Day 12 (part 2)

Efrat’s about 20 minutes from Jerusalem, no further than Brighton is from Lewes. In the real world where politics collides with culture and history, it’s a lot further than that.

But first… I’ve got a podcast to do. Antony works for The Israel Project, an organisation dedicated to putting out good news stories about Israel, putting the other side of the story to the one you usually hear. Their main focus is on the American market, but things that are happening in Israel and things that are affecting Israel anywhere in the world are under the gaze – and right now they are, like everyone else, intrigued/interested/concerned about the rise in antisemitism in the UK and the whole Jeremy Corbyn business.

Anyway, for good or for ill, I’ve been quite vocal on social media about my feelings and fears about Corbyn and Labour and when I told him I was coming over to visit, Antony asked if I fancied doing a podcast for TIP and… yeah, why not? As long as it’s clear I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone, that I’m just a concerned Jew of the Left, why not?

“Sure. Love to”.

It’s not like it’s a subject I haven’t thought about and it’s not like the arguments aren’t ones I’ve had a thousand times, so I was kinda relaxed about the whole thing. I still haven’t listened to it back, but here it is anyway.

https://soundcloud.com/user-579725143/tipping-point-jed-novick

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Like the old saying has it, you can’t make new old friends.

Seeing Antony was very lovely. There’s something interesting about the bonds you put down at an early age. They set deep and they stay there and it doesn’t matter how long it is since you last saw each other, there’s something that binds you. It was there as soon as I saw Lovely Ruth and it was there as soon as I saw Antony. It helped that he hadn’t changed an inch.

Driving out of Jerusalem to Efrat – past the checkpoints, past the walls, past the fences, past the wires – takes about 20 minutes but it’s a lot further than that. You’re not only driving past fences, you’re driving past history and past agreements.

As we approached we went round a roundabout.

“You don’t go down that one” said Antony as we went past one of the exits. That way’s the Badlands”. He took another exit.

Turn left to Efrat, right to the supermarket and straight on to... well, let's not go straight on

“This road is where three teenage Israelis were kidnapped and killed. You remember that story?”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/bodies-missing-israeli-teenagers-found-west-bank

“Stop trying to make me feel relaxed” I said, thinking it was bad form to smoke and drink in someone else’s car.

Efrat is a long way from that cartoon idea of a settlement. Think maybe a small English new town, a smaller Milton Keynes with streets, school, a shopping mall… a proper town with families living lives.

Sitting outside the house – a normal house with normal house stuff – having a glass and a smoke, a helicopter choppered overhead.

I remember when I was living in Tokyo and started working in a high-rise newspaper office. One day the building started shaking. An earthquake. Mild, but still an earthquake. I dived under the desk, but everyone else carried on working as if nothing had happened. A few weeks later and I was sitting next to someone who’d just started working. The building started to shake. He dived under the desk, while I just carried on working as normal.

This was me, Antony and his wife when the helicopter flew over. I was like “Fuck, we’re on a settlement and there’s a helicopter flying overhead”.

Antony’s wife smiled. “It’s when they come over in twos or threes that you start to worry”.

We had a few glasses through the night, but there was never more than one helicopter at a time. And if they weren’t worried… fine by me.

While I was there, we had a drive around Efrat and, in truth, it looks a nice place to live. Take away the fences, the wires, the checkpoint on the way in, the helicopters and the paranoia of your namby-pamby guests, and it's a nice place to live. It's easy to see why people go there. A two-bedroom flat in Jerusalem - and not in the Hampstead or Kensington bit of Jerusalem - costs about $900,000. And you can't park. And you spend your life in traffic - all that usual city stuff.

But it's still on the darkside and sometimes to feel the paranoia isn't so paranoid.

On Friday morning we went to the mall - just off the roundabout where one road goes to the badlands and one road is where the three lads were murdered - and it's just like a shopping mall anywhere. Car park, shops, soft kids play area, supermarket. Most of the faces are white, most of the accents American, but there are also local arabs - Palestinians - who come to do their shopping. Everybody rubs along.

We had a coffee in the cafe, did the shop, took the trolley to the car park, unloaded... the usual. But on Sunday morning, in that very car park, a local bloke - Ari Fuld, 45 - who was doing exactly that was stabbed - murdered - by a 17-year-old Palestinian. In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-critically-wounded-in-stabbing-at-west-bank-junction/

In the car park me and Antony unloaded our trolley.

The car park where Ari Fuld was murdered