September 1973 and I travel from Sheffield to Manchester by train to start a new job. It’s a journey I know well but my notoriously poor sense of space and direction kicks in and I get off the bus from Piccadilly Station at the wrong end of Prestwich.

A fatherly chap sees small, ungainly me struggling with an outsize travel bag, stops his car and offers me a lift. I accept and 10 minutes later after a chat in which I learn his own daughter is a Blue Bell dancer I’m dropped  outside the front door of my first digs.

Several years and not much to yack about later, I’m still in North Manchester and walking down Bury New Road very late evening after a reporting job. A seedy character slows his car and offers me a lift. I keep my head down and trot home -  by now a  Salford bedsit  – as fast as my pudgy pins can carry me.

Yeah, I’m still here - and so is  journalist, Lynne Barber who 12 years before me was picked up by an attractive guy twice her age while waiting for a bus in the pouring rain. But her story is glamorous enough to have made into a glorious film.

An Education – with a screen adaptation by Nick Hornby - is a semi-fictionalised account of her memoir so before I do the forensics, I’ll give you the official synopsis:

“It’s 1961 and attractive, bright 16-year-old schoolgirl, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is poised on the brink of womanhood. Stifled by the tedium of adolescent routine, Jenny can’t wait for adult life to begin. One rainy day, her suburban life is upended by the arrival of an unsuitable suitor, 30- ish David (Peter Sarsgaard). Urbane and witty, David introduces Jenny to a glittering new world of classical concerts and late-night suppers. Just as the family’s long-held dream of getting their brilliant daughter into Oxford seems within reach, Jenny is tempted by another kind of life. Will David be the making of Jenny or her undoing?”

Neither my own  tale nor the  blurb  even begin to scratch the surface of the film or the real-life story behind it, whose narrative is set just before the 60s really begin to swing. Not only is the unsuitable man   shifty Jewish wide-boy, David Goldman, but wildly-precocious Jenny’s parents encourage her to marry him as they see it as a cheaper, easier alternative to earning a degree at Oxford.

In a far briefer time than the more recent technological revolution changed life forever, people a few years my senior experienced free-love, dope, feminism, the legalisation of homosexuality, the near-abolition of capital punishment and a massive lurch towards left-wing liberalism.

Even the Catholic Church got in on the act and while Jenny’s headmistress (a stunning cameo performance by Emma Thompson) mouths the traditional cant about  Jews as Christ killers, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) dropped centuries of Holocaust-generating antisemitism and made Jew-hatred  a sin.

I was fascinated to watch this scene on a second level knowing that in reality Thompson often babbles the ‘new antisemitism’ against modern Israel.

Certainly age-old antipathies don’t disappear over-night and my guesses are several:

• Jenny’s (Barber’s) headmistress would have had her prejudices reinforced when it was learned that ‘David’ (really Simon Goldman) was not only as shady as hell but an associate of the Jewish racketeering slum landlord, Peter Rachman. I’d love to know, incidentally, if Barber and novelist,  Linda Grant have discussed the latter’s novel, The Clothes On Their Backs, which features Rachman as ‘Sándor Kovacs’. Grant has said: “(I have been forced) to think of the moral dilemma posed by the sheer existence of people like Peter Rachman … His flashiness and lust for life. The ethical problem he poses - a man who is a Holocaust survivor and goes on to become a slum landlord - is the central one of our age …”

• Goldman’s long-suffering wife stayed with him through innumerable affairs with much younger women, not  only for the sake of their children but because in the early 1960s a divorce would have been far more difficult and twice as humiliating as the adultery. This situation would have been magnified a hundredfold in the tight-knit Jewish community during an age when one was “a Jew at home and a non-Jew in the street”.

• A third – extremely shaky - hunch is that Barber’s eventual husband, David Cardiff, described in a newspaper interview as “an olive-skinned, dark-haired artist” was of  Jewish stock. Her in-laws, Maurice Cardiff and  former RSC actress Leonora nee Freeman had to elope to Gretna Green to marry as Maurice’s  parents had disapproved of the match.

If I’m correct, then the  self-willed Barber is as fair-minded as she is brainy. But her early life-lesson taught her to   trust no-one – least of all her parents - for whom she continues to harbour a  spirited, robust contempt.  I’m unsure whether I’d express such  feelings publicly knowing that they are still alive and that such behaviour could injure associated, innocent parties.

While I must suppose that being an only child creates an obstinately self-centred attitude, I suggest that her very status forced her parents to concentrate  their often misplaced attention on her from the outset. I must also muse that like many driven, excessively gifted people she’s also highly sexed and  was born on the cusp of an era which allowed her to fulfil both that urge and a quite aggressive independence to the limit.

But her story is set in London. The north-west provinces – including Liverpool and Manchester – were far behind. I’ve been assured that in the early 60s local kids drank nothing stronger than coffee, even at hip city-centre dance clubs.

A few years down the line a trendy late-night supper club like the“Garden of Eden” in Manchester’s Whitworth Street didn’t last long and a  young Irish comic named Dave Allen who performed there complete with fag-end and whisky glass wished he hadn’t bothered to make the trip.

But all that was before 1973, the Yom Kippur War and more than 30 years of intermittent and increasingly serious anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activity on student campuses. All of this seems to have turned the latest generation of Jewish kids to drink. But let me leave you wanting more…

This piece first appeared on Blogcritics:  http://blogcritics.org/video/article/lynn-barbers-an-education-out-of/

<a href=’http://blogcritics.org/video/article/lynn-barbers-an-education-out-of/’>Lynn Barber’s <i>An Education</i>: Out Of Eden In London and Manchester</a>

Technorati Tags: Lynn Barber,An Education,Nick Hornby,Peter Rachman,Sheffield,Manchester,Oxford University,Swinging 60s,Dave Allen,Three Coins,Garden of Eden,Yom Kippur War,‘Booze for Jews’

msniw

No matter, while Gore captured the hearts and imagination of the thinking world with his documentary about climate change, Dershowitz has done much the same for Israel’s supporters with his own ‘inconvenient truth’ -  The Case for Israel. Those who made the documentary with him explain:

“ We made this film as a proactive defence of Israel. While Israel repeatedly demonstrates its commitment to peace, anti-Israel activity continues to rise in the media, on campuses, in the churches and in the international community. Israel’s detractors-some with international prominence-blame Israel for the conflict. They deny the fact that Israel has made painful concessions in working toward a two-state solution, which include the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza initiated by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and that Israel has expressed readiness to take additional painful measures.

“They ignore the rise in Gaza of Hamas, which rejects peaceful coexistence. They turn a blind eye to the grave challenges inherent in the Palestinian Authority’s unstable governance of the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas. They rarely acknowledge the ongoing terrorist attacks against Israeli children and other civilians, and they equate that terrorism with Israel’s attempts to protect its citizens. For Israel’s detractors, there is only one focus for fault: Israel.

“Clearly, as Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz states in his seminal work The Case for Israel, “the time has come for a proactive defence of Israel to be offered in the court of public opinion.”

“We produced this documentary to present a vigorous case for Israel-for its basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile enemies-in a highly accessible multimedia format. Alan Dershowitz has achieved international distinction as one of Israel’s most prominent and articulate advocates. He plays a central role in this documentary as adviser and on-camera presence and argues forcefully that real peace in the Middle East can only occur when the Palestinians, Arabs and their allies value the creation of a Palestinian homeland more than they oppose the presence of a Jewish state. Through incisive conversations with key judicial, political and academic leaders, Dershowitz refutes deeply entrenched misperceptions about Israel’s history, Jewish claims to a homeland, individual rights under Israel’s democratic system of government, the security fence, and military conduct in the face of terrorist attacks.

“He closes with a formidable warning that the greatest threat to Israel is also the greatest threat to international peace and security: Iran’s aggressive nuclear ambitions, driven by a zealous anti-Zionist, anti-democratic mission that is championed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Unchecked, a nuclear-armed Iran or its terrorist surrogate would imperil targets far beyond Tel Aviv.

“This project is truly a team effort. We are indebted to Alan Dershowitz for his intellectual vitality and vigorous engagement with the wide-range of leaders who support Israel’s fundamental democratic values. We also want to extend great appreciation to the Adelson Family Foundation for its vision and willingness to step up to the plate at the earliest stages of this project. CAMERA has served as a tremendous partner in so many ways, including financial support, logistical arrangements, and serving as a constant and constructive sounding board at all phases.

“Making this film was the beginning step. We invite you to join us in going forward to make the case for Israel in the court of public opinion.

Gloria Z. Greenfield & Michael Yohay

Doc Emet Productions”

msniw

“But soon a wonder came to light,

That showed the rogues they lied:

The man recovered of the bite,

The dog it was that died.”

Oliver Goldsmith, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog

If I use a phrase like ‘fraternal lodge’ or ‘freemasonry’,  many readers will react badly.

They will  think immediately of  weird rites; exclusive, male orientated social networking – and absolute secrecy.

It is this very concealment which gives quite ordinary organisations and their members a raffish glamour  and leads to rumours of criminality.

Sometimes the accusations ring true, so the world is still fascinated by the death of the Italian banker, Roberto Calvi, found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge, London in 1982.

 Calvi, known as “God’s banker” due to his Vatican links, had also been a member of a clandestine Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2). He was almost certainly murdered by the Mafia but those charged were acquitted after a long court case in June 2007 due to insufficient evidence.

 Now a quirky and occasionally funny look at fraternal lodges and their potentially nefarious activities comes in The Lodge – A Tale of Corruption, the latest novel from thriller writer, David H Brandin.

California-based Brandin who hails from Chicago has belonged to US fraternal orders of the type he illustrates but insists:

“I’ve never witnessed the greed, avarice, and corruption which serve as the backbone of this novel. Most of the volunteers I’ve worked with were straightforward and honest. The events in this book did not happen. Still, volunteers are human and make mistakes. Could these events happen in an order? Perhaps they could …”

That aside, Brandin uses an extensive knowledge of San Francisco and Chicago along with his   love of  deep sea diving to give us the sort of zip-along, page-turning murder mystery which  helps to make a long flight less arduous. He tells me - honour bright - that he had to research the details about the US Mafia and its association with a wide-boy builder – and I believe him where thousands may demur!

Meanwhile he intends to continue in the tradition pioneered by Red Tent author, Anita Diamant, and promote his book directly to audiences where it’s bound to be sure-fire success.  I consider The Lodge to be  an excellent – and far better written - follow-up to his first full-length thriller, The Horns of Moses, which I’m more than half-convinced helped to inspire Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Inglourious Basterds.

No matter, Brandin’s publisher, iUniverse have granted The Lodge its Rising Star Award and has made it an Editor’s Choice.

 The Lodge is available on-line and in bookstores @ $17.95  (ISBN: 978-1-4401-7210-6 - paperback); $27.95 (ISBN: 978-1-4401-7208-3 - cloth) or as an e-book @ $6.00 (ISBN: 978-1-4401-7209-0).

msniw

It’s about 18 months since I last visited The  Octagon Theatre, Bolton. It was to see a fairly pedestrian production of   Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Now I find that Miller’s equally brilliant All My Sons has been hijacked by local Israel haters as part of a so-called ‘investigation’.

Miller, a proud if religiously non-observant Jew, was among the great English-language playwrights of the 20th century. As usual, Jews who seem  scared of being disliked by playground bullies,  today topped the bill of a Lancashire farce at the Octagon directed by the Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The theatre hosted  a performance of  Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill, labelled antisemitic by critics  and the simultaneous performance of Seven Other Children, the Jewish response to Churchill’s ‘opus’.

Even as I write (Sabbath or not!) Jonathan Hoffman,   Zionist Federation vice chairman  and Richard Gold of Engage were due to be on hand in an attempt to counter the remarks of  five pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel speakers during a four-hour debate.

Like the attempted supermarket boycott I highlighted last week, it is typical of Israel’s foes that  Saturday  was chosen for this event as  many Orthodox Jews neither could nor would go on a Sabbath afternoon. It was hoped that Christian Friends of Israel would be there to state Israel’s case.

The pro-Palestinians included South African-born Richard Kuper, Chairman and Publications Officer of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Linda Clair, Chairman of the Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  She visited the Palestinian Authority with the “Zyara” group during the summer, with stops at Ramallah and Bethlehem and had been joined by two of her grandchildren, one of whom is a drama  student and hopes to do theatre work with Palestinian children.

Ms Clair is described as being of ‘Jewish origin’. But her connection to Judaism and the Manchester Jewish community is far stronger than the phrase implies. Her mother was recently buried under the auspices of the Sha’arei Shalom North Manchester Reform Synagogue and I helped with some of the funeral arrangements and with those for the headstone unveiling planned for early 2010. Further, I understand that her husband is the brother of another member of the synagogue.

Indeed, I’ve been advised that the couple work for the immigration service, which I consider not only to be a very noble career but in direct line from the biblical prophetic tradition. In my view there are a million ways to be ‘frum’ (pious) and this is one of them. All the more pity then, that Ms Clair and family cannot give as much to their Jewish brethren in Israel as to their Palestinian counterparts. If only they realised, there are as many vastly impoverished, undervalued and underfed Jewish kids in Israel as there are Muslim children in Gaza. But she and too much of the rest of the world would rather invent their own truths than face the real facts.

If I didn’t consider it a total waste of time, I’d challenge Miss Clair, Mr Kuper et al to front another, equally worthy group. I’d name it “Jews for Justice for Fellow Jews”.

Before closing, I must explain that this unpleasant episode reminds me very much of something which happened to me as we left the theatre after that performance of The Crucible. I couldn’t concentrate on discussing the pros and cons as I was conscious of being ‘centre stage’ for  two nearby young Muslim women who giggled and pointed at me for more than five minutes. I ignored them  to avoid a confrontation but even now, I’m unsure of their intentions and why they tried to provoke me.

Details of the video above:

“(Manchester, England. 7th June 2008. Palestine Lives 2008 is a celebration of Palestinian art, culture, history and experience organised by Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It brings together artists, poets and musicians from Palestine and England to celebrate Palestine and its culture 60 year after the Palestinian Nakba, Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
There are stalls informing people of issues facing people in the Middle East, as well as peace organisations campaigning not just for peace in the region but against nuclear weapons and all war. Speakers bring messages of solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for peace and justice. This event comes at a time when the situation in Gaza is at crisis point with people, especially children, starving and dying due to lack of food, water and medicines, but first and foremost the actions of the Israeli occupation forces)”.

msniw

But that’s enough irony. The BBC may have been correct to invite him on the show, but in turn Griffin was entitled to complain how he was then treated. If the BBC had not given him air time, the corporation would have begun its own march towards totalitarianism. But the show was more like a “show trial” and  audience members were allowed to behave like a Greek chorus.

The entire debate was focussed on Griffin and the BNP rather than a full range of topical issues as is the  normal format. Further, I  take issue with The Times’s columnist, Minette Marrin, and must argue that David Dimbleby was an exceedingly poor chairman as he acted as a highly partial moderator. If it had been another, less senior presenter, I am sure he would have been severely reprimanded for his conduct.

Griffin and I could not be further apart in lifestyle and values but I have almost started to understand this unhappy, unlovely mini-thug. His views are not  only the politics of envy but  those of a man born out of his time. They are simply deeply unfashionable.

Less than 50 years ago, the average ‘decent-minded’ person in Britain would cheerfully espouse a distaste for homosexuality; refer contemptuously to blacks and Jews while the Holocaust was a subject rarely mentioned, even in Jewish circles.

Unfortunately, it is now considered deeply offensive to remind people what I was taught as a young (Jewish) child in the 50s:

The U.K., as Griffin remarked,  is ‘a fundamentally British and Christian country’. The Jewish view has always been that wherever we settle “the law of the land is the law”. To state otherwise is nothing short of sedition and those mouthing it should be chucked in a nice deep dungeon – perhaps with a mythical ‘griffin’ for company! 

msniw

A message to the people of Gaza in Arabic (with English subtitles) from Israel Defence Forces spokesman Capt. Avichai Adraee, 7 Jan. 2009. The video must be viewed in full-size to view subtitles.

msniw

Now, that’s chutzpa! As the  Jewish and Zionist lawyer has also accused Israel of heinous war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, I can but compare him to the story of the man who murdered his parents and then begged mercy from the court on grounds that he was an orphan.

Goldstone, who agreed to lead the fact-finding mission only if he could also investigate Hamas  said he was “saddened” by the resolution.

“There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report,” he complained.

Contrast the UN Watch Statement, delivered by Colonel  Kemp on Friday last week at the UN Human Rights Council Special Session on the Goldstone Report.

For the second time since the war last winter, Colonel Kemp has gone to extraordinary lengths to praise and defend the role of the Israeli military in Gaza. Why a gentleman like him should do so, is beyond me. I’d truly love to meet him to discover why.

Meanwhile, I’m making do with  publishing his statement  and via the video (below). Unsurprisingly, it’s been ranked among YouTube’s ‘Top 100 News & Politics Videos’. Enjoy!

“Thank you, Mr. President.
I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Governments Joint Intelligence Committee.

“Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

“Hamas, like Hezbollah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

“The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

“The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.
Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes.

“There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.
More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’s way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.
Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

“And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Thank you, Mr. President”.

The store includes a good range of vegetarian products and three reasonably useful kosher sections (dry goods, frozen and chilled). I don’t buy from those often as I make a lot of home-made basics and often use goods carrying a Vegetarian Society label of approval rather than one bearing a rabbinical seal, no matter its provenance.

Never mind! I do not want to learn that either the company or its Whitefield branch has succumbed to the latest Palestinian Solidarity Campaign boycott campaign against itself and Waitrose  earmarked for the week starting Saturday November 07.

The excellent Stuart Palmer of ICAN (the Israel Citizens Action Network) writes:

“As usual the PSC picks a weekend for these actions knowing that the religious community is not likely to be around. Thus I call upon all our Christian Friends of Israel to help.

“Wednesday November 11 is planned to be a phone- in day so all can help to counter this.

Inaction results in being “walked over”; let this not happen”.

This coincides with a week of action called by the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign http://www.stopthewall.org. I don’t think it’s appropriate to repeat the PSC’s fantastically Goebellian lies here.

However, From Saturday November 7 to Sunday November 15, the PSC and other organisations across the UK intend to target Waitrose and Morrisons supermarkets “in particular, as both refuse to discuss the question of settlement goods” and aim “to inundate them with calls to their HQs on Wednesday  November 11.   Note these numbers:
Morrisons Customer Services – 0845 611 6111
Waitrose Customer Services - 0800 188 884”.

Thank you, Messrs PSC, I certainly will, but only to tell them to keep up the marvellous work of not being intimidated by the likes of you.

• My one disappointment at Morrisons,  last night was  that at the check-out Brian and I were served by a friendly young man we’d never previously met. No offence to him, but I do so like the sweet young lady who invariably serves us on a Sunday morning. She is a strict Muslim but that does not stop her treating us with the greatest and warmest courtesy – kosher, Israeli products ‘n’all!

Technorati Tags: Morrisons,Waitrose,Palestine Solidarity Committee,supermarket,boycott,kosher,Israeli,vegetarian,Stuart Palmer,ICAN

msniw

The young Israeli soldier has spent the past three years in a horrible Gazan jail and is about to mark his 23rd birthday there. Let’s work to ensure next year he celebrates in freedom.

msniw

 The acceptable face of Fascism?

In a few weeks time, football hooligans, far right extremists, Jew-haters and Islamophobes will descend on Luton with one simple goal - to whip up fear, religious tension and violence.  And you won’t be surprised to hear that the BNP are involved.

I’ve sent a message to the people who can stop this violent gathering - the Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Bedfordshire’s Chief Constable Gillian Parker calling on them to stop the protest.  It will take you less than a minute to send a message - all you need to do is click here:

http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/luton

Readers accustomed to my writing style will appreciate that I did not compose the above message and have simply  edited it slightly so I may help publicise the cause. It doesn’t matter. I share the sentiments of “Hope Not Hate” in every possible way so long as those involved do not themselves become violent.

msniw