from the Israeli treasury be withheld as they risk be filtered through to Hamas to fund their war against Israel. This seems a not unreasonable move given Hamas’ recent track record.

Any hope that neutrals might have had that Egypt would move to a genuine democratic process following the removal of President Mubarak suffered another massive blow with the news that the new Egyptian regime wish to fully open the border with Gaza allowing complete freedom of movement for people and goods; the goods almost certainly to include significant weaponry making its way from Iran via Sudan, through Egypt to Gaza. The signing of a deal between the supposedly reconciled secular Fatah and the fundamentalist Hamas factions in a ceremony in Cairo later this week, a deal overseen by the new faces in charge in Egypt)is another indication of the direction of the new Egyptian policy towards Israel, as too is the reputed indictment for treason of Egypt’s former Energy Minister who sold oil to Israel as part of the Israel/Egypt peace deal with the full backing of the international community, and could now be sentenced to hang by the supposedly ‘democratic’ new authorities.

With a significant influx of Al Qaeda personnel into Gaza since the fall of Mubarak, and Al Qaeda doubtless in turmoil following the overnight news of the death of Osama Bin Laden and likely to strike hard in retaliation at various targets around the world in response, the likelihood of a military engagement between Israel and Hamas has surely increased significantly.

The Palestinian leadership (both Fatah and Hamas) have rarely done the right thing for their people from the earliest days of Yasser Arafat’s brutal and corrupt tenure to the current status quo under Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mashaal. If there had in recent years, been a positive light of hope for the Palestinian people beginning to glow at the end of a long and very dark tunnel, that light might still be there following the sad news of this ill-conceived alliance, only it is now that of an oncoming train.

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