Posts by Geoffrey Paul

Sharon: The Life Of A Leader

Geoffrey Paul — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:58:50 +0000

By Gilad Sharon
Harper, £24.99

There is an element of the surreal in the image conjured by his son of this once bluff, tough. roiling figure of a man now in the sixth year of a coma from which he is unlikely ever to emerge.

Ariel (Arik) Sharon's two sons Omri and Gilad share a daily vigil at his bedside where their father "lies in bed, looking like the lord of the manor, sleeping tranquilly. Large, strong, self-assured. His cheeks are a healthy shade of red. When he's awake, he looks out with a penetrating stare. He hasn't lost a single pound; on the contrary, he's gained some."

Gilad adores his dad and dedicates this biography to "the hero of this book, the hero of our lives." This pretty much sets the tone in a hefty book which befits the man who almost certainly saved Israel from defeat in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War and who, in his last active years, was Prime Minister of his country. It is filled with tales of derring-do, military adventure, political warfare and the reality of an Israeli life lived under constant threat of war, of terrorism and, on occasion, of both.

Arik Sharon, who fought in every Israeli war and was probably the best and most daring - some would say headstrong - general ever produced by Israel, has incised his mark into almost every aspect of his nation's life and hewn its future by such major acts of political contrariness as fathering its settlement movement and unilaterally disengaging from Gaza.

A man, it would seem from his son's account, who went about his mission of preserving the Land and People of Israel with almost Old Testament fervour, Sharon had a keen sense of history.

His retention of letters, notes, maps, records of conversations, articles, speeches and detailed note-books infuse this partisan account of his life and career with a liveliness, intimacy and, yes, fire which makes it eminently readable.

What will be new to some who don't follow the Israeli media closely is the venomous personalisation of political squabbles and, even more so, the bitter infighting between the country's top military brass.

One most assume that Gilad speaks with his father's voice when he describes President Shimon Peres as being "detached from reality," accuses Prime Minister Netanyahu of being "a liar" (and worse) and excoriates a whole generation of celebrated top commanders whom he claims plotted against his father's progress within the IDF, even to the extent of hazarding soldiers' lives.

Gilad almost succeeds in attempting to make his father the innocent scapegoat for the horrendous massacre of Muslims by Christians in Lebanese refugee camps during the Israeli occupation, under his command, in 1982.

An Israeli commission of inquiry put the blame on Sharon and he had to resign from the Government.

Gilad explains his father's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount, on which he accompanied him, as an expression of Sharon's opposition to Labour Prime Minister (and ex-general) Barak's offer to return the area to the Palestinians in a peace deal. Controversy still rages as to whether this visit triggered the second intifada.

Arik himself will long remain a subject of discussion. Although his active life is over, final judgment on the man awaits the long-term consequences of decisions, military and political, taken by him over many years that will largely determine the shape and fate of the Jewish State.

Where were you when........?

Geoffrey Paul — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:03:06 +0100

As almost a lifetime critic of Israel's lack of public relations skills, I have watched even more aghast than usual as Turkey's Erdogan has made the running against Israel with his portrayal of her attack on the Turkish “humanitarian relief flotilla” to Gaza as something not short of an international crime. I will concede absolutely that, confronted with opposition. the Israeli commandos went into overdrive and did not stop to decide whether they should suffer casualties before responding to their attackers. But then this was no innocent `”humanitarian” sortie by well-intentioned Turks – and I do not rely on Israeli propaganda sources for my information. What's wrong with the Washington Post and why has Israel not drawn on what it had to say in an editorial in June last year? You don't know what I am talking about? Well, here's the editorial and if you did not know about the information it contains, phone your local Israel Embassy and ask why (all the words that follow are from the Washington Post editorial):

Western governments have been right to be concerned about Israel’s poor judgment and botched execution in the raid against the Free Gaza flotilla. But they ought to be at least as worried about the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which since Monday has shown a sympathy toward Islamic militants and a penchant for grotesque demagoguery toward Israel that ought to be unacceptable for a member of NATO.  

On the opposite page today, Turkey’s ambassador to the United States makes the argument that Israel had no cause to clash with the “European lawmakers, journalists, business leaders and an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor” who were aboard the flotilla. But there was no fighting with those people, or with five of the six boats in the fleet. All of the violence occurred aboard the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, and all of those who were killed were members or volunteers for the Islamic “charity” that owned the ship, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).  

The relationship between Mr. Erdogan’s government and the IHH ought to be one focus of any international investigation into the incident. The foundation is a member of the “Union of Good,” a coalition that was formed to provide material support to Hamas and that was named as a terrorist entity by the United States in 2008. In discussions before the flotilla departed, Turkish officials turned down offers from both Israel and Egypt to deliver the “humanitarian” supplies on the boats to Gaza and insisted Ankara could not control what it described as a nongovernmental organization.  

Yet the IHH has certainly done its best to promote Mr. Erdogan. “All the peoples of the Islamic world would want a leader like Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” IHH chief Bulent Yildirim proclaimed at a Hamas rally in Gaza last year. And Mr. Erdogan seems to share that notion: In the days since an incident that the IHH admits it provoked, the Turkish prime minister has done his best to compete with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah in attacking the Jewish state. 

 “The heart of humanity has taken one of her heaviest wounds in history,” Mr. Erdogan claimed this week. He has had next to nothing to say about the slaughter of Iranians protesting last year’s fraudulent elections, but he called Israel’s actions “state terrorism” and a “bloody massacre” and described Israel itself as an “adolescent, rootless state.” His foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said in Washington on Tuesday that “this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey” -- an obscene comparison to events in which more than 2,900 genuinely innocent people were killed.  

Mr. Erdogan’s crude attempt to exploit the incident comes only a couple of weeks after he joined Brazil’s president in linking arms with Mr. Ahmadinejad, whom he is assisting in an effort to block new U.N. sanctions. What’s remarkable about his turn toward extremism is that it comes after more than a year of assiduous courting by the Obama administration, which, among other things, has overlooked his antidemocratic behavior at home, helped him combat the Kurdish PKK and catered to Turkish sensitivities about the Armenian genocide. Israel is suffering the consequences of its misjudgments and disregard of U.S. interests. Will Mr. Erdogan’s behavior be without cost?

End Washington Post comment.....and mine

Review: A Line In The Sand

Geoffrey Paul — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:30:42 +0100

By James Barr
Simon & Schuster, £25

Amazon lists more than 50 books on the modern Middle East. Do we need another? For sure even those only moderately familiar with the history of the region will know of the machinations before and after the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Arab uprisings, British military victories and defeats (T E Lawrence, of course) plus imperial double-dealing on all sides, especially conflicting promises made to Arabs, Jews and allies.

It is all here. There seems scarce a relevant document, newspaper cutting, memoir or history book not filleted by author James Barr for some unknown or little-known detail to pack around the well-picked bones of the oft-told story. What makes this one different and provides its raison d'etre is that at its heart lies a tale of how perfidious Albion and duplicitous France sought to outwit each other while engaged in carving up the Ottoman Empire.

The book's title refers to that line (using topological licence) drawn in the sand by British politician and adviser, Sir Mark Sykes, and French diplomat, Françoise Georges-Picot - from the "e" in Acre to the last "k" in Kirkuk - in their secret 1916 pact to split the territory to be wrested from the Turks into two separate domains of control and interest.

The French were to get Syria, from which they carved out Lebanon, the British that area within which they were to create Trans-Jordan and Iraq and, virtually, seize for themselves the territory known as Palestine, though they managed, against French opposition, to achieve the respectability of a League of Nations mandate to govern it.

It is their often clashing imperial ambitions, subterfuge, and even downright acts of hostility, they used against each other that is the major theme running through this book.

Barr suggests that the climax of the struggle between the two, which lasted right up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, was French support (at what level is not clear) for acts of Jewish terrorism against the British.

His most striking piece of evidence came from a report written in 1945 by an MI5 officer and never before published (and not sourced here). It was at the time when the Yishuv was struggling to get the first pitiful remnants of the concentration camps into Palestine, and Britain was resisting both Jewish and Arab unrest with tough, even brutal, measures.

Barr quotes the MI5 man as reporting, from top-secret sources, that it was known that "French officials in the Levant have been clandestinely selling arms to the Hagana and we have received recent reports of their intention to stir up strife in Palestine."

Barr, a newspaperman by profession, adds his own gloss to this suggestion: "In other words, while the British were fighting and dying to liberate France, their supposed allies the French were secretly backing Jewish efforts to kill British soldiers and officials in Palestine."

A shame, this; Barr could have left the reader to draw his own conclusions rather than include the comment in his prologue and thus draw a darkling suspicion of having written this often fascinating narrative to suit a preconceived outline. It inevitably colours what follows.

Not in my lifetime

Geoffrey Paul — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:56:47 +0100

I have always believed – sometimes, admittedly, in desperation – that what opponents, enemies even, address to each other in public does not truly reflect the life-and-death stuff of which they talk in private. Lives really depend upon this hidden intercourse. I am not sure of this any more, after ten hours this week spent in the company in London of old-hand Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. It became frighteningly clear after only a short while that they were not talking to each other. They were talking past each other. The Israelis talk, as they must, about security in depth. The Palestinians talk, as they must, about the degree of self-determination they require. A senior Arab spokesman insisted that , in Mahmoud Abbas, Israel now had an opportunity of negotiating with the most pragmatic Palestinian leader they were ever likely to encounter. The Israelis insisted that Abbas spoke for just a fragment of Palestine and that there was that other element, Hamas, which was sworn never to accept a Jewish State.The Palestinians spoke about a need for Israel to accept , at least in principle, the right of Palestinians to return to their former homes. The Israelis spoke about a need for the Palestinians to accept, absolutely, that Israel be recognised as the national state and home of the Jewish people. Sir Malcolm Rifkind told a joke (and he does not have great recognition as a joker): The Israelis and the Arabs sent a delegation to God. “God,” they said. “will there ever be peace between us.” And God replied: “Yes, my children, there will be peace between you – but not in My lifetime!.” It was hard to disagree.

From Oxford to Ramallah

Geoffrey Paul — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:48:43 +0100

An unexpected spanner has been thrown into the intention of Ramallah to seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN later this month. A leading Oxford academic and legal expert has warned that, by pushing ahead with their bid for recognition of a Palestinian state, the PLO leadership may well hazard any right of Palestinians to return to what is now Israel and disenfranchise every Palestinian living outside the area currently under the control of the Palestine Authority.

Professor S Goodwin-Gill, a barrister and senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, in an opinion requested by a member of the Palestine National Council, a sort of Palestinian inner cabinet, has cautioned that:“Until such a time as a final settlement is agreed, the putative State of Palestine will have no territory over which it exercises effective sovereignty, its borders will be indeterminate or disputed, its population, actual and potential, undetermined and many of them continuing to live under occupation or in States of refuge.

“While it may be an observer State in the United Nations, it will fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood, with serious implications for Palestinians at large, particularly as concerns the popular representation of those not currently present in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Professor Goodwin-Gill, in his conclusion to an opinion which is already exercising international lawyers in Europe, the US and the Middle East, says that “current moves to secure recognition of statehood do not appear to reflect fully the role of the Palestinian people as a principal party in the resolution of the situation in the Middle East.

“The interests of the Palestinian people are at risk of prejudice and fragmentation, unless steps are taken to ensure and maintain their representation through the Palestinian Liberation Organization, until such time as there is in place a State competent and fully able to assume these responsibilities towards the people at large.”

In short, replace the PLO, which is now taken internationally to represent the Palestinian people wherever they may reside, with a Palestinian state without borders and state power, and you have yielded your right to speak on behalf of those Palestinians living outside the area controlled by the PLO, a recognised legal entity.

The next few days may show where the UN bid is going. if anywhere. But given that lawyers are deeply involved....

Fascinating Tosh

Geoffrey Paul — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:19:11 +0100

I am ever fascinated by the world of the chassidim, especially when introduced to a dynasty of which I had no previous knowledge and which, in general, has managed to remain aloof from the outside world and struggles to keep it that way. So meet the Tosh (no joke, honest) and their venerable though ailing Rebbe, Meshullam Feish Segal-Lowy, great-grandson of the first Tosher Rebbe who sprang from a long rabbinic line and lived in the Hungarian town of Nyirtas, the last syllable of which provided the dynasty's title, Tas, sometimes Tash and most often Tosh.

Now in his 90th year, the current rebbe lives in a town built around him and populated by several thousand of his followers. Named, not surprisingly, Kiryas Tosh, it was established in 1963 not in some Brooklyn suburb nor even in Israel, but, wait for it, in French-speaking Quebec, Canada, about a 30-minute drive from Montreal where its members previously lived. It is no surprise then that the main street of Kiryas Tosh is Avenue Beth Halevy.

Rabbi Lowy took his followers to Tosh from Montreal so that he could preserve their life style and keep distractions at bay. He seems to have succeeded. Even in Catholic Canada, Tosh has one of the highest birthrates in the country. But is has not been without its heartbreaks. A fire last month destroyed a block of 18 apartments but caused no casualties. The local shomrim said all 200 flat-dwellers were rescued, 150 of them children.

Review: The Anatomy of Israel's Survival

Geoffrey Paul — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:10:36 +0100

By Hirsh Goodman
Perseus, £17.99

There comes a moment when, if attempting an analysis of Israel's political and military dilemmas, you just have to get on with it hoping that, between pen and publication, nothing will happen - an intifada, a war, an assassination - that will make your assessment little more than footnotes to a volume of history.

Hirsh Goodman, journalist, author and now senior fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, is too experienced a hand to fall into the traps awaiting the unwary.

His insights and judgments on the issues confronting Israel are sharp, original and, in many instances, disturbing and challenging.

He is harsh about Israeli leaders, past and present. He believes Golda Meir, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, was blinded by Moshe Dayan's strategy, supported and expanded by Yigal Allon, of seeking to occupy the West Bank without settling it, while economically integrating its inhabitants. Golda Meir's government, says Goodman, "had all the arrogance of the old colonialists."

Menachem Begin's attitude was even worse, seeking total annexation of all the territories and the extension of Israeli citizenship to all inhabitants of "liberated Judea, Samara and Gaza" and ignoring the demographic bombshell lying at the heart of his policy. Goodman estimates numerical parity will soon be reached between Israelis and the Arabs of the territories, "after which the Palestinians will surpass the Jews."

He quotes Yasser Arafat, shortly after shaking the reluctant hand of Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn, saying that the womb of the Palestinian woman was the Palestinians' best weapon.

It took 30 years after Begin for his Likud successor, Ariel Sharon, "realising that demography was Israel's biggest enemy," to pull out of Gaza "and shed 1.5 million Palestinians from the scales." That is about the only good thing Goodman has to say for Sharon.

He certainly has little faith in Prime Minister Netanyahu's peace-making (or any other) ability and even less in that of his coalition Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, the former Labour leader. Looking back to their previous terms in office, he comments that "Barak was as disastrous a leader for Labour as Netanyahu had been for Likud." His assessment of Barak's character - egomaniac, manipulative, secretive and worse - borders on the libellous.

Goodman offers little confidence that these or any other leaders now in the public eye will take Israel through the threats from Iran, frustrate the delegitimisation campaign and find the path to a workable peace. But he does recognise in the Knesset wings capable young men and women who have visions and dreams of an Israel at peace.

He does warn that, if Israel is not destroy itself from within, its search for peace will have to take account of the religious Zionist camp, from which come the leaders of the West Bank settlers. But he does not explain how that can be squared with his haunting conclusion: "Peace is possible… but the risks are tremendous and it is going to take extraordinary leadership on the Israeli side to surmount them, convince the Israeli public that the price of peace is worth the risks, and actually carry through on whatever movement of Israeli population on the West Bank needs to be done."

An Israeli Autumn?

Geoffrey Paul — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:54:18 +0100

A major dilemma is fast looming for that larger part of the diaspora which, if not subservient to the slogan 'Israel right or wrong', feels emotionally, ideologically, even, it might be said, tribally committed to total support of the Jewish State, certainly when face-to-face with a critical non-Jewish world. But it is going to be different and the adjustment will demand new approaches and mind-sets for, if we are not on the edge of an “Israeli Spring,” we are imminently going to see challenges to the Israeli government and the ruling parties which are without precedent.

Within the last few days, Israel has experienced acts of civil disobedience unparalleled since the 'fifties and 'sixties. Thousands have marched and demonstrated in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa against the dearth of affordable housing. Roads have been blocked, tent cities have sprung up, and young families have taken to the streets in protest on a scale which has not been seen previously on a civil issue. These are not the disaffected “Black Panthers” of the Sephardi protests in earlier years. These are young men and women who are most decidedly in the mainstream.

They have now been joined in protest, a different protest, by doctors, headed by the president of the Israel Medical Association, who say that the once highly-regarded Israeli health service is near collapse, with doctors being overworked and insufficient funds being invested to keep the service viable. The IMA head is himself planning to start a hunger strike on Monday to draw attentiom to the situation. There is even talk of a national strike on August 1 and the Prime Minister has called off a visit to Poland in which he wanted to seek support against UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

The diaspora's dilemma? With whom do you stand, with the government of Israel which is being called to account for its inability to competently deal with domestic issues (while seeming to lack creativity on foreign ones), or with Israel's future which claims it cannot afford to live decently and bring up its children in the Jewish State and the doctors who say they are at the end of the life-preserving road? An exaggeration of where things are heading? I am sure someone will say so. But, OK, call me to account when we reach the Israeli Autumn.

1967 and all that

Geoffrey Paul — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 22:20:28 +0100

s'funny how everybody got uptight in May when President Obama spoke of an Israel-Palestine peace agreement based on the 1967 boundaries with land swaps (presumably to take account of some current realities). Not a few Israeli – and other - commentators saw this as some kind of sell-out of the special American-Israeli relationship. But it was all said, and more, a year ago by Dan Shapiro, the National Security Council's advisor on the Middle East, when he addressed the Anti-Defamation League at its annual get-together in the United States. He has been a top advisor to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on the Israel-Palestine peace process since the installation of the new Administration. Scarcely any “peace mission” to Israel in the last two or three years has not included him in its membership. Some believe him to be the real architect of American policy vis-a-vis the Israel-Palestine peace process. In which case Prime Minister Netanyahu - who knows him very well indeed, well enough to entertain him in his kitchen - is going to hear some tough talk (in Hebrew, a language in which he is fluent) from the new US Ambassador to Israel: Dan Shapiro.

Steady as you go!

Geoffrey Paul — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:48:28 +0100

It is depressing how all the evidence is building for a summer, autumn and winter of discontent and we, the everyday victims, have little choice but, Canute-like, to sit there at the edge of the threatening ocean of strikes and allow them to wash over us. If you are as old as I am, you will have been here before and you will know that, at some point, strikers and their intended target, government, will have to sit down and thrash out some sort of compromise which will require both to give a little. I ask now, as I have asked over many years before, why does it have to get to this point before intelligent leaders on both sides sit down and thrash out the solution which is going to be the end point of this tragic game? Why the need for self-inflicted suffering when there is so much unavoidable sacrifice ahead for all of us?

Obama's major dilemma

Geoffrey Paul — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:22:03 +0100

“The key problem is this: American support to the Peace Process requires American public support to Israel. American public support to Israel infers defense commitments directed against Arab states (and Iran). Defense commitments directed against Arab states inherently undermine the construction of a new relationship with the Arab world.”

This, in the simplest of terms, defines President Obama's dilemma in facing up to the problems of the Middle East. It comes from the blog of an American who seems to know well the differences between Shias and Sunnis. I have found reading him enlightening often, infuriating frequently. You can read the whole of this and other of his blogs relevant to the US and the Middle East at this website:
http://ishouldhavestayedhome.blogspot.com.

Dateline Washington

Geoffrey Paul — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:45:57 +0100

Just as those who were around at the time recall where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, folks here in Washington DC are already exchanging details of where they were when they heard of the Osama bin Laden assassination. Most it seems were already in bed (a vast amount of US TV viewing seems to be done in a prone position) but quickly aroused themselves when they heard the President was to make an unprecedented near-midnight address to the nation. There's no question about the boost the killing of bin Laden has given his prestige. His re-election seems almost guaranteed, unless the Republicans find a strong (non-female) candidate to put up against him and there is no sign of this to-date. Many American Jews, specially on the religious right where support for Likud is solid, are concerned that a strengthened Obama,relying on his national popularity,will feel emboldened to pressure Israel for a deal with Fatah (now, possibly, Fatah-Hamas) which will be unsafe for Israel. Obama was already so unpopular among some Orthodox Jewish groups that congregations with which they pray have, quietly and unofficially, dropped recitation of the prayer for the President. While they most certainly applaud the political and military risk that Obama took in authorising the bin Laden operation, they are unlikely to be sporting the favourite tee-shirt of the day which proclaims the widespread delight that "Obama Got Osama!"

More than a few crumbs

Geoffrey Paul — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:59:26 +0100

Having spent the first days of Passover in an American venue of kosher excess - 24-hour food of such variety, quality and abundance that it becomes almost impossible to accept a small portion, the wine bottles piled high with an invitation to help yourself - it came as a real shock to open the New York Times to a front page splash, based on a Census Bureau report, that the poorest village, town or city in the US with a population of more than 10,000 is the Satmar-dominated ultra-orthodox community of Kiryas Joel, less than an hour's drive from New York City. Seventy per cent of its 21,00 residents live in households whose income is below the federal poverty threshhold. The women marry young and have many children. The median age in Kiryas Joel is 12. Many of the boys will follow in their fathers' footsteps and spend their days,not working, but in religious studies.

All of which intrigued the New Yirk Times reporter. If things, according to the Census Bureau, were so bad, how come they had thriving schools and a first-rate medical centre with a highly-developed welfare system for over-burdened mothers? If you visit Kiryas Joel, you won't find people starving or a lack of pushchairs, kids' bikes or even cars. How do they do it ? Well, in the first instance, in any election, federal or state, Kiryas Joel can be counted on to vote as a solid block for favoured candidates. When it comes to handing out funds for education, health or programmes, these favoured candidates are unlikely to forget Kiryas Joel. Most unlikely. Then there's the matter of the local poultry slaughter house which has a throughput of 40,000 chickens a day. Since the community owns it, it rates as a not-for-profit enterprise. And the major matzo bakery which produces 800 tons of matzo a day? That belongs to a local shul and is equally a charitable enterprise.

They certainly know how to count their chickens in Kiryas Joel,,,which reminds me, it must be time to go and have a bite or two to eat.And a glass of wine, of course.

The Fifth Question

Geoffrey Paul — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:47:40 +0100

Is there no end to Jewish ingenuity (or the ability of some to see a way of making a dollar or two)? I ask because someone has sent me the ultimate in Pesach marketing. You will know, of course, that at the Seder table it is the custom to lean, in recognition of the fact that free men (and women), in contradistinction to slaves, can relax in the comfort of their homes and eat, as apparently did the aristocracy of Talmud times, tilted comfortably to the left, as on a chaise longue. Leaning left, it seems, is better for the digestion than leaning right. Ha! But, what if you live in the modern world, where the possiblity is that your chairs do not have sides which will support you when you lean? What then? Never fear! Our redoubtable friends of the hairy headgear have come up with an attachable arm which will fit (guaranteed to fit) on the left side of any chair at all. So there you are. No problem – except, of course, if you happen to have rather large goblets for your four cups of wine and, in your absolute freedom, you momentarily lean right......

A view from the Grill

Geoffrey Paul — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:48:42 +0100

Is it just me or is there something that smells particularly unpleasant tucked into the middle of Alistair Horne's review (published in this week's Spectator luxury supplement) of a meal in the new Savoy Grill? I am not one of those who senses bigotry on every hand, or who goes looking for it, but...well, you read what troubled me: “Our conversation was beaten down by the nasal tones of Finchley Road entrepreneurs, boasting their latest high-powered deals” which carried him back to a party in the Savoy Grill in 1940 for a war-hero cousin who had brought his battalion out of Dunkirk. As they rose at the end of the meal, Horne relates, the cousin “looked around the room and asked scathingly:'Are these really the people we fought for?' He might possibly have posed the same question today,” adds Horne, “except that he was killed two years later at the head of his brigade in the desert.”

A view from the Grill

Geoffrey Paul — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:48:42 +0100

Review: Memories After My Death

Geoffrey Paul — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:04:03 +0100

By Yair Lapid (Trans: Evan Fallenberg)
Elliott & Thompson, £18.99

The notion is bizarre - that a son might so totally steep himself in his father's life, his innermost thoughts, that, after his father's death, he can recreate the man and write the autobiography his father never penned. But this is what Yair Lapid has done. The result is a literary tour-de-force in which the son reassembles the voice, the spirit of the father so absolutely that, for most of this big book, it is the man himself who turns the pages of his life and speaks directly to the reader.

And Yosef "Tommy" Lapid has a lot to say. As a journalist, a politician, a celebrity, Tommy Lapid wrote, recorded, broadcast and shared with his close and loving family so many of his experiences, his thoughts, his emotional highs and lows, that his son Yair, himself a high-profile journalist and broadcaster in Israel, had an abundance of sources.

Born into a comfortable, intellectual and secular Jewish family in Novi Sad, in the Serbian republic of former Yugoslavia, Tomislav Lampel (later Hebraised to Lapid and the Tommy prefaced by Yosef - which nobody called him) lived in Budapest with his mother after his lawyer father had been taken by the Germans (he died in Mauthausen two weeks before the Liberation).

Mother and son were on a death march to the banks of the Danube, where they were to have been shot and left to die under the ice, when a Soviet reconnaissance plane temporarily distracted the Hungarian and Nazi escort. Young Tommy was pushed into a nearby public toilet by his mother and when both emerged the march had moved on. Not one of the marchers survived.

It was this scarred but street-smart teenager who arrived in Israel with his mother just as the state was born and there, seizing every opportunity he could make for himself in the next 60 years, carved out a remarkable career as journalist, author, radio and TV star, later head of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Knesset Member, a founder of the anti-clerical Shinui party, deputy prime minister and, in his last years, chairman of Yad Vashem.

But this dry catalogue in no way captures Tommy's gusto for life, of a man flamboyant in his many loves: of food (he grew to be a Falstaffian figure), of his writer wife, their children, and of friends, who included humorist Ephraim Kishon and Ariel Sharon.

He embraced almost everyone but Hungarians and it's impossible not to forgive him his delight in his own celebrity. Former Prime Minister Olmert sat in tears at Tommy's bedside as he lay dying from cancer having asked his doctors not to prolong his life.

Having first met Tommy when we were both young journalists in London in the '60s (he for the Israeli newspaper Maariv), I am familiar with his voice and it is remarkable how his son and intimate friend Yair brings it back to booming, ebullient, opinionated life in this extraordinary memoir.

Only be well!

Geoffrey Paul — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:48:29 +0000

Part of the post-operative recovery programme for patients in hospital has to be the care, attention and, by no means least, diet provided for their recuperation. Having been the unfortunate close-up viewer of the kosher diet provided in a leading London hospital, I can only say, if you can possibly help it, don’t opt for the meals provided by a well-known kosher caterer whose offerings, while well intended, are plainly not designed for the bed-bound patient. Mounds of silver foil and plastic wrap, while they may protect kosher food from contamination from handling by non-Jewish staff, arrive at the bedside table in a jumble requiring forensic skills to detach the food from the wrapping. Soup comes in bowls which have been upset within their outer packaging, with more soup in the containing package than the bowls. Cold cuts of meat are heated to the same temperature as a portion of chicken and are therefore inedible. I could go on but would not want to disturb your digestion. All I want to say is, in this day and age of advanced technology, it cannot be beyond the skills of Jewish scientists and food technologists to come up with a kosher diet which is edible within a hospital context and which does not provide the best reason for opting, instead, for a vegetarian, non-kosher diet. By the way, if you order a kosher meal for a visitor, expect to pay £31.50 for something which will almost certainly be left uneaten, Outrageous.

Revolution by Twitter

Geoffrey Paul — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:16:25 +0000

Have we entered a new era of revolution by tweet? Until the Egyptian cut them off yesterday, it was possible to follow the unfolding of events in Cairo by logging into one or the other of the social networks being used to spread the word of demonstrations against the regime. This is so much more authentic in conveying the flavour of events in Cairo than the digested and sometimes overly-cautious interpretations offered by media experts. Some of the best stuff on developments in the Arab world comes from savvy bloggers. One who seems to know his olives from his dates pointed out that the al-Jazeera/Gurdian leaks of Palestinian papers came from within the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit (NSU). The NSU is funded by DFID, the UK Department for International Development, and exists to provide parity in the negotiations by giving the Palestinians a professionally-staffed reach-back capability for negotiation details. My blogger observes: “ I'm not casting aspersions here - the NSU hires a lot of young international idealists, and local skeptics, any of whom might have been to blame for the leak. But that detail, combined with the recent admission by a British general that his support to the Palestinian security forces has not made any impact on the use of torture by those forces, reinforces the perils of giving any backing to a regime that doesn't have the support of its own people.” There’s a thought. And another one: how does supporting the Palestinian negotiating team fit in with DfID's apolitical remit of poverty reduction?

Mitigating shame

Geoffrey Paul — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:06:57 +0000

Daniel Liebeskind has designed one of his most poignant memorials, a miniature in scale when compared with his Berlin Jewish Museum or his plans for the rehabilitation of the site of the World Trade Centre in New York. The “Wheel of `Conscience” as he calls it is reminiscent of a ship’s steering wheel. At its centre is a mesh of revolving gears as would be found in an engine room, individually bearing the words hatred, xenophobia, racism and antisemitism. On the reverse are the names of more than 900 German Jews who sought refuge from the Nazis in 1939 aboard the liner St Louis. Men, women and children, they were waved away from ports in Cuba, the United States and Canada. The US had a patrol boat make sure none tried to swim ashore. Over 250 perished in the Holocaust, after their return to Europe.

What is as interesting as the monument itself is that it has been installed at Pier 21 in the port of Halifax, the Canadian harbour which, on the orders of the Ottawa government, following the example of President `Roosevelt in the United States, denied the asylum-seekers refuge. The Canadian immigration minister of the time wrote a note which spat “The attempt of Jews to get into Canada reminds me a great deal of what I have seen on the farm at hog-feeding time when they are all trying to get their feet into the trough at the same time.” The monument was commissioned by the Canadian Jewish Congress with a major grant from the Canadian department in charge of immigration. It goes some way to mitigating that department’s shame and reminding Canadians of something they would rather forget.