Next year in Jerusalem for this shiksa

Chief amongst these is dismay at the West’s growing spinelessness in the face of the threat from militant Islam, to the point where I haven’t much respect anymore for our liberal democracies (and their largely craven and hypocritical media).

I put this down to the Obama effect. The US President is equivocal, at best, in his support for Israel. Other Western nations take their lead from America, so if the only superpower to believe in freedom, liberty and pluralism won’t take a firm stand on the side of its single true ally in the Middle East, why should they?
In rickety times like these, when the world needs a clear message — that the enlightened countries of the West will never let barbarism prevail — we can’t have a feeble Obama in the White House. We need a robust Reagan. And a Maggie Thatcher here — a leader who wouldn’t just pussyfoot around whilst hate preachers radicalise a generation of British Muslims.

Is it any wonder I have been asking myself: so…if not here, then where else would I live?

And the question always brings me back to Israel. In today’s world, it’s the one country I can really respect. A country with cojones.

And then there’s all that intriguing history. I’ve really got into the Old Testament lately. This was triggered by watching the 1985 film King David, with Richard Gere in the title role, wearing an unconvincing shaggy wig. I could finally fit all those great biblical figures together — Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, etc. Of course I should have known it all before but as a Catholic kid I attended Catechism classes and mainly had the New Testament rammed down my throat. Nowadays I’m rusty on that too, having lapsed when I was ten.

Anyway, you’ve got to admire the way King David smote the Philistines. And the Ammonites and the Aramites, the Moabites and the Edomites (see, I’m learning). Blimey, back then the Jews really knew how to smite, just as, since the founding of Israel, they have carried on defeating their enemies.

But they can’t do it without statehood. Without a strong and confident Jewish nation there is only persecution, pogroms and the Holocaust. Why can’t the world see that?

So far I’ve been to Israel only once, in 1992, when my mother and I attended her ceremony at Yad Vashem. She was named a Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jewish friends in Budapest during the Nazi occupation. Please note: my mum was a Holocaust heroine! Mega brownie points, which surely should be taken into account when I apply to make aliyah.

And here’s a final basis for my relocation to the land of milk and honey: I had one set of Jewish ancestors, albeit on my father’s side. Yes, the Halasz family (previously the Fischers) were bona fide Ashkenazi Jews, and while it’s true that my father converted to Protestantism in the 1930s, that was for self-preservation reasons.
So, as I am in fact half-Jewish, maybe I could live in Israel for just six months of each year. That’s not asking too much, is it? Next year in Jerusalem! Please?

Monica Porter is a journalist and author whose book Deadly Carousel tells her mother’s wartime story.