For someone who not very long ago gave a concert lecture on’The Great American Song Book’, I suppose I should hang my head in shame in admitting that it was not until a couple of weeks ago that I actually visited the good ‘ol US of A for the very first time!  

America had not been anywhere close to the top of my travel ‘wish list’ until very recently when I suddenly had an urge to see what all the fuss is about. And I’m glad I did, as I have to say that for the most part I was more than a little impressed with life ‘Stateside’. Leaving aside the hugely huge and impressively overwhelming New York, delightful San Francisco (where yes, I rode a trolley car but resisted the urge to burst into The Trolley Song and perplex a bunch of Korean and Japanese tourists), the stunning national parks, and the glitz and glamour of Beverley Hills and Hollywood, (where astonishingly I wasn’t plucked from obscurity by a casting agent and catapulted to overnight international stardom - although I did meet Spongebob Squarepants and Shrek outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre), the most long lasting memory will surely be just how nice most Americans are. This will come as no surprise to those of you that visit the place regularly, but for a first-timer it certainly shattered many stereotype images of the noisy, brash, vulgar Yank in a loud checked shirt, the type of guy who can whisper across two fields.
 
The only reliable stereotype images were that there are an awful lot of fat, (not to say clinically obese ’folks’), people do actually say‘Have a nice day’ and appear (on occasions) to mean it, and that that they love little old England (‘it’s so quaint’) and yes, there were plenty of plaudits for Israel as well. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by the support for Israel as the US is, of course, the singularly most consistent supporter of Israel in the UN (if you choose to overlook Micronesia – which you shouldn’t), but I had assumed that support lay more amongst the politicians and the Jewish lobby than the general American populous.
 
Most sensible Israelis when travelling abroad and asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ may, like me, tailor their answer to suit the location and situation. If I’m travelling in a country not particularly friendly to Israel I have often only told people that I’m English, and left it at that, or in other circumstances might say I’m from the Middle East or that I ‘live in the Mediterranean’. It’s not that I’m in any way ashamed to be Israeli –although at times the behaviour of the present government pushes that loyalty to the limit - but sometimes discretion can be the better part of valour.
 
So when first asked where I’m visiting from it came as a surprise when people said how much they admire Israel and would love to visit. This theme was generally repeated on a regular basis, and I’m not talking about Jewish people’s comments or those of the bible bashers from the mid-West, I’m talking about shop assistants, taxi drivers, waiters and the like who seemed to genuinely, (unless I’m very much mistaken), empathise with Israel’s sometimes very difficult plight in the Middle East.
 
It was in a restaurant overlooking the harbour at San Francisco with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance that we received an SMS message suggesting that captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit would soon be released. It was one of those moments of such shock – in this case a joyful surprise – that, like the death of Lady Diana, the attacks on the Twin Towers, I’ll never forget where I was when the news came through. 
 
Like the overwhelming majority of Israelis I had hoped so much against hope that Shalit would be returned alive, but deep down after more than five years in captivity and knowing the fate of such as Ron Arad and the Sultan Yakoub four before him, remembering such as Ken Bigley and Daniel Pearl who were also held by Islamist terror groups before being executed, I had doubted the young conscript soldier would walk home to his admirable parents Noam and Aviva. Sitting with me at lunch by the bay in San Francisco were my mother and father-in-law, and Ilana, my wife’s mum, was probably more overwhelmed than the rest of us at the text message, having for the past two years been amongst the many volunteers who had joined the Shalit family in their tented village opposite the PM’s office in Jerusalem, manning the publicity stations and imploring Israel’s government to do more to bring Gilad home.
 
Five days later, whilst hiking in the Red Canyon in Utah, (the place where Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid hid out before escaping their pursuers and legging it to South America), Shalit was released, a truly joyous moment for Israel and for the Shalit family, in particular. Crossing a path in the canyon we met a middle-aged ‘hippie-style’ couple from Montana who were excited to hear we were from Israel. The man turned to us and said how truly excited we must be about ‘your boy coming home’ and observed that to him and millions of Americans it was a shining example of Israel’s commitment to preserve life whatever the cost, exchanging more than 1000 terrorist prisoners for one captured young man, whilst the other side have such a seemingly cavalier attitude to death and destruction. 
 
I thanked him for his good wishes, and he went on to ask how people within Israel could have objected to the release? It’s a good question, one I covered in a previous blog of a year ago, but it is only fair to understand the feelings of those whose loved ones were ruthlessly murdered in a horrifically macabre variety of ways by Islamist terrorists and who objected to those with blood on their hands being released back to freedom.
 
Israel has taken a gamble in handing over these men, most of whom went to Gaza, although significantly it should be noted with disdain that others were given a warm welcome and sanctuary by Israel’s former friend,Turkey, a decision the Turks may well live to regret. The gamble however had to be taken no matter how many were needed to be handed over to bring Shalit home. If the Israeli government had failed to seize the opportunity and prove that in the awful circumstance of a conscript young soldier being captured by enemy forces they would fail to do everything to bring him or her back home, there would rightly have been a groundswell of opinion against sending our 18-year-old children to risk their lives in the service of defending this country and the democratic values it represents.
 
I believe it is no exaggeration to suggest that a failure to make that deal could well have undermined Israel’s long-term security and defence  capabilities. I for one would have thought twice about offering my two children for service when the time comes, and I would not have been alone as tens of thousands of other Israeli parents and youngsters would have been of the same mind.
 
Now, although looking painfully thin, traumatised, and surely needing time to re-adjust to a world he has been deprived of seeing for so long, Shalit is free and we should all be delighted that things have worked out so well. For now, internal confidence in Israel doing all in her power to protect her citizens has been for the most part restored, and with the news today of the
imminent release of the American Israeli tourist Ilan Grapel from Egypt, it is a pleasure to report on something positive happening in this corner of the
world.
 
Maybe I should go away more often!

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