Last week I wrote, you will almost certainly not recall, “… in this week’s post, and almost certainly for one week only, I am adopting ‘war correspondent’ as my profession.” Despite that prediction, I find it impossible to write about anything other than ‘the situation’, and so I will stick with being some strange kind of war correspondent for one more week. William Boot revisited.

I had planned to devote this week’s blog to the other major story of the week: the news of the passing of Alred Brendel, one of the giants of classical piano of the second half of the last century. It is true that he retired from the concert hall 16 years before his death, and that he lived to the respectable age of 94, two facts that mitigate to some extent the blow of the news of his death.

However, he was still, until relatively shortly before he died, an incredibly insightful, as well as a charming, speaker and writer about music, art, philosophy. He was also a living oxymoron. No great pianist was ever more cerebral, yet Brendel achieved, in performance, a depth of emotion that few could equal. Terrifyingly serious, he could cow an audience into silence with a single look, but was possessed of an impish sense of humour.  A rationalist intellectual, he had a deep love of Dada and the absurd, as well as kitsch.

He was also, astonishingly, almost entirely self-taught, not a career path normally recommended to classical pianists. I’m guessing the secret is that, if you are going to be self-taught, make sure you get a teacher as insightful, disciplined and gifted as Alfred Brendel.

As if this were not enough, Brendel was an exhibited watercolour artist who also published both nonsense verse and serious poetry. Indeed, it seemed at times that he was all things and everywhere. Yet, he was above all a uniquely crystal-clear pianist, and it is this purity that makes his frequent encore – Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s choral prelude Nun Komm’der Heiden Heiland – a perfect distillation of his musical insight.

If that is too dry for your taste, then search for Brendel playing any Mozart concerto, Beethoven, Schubert or Liszt sonata. (Those links are all suggestions available on YouTube.) His repertoire was confined to those composers who commanded his respect and into whose works he felt he could offer insight. Within that repertoire, he plumbed incredible depths and uncovered truths that perhaps no other pianist has revealed.

Meanwhile, back in Israel, it has been a truly remarkable week, as you may have noticed. Once again, I am going to avoid attempting any profound geopolitical analysis, other than to observe that, whatever else you might say about that Donald Trump, he certainly keeps you on your toes. Those of you outside Israel won’t be surprised to hear that even Israelis who are not, by nature, fans of Trump are acknowledging his contribution, this week, to Israel’s, and the world’s, security.

Incidentally, this is, I think, a reflection of Israelis’ understanding of the nature and extent of the existential threat we face. Too many in the Western world feel so secure in their lives that they cannot imagine a situation in which they could applaud any action of Donald Trump. In Israel, over the last couple of weeks, or days, sworn enemies of Netanyahu, and those who despise Trump, have acknowledged the rightness of their actions against Iran. There is nothing like an existential threat to encourage a pragmatic world view.

On a more personal level, our life has understandably shrunk over the last couple of weeks. We are following orders, and not venturing far from our bomb shelter, except when we have to, of which more later. On all but one occasion, we have been given the 10-muinute heads-up before the sirens sound, indicating that we have 90 seconds to get into the shelter. Indeed, on several occasions, the warning is not followed by a siren, either because the missiles have all been intercepted or because, as they approach, their target can be more accurately calculated, and it isn’t Maale Adumim.

As a result, we have often either been lying in bed, or sitting in the salon, ready to move, listening to distant, or, sometimes, what sounds like not-so-distant, explosions, trying to assess whether they are mid-air detonations of intercepted missiles or explosions of missiles as they hit the ground, and wondering whether we are wise to have such confidence in the accuracy of assessment of the Home Command in determining that we really don’t need to go in the shelter. So far, our confidence has not been misplaced, although as I say that I may sound to you rather like the man who threw himself off the roof of the Empire State Building and, as he passed a 29th floor window, called out to a spectator: “So far, so good!”

Last week I was due to have a minor medical procedure in Shaarei Zedek hospital. After a couple of days of trying, I finally got through to the hospital to confirm that my appointment had not been postponed. As the information clerk put it: “We’ll be treating anyone who turns up.” The following morning, the roads were considerably emptier than usual – at that point, schools were closed and only essential workplaces were open – but the hospital was fairly busy, although not quite as crowded as usual.

I was actually seen to very quickly and efficiently, and we would have been in and out in just over an hour, were it not for the fact that there was an air raid just as we were nearing the end of our stay. Fortunately, Shaarei Zedek, like many hospitals in Israel, has considerable facilities that are in protected spaces, and the department we were in was one such facility. As a result, the air raid did not interfere with the procedure at all.

Last Shabbat, when restrictions were marginally eased, our shul reopened, with provisions to use the shelters in a number of buildings within a minute’s walk from the shul. We personally didn’t return to shul on Shabbat, largely because we live a 15-minute walk from the shul, and would feel rather exposed on that walk. I understand that those who did attend were almost exclusively members (and others) who live very close to the shul.

I haven’t even been attending the shul I normally go to on weekday mornings, which is currently conducting services in the shelter attached to the shul. This is because I have not been putting an alarm on for the morning. Most nights the Iranians interrupt our sleep once or twice, and, even when they don’t, I, in common with most people I speak to, am finding it difficult to get the energy and the focus to do very much.

Having said that, Bernice and I have, this week, tackled the jungle that our front garden had become. Our gardener has spent much of the last 20 months on reserve military duty, and, even though we understand he is currently home, he did not respond to Bernice’s WhatsApp enquiries. So, I have been cutting back the nectarine tree, most of whose fruit this year was beyond my reach to harvest, and Bernice has been trimming and tidying up the bushes, thinning out the undergrowth, and collecting leaves and rotting fruit. We can only work for an hour or two in the morning and another hour or two in the early evening, because of the heat during the day. However, we really got into a routine, and we are currently convincing ourselves that we can handle this routine on a regular basis, and save ourselves a considerable amount of money while keeping fit.

Past experience suggests that this may be one of those plans that sounds good when pitched, but doesn’t always deliver. In addition, gardening in the dappled early morning light of June is not quite the same experience as in the cold and rain of December. However, only time will tell.

I have one more observation to share with you. I have started playing bridge online, on a platform that allows individual players to join an ad hoc table. I have noticed, in the past, that every two or three tables that I joined would contain one other person from Israel. Since we started direct hostilities with Iran, I am bumping into Israelis at the table two or three times as frequently. This is not really surprising, since you can play online bridge close to, or indeed in, your bomb shelter. It did mean that, when I left a table last Friday afternoon, I felt very comfortable wishing my fellow players Shabbat Shalom.

At some point in the last fifty years, ‘Profession’ stopped being one of the items of personal information that appears on a British passport. This is a shame, because I have always secretly wanted to have my profession listed, on my British passport, as ‘War correspondent’, and, in this week’s post, and almost certainly for one week only, I am adopting ‘war correspondent’ as my profession.

I have, undeniably, left this career move rather late. I’m not sure just how cut out I am these days for weaving my way across a live minefield, dodging sniper fire, and I no longer have much of an idea what I would be supposed to fill the multiple pockets of a fisherman’s flak jacket with. (I suspect these days it would be heart tablets and foot cream, one or two really useful lengths of string and yesterday’s unfinished crossword.)

Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, and in a considerably jauntier style than the last few days’ events would appear to call for, here’s my dispatch from the front.

Israel’s air force, in coordination with Mossad operatives on the ground, struck multiple strategic sites and carried out multiple assassination strikes on key personnel in Iran in the early hours of last Friday morning (which, as I write on Monday, is staggeringly less than four days ago, but seems like a previous existence). Literally overnight, the balance and nature of the war that Israel has been waging since 7 October changed. Instead of heart-rending stories, almost every day, of our youngest and finest falling in the service of their country, we now have equally heart-rending stories every day of civilians, men, women, the elderly, children, being killed in ballistic missile attacks in the heart of our civilian centres. We have, over the last couple of days, heard almost no news from the Gaza front; the news focus has been on Iran, 1500 or more kilometres away, and on our major cities, under fire.

Historically, the home front has been on the frontline in ‘peacetime’, with terrorist attacks carried out within Israel. In wartime, however, the front has almost always been beyond Israel’s borders. The burden on the home front has, even in the 20 months since October 7, been almost exclusively emotional and economic, being measured in the number of weeks families have been without their reservist spouses, parents and children and the effect of those absences on the workplace and the study hall. It is the reservists and the other serving troops who have faced the enemy on the battlefield.

Suddenly, in the last four days, the bulk of the military activity has been conducted by fighter pilots who appear to have total domination of the skies above Teheran, and the entire country has been under the terrifying threat of massive missile strikes. While we have become to some extent inured to rocket barrages, confident that, if we follow the Home Front protocol, we will be safe, we now know that a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile can destroy even a purpose-built safe room.

It is a measure of this change of perceived reality that Bernice and I, in common with several like-minded friends, have, in the last couple of days, moved from stupidly believing that we were safe enough in a windowless and entirely internal space within our house, to recognising that the only sensible action is to use the communal public shelter that serves our row of five houses. This shelter is not the most salubrious of living spaces, but it is clean, has a working fan and lighting, has been stocked by considerate neighbours with plenty of bottled water and enough chairs for everyone, and should withstand anything less than a direct hit from a ballistic missile.

Not the least curious effect of living in Israel in these times is how quickly the unthinkable comes to seem normal. It was only when rereading that last sentence that it struck me how I was calmly discussing our shelter’s ability to withstand a hit from a ballistic missile.

In the same vein, the updated Home Front protocol for using a safe room or shelter is bizarre in the way in which it turns what one might expect to be a panicky scramble to find cover into a mundane routine.

The new protocol is, if you can believe it, as follows:

1. Between 15 and 30 minutes before a missile attack is anticipated to land in our area, we receive a heads-up on the Home Front app, which reads, in part: ‘It is required to stay next to a protected space.’ Since the missile flight time from Iran to Israel is about 15 minutes, this message is, I assume, sent when there is some kind of intelligence information (either from aerial observation or human intelligence) of an impending launch.
2. About 15 minutes before a missile attack is expected to land in our area, we receive a follow-up message, which reads, in part: ‘Continue to stay next to a protected space.’ This message is sent as soon as the launch is observed.
3. A few minutes before a missile attack is expected to land in our area, we receive a further follow-up, which reads, in part: ‘In the next few minutes, alerts are expected in your area. If an alert is received, enter the protected space.’ This message is sent when the more exact area of the expected landing has been determined..
4. 90 seconds before the expected landing, sirens sound locally and we receive a further follow-up, which instructs us to enter the protected space immediately.
5. Subsequently, we receive follow-up messages, instructing us to continue to stay in the protected space, or informing us that we may leave the protected area.

Between steps 4 and 5, as we sit in our shelter, we usually hear, sometimes more clearly, often more faintly, one or more booms that signify either a successful interception or a missile landing and exploding.

You may well agree with me that this reads more like instructions for a charabanc outing than guidelines for coping with an air raid. I can assure you that the very matter-of-factness of the instructions, and generous time allowance, greatly help to reduce the feeling of panic. It also appears to be true that the number of injuries incurred while getting to the communal shelters has been reduced dramatically. Under the previous protocol (for rocket launches from Gaza or Lebanon), 90 seconds was the maximum time allowed. This induced panic and led to many cases of people slipping and bruising themselves or sustaining fractures.

So, this is the new reality we find ourselves in. I am well aware that this particular we – the inhabitants of Maale Adumim – have, so far, had a very quiet war. For the inhabitants of Sderot or Nahariya, the twenty months of the war have been nowhere near as quiet. For us, on the other hand, a succession of disturbed nights is a new experience. The new protocol renders it considerably less stressful than it would otherwise be; nevertheless, it is a somewhat draining experience.

Perhaps the greatest worry is not knowing how long this situation will continue. Official statements speak of the air force making faster progress than originally anticipated. There is talk of one third of Iran’s missile launchers having already been destroyed on the ground. At the weekend, there was talk of the campaign lasting two weeks. At the moment, the country seems to be more or less on hold: schools running on zoom; non-essential workplaces closed; significantly reduced public transport and health services. If this continues for much more than a week, recovery becomes much more complicated.

We will, as always, just have to suck it and see.

By the way, if the reference to William Boot in this week’s title means nothing to you, then find a copy of Scoop by Evelyn Waugh and treat yourself to a gentle, very English satirical delight, originally published, I am staggered and dismayed to discover, 87 years ago. Probably no longer qualifying as modern fiction, then. Heigh-ho!

If you’re reading this, then it represents third time lucky.

Last week, you may remember, I cunningly constructed a very brief post out of an abject and depressed confession that I was, for the first time, failing to produce a post. This had the desired dual effect: it both elicited sympathy from my many kind-hearted readers who assured me that I should not be downcast: my unbroken run until last week was, in itself, a magnificent tribute to my perseverance and dedication; at the same time it technically constituted a post, so, as I shall claim in any court of law where the issue is raised in some as yet unclearly delineated future legal dispute, my run is still unbroken.

Yesterday (which was Sunday), having decided already last week what I planned to write about, I diligently locked myself in the office and began pecking away at the laptop. After a couple of hours of fairly tough slog, and stuck in an inability to locate an article I had planned to reference, I ground to a pathetic halt, broke for lunch, and then spent the rest of the day, and a decent chunk of today (Monday), avoiding resuming.

I have spent the last hour wondering how I am ever going to complete this week’s post, and I have only just now realised that, for one reason or another, I am simply not ready to write what I planned to write about. There are probably several reasons for this. My intended subject, which I was going to approach a little obliquely, was Israel’s position as a pariah state, but I am ambivalent about choosing this subject. Preaching to the choir seems a little like a waste of effort, particularly when the writers who set me thinking are so much more eloquent and better informed than I am. I’m not sure I have anything new to add to the conversation, and the one idea I have, which may possibly be something you haven’t already encountered twenty times this month, is still in a process of gestation. In addition, of course, anything I write that is even vaguely topical runs the risk that news journalism always faces: today’s paper is only fit for wrapping tomorrow’s fish. I don’t want to risk being a hake hack.  

On this note, friends brought back from their recent visit to the grandkids in the States, a copy of Douglas Murray’s new book, and kindly lent it to us. As it sits accusatorily on the table in the middle of the salon, Bernice and I have spent a couple of days edging round it, wondering whether we really need to read another 250 pages of Douglas Murray telling us, with whatever clarity and grasp, the depressing truth we already know.

In the same way, Melanie Phillips, through her almost daily majestic appearances in my Gmail inbox, is beginning to feel like a stalker, or one of those lost souls who used to stand on streetcorners, their feet wrapped in newspaper, their torn trousers held up by string, and rant about the impending apocalypse.

So, in the end, and third time lucky (Oh! I do hope so), I have opted to write about what I arguably do best, which might be described as half a yard of assorted wittering.

I don’t, in the normal run of things, spend much time thinking about greengrocers, but today it struck me forcefully how sorely I miss them. In stark contrast to much of our disorganised daily life, Bernice and I have supermarket shopping down to a military operation, at whose heart lies the division of duties: our printed shopping list, with its checkboxes for marking off what we need this week, is designed to be torn vertically in two, once filled in. The left half, whimsically headed “His”, lists the fruit and vegetables, in the order in which they are shelved in Rami Levi, and also flour, wine and cooking chocolate, for reasons lost in the mists of antiquity. This represents my objects in the weekly scavenger hunt. The right half, headed, as you may have guessed, “Hers”, represents Bernice’s challenge. She brings to this both the topological knowledge of exactly where Canola oil, salted butter, bleach and night lights are located in the store, and the youthful energy to put in the extra miles of doubling back and criss-crossing the store. She also has the people skills to navigate the cheese counter.

All of which is relevant only to explain why, for me, Rami Levi is our greengrocer. I remain largely unaware of what else he has to offer.

Back in the day, in the old country, the greengrocer’s was located at the end of the street. (The apostrophe in the previous sentence is, I hardly need point out to you, a distant relative of Schrödinger’s cat , being simultaneously a greengrocer’s apostrophe and not emphatically not a greengrocer’s apostrophe.) The greengrocer himself was a friendly soul, in his white coat and, if you are buying into the de luxe nostalgia edition, straw boater. He greeted you warmly, and, where relevant, urged you to sample the cherries which were “just perfect, this week”, or advised you against the melons, which had been harvested too early.

The shop was designed to enable the proprietor to reach all of his stock with minimum movement. He would glide around the premises, placing your produce into proper brown paper bags that never ripped or split when in use, and did not strangle turtles when disposed of later. They could be used multiple times at home, and then made excellent spills, or firelighters, for those long evenings we spent smoking our churchwardens or lighting our coal fires.

Rami Levi offers a rather different shopping experience.

This morning, it offered a very unsettling shopping experience. After Bernice and I corralled two stray shopping trolleys, we separated. While she entered the store, I went to waste five minutes at the side, where a machine has been installed to accept, read the barcode of, and credit the customer for, returned deposit bottles, This is a fine example of progress in reverse. 50% of the time the machine is out of action. When it is working, it routinely refuses to accept several types of bottles, including ones definitely purchased at that branch of Rami Levi. The process is not fast, involving feeding the bottles one at a time through an orifice onto a conveyor belt. Today’s experience was better than usual. I did not arrive just after a Russian who had just carried out his twice-yearly clearance of the cupboard under the sink (50 vodka bottles) or a young adult who had just had a weekend-long barbecue party (200 beer bottles). Mind you, our stock of wine bottles piles up shockingly quickly – and there’s only two of us.

Anyway, having posted two-thirds of the bottles, and handed the rest in at the main desk to receive the small change owing to me, I went round to the entrance, where Bernice told me she had been approached by one of the staff encouraging the use of barcode laser guns. We have, until now, avoided getting sucked into this revolution, which, I suspected, saved the customer no time, and was basically just another cunning way Rami Levi gets the customer to do the job of the staff (weigh, tag and scan purchases) without being on the payroll. After a three-minute training session (“Ah! The death ray comes out of that little hole? I see.”), we both felt good to go. First, of course, we had to declare how many shopping bags we were going to fill. How on earth I am I supposed to determine that before I have started shopping?! I realised, at this point, that this meant Bernice would be packing her own shopping. Now, we all know that packing supermarket shopping, like dishwasher stacking, is a job that should only be done by a man. Women simply don’t realise the seriousness of the decision-making processes involved. However, I took comfort in the fact that at least the greengroceries would be separate from the dry goods.

For me, weighing and printing price labels for the fruit and veg was a little frustrating, until I realised that the quickest way to locate an item on the screen was to type in the first two letters of its name. (I have never noticed how many produce items begin with an aleph, or, rather, dammit, an ayin, or is it an aleph after all – agvaniya, avocado, ananas, anavim, agas, afarsek – tom’s, avocado’s, pineapple’s, grape’s, pear’s, peache’s/peach’s/peaches’ respectively, complete with their grrengrocer’s apostrophes).

While I was facing up to this spelling bee challenge,an eager young salesman with a tablet approached me to offer a Rami Levi credit card. When I explained that my wife had one, he pointed out that, since it was an old one, she was paying a monthly fee on it. If we took a new card, we would receive a Rami Levi gift card equal in value to the registration fee, our first year would be free of charges, and, at the end of the year, we would be able to request a second year free of charges (which, of course, we could not do with our existing card, because it was so-o-o old). I told him to wait a moment, located Bernice, discussed it with her, and, since she didn’t need to be involved in the bureaucracy, she agreed we should go for it. This was, I should add, the third time I had been targeted in this way in as many visits oto the store, and my resistance had been worn down.

For the next ten minutes, the salesman talked me through the intricacies of applying for, using, and unlocking the benefits of, the card. The speed of his delivery put me in mind, at times, of Leroy van Dyke, for those of you who go all the way back to 1962. At the end, I was only too happy to sign the tablet, and wait for the credit check.

After all this high-end tech stuff, both Bernice and I had our trolleys rejected by the weighing station, and yet another member of staff had to come over and beat the machine about the head until it submitted.

In short, I have seen the future, and it doesn’t quite work yet. Bring back the straw boater and the brown paper bags, I say.

Dear Reader

No. I really can’t, on reflection, attempt to hide behind the pathetic excuse in this week’s title. I have to come clean.

It’s been some time coming, but I’m afraid it’s finally arrived. I am sitting at my desk, heavy-hearted, typing this brief post at almost 1:40 on the night between Monday and Tuesday; or, to put it more bluntly, seven hours and twenty minutes before publication time. I have nothing to say. Words fail me. I blame a combination of the Jewish calendar, a slow news day (something of a novelty in these parts) and the lethargy induced by not getting to sleep until gone 2:00 on Sunday night (not quite the all-night learning that is traditional on Shavuot night, but about as much as Bernice and I can handle at this stage and still have a hope of making it to shul in the morning).

And so, a hitherto unbroken run of 289 posts of content (some better than others, but all over 1200 words: never mind the quality, feel the length), one a week over 2023 days, ends here, with a mere 348 vacuous words from a henceforth broken man.

There will, bli neder, be other weeks. I plan to be back next Tuesday for my usual desperate ramble through the byways of what passes these days for my mind. If I’m really firing on all cylinders, I might address the question of what exactly is the nature of the ‘Palestinian state’ that France claims to be about to recognise. Or I might just possibly be sharing with you the details of our interesting crop of nectarines this year, or speculating on the likely etymology of bandersnatch. At this stage, dear reader, your guess is as good as mine. I can only hope that, by this time next week, my guess will be considerably better than yours!

Until then, and in the hope that I have not completely ruined your week (just my own), I remain

Your (finally exposed as intermittent) correspondent

David