Ok, I went to Israel, I loved it, I always do, its fab, its sunny, the beaches, the restaurants, the sea, blah, blah, blah… wonderful! Fabulous! Divine! Perfect!!!

But its not.

Its the most contentious country in the world, and the most divisive and it has been virtually from the word ‘go’. Which was in 1948 when the British Mandate in Palestine simply upped sticks and went home, leaving the inhabitants to fight it out for themselves. Although the “Jewish State” had always been promised, since the Balfour Declaration in 1917. And the newly formed UN had approved it in principle.

And its not like ‘there was Syria, and there was Lebanon and there was Jordan and there was Palestine’, like they’d been there for millennia and since the first dinosaur spoke in Arabic. These were new countries. Ill-defined. Recent borders showing basically nomadic populations who wandered around.

Everyone wanted a piece of that tiny strip of land that lies between the Med and the Red Sea. Because they’d ‘always’ been there. The nomadic Arabs and Beduins, the Christians, the Druze and the Jews. Who had in fact been there for thousands of years before any other religion came about. Then they left, went into slavery, came back, left, got killed, came back, built the Temple, got thrown out…

Would the UN have approved the Jewish State, right there, where it was always going to be problematic, if the holocaust hadn’t happened? Who knows. Tragically the holocaust did happen and the secondary result was millions of Europe’s surviving Jews riding round in boats homeless and stateless and impoverished. The lucky ones.

So they went to Palestine, mainly because no-where else was prepared to accept them, and the Zionists invited them. Even though in 1945 the Brits, who were still there, thought it better to lock these people up in camps. The people who’d just been liberated from camps. Sensitive.

Thus was born the State of Israel. The Jewish State. Home to Jews, Arabs and Christians. Who, after some initial and inevitable warring, settled down.

And the place was turned from a barren desert into a thriving, viable, amazing place where suddenly things grew where before there was just sand. And cities sprang up, and schools and hospitals and communities. Ahhhhh, nice.

But all was not well in the Land of Milk and Honey. So in 1967 the Arab nations decided to get together and get rid of Israel. And the 7-day war took place, after which Israel had become bigger, better, stronger. Exactly how a tiny and underpopulated nation could do such a thing against the full might of massive countries and their populations, like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and many others, is another question. But survive Israel did.

In Israel, 20% of the population are Arabs. Who work there, live there, many join the army there, they vote there, they are citizens. You see them all over, in the shops and restaurants, on the beaches, many in burkinis which are allowed there (as in all civilized countries).

And its a proper democracy, the only one in the entire Middle East, with gay rights, and human rights, sexual equality, total religious freedom and all those wooly European constructs that we so love… except when Israel claims them. Instead they’re ‘boycotted’ and accused of apartheitism and all manner of atrocities.

Because the bit that is a problem is Gaza. The West Bank is fine. But Gaza, under Hamas is a problem. And because its treated as a problem, Israel is lambasted and pilloried by the international press.

Gaza was once fine. Its residents would work in Israel, would play there, whatever they so pleased without any issues from anyone. Then Hamas swore its destruction of Israel in its charter and laid claims to land that at best was ‘disputed’ and all went to shit.

The suicide vest was invented. A game changer. No longer did you need to ‘leave a bomb’ somewhere; you became the bomb. Its also instructive in the relative values of ‘a life’. Ok, you’ll be martyred, blah, blah, blah, 65 unwashed virgins with facial hair, blah, blah, blah. But its not the western, wooly way. We value life. The suicide vest showed us that extremists don’t value life. And they were deployed across Israel, always from Gaza/Hamas, and always in civilian areas. Never in military bases. Even walking suicides aren’t totally stupid.

So Israel built a wall. The shouts of ‘Apartheit’ went up but Israel didn’t give a shit because that wall stopped 90% of bombing attacks. 90 percent. Would you build a wall? I would.

And during the last Gaza ‘war’ the ceaseless bombing, again into strictly civilian areas of Israel, hundreds every day, were deemed sufficient a problem for Israel to try to destroy the missile sites.

And again, this was something of a game-changer for the west. Who once again fail to understand the passionate insanity of the jihadi mindset.

As happened just weeks ago, two 9-year-olds were caught in Turkey wearing suicide vests. Who would send their children, the most precious thing any westerner can imagine, to die in a political statement? Who could do such a thing??? ISIS for one, Hamas for another. But what Hamas did was a little more subtle and much more clever from a PR perspective. They moved their missile launchers into schools and hospitals and densely populated civilian areas. Knowing that the Israelis would try to destroy them. Because there is no value given to a life over and above ‘the cause’.

The world has kind of woken up to the extent of what extremists will do. ISIS has shown us that. There are no limits at all. The western mind has limits, the jihadi has none whatsoever.

Hamas are ISIS. They are the same. And Israel has lived with them for decades. Yet the world condemns them for acting in the only way it can.

I love Israel. And not just the food.

Happy Saturday; that was a long one.

A xxxx