The traditional question of the London black-cab driver reflects my own uncertainty. I had it all planned. This week’s post was all set to be a calm and measured philosophical reflection on the extent to which the artist’s conscious intentions determine the meaning of a work of art, all nicely inspired by a bang-up-to-date example, backed up by contributions from commentators from an earlier age. It was going to be a really class act. And then along comes ‘stuff’, and barges its way to the head of the queue, leaving me no choice but to be led by the nose.

Our story begins in the early hours of Monday, when three dark-clad and hooded figures were captured on CCTV setting fire to four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green, an area of north-west London some 50% of whose residents identify as Jewish. Hatzola is a charity that raises money, largely from the Jewish community, to finance the purchase and operation of an ambulance service that acts as a supplement to the National Health Service, providing emergency services to all local residents, regardless of race, colour or creed.

As the story developed over Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it a “horrific antisemitic attack”; Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch said that “all of us need to make it clear in our words and actions that Britain will not tolerate antisemitism”; the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan condemned it as a “cowardly attack on the Jewish community”. Meanwhile, the BBC resolutely persisted in referring to a “suspected antisemitic hate crime”. Let’s not leap to any hasty conclusions here. This may well have been just an act of random vandalism/

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I have a small current agenda with the BBC. In the last week, catching myself spending rather more time than is healthy listening to panels of experts on Israel radio and TV attempting, and failing, to find a path of sanity through the dense undergrowth of Trump’s announcements and Iranian conduct of the war, I have taken refuge in BBC Radio 3, which is the BBC’s radio station dedicated to classical music and, to a lesser extent, the arts in general.

Their mid-morning programme has a daily feature, The Playlist, in which the station plays a piece of music near the start of the programme, and invites listeners to write in with suggestions of follow-up pieces that they feel would go well with the starter piece, in tone, style, theme, or whatever. Over the next couple of hours, the presenter reads one or two of the emails sent in, and then, towards the end of the programme, the presenter plays three or four of the suggested pieces that the programme’s producers have selected.

Yesterday (Monday), the starter piece was In Party Mood by Jack Strachey, familiar to boys and girls of my vintage as the signature tune of Housewives’ Choice, a BBC musical request radio programme that our mothers listened to in the 1950s. You can hear it here. I immediately knew what would make a perfect pairing, and I duly sent off the following email to the BBC.

The joyful forward drive of today’s choice, and something in the confidence of the orchestration (though I lack the musical knowledge to identify exactly what) brought to mind, for me at least, the work of Leroy Anderson. Might I suggest that The Typewriter Song makes a perfect companion piece, highlighting, as it does, one of the principal options open to women who chose not to embrace housewifery in the 1950s.

David Brownstein
Ma’ale Adumim
Israel

You can watch the Leroy Anderson composition being performed here.

I was delighted, a couple of hours later, to hear my email read out on air, as a prelude to my suggestion being included in the selection to be played. It was true that I was only one of many listeners who made this suggestion, but it was my email that was read out! I have, you will note, lost none of my competitive appetite.

Actually, that last paragraph is inaccurate. I wasn’t delighted, but rather disgusted. Let me explain why. The presenter is in the habit of reading the listener’s name and location – ‘Brian from Walsall’, ‘Heather from Beaconsfield’, and so on. However, in my case, the presenter declared: ‘David writes to say that…’

I must confess that I was a little devious in writing my address as Maale Adumim, Israel. I was fully aware that I was placing the presenter in a dilemma. As far as the BBC is concerned, Maale Adumim isn’t in Israel, but rather, I imagine, in the currently imaginary state of Palestine. So, she couldn’t say: ‘David from Maale Adumim in Israel’, nor even ‘David from Israel’ either of which would concede me a point the BBC wouldn’t dream of conceding. On the other hand, to say ‘David from Maale Adumim in Palestine’ or even ‘David from Palestine’ would be ridiculous. It is not possible to live in an imaginary state. She could have said ‘David from Maale Adumim’ but then, when listeners wrote in to ask where Maale Adumim was, she would not be able to answer them.

So she chose to present me as homeless, which prompted me to write a follow-up email:

I would be flattered to be selected for my email to be read out, and my suggestion if Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter Song adopted, this morning on Essential Classics Playlist, were I not disgusted by the fact that BBC Radio 3 feels unable (on what possible basis I can only guess) to include my address. 

I am typing this while I listen to missiles being intercepted… missiles which, if the future of Western civilisation rested in your hands, would soon be winging their way to a civilian residence near you. 

I would strongly advise you to pray to whatever supreme power you believe in that that never happens, and meanwhile to recognise and name the struggle that the US and Israel are currently engaged in for what it is. 

Yours in disgust, but, even more sadly, no surprise whatsoever

David Brownstein
Still of
Ma’ale Adumim
Israel. 

(I must confess that that bit about typing while listening to missiles was poetic licence, but I hope you won’t begrudge me that.)

Needless to say, as of writing I have received no reply, not do I expect to. I am currently contemplating how to present myself next time I write to the BBC. I might try just giving Israel as my address, to see how deep the BBC’s antipathy goes. I might, alternatively, just give Maale Adumim.

I know enough about Greek tragic drama to be aware that my feeling of occupying the moral high ground has the unmistakable sanctimonious smell of hubris. This should have made me more on the lookout for the inevitable nemesis. This arrived last night when I read about something that happened in a village called Burqa, in the Ramallah area, a very long way from Golders Green and yet, in a sense, nowhere near as far as you would expect. At about the same time as a gang of hooded thugs (possibly ideologically driven, possibly funded by Iran) were setting fire to ambulances belonging to a Jewish organisation in London, another gang of thugs (almost certainly Jewish settlers, ideologically driven) were attempting to set fire to a health clinic in an Arab village in Judea.

The symmetries here are inescapable. Some mainstream media in Britain made much of the attack on the clinic, and underplayed the antisemitic aspect of the attack on the ambulances, while some mainstream media in Israel ignored the attack on the clinic and headlined the attack on the ambulances. In both cases, a morally unjustifiable action against the innocent is lauded by its supporters as an attack on an entire group that is seen, uniformly, as the enemy.

In Britain, over the last years, it has been impossible to escape the feeling that the Muslim community, and, within it, Islamist extremists, were being given a free hand by the police and the authorities to act as they wished.

In Israel, over the last years, it has been similarly impossible to escape the feeling that the hilltop youth, and extremist settlers, have been given a free hand by the police and the authorities to act as they wished.

In both cases, this leniency seems to be politically motivated. Bibi indulges Ben Gvir; British politicians court the Muslim vote.

Having got here, I’m not sure where I go next. The irony does not escape me that I, too, am a settler, however nice the distinction the government, most of the population, and I  myself draw between ‘major Jewish conurbations’ over the green line, and outposts of a handful of families living in caravans. I know that the world’s decision, exclusively where Israel is involved, to regard land won in a defensive war as occupied, is arbitrary. I feel justified, geopolitically and culturally, in living throughout Eretz Yisrael. But that does not mean that I am not as sickened by settler violence as I am by antisemitic violence in Britain, or anywhere in the world. If we call out the one, we need to call out the other. Anything less is a betrayal of our values as human beings.