I’m back from holiday. I’m home. I can tell because I slept in my own bed last night and woke up this morning in Antarctica. It’s so cold, I don’t know how anyone can live here. And Mel went swimming at 7 this morning, outside(!!!! But heated, obvs, she’s keen, she’s not fucking stupid) when it was -2 degrees and dark. I passed. Funny enough. Preferring to do my swimming in Tenerife. Even more preferably with Lila and Joey, then I don’t have to do ‘lengths’ but just ‘play’. I’m as dedicated a swimmer as I am a Padel… person? Player? Whatever. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip. We went nowhere, saw nothing, ignored the volcanos, the lagoons, the ‘special beaches’, just a 5 hour coach ride including 14 stops to see ‘local’ (read: Taiwanese) produce and have the ‘opportunity’ to buy it!!! We stayed on the lovely resort, leaving only for walks along the really gorgeous promenade and to go to restaurants. Anywhere you couldn’t get to in 30 minutes on foot didn’t get seen. We weren’t there on a mission of discovery. We weren’t evangelical missionaries intent on converting the indigenous, we just went to lie in the sun and learn to play padel. The first of which was completed successfully.

You go on this type of ‘do nothing’ (NOTHING? Have you met Lila and Joey??) holiday to cut yourself off from reality. And from bad weather for a bit. Yet the world creeps in. I can actually read a newspaper on my ipad! Not, like, in ‘paper’, but it’s there. I don’t like it but it’ll have to do for 10 days. And I learned some interesting facts. One in particular which I’d like to share because you’d never see something like this on the BBC.

There are constant cries of ‘ethnic cleansing’ coming from Middle East protagonists and anti-Israel commentators. And yet the reality speaks differently.

In 1948, the year Israel was born, there were large Jewish populations all over the Middle East. Because they’d always been there. In Lebanon, Syria, hundreds of thousands in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, even… Iran!!! Today none of those countries can count more than about 50 Jews in their populations. The rest, whose families would have been there for literally thousands of years, all left or were expelled or killed. Whereas in Israel, in 1948, the Arab population was about 150,000 and today counts 2.2 million. All of whom are full Israeli citizens.

So who’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ now then?

Happy Friday

A xxxx