“Meanwhile, on Sunday morning TV, the most hate-filled studio “discussion” took place between Israel bashers and defenders, hand-picked, it would seem, by Katie Hopkins. Lunatic, petrifying, anti-Semites — the worst being self-hating Jews who prefaced each remark with “I’m Jewish myself, but . . .”. Shame on the researchers. It made me feel sick all day.
The Palestinian cause is as important a cause as the occupation of Tibet, Chechnya, Crimea, Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus. I won’t go on because they will accuse me, as they always do, of “what-about-ism” and never, never give me an answer as to why they don’t give a flying fart about the “right to return” of any of these other oppressed peoples. So, as I said, I did not respond. I am too tired. I am 4,000 years too tired.”
“So what do you think?” people keep asking me. Would I come on the Today programme, Newsnight, breakfast television for heaven’s sake, and talk about it. “It” was not the opening of a new play, the surprisingly good reviews, or the fact that one of the four actresses had to leave the show permanently after the first night due to family illness. Nor the broken limbs of two audience members who tumbled down the theatre steps, on two different nights (making the term “break a leg” a no-go area for ever more), stopping the show while paramedics were called.
Nor was it for my thoughts on Barack Obama’s gig as a stand-up comedian — good — or his lecturing us on the consequences of a Brexit — bad — or even the terrible shock of losing the bright and beautiful Victoria Wood, whom I had not even known was ill.
What they sought was my response to Ken Livingstone’s response to Naz Shah’s delicate 2014 tweet on the Jewish question. I turned them all down. I was — am — too tired.
I read and listened and watched, though, and came to a cynical conclusion. For the Jews in the diaspora, as for the state of Israel, one thing is for sure: we’re damned if we respond and damned if we don’t.
Out of the blue, the papers and the airways are filled with the word “anti-Semitism”. It is all about us. Again. Why? Have I missed something? Did Israel attack a neighbour in response to rocket fire? No. Have Jews attacked, surrounded, blown up, beheaded, caged, destroyed, proselytised, rounded up, raped or hijacked anybody? No. Have any recent terrorist attacks been perpetrated by Jewish groups? No. Have we vowed in our constitutions, on our websites and on social media to destroy any one of the Muslim states or Catholic or Christian countries of the world, or urged young Jews to stab members of other faiths? Have we flown planes into tower blocks or trained suicide bombers to blow themselves up in marketplaces, on buses, and in hospitals? No.
