“Is this the gate for Tel Aviv?” I nodded, though tempted to jest: no, this flight’s to Benidorm. The line in front of us bobbed with top hats, frock coats, tassels and ringlet sideburns. Ladies demure, topped with felt hats born from a century previous, and kids… kids everywhere… all miniatures of the same. It turns out that easyJet’s cost-cutting measures work pretty well for the Orthodox Jewish traveller (no food means easy to keep kosher) and so standing in a Bedfordshire departure lounge I already felt strikingly conspicuous. Upon taking my seat aboard the plane I fought an urge to apologise for something, I know not what.
I first visited Israel in 2005, wide-eyed, alert, and struck by the security that was then everywhere. I’ve been back often since; like nowhere else, it has pulled me back. I’ve enjoyed Pesach in the Golan, I’ve seen snow in Jerusalem. I’ve swam in the cool Kinneret, hiked in the spectacular Negev and hung out in hip Haifa. It’s a small country, and I’ve eaten humus here there and everywhere.
This is not, however, an attempt to establish my credentials: religious or historical or God-given claims I have not; observations and opinions I have. It’s true that when sharing these with close companions I have fairly standardly been accused of anti-Israel prejudice, of having being conditioned by a biased BBC, and in fairness I have often noted my tendency to spit out emotion rather than analysis . I have also been influenced by the idea that I have no right to comment because what do I know? Because suicide attacks in Jerusalem did disappear as the West Bank separation barrier appeared. But, does this morally obligate me to keep my opinions to myself?
To hell with that.
I first visited Israel in 2005, wide-eyed, alert, and struck by the security that was then everywhere. I’ve been back often since; like nowhere else, it has pulled me back. I’ve enjoyed Pesach in the Golan, I’ve seen snow in Jerusalem. I’ve swam in the cool Kinneret, hiked in the spectacular Negev and hung out in hip Haifa. It’s a small country, and I’ve eaten humus here there and everywhere.
This is not, however, an attempt to establish my credentials: religious or historical or God-given claims I have not; observations and opinions I have. It’s true that when sharing these with close companions I have fairly standardly been accused of anti-Israel prejudice, of having being conditioned by a biased BBC, and in fairness I have often noted my tendency to spit out emotion rather than analysis . I have also been influenced by the idea that I have no right to comment because what do I know? Because suicide attacks in Jerusalem did disappear as the West Bank separation barrier appeared. But, does this morally obligate me to keep my opinions to myself?
To hell with that.
I love Israel at the same time as I am deeply critical, and I want to explore these feelings a little. At the most basic level, it’s simply impossible not to feel something about the country, something strong. Travelling up, up, up to the Holy City; well, there just is something very special about it. Jerusalem exudes a sense of the miraculous. Nothing detracts from it: coachloads of Argentine tourists making their slow pilgrimage along the Via Dolorosa, blocking an old man with a pushcart as they stop to buy plastic Messiahs and prayer beads. Teenaged soldiers on King David Street looking to me poignantly comical as they gather and gossip, wolfing down falafel and dripping tahini over their IDF greens, guns slung over shoulders. American Jews on exchange at the Hebrew University marvel to each other in their oh-so-American way but they don’t stand out as loud, because everyone is loud, pushy. Yet the abrasiveness of all of this somehow serves only to emphasise the wonder – the guy yelling Arabic into his phone next to the woman weeping soft tears onto Jesus’s tomb, the ranks of guns loitering around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy of Holies, the incongruity, the absurdity but also the persistent necessary normality.
This was my sixth or seventh visit (I have actually lost count) and I found myself still abuzz with questions, most of which were immaterial to those I asked (to whom Orthodox Jews are as bizarre as they are to me, if not as unusual). But why do they dress like that? What happens if cutlery reserved for dairy accidentally comes into contact with meat? Does it really make sense for women to cover their ragged or shaved heads but let everyone see their sexy wigs? What does Sukkot remember, and what’s with all those gazebos? And Shabbat elevators – seriously? Judaism has come up with this incredible set of rules, and then devised workarounds for them. That dairy knife that fell into the meat sink? Bury it in soil for four hours and it's ok to use it again. Opening a milk bottle or tearing off squares of toilet paper counts as work? Just prepare these things and leave them lying ready before Shabbat comes in.
But it’s not just the intricate rules and ingenious circumventions of Orthodox Judaism that fascinate me. It’s the bigger questions too. What does a Jewish state mean, and how does it work? How integrated are Israeli Arabs (20% of the population)? How can democracy hope to function in a society that is so entwined with its military? While there are provocateurs in any society, why do the settlers have so much political power? How can it be acceptable for the policeman at the Dome of the Rock to take one look at me and immediately grant me access to the outer perimeter (I do not look Jewish) but not to the inner area (I do not look Muslim)? What would happen if, when the border official asks me the name of the friend I am visiting, I answer any name with a Mohammed in it? (I stamp down hard on the temptation to reply ‘Abu Nazir’). And to be Jewish, Israeli: what must it be like to grow up with an enemy all around you? And what must it be like to ‘belong’ to somewhere, to something, so strongly, and for that belonging to mean so much?
Israel’s army service perhaps best exemplifies both what I love and what I hate about the country. I am secretly envious of the experience, at the same time as I am deeply grateful for neither having had it forced on me nor having been conditioned to accept it. I admire its effects – the great social leveling, the cementing of a shared identity, the postponement of university into adulthood – at the same time as I abhor the system that I believe brainwashes a nation. Israel – I love your sense of importance, difference and belonging, and these are the same things about you that I hate.
But it’s not just the intricate rules and ingenious circumventions of Orthodox Judaism that fascinate me. It’s the bigger questions too. What does a Jewish state mean, and how does it work? How integrated are Israeli Arabs (20% of the population)? How can democracy hope to function in a society that is so entwined with its military? While there are provocateurs in any society, why do the settlers have so much political power? How can it be acceptable for the policeman at the Dome of the Rock to take one look at me and immediately grant me access to the outer perimeter (I do not look Jewish) but not to the inner area (I do not look Muslim)? What would happen if, when the border official asks me the name of the friend I am visiting, I answer any name with a Mohammed in it? (I stamp down hard on the temptation to reply ‘Abu Nazir’). And to be Jewish, Israeli: what must it be like to grow up with an enemy all around you? And what must it be like to ‘belong’ to somewhere, to something, so strongly, and for that belonging to mean so much?
Israel’s army service perhaps best exemplifies both what I love and what I hate about the country. I am secretly envious of the experience, at the same time as I am deeply grateful for neither having had it forced on me nor having been conditioned to accept it. I admire its effects – the great social leveling, the cementing of a shared identity, the postponement of university into adulthood – at the same time as I abhor the system that I believe brainwashes a nation. Israel – I love your sense of importance, difference and belonging, and these are the same things about you that I hate.
Israeli society is just about as divided as my opinions of it. History has made this little country one of the most diverse in the world, amongst the Jewish population as well as outside of it, and prejudice and discrimination run deep. Ashkenazi over Sephardic, old-timers versus new-wave, secular versus religious. And that’s before we even get to the Israeli Arabs, Bedouin, Druze. The chav-tastic beach babes of Tel Aviv (a buzzing city, lively, open-minded, brash and unapologetic for its rather unfortunate ‘70s décor) have little in common with the orthodox of Jerusalem (an intense, restrictive, beautiful city, less than an hour’s drive but a million miles away). But these differences are rarely celebrated. They are certainly noted (a newsreader talks of the murder of a Bedouin man in the Negev, I am not sure why his race was relevant), but my sensitive ears hear more subtle scorn than genuine interest or respect. How funny these people are. Look how they build their houses, they never finish them. Look at the ridiculous things they buy.
Difference never showed itself more starkly than during my visit to Mount Hermon. Straddling the border between Syria and Lebanon and with southern slopes descending into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the mountain is carved into meaty slices by a snaking border wall and reams of razor wire. A ski lift takes holidaying Israeli families up to a stunning viewpoint, where a tank is parked up next to an ice cream vendor. In blazing heat, sultry quiet sits over the mountainside and sinks down into the haze that stretches out below. We walked a little way around a rocky outcrop and an IDF teenager with a gun turned us back. Otherwise we could have sat with our sandwiches watching the smoke that was rising from the town of Quneitra below (the site of frequent clashes between Syrian rebels and government forces).
On the way down, the lift attendant asks my friend to tell me that Assad should stay and the Golan should remain with Israel. Right, noted, thanks. In the meantime, we’ll find somewhere else to hike. Plenty of trails wind through the beautiful, wild Golan, waymarked with splashes of bright paint that weave past fields of small red triangles – warning signs denoting mine fields – and mangled detritus of old war.
Difference never showed itself more starkly than during my visit to Mount Hermon. Straddling the border between Syria and Lebanon and with southern slopes descending into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the mountain is carved into meaty slices by a snaking border wall and reams of razor wire. A ski lift takes holidaying Israeli families up to a stunning viewpoint, where a tank is parked up next to an ice cream vendor. In blazing heat, sultry quiet sits over the mountainside and sinks down into the haze that stretches out below. We walked a little way around a rocky outcrop and an IDF teenager with a gun turned us back. Otherwise we could have sat with our sandwiches watching the smoke that was rising from the town of Quneitra below (the site of frequent clashes between Syrian rebels and government forces).
On the way down, the lift attendant asks my friend to tell me that Assad should stay and the Golan should remain with Israel. Right, noted, thanks. In the meantime, we’ll find somewhere else to hike. Plenty of trails wind through the beautiful, wild Golan, waymarked with splashes of bright paint that weave past fields of small red triangles – warning signs denoting mine fields – and mangled detritus of old war.
In a packed cinema in downtown Tel Aviv I watched the acclaimed new movie ‘Bethlehem’. A dark story of seemingly intractable conflict billed as a balanced portrayal, it came across to me as Palestinians bad, Israelis stupid. But as I sat in that movie theatre what struck me most of all was, the audience sniggered at the most inappropriate moments.
One review welcomes ‘Bethlehem’ for bringing the Palestinian conflict back into Israelis’ lives, for reminding them of the reality of its existence. As Giles Fraser pointed out recently, the West Bank separation barrier hides the problem from everyday normal thank-you-very-much Israeli life.
This touches directly on something that has become clearer to me as I have tried to understand my uncomfortable love of Israel. I have often failed to understand the apathy of good people. I was appalled when in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest against rising prices and the cost of living: is this what brings you out on to the streets? You serve your army, you elect your Bibi, you support your society and this, this is what you choose to object to, over any of the abuses committed by your democratic state, on your doorstep. A nation born out of moral imperative and built on social idealism, Israel now seems resigned to and accepting of its current reality. I have deep-seated belief in democratic responsibility, in Asking Not What Your Country Can Do For You, But What You Can Do For Your Country, and so I find this hard to accept.
But ostriches prefer not to see, and there’s something to be said for their tactics. Recently I have consciously chosen not to follow what’s happening in the domestic affairs of my own country because Gove and Go Home vans and the Daily Mail depress me too deeply. I am not politically active; I turn a blind eye, I decide it’s not my battle.
Judaism places such strong emphasis on practices and observances (remember those tassels, those dairy-only knives?) – just the way you live matters. And I hear Israelis say that they just want to live their lives, normal lives without having to take on the world – and who am I to judge.
So this is my love letter to Israel, from an outsider who sees what she sees and thinks what she thinks and hopes, really hopes that people there can be better than she is.
One review welcomes ‘Bethlehem’ for bringing the Palestinian conflict back into Israelis’ lives, for reminding them of the reality of its existence. As Giles Fraser pointed out recently, the West Bank separation barrier hides the problem from everyday normal thank-you-very-much Israeli life.
This touches directly on something that has become clearer to me as I have tried to understand my uncomfortable love of Israel. I have often failed to understand the apathy of good people. I was appalled when in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest against rising prices and the cost of living: is this what brings you out on to the streets? You serve your army, you elect your Bibi, you support your society and this, this is what you choose to object to, over any of the abuses committed by your democratic state, on your doorstep. A nation born out of moral imperative and built on social idealism, Israel now seems resigned to and accepting of its current reality. I have deep-seated belief in democratic responsibility, in Asking Not What Your Country Can Do For You, But What You Can Do For Your Country, and so I find this hard to accept.
But ostriches prefer not to see, and there’s something to be said for their tactics. Recently I have consciously chosen not to follow what’s happening in the domestic affairs of my own country because Gove and Go Home vans and the Daily Mail depress me too deeply. I am not politically active; I turn a blind eye, I decide it’s not my battle.
Judaism places such strong emphasis on practices and observances (remember those tassels, those dairy-only knives?) – just the way you live matters. And I hear Israelis say that they just want to live their lives, normal lives without having to take on the world – and who am I to judge.
So this is my love letter to Israel, from an outsider who sees what she sees and thinks what she thinks and hopes, really hopes that people there can be better than she is.