Should I Stay or Should I Go?

A recurring theme of my conversations here over the past three years has been the options for living somewhere more normal.

When I met my girls’ mother in the summer of 2015, my head—if not my heart—was already in Berlin. And when, very quickly (how could she resist?), we decided to have kids together, the option of my living abroad and coming back to visit them (every month and a half or so) was enshrined in our co-parenting agreement.

While still sufficiently emotionally retarded to be able to make the move, a combination of Jewish guilt but also of doing the right thing by my girls has kicked in, making the one-time fantasy of flat whites on Kastanienalle with svelte Mädchen a permanent one. (I am also now 58, which brings a reality check all of its own.)

Life in Israel has become significantly more difficult since that horrible Simchat Torah morning in October 2023. Though, as I hugged old Stuey in the stairwell of my building in Rechavia as the sirens blared, I had no idea of the hardships ahead of us.

While I will always be a Zionist, I guess I am not the best of them, because—at the worst times over the past three years—I have tried talking to the girls’ mum about taking them elsewhere. But where?

The UK is no longer an option. Nor, of course, is Ireland. (The girls and I, ‘thanks’ to my late Dublin-born father, are “passport Paddies”. I am no longer a “plastic” one, because that implies a level of pride which has been tested to the absolute limit and now, I think, failed.)

Greece was also in the running. Athens has become my new Berlin. But I would rather stick pins in my eyes than attempt to become a Hellenised Hebrew. Following an incident last week, I made the decision to abandon all of my ‘Greek’ Israeli WhatsApp groups. I had highlighted a horribly antisemitic thread in a Greek-interest Facebook group, merely encouraging my fellow WhatsApp group members to respond (as I had). Not only did I not receive a single ‘Like’ or message of support, but I was told to go back to Israel if I didn’t like it!

One particular member I had considered a friend, the father of whom made Aliyah after the Second World War because of Greek antipathy toward its Jews, felt fit to reply (and in a group that I had set up!) as follows: “Mike, you are so worried about Greek antisemitism, maybe you should sell the apartment [in Athens] and invest in the hills of Samaria.” The ultimate chutzpah: a Sabra telling an Anglo-Irish Israeli to get out of Europe! And all because I chose to speak out against Jew-hate.

The Israelis I have come across in Athens are a mixed bunch. There are the retired (and tired), most of whom seem to come and go, and who just want an easier life for some months in the year. Then there are the younger and middle-aged ones, whose hedonism has won out over their Zionism. And there is also the smaller, but still significant, number of Left-leaning, secular anti-Zionists.

At a recent gathering of my aforementioned (now former) group—international/expat meetups became less comfortable for Israelis after October 7—I posed the somewhat mischievous question “Who here has Greek friends?” There was a stony silence of several seconds before one hand went up, classroom-like, “I’ve got two!”

“If I go, there will be trouble,” sang The Clash. “And if I stay, it will be double.” I would reverse that (while admitting that, at the present time, it could go either way).

Of course there is justification for disillusionment with the social and political situation in Israel, but jumping ship at this very low point is, to my mind, not the answer. And many of the folk—especially those with young and school-age children—who left are coming back, having felt no more comfortable, and often a lot less, elsewhere. I actually feel more tied to Israel since October 7 than I did before.

Indeed, however hypocritical and outrageous—these things are not always rational—in view of my own vacillations and moments of self-doubt, I don’t like people leaving the country for good. While my intention, therefore, is not to lecture, this is also about perspective. Knowing our history, it is hard to think of Jews who lived through a more comfortable period than those of us who were born post-1945. But we have become entitled. No one promised us that life would continue in that vein.

Things are not going to get better for Jews abroad. Not for a while, at least. And I, for one, would rather be living through this challenging period in a sovereign Jewish state—that can (though only most of the time, I must sadly qualify) defend its citizens and pursue those who choose to harm them—than amongst those who pathologically despise us.