Car Bomb
Channel 4 Sunday, July 27
Car bombing has become synonymous with the Middle East in recent years, so few people would be surprised to realise that this most destructive and indiscriminate form of terror became established in this part of the world.
However, less well known is the fact that this was originally a Jewish weapon used against the Arabs.
The method of killing and destruction was actually pioneered in 1920 in New York, and in a cart rather than a car. An Italian anarchist called Mario Buda packed a horse-drawn wagon with explosives and killed dozens of innocent bystanders on Wall Street in a protest against capitalism.
However, the first bomb to be transported to a target in a motorised vehicle was created by two fighters of the Lehi movement in pre-state Palestine.
These pioneers of a uniquely horrible form of warfare are still alive and were interviewed by the presenter, former CIA agent Bob Baer. Yaakov Heruti and Eliezer Ben-Ami explained how they chose their target, the Soraya building in Jaffa, used as the headquarters of the armed Arab resistance. They parked their truck bomb outside the building and set it off, killing 28 people including innocent bystanders, and injuring hundreds more.
The two 83-years-old were unrepentant about the operation but regretted the non-combatant casualties. Said Heruti: "We never wanted to kill innocent civilians and children, it happened by bad luck." Perhaps, but it must have crossed their minds that by exploding a truck packed with explosives in a crowded street without any warning, civilians and children were likely to be blown away along with enemy fighters.
This was not a film that set out to make any moral points - indeed most of those interviewed showed little remorse for their actions - but it did demonstrate that in every single case, the reverberations of the explosions had a negative impact on those who planted the bomb as much as on those who were attacked.
After the Lehi bomb, an Arab called Fawzi El Kuttub set about wreaking vengeance on the Jews. Trained by the Nazis in bomb-making, he aped the Jewish fighters by setting off car bombs which killed Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, and came close to assassinating future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. When the smoke eventually cleared, eight car bombs had been set off - four Arab, four Jewish - claiming 120 lives. Ironically it took the outbreak of the 1948 War of Independence to stop the slaughter.
Crossing Continents: Israeli Football
Radio 4, Wednesday, July 30
A rich Russian buys a football club with an undistinguished history and a reputation for hooliganism and propels it to trophies and success. Sound familiar? Well this is not Abramovich's Chelsea but Arkady Gaydamak's Beitar Jerusalem, whose group of ultras, named La Familia, stands comparison with any of the British hooligans of the ‘70s and the ‘80s.
While the British fans had to manufacture their own arbitrary tribalism, that of the Beitar fans is inbuilt. They are predominantly right-wing working-class Sephardis who dislike the affluent Labour-supporting fans of the Hapoel movement, and loathe the Arabs of Bnei Sakhnin and Nazareth.
Beitar fans have more than once been in trouble for violence and racist chanting. Presenter David Goldblatt travelled with them to an away fixture at Nazareth, where the local club welcomed them with a dish of Baklava which was thoughtfully thrown back in their faces by the Beitar thugs. At half-time there was a sight you do not often see at Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge - the hardcore hooligans gathering at the back of the stand to daven.
It was, said La Familia leader Guy Israeli, partly a provocation to the Nazareth fans.
Israeli also confided that his wife of five years had demanded that he choose between his beloved Beitar and her. It was no contest - he chose the football club and divorced his wife.
I reckon she had a lucky escape.