Truth, Lies, and everything in between.

After the shock

After the horror

After the disbelief, then realisation

of the events,

My aspiration has been to communicate.

To rise above the misinformation.

It has been impossible.

Reality isn’t what it used to be,

They say,

Truth, lies and videotape.

Look left and good is bad,

Right and bad is good,

Not politically,

Literally,

Physically,

One side calls for death, the other life.

In 1967, following the Six Day War, when Israel successfully defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and, the paratroopers stood by the Western Wall, with moustachioed tears, the Israeli army also occupied the site of the Dome of the Rock.

Following discussions between the government and the army, it was decided to provide the religious Jordanian authorities control over the Dome of the Rock (which continues today, despite all the intervening palaver).

This place, Qubbat al-Sakhra is holy to Muslims. It is believed to be where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

It is also holy to the Jews. We call it the Temple Mount. It is where our temple stood before the Romans knocked it down in the year 70 AD/CE.

This calculation, made by Moshe Dayan, led to suspicion.

The confusion arose as his act was both of and ahead of its time.

It was visionary, prophetic, it said, ‘You, Muslims can access and control your holy site, we, Jews will have ours, the Western Wall.’

The two places abut.

And the consequence?

Disbelief.

‘If this place is so holy to you (Jews), why are you giving it to us (Muslims)? Everything you say is a lie.’ The corollary being, was the situation reversed and had Jordan held on to Jerusalem following the war, their forces would not have benevolently allowed Jews access to their holy place, they would have said, ‘This is ours, keep out.’ (Temple Mount and Western Wall).

Dayan’s benevolence led to disbelief.

Their act demonstrates that the Jews’ allegiance to the Holy Land is fictitious. A dream, fantasy.

Just as people deny the events of the Holocaust.

Either because they are cynical, cruel or because of the catastrophe’s unimaginable enormity.

….Lambs to the slaughter, they laugh… pull the other one.

Genocide, stranger than fiction.

Just as stories were created in the Middle Ages, of Jews kidnapping Christian babies to use their blood to make Matzah (NOT part of the recipe).

The blood libels have translated into the very recent, ‘Israelis bombed the hospital,’ or, ‘October 7^th was a false flag, never happened, made by Spielberg to provide the Israelis an opportunity to kill Palestinians.’

Incredible how reality can be twisted.

I guarantee that 99.9% of those marching through Central London this morning, waving Palestine flags and railing against Israel will never have stepped in either country, will never have laid their hands on the Western Wall or Al Aqsa.

I’ve done both – yes, they are real.

There is a song about Jerusalem, ‘There are stones with the hearts of men and men with hearts of stone,’ and, so it goes.

My reality and yours.

‘Yes, you have touched the stone, it wasn’t real. A fata morgana; get back to where you came from!’

‘I did, I have, this is my place of origin!’ (Shouts the Palestinian and the Israeli.) – Only one reality can exist.

Co-existence is non-existence (well, yes, that was true for the Be’eri residents.)

And yet, the world it seems, is against Israel.

‘What do we care? We don’t need to be liked.’

In Arthur Miller’s play, ‘Death of a Salesman,’ Willy Loman just ‘wants to be well liked.’

Funny.

Putin doesn’t appear to care.

Does Nasrallah lose sleep because a few Jews don’t like him?

At least the Russian Oligarchs have friends (other Oligarchs, the other very, very rich of the world and the leaders of Iran, Syria, and North Korea.) – a gaggle of angels.

The protesters share more in common with Kim Jong Un than Kfir (lion cub). The tiny ginger headed baby; kidnapped.

Truth and lies.

I have tried to describe my truth, taken from listening to podcasts and Israeli radio the internet and TV, I have read and reflected.

One can never be sure of anything.

Perhaps life is all an illusion?

We don’t have time for philosophy, not when someone is hammering your door, Kalashnikov locked and loaded.

Is there a point to my words?

Am I writing as a personal balm, a self-salve or am I able to influence?

You see, to me it is logical, it is black and white:

Hamas is bad. They want to kill all Israelis, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, once they have killed the Israelis (there are only 10 million), they will move-on to me and my family, then the gay or transgender person across the road, then the 20-year-old with learning disability and the old man in the wheelchair, ‘Christian – die,’ ‘Atheist – die.’

This is Fundamental Islam at its best.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

Have you seen the sketch with the students of Columbia Antisemity?

They play the part of the innocent who welcomes Dracula, such is their experience, their naivete. ‘Come, sit, here is my neck.’

‘Don’t do it!’ We scream at the TV. And yet, Dracula keeps coming, his army of the dead expanding their numbers, their position, their influence.

I suspect the only way through this is comedy.

Unfortunately, I’m not very funny and my medium is serious-talk.

I tuned-in to Have I Got News for You last night. I knew it would be delicate. I switched off after five minutes. You have to be in the right mood for that kind of thing. Tiptoeing through a mindfield – literal and figurative or saying the wrong thing makes for too-tense viewing. Mis-step and you are Fatwa’d; life changes. If you are lucky, you will just be stabbed in the eye.

‘Believe me!’

Whenever you hear this, you know to question what is said, what you hear.

‘OK, don’t believe me.’

The right or the wrong side of history.

What can you do?

Should Israel not have responded to the massacre?

Should the bombs not have fallen?

Should the army have sat on their hands and waited for something else?

What about the hostages? 36 days today.

I can’t imagine.

What about their work, their plans, their suddenly in the middle of life events?

The clock stopped.

Moments grind to a halt and we are on a treadmill.

Running to stand still.

Running to go nowhere.

Last night I dreamed a young Israeli had been rescued. Somehow escaped from Gaza.

The dream was him, become a visionary, telling the families of the kidnapped people the fate of their loved ones.

Initially it appeared possible that he has spoken to Oded or Avda or Yocheved.

Later you realise he is lying.

He is cracked and making it up, ‘David, he wants to be a pilot, he is fine. Dafna, curly hair, she says hello, she is still planning to travel to France,’ and so on.

Lies, lies and untruths.

Reality is not what it used to be, perhaps it never was.

Close your eyes and think of better times.

Perhaps return to the Garden of Eden, before the apple, to the time of innocence.

Innocence without experience.

Babes in arms.

Oh, they have been kidnapped too.