It’s hard to believe that already a year has passed since I sent greetings to all last Jewish New Year 5771. Now, on the eve of Jewish New Year 5772, we here in the Holy Land, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze, Bedouins and   more, are looking at an uncertain future. 


As the ‘Arab Spring’ fades and pundits predict a ‘Palestinian Autumn’, I don’t want to get political, I just want to wish everybody in this region and around the world peace, happiness and prosperity, and hope that we can all take time to look around us and see that none of us are going anywhere, so we have to find a way to get along together for the betterment of all, for all our families and especially, for our children.

 
Even more than last September we face a momentous year ahead. I’ll continue to send my regular missives outlining my thoughts and opinions on
the matters in hand, and hope that you continue to listen to or read the blog in 5772.

 
Of course, my blog is not just about politics,(although I admit it has been very political of late), it’s about all things dear to me, so I want to pass on three recommendations to you for the near future.

 
First, go see the latest Woody Allen film ‘Midnight in Paris’. Although Woody hasn’t been in top form for much of the last decade, this movie has him right back on top of his game. He isn’t acting in it (much to my wife’s  delight), but he directs Owen Wilson who plays Gil, a romantic writer who goes to Paris for a little inspiration walking in the footsteps of great literary
figures such as Hemmingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and artists such as Picasso,
Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Wilson plays the lead in one of the most   beautifully photographed movies, with a truly charming and creative storyline, one of the best I’ve seen in a very long while.

 
The film is pure escapism, gently humorous, and is basically a romantic fairytale. The music (as always in Allen’s films), is a delight. Go see it and drift away – for an hour and a half, at least.


Second, go eat in Tel Aviv. I’ve eaten in many destination around   the world but am convinced that Tel Aviv offers the best variety and quality of   food I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting. On Sunday, Paz and I spent 24 hours in and around the buzzing coastal city and had thee cracking meals. Lunch was taken in one of the worker’s restaurants (basic, home-cooked food) near the Carmel market. Grilled chicken, majadara, (rice with lentils), beef soup Tunisian style, delicious salads, and amazing ‘crumpet-like’ bread – and as we all know, there’s nothing like a bit of crumpet to put a smile on your face!

 
Dinner at the Thai House restaurant on the corner of Bograshov and Ben Yehuda was simply sensational. I reckon I know a little about genuine Thai cuisine having spent extended periods there over the years, and this is as   good as any Thai food I have ever tasted. And third, (for lunch the following
day), a trip to the rather poor Arab/Jewish town of Ramle, next to Lod, 20
minutes ride from Tel Aviv itself. A place mentioned in the most ancient
scriptures written on the Holy Land, but you won’t find any mention (or at
least, I don’t think you’ll find any mention in the ancients texts), of the
Maharaja Indian restaurant at 87 Herzl Street, opposite the city market.
Vegetarian Indian food of the highest quality in the most unprepossessing of
surroundings, but worth travelling a very long way to sample. If you’re ever in the area, go there for a warm welcome, the sight of Jews and Arabs living and working together in harmony, and stunning Indian food presented by Indian Jews originally of the Cochin region of the former British colony.

 
And finally, it’s more than six months since I made my last betting recommendation to you which was Long Run in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He won, and I hope you backed it. On Sunday, Europe’s biggest Flat race, the $4 million Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris, will be run in front of a massive crowd of international racegoers who will flock to the Bois de Bologne to see the best horses in the world race over a mile-and-a-half.

 
I’ve watched all the trial races and followed the form closely and am convinced that the filly, (yes, I think a girl will beat the boys), called Sarafina will win the great race. She was very unlucky-in-running in last  year’s renewal when nearly knocked over two furlongs from home, but still
finished third, and this year has looked better than ever showing a stunning
turn of foot last time out to win easily. Owned and bred by HH The Aga Khan, the leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslim sect, I believe the French-trained four-year-old will triumph and recommend you have a couple of shekels on for an interest at odds of around 4/1; that’s 400% profit if our girl beats the other 18 runners. That’s Sarafina, my New Year’s present to you all – I  hope!

 
And that’s that. Once again, my best wishes to you and your families for a very ‘Happy, Healthy and Successful’ New Year.

Shana Tova,

 
Paul 


 
 

Watching the action unfold at the UN yesterday was a surreal experience, living as I do in a country that appears ever more isolated from the majority opinion of world nations.  Granted, Mahmoud Abbas was preaching to the converted, but his performance was surprisingly animated and commendable for a man who has repeatedly taken the art of dithering and indecisiveness to a new level. 


Watching the repeated standing ovations during his speech as he presented the Palestinian request to be given full recognition and statehood, you had to be impressed with the initiative the Palestinians have stolen from Israel in presenting their case, an initiative that was taken some years ago and to which (on the whole), successive Israeli governments have failed to respond
and present their case properly to the world.

 
The stubborn, short-sighted, and indolent Netanyahu administration has proved to be the most intransigent and regressive in blocking all realistic attempts at dialogue, believing as they do that ‘we are right, and they are wrong, so there’s nothing to talk about’. While Israel has a genuine case in many aspects of the argument, the Palestinians, presenting themselves very successfully as the innocents in this scenario, have clearly stolen a march and are overwhelmingly perceived as the good guys. Israel is seen as a bruising bully who deserves to get a bloody nose – if not more.

 
Netanyahu’s all too late response and his reliance on the US veto has done Israel no good it all. It has also done massive damage to the US, damage compounded by Netanyahu’s cringingly embarrassing “badge of  honour”comment to Barak Obama, after the US president had made it clear to the UN that he only sees a negotiated settlement as being the true route to peace, and that a unilateral declaration by the Palestinians is doomed to failure. That may well be true, but Netanyahu’s comment was cynically designed to paint Obama into a corner and outrage the Arab world. Obama had a fixed expression on his face when those words were spoken, and I’d like to bet ‘large’ that away from the public gaze Obama had harsh words with the Israeli PM about that exchange.

 
The argument appears to have been well and truly won by the Palestinians because Israel has ridiculously refused to robustly defend itself and point out the following; that the UN would be authorizing the creation (for the very first time in history) of a country that still has not given up on the  total destruction of its neighbour; whose government in Gaza (a government that rules, in the words of Abbas’ Fatah party “following a violent coup d’etat”), is supporting Al Qaeda, refuses to recognise the legitimacy of a two-state solution, denies the Holocaust ever happened, and has fired thousands of missiles into Israel with the intent to kill indiscriminately since Israel left the territory and gave them a chance to prove whether or not they have genuine peace aspirations.

 
Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Fatah government in the West Bank, is no saint. He has denied the Holocaust, was (and still is) a major force in the PLO, (particularly at the time of many terrorist atrocities), and there are masses of question marks over human rights abuses within his Palestinian   Authority. That said, these days he remains a voice for calm amongst his people and has skilfully distracted world attention away from the hatred between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The two factions despise each other so much that none other than Al Jazeera reported late last night that in Gaza, Hamas was furious with the ovation given Abbas’ speech and ordered all public television broadcasts to be cut. The sight of their arch-enemy (who they have  cleverly sought not to undermine at this point to further their own ends), getting a rapturous reception at the UN was more than they could bear! According to Al Jazeera, anyone caught watching the broadcast in a public place ended up doing so at the risk of being spirited away by Hamas thugs.



Whilst a deal with Fatah and the recognition of the Palestinians on the West Bank is necessary, (indeed I would very strongly argue is not before time), it is incumbent on the world to realize that Mahmud Abbas, in a desperate bid to gain ground on the issue has made a fatal mistake in getting back into bed with the Islamic fanatic that are Hamas. He will never be able to control them and they have cleverly used him as a pawn to further their own means. There were no Hamas officials sitting in the Palestinian ranks at the UN; even if he had wanted them there they would not have gone as they believe a two-state solution is treachery. In their view there should only be a one state solution – Palestine, at the expense of the existence of Israel and the lives of Israel’s citizens!

 
But Netanyahu’s government and PR have failed to sufficiently draw attention to the massive chasm within the ranks of the Palestinians and  have granted them an open goal in portraying themselves as united and prepared to work together for peace. If Bibi (Netanyahu) was clever, or if he had not so cynically saddled himself with so many loony right-wing coalition partners, he  could have so easily exposed the myth of the Palestinian argument by offering a three-state solution. Recognising a Palestinian state on the West Bank, but refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza, would have forced the Palestinians hatred of each other out into the open and exposed their argument of a united people as a phoney. 

 
But he hasn’t, and the consequences of the US veto and Israel’s perception on the world stage as the oppressive bully mean that the reaction to a failed bid (for the time being) for statehood at the UN could well spark a significant downward spiral of violence in this region. To save the day Bibi must swallow his pride, turn his back on the fanatics within his own government and reach out to Abbas. He should stop building in the West Bank, and offer a real deal to those Palestinians in that area who most certainly deserve a state of their own. In return, Abbas must confirm that he and his people in the West Bank will turn their back on violence, will completely disassociate themselves from the terror regime in Gaza, will fully recognize Israel’s right to exist, and together embrace peace and isolate and expose the Iranian-backed Hamas as the true force of evil that stops a deal being done.



It’s a massive wish-list I know, and the odds of this or something similar being offered by Netanyahu are miniscule, but it seems to me the only way to move things forward and avoiding a violent confrontation or all-out war.


 

10 years since 9/11.

We all remember where we were when the first pictures of the hijacked plane hitting the Twin Towers was screened across the world. Paz and I had dropped in to visit my grandma for morning coffee and the three of us
watched in horror at what was unfolding before our eyes. It didn’t seem real. We saw the flames, the panic, people jumping to a certain death, and it seemed the end of the world was nigh.

 
My grandma had witnessed bombings and destruction during the Second World War, lived through and survived night-time Luftwaffe sorties and wondered if the world would ever return to normality and if she and my grandpa might be able to go back to their everyday lives; he as a simple tailor and she as a housewife and soon to be mother-of-two? They did survive, as have the
families of the victims of 9/11, but my grandparents, together with all their generation, never forgot what they had suffered, the same way New Yorkers and many people around the world will never forget 9/11.

 
I remember my grandpa telling me of the Luftwaffe bombing of Exeter in May, 1942. He told me that that particular year the weather was unusually mild and many people were down on the beach, swimming and making sandcastles. He had been stationed only about seven miles away at Chudleigh and was being trained along with his platoon, the 23rd Royal Field Artillery, for action across in France that spring. 

 
When the planes emerged out of the sky everyone looked up and started waving thinking they were RAF fighters, but then the livery of the German air force came into view and people panicked and ran for their lives. Bullets started strafing the beach and a number of people were hit. But they weren’t the target for these ‘angels of death’; the target was the city of Exeter. As my grandpa and others from the armed services tried to comfort the injured and the shocked, and cover up those beyond help, the Luftwaffe sent ‘fire and brimstone’ down onto the cathedral city of Exeter setting the city
ablaze and taking many lives. 

 
Sent along with his platoon to try and help rescue people from the rubble and burning wreckage of the beautiful city, those hours of desperate searching for survivors and the discovery of those who had lost their lives never left my grandpa’s memory. It was the worst thing he ever saw, but life had to go on and there was an enemy to be defeated.

 
Despite the many conspiracy theorists that have attempted to deflect the blame for the atrocities on 9/11 from Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and blame variously the US government itself, MI6, and of course, the Israeli secret services, most clear thinking people know that Al Qaeda was behind what happened in New York and Washington on that darkest of days. But fighting the enemy in the 21st century is in many ways far more difficult than the task faced by the Allied forces against the evil of the Nazis and the Japanese in the 1940’s. There is no army to pin down on a battlefield and defeat blow by blow. The enemy in this second decade of the century is spread around the world, small pockets of dedicated, determined and religiously brainwashed individuals who on their own can cause as much death and destruction as did an entire Luftwaffe squadron in the 1940’s.



This is a very difficult fight to win. Indeed, it might never be won, but it might be contained if intelligence  agencies and governments from around the world pool their resources and knowledge and do everything possible to help each other combat the enemy both  external and within. Since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt it appears that Al Qaeda and associated groups have been handed free passage to Gaza where their ideology is viewed more than sympathetically by the Hamas government, one half of the Palestinian Authority double act that seeks to gain recognition from the UN later this month for an independent state.



Would you want to give these people total control over freedom of movement through their borders, knowing  full well where their sympathies lie? More to the point, if they lived just down the road from you, your family and your friends, would you be happy to see them  recognised by the international community, a community amongst whom many have suffered at the hands of Islamic terrorism and are still fighting a daily intelligence battle to foil more terrorist plots?



As the world remembers the events of 9/11 and wonders if it can ever happen again, the plain and simple answer is ‘Yes’, it can and most likely will happen again if people who support terrorism and seek to wipe another country off the face of the map are handed the gift of international support in the hope it might appease them and make life a little quieter in the short term.



A Palestinian state that recognises Israel, lays down its arms and seeks genuine peace and co-operation is something we should all earnestly strive for. No-one deserves it more than the downtrodden, decent Palestinian majority themselves who have been manipulated time and again by their own leadership and by so-called Arab allies in the region for their own needs. But until those in charge truly set out on a path of peace, recognition by the UN should not be given. Haven’t we learned the lesson of recent history that trying to palm off those seeking to wipe out their neighbours is only staving off the inevitable? Chamberlain’s cowardly declaration on returning from Berlin in 1939 that he had achieved “peace in our time” could well be repeated if the UN endorses recognition of Palestinian statehood at this time.



The fight against fundamentalist terror and violence has already been carried o the streets of New York, London,
Madrid, Mumbai and many other major population centres. It should be made clear to all terror organizations and terrorists regimes that if they truly want to achieve recognition they should hang a ‘No Entry’ sign on their national borders and refuse to harbour, aid and abet those intending to commit terrorist
atrocities in the name of religion, or any other so called
‘cause’.



Heavy stuff I know, but this tenth anniversary really should be a time of serious reflection on what has to be done to secure a safer future for us all in places where our lives could irreparably be damaged if terrorism is not beaten back and defeated.