There’s only one place I feel safe wearing my Magen David. Can you guess where?

It’s so exhausting being Jewish and I am a very jaded Jew for it. See, I’m not psychic, yet I’ve developed an uncanny ability – a Jewbility, if you will – to predict exactly, verbatim, what someone is going to say as soon as they realise I am Jewish.

“Isn’t it a shame that the Jews are now doing to the poor Palestinians exactly what Hitler did to the Jews? It’s so ironic, really, isn’t it?” And: “I suppose that’s why they’re doing it, aren’t they, because it was done to them.” And: “When you think how everyone felt so sorry for them after what happened to them in the war. Isn’t it such a shame?”

I’ve developed an uncanny ability – a Jewbility – to predict exactly what someone is going to say as soon as they realise I am Jewish

If I were braver and not just thinking about the consequences of pointless arguments, such as my sanity, my blood pressure and being fired from my job, I’d love to reply with: “Isn’t it a shame that you’re disappointing me with mindless antisemitic tropes that you think are somehow really clever and profound and which you haven’t even come up with yourself but which you are trying to deliver to me in a way that you hope makes you sound as if you thought of them yourself and you probably in fact are so delusional that you believe you’re being original, and the irony is you don’t even understand what you’re saying or you wouldn’t actually be saying it because if you did have the capacity to grasp at the knowledge, meaning and truth of some of the rubbish you are mindlessly repeating while nodding in what you think is a sagacious and wise, philosophical and sorrowful way you would actually cringe yourself wrinkled and burn so red with embarrassment that you’d be able to launch yourself into outer-space like a rocket fuelled with shameful stupidity…”

But I don’t say all that. I just let out a resigned little sigh and say, “Well anyway, it’s certainly a complicated and sad situation.”

In the last few weeks we’ve seen the anti-Israel hysteria grow even madder, louder and more incoherent. They don’t want Israel – or Israelis – in the Eurovision, in the football, in the cycling, in the supermarkets, in the music raves, in the film festivals, in theatres, in the audience, in the anything. They will tell us it’s anti-Zionist, and not antisemitic, no, no, of course not. They just need to tell me this stuff because I am a Jew. They don’t mind my being a Jew. They have, in fact, some wonderful Jewish friends, the good types. The ones who believe in a one-state solution (no, not for Jews, stupid) because apparently, believing in a two-state-solution now is so, I don’t know, white-settler-colonial-Zionist-apartheid-Nazi these days.

So. I’ve told everyone at work I’m slumming it in Spain with an embarrassed little chuckle and an ironic little eye-roll. Predictably, people have responded with “all right for some” and “the struggle is real, haha” and, “ooh, go easy on the sangria”. And we all chuckle together. I know it’s supposed to be wrong to lie but honestly it makes my work-life so much smoother not to have my colleagues horrified by me.

I should clarify I’m talking about my day-job colleagues. My goodness, if I ever have to worry about my JC ones chasing me up the road with pitchforks it really might be the end of days.

Anyway, amigos, if you see me walking down the street, and we’re not alone, don’t say shalom, holler “hola!”