Irene Lancaster's Diary

In better times Burma was the first country in the region to recognize the State of Israel

A fascinating article in today's

Haaretz

about the relationship between Burma and Israel. Ben Gurion visited Burma and even spent some time at a Buddhist monastery there.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908066.html

And another piece on how Spain has made history by including the Holocaust in its eduational programme for the first time.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908389.html

On a more mundane level, we returned unscathed from our trip to the Lebanese border, although four meals of exactly the same pre-packaged stricly kosher chicken, rice and potatoes would test anyone's stamina.

On the way back through the South Golan and Galilee, we stopped at the

Yagur Junction

for very fresh kibbutz produce and decided that this was probably the best supermarket that we had yet encountered in Israel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagur

When we arrived our place after four days away, we found that the Succah had moved and part of the roof had been destroyed, probably in gusts of wind, so we replaced it with some roofing material that we had brought from England and never ever used. Next year, we might try the non-artificial stuff, i.e. branches and leaves - which we prefer in any case.

Finally, this is one of the more balanced articles on the present Hamas takeover in Gaza:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2543457.ece

More lies about Israel from Britain, whilst the boycott is deemed 'illegal'

Last night, just as Shabbat was coming in, a white UN helicopter did its rounds just outside our guesthouse on the Lebanese border, just as it did tonight.

Before that, we went for a walk and encountered a house with

Tibetan prayer flags

http://www.prayerflags.com/

and then the

Ayun Stream

http://www.zimmer.co.il/moran/bigframe_en.htm

which was dried up but still worth seeing. There, just by No-man's land, we encountered two students from Jerusalem who were studying with

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adin_Steinsaltz

one of the greatest Talmudic experts around today. They were interested in why we had made aliyah from Britain and also knew a fair bit about

Abraham ibn Ezra

http://www.amazon.com/Deconstructing-Bible-Abraham-Ezras-Introduction/dp/0700715746

especially his lesser-known mathematical and scientific leanings.

We also discussed the

British academic boycott threat against Israeli academics

I said I was sure it must be illegal. And sure enough, it is.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908037.html

How this makes Britain look in the eyes of the world, I don't know, but surely any General Secretary with an ounce of intelligence would have looked into the legality of such a move well before now.

But Britain has been so full of denial in the last seven years that even this:

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2007/09/times-produces-anti-israel-propaganda.html

does not surprise anyone any more.

Day out on the Golan Heights

Just come back from a day out in the

Golan Heights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights

First we visited the

Tel Dan Nature Reserve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights

in the company of half of the entire Israeli population, including babies and toddlers. We had to negotiate stepping stones over streams and the blisteringly dry heat, which someone said was a sign that the summer season was eventually coming to an end.

Then we continued to the

Mount Hermon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hermon

range itself, complete with snow poles, although there was no sign of snow: the landscape being mainly brown and arid in nature.

The apple-harvesting season us underway with a vengeance and we encountered truckfuls of the fruit meandering across our route.

We also saw what looked like

etrogs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrog

growing on trees.

we veered off to a place called

Nimrod

http://www.ronmertens.com/2004/nimrod/

and another on the same route with the unbelievable name of

'The Witch and the Milkman'

http://www.drive-israel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=31

no kidding.

We had lunch in the grounds of a Druze holy place, which was also set up for picnics.

http://www.inisrael.com/golan/history.htm

We knew it was a holy place, because the sign said, in English:

Privite area entrance forbiden

Full dresses

No nargella

No drugs and alcohols

For visitor only

A Ministry of the Environmental Protection employee was present and pointed out the peak of Mt. Hermon, as well as the ski run for which the area is famous.

We asked permission and collected some fine examples of limestone and said 'Hi' to all the Druze and Syrian picnickers whom we encountered.

We then set out back to Metullah, past

Nimrod Fortress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod_Fortress

and

Banyas Waterfalls

http://mosaic.lk.net/g-banyas.html

in time to write this blog just before Shabbat.

Being assailed by mosquitoes on the Lebanese border

Last night we celebrated Succot in a succah on the Lebanese border, to the sounds of the muezzin celebrating the end of Ramadan in a friendly Shi'ite village on the other side of the fence.

Day two in Metullah started with shul. The weather was extremely hot, but soon we experienced the cool of the modest building where Les was called up to perform

hagbah

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/torah_reading.html

Then we ate lunch and sat out in the orchard, facing north. When it cooled down we went for a walk and saw

Mount Hermon 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hermon

not far away to the east on the Syrian border. That's where we'll be heading tomorrow.

As darkness fell, the weather became pleasantly cool, but the mosquitoes were out in abundance. And then I downloaded the

Moral Maze

featuring the indomitable

Melanie Phillips

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1640

now produced by our friend

Phil Pegum.

As our daughter said, it's not often you celebrate first night Succot to the accompaniment of Muslim prayer.

Erev Succot on the Lebanese border

Well here I am on the Lebanese border, writing this blog, whilst listening to

Michael Buerk on the BBC

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/09/a-strange-reven.html

and relishing the dry air and cool breeze which are so different from Haifa.

The view from our window is of Lebanon and this will be our home for the next four days.

All our well-laid plans to travel along the Sea of Galilee due north went pear-shaped after we realised that the kitchen chairs purchased yesterday were lacking one essential bung. So we decided to go via the industrial area of

Checkpost and Krayot

http://muqata.blogspot.com/2006/07/sundays-news-from-israel.html

which we expected to be extremely busy, but were not; retrieved the bung and carried on towards

Acco

http://www.gemsinisrael.com/accomap.html

and then eastwards through

Karmiel

http://www.webscope.com/karmiel/homepage.html

adjacent to

Sfat

http://www.safed.co.il/

then taking route 90 north of the Galilee until we reached

Rosh Pina

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/PLACES/roshpina.html

(home of Madonna),

Kiryat Shemona

http://www.pefs.us/index.php?search=Kiryat

(hit hard during the war) and then

Metullah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metula

(hit very hard during the war).

The landscape was definitely autumnal and in need of rain, but traffic was sparse. So, instead of arriving at 3.30 as expected, we got there by 1.00. We were then given a tour of Metullah, which differs greatly from Haifa in having plaques and info everywhere in both English and Hebrew. The B & B owner came to meet us and showed us our room and the lovely garden (which looks right into Lebanon) the synagogue for tonight and the two supermarkets, one owned by a Lebanese.

The B & B has provided us with a private Succah just for our family and friends and even this wireless connection, which is really thoughtful of them. They never get tourists from out of Israel, so were surprised to meet us. Although I've lived here for a year, I will still always be British in the eyes of most Israelis.

Metullah is both like a ghost town and beautiful, with an interesting history, including remnants of the British Mandate and other, more recent scars from the time of the last Lebanon War, last year.

We met a woman who had moved here during the war from the centre of Israel, simply because she loves the place. And why shouldn't she? It's special and certainly different.

Just the place in fact to sit facing north and contemplating how we can come to terms with our neighbours in Lebanon, some of whom it seems are living in Metullah in any case.

At school we discuss what a 'bridge over troubled water' might be, as the weather gets decidedly choppy in Haifa

It rained for about three minutes early on Monday morning. I left at 6.45 for Haifa station and caught the train to Jaffa, walking into school at around 8.45 am.

I downloaded

Bridge over Troubled Water

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_Over_Troubled_Water_(song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFEnoITiWE

Hey Jude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXG83p2nkHw

and

Let it Be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67J_66hdN-I

and tried them out in some of the singing lessons. Great success.

After school, I was given a tour of Jaffa and Tel Aviv by one of the teachers, who kindly dropped me off at my daughter's in central Tel Aviv. I like Tel Aviv. It is flat and narrow, with a Bauhaus feel to it. It's unpretentiously modern and feels like a capital city.

http://baronesstapuzina.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/neve-tzedek-old-tel-aviv/

Les and I went for a swim on the beach and almost got swept away by the waves. Certainly exhilarating!

Then we surveyed the

Succah

http://www.totallyjewish.com/tradition/festival_guide/?content_id=510

fair at

Rabin Square

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabin_Square

with

etrogim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrog

the size of giant grapefruit, or even melons, and the entire area decked out in Christmassy-like tinsel and glitter.

Our daughter - a calligrapher - was finishing her seventh

ketubah -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketubah

this one illustrated in the style of a

mandala

http://www.google.co.il/search?hl=iw&q=mandala&meta=

with a desert background. It took her about three weeks.

The wedding is tonight and the clients are thrilled, apparently.

Then we went out to dinner and walked back down

Rothschild Boulevard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_Boulevard

where a scultpure display adorned the entire area: the theme being 'our world'.

Today, I left our daughter's home as usual at 7.00 am. It was raining slightly and cloudy. I arrived at school in time to accompany assembly, followed by a whole day's worth of music, dance and song. The youngest pupils, aged 5, learned to beat rhythms to

Simon and Garfunkel.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/simon+and+garfunkel/

Class 3, aged 9, made up their own dance.

One girl played

Let it Be

on the piano, which led to others wanting to try out their instruments next week. And finally, class 6, aged 11, learned the lyrics to

Bridge over Troubled Water

and obviously thoroughly enjoyed the lesson.

Ramadan

http://www.holidays.net/ramadan/

is still in full flow, but those kids who felt unable to sing just swayed or clapped to the beat. Yesterday some of them got a bit hyper, but one of them played the piano:

C.P.E Bach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Philipp_Emanuel_Bach

no less!

I got back to Haifa around 5.00 - the traffic being overwhelming just before Succot and found that Les had put up our own

Succah

http://www.jewishmag.com/48mag/succa/succa.htm

and that a storm is brewing on the Carmel, rendering it a bit precarious

We're setting out for

Metullah

http://www.zimmer.co.il/moran/index_e.html

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/places/metulla.html

in the morning, meeting up with our daughter and a couple of her friends in the late afternoon.

If I can get linked up, I'll try to give an impression of Metullah as we go along, right on the Lebanese border. Otherwise, I'll post again on Sunday.

Chag Sameach to all my Jewish readers.

Definition of bliss

Definition of bliss

Sampling Israel's fantastic rail system: from Haifa to Ben Gurion airport on the pristine, double-decker, air-conditioned train for less than a fiver. Then straight up into Terminal 3. And receiving the entire Beatles oeuvre for piano and orchestra, as well as Simon and Garfunkel, from one's husband.

If that doesn't sort out the kids at school tomorrow, I don't know what will!

Another Yom Kippur: another foiled suicide attempt in Tel Aviv

Another relatively easy Yom Kippur fast, no doubt due to the magic powders provided by my neighbours beforehand.

But then you read this, and you realise how lucky you are.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/906156.html

I do that journey every week and to think that a catastrophe has been avoided, this time, but with loss of life nevertheless.

Taking stock on Yom Kippur - Israeli style

It's not long now till the festival of Yom Kippur: 2 hours to be exact.

I've been invited next door to eat the last meal before the fast and they have also given me some special powder to put in drinks beforehand which apparently makes the fasting all the easier.

I'm eating at 4.00, whilst my daughter in Tel Aviv will be starting as early as 3.00 pm.

With the clocks having been changed last week to accommodate Yom Kippur, it gets dark here at around 6.00 pm, much earlier than in Britain.

Last night, I happened to tune into a programme about the fast on Channel 1. To my utter astonishment, there was Israel's bete noire, former Knesset Speaker

Avraham Burg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1042071,00.html

holding forth on all manner of issues, as if he still lived here and were not being accused of betraying the country with some of his more extreme views.

Titbits from him were that Yom Kippur is like a

battery for the whole year

and that (wait for it) he is actually a

Protestant Jew.

I loved this. Just when the Church of England is waking up at long last (having been battered and bullied into it by people like me, I'm afraid) to its roots in Judaism, here comes a rather famous (some would say infamous) Jew from Israel, determined to define himself in terms of Christianity.

What he probably means is that there is no-one between him and his God. But that is a Jewish view in any case, and he does seem to have forgotten the slight problem of Jesus. Maybe he regards Protestants merely as people of the book, much as the Muslims regard us and the Christians.

I suppose that you might call this good interfaith relations, or maybe multiculturalism. I would say, personally, that he is somewhat muddled, and not just about his faith. But, no-one can accuse the media here of being in the hands of the government, or the good and the great.

For as part of the programme, bits of tonight and tomorrow's liturgy appeared on the screen, and to the accompaniment of some very loud and typically Israeli music, various figures from the past year were thrown up on and their sins highlighted in big black letters.

We had former

President Katsav

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Katsav

Haim Ramon MK

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3292597,00.html

and also I think (there were no captions)

former Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3442321,00.html

who, if you remember, had blamed Israeli deaths in last years Lebanon War on the fact that the soldiers concerned hadn't been religious. The caption produced for this one was

Chilul ha-Shem

which means

'Desecrating God's Name

http://www.nishma.org/articles/update/update5756-1.htm

But what the former Chief Rabbi said wasn't even true. Everyone I know in Haifa has someone in the army and 70% of these friends at least are religious.

Then a famous writer was interviewed about his views on Yom Kippur.. I think it was

A.B. Yehoshua.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1145961275054

And yes, I've just checked the photo on the above link and it is he. For him, only living in Israel, ensures the survival of the Jewish people, whether they are religious or not.

He mentioned the importance of including the Palestinians and the Druze in our thoughts and said he didn't go to synagogue, but that the day still meant something to him.

And then we had a broadcast by

Chief Rabbi Metzger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yona_Metzger

a bit like the Queen's Christmas Message, I suppose. He gave us a parable of the 'soft' and the 'hard' and said that we should always be 'soft' and not 'hard'. Does this mean, I wonder, that the rabbinic establishment will try to ease the plight of

agunot

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3323056,00.html

and deal with all the other matters of a purely internal social nature in the coming year?

He then personally apologized for the fate of the three kidnapped Israeli soldiers, who he mentioned by name, and ended with an apology for the 800,000 Israeli children, who he said lived below the poverty line. When you think the whole country is only 7 million strong, that's an awful lot of children. According to the Jerusalem Post, it's actually 35%, which is unbelievable!

Oh, and he was apparently born in Haifa!

But my favourite comment on Yom Kippur came in a

Jerusalem Post article by Alex Berlyne.

Alex looks very much like a dear friend of mine who is his cousin and lives in Manchester. They also share the same sense of humour. This is how it goes in his Yom Kippur article, entitled

Taking Stock

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392574474&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Holocaust and its post-war aftermath in Kielce and other Polish hellholes was the main motivation for my decision to settle in the newly founded State of Israel, a country which, from the moment I stepped ashore seemed strangely familiar.

Know what he means.

I was bothered for months by a nagging sense of deja vu.

Absolutely

Then the penny dropped.

I had once come across a letter written by James Fenimore Cooper to his friend Horatio Greenough as long ago as 1820. "You are in a country n which every man swaggers and talks, knowledge or no knowledge, brain or no brains, taste or not taste," he wrote. "They are all ex nato connoissuers, politicians, religionists, and every man's equal and all men's betters."

James Fenimore Cooper was, of course, castigating the rude inhabitants of the infant United States.

Couldn't describe Israel better myself. When you realise that 98% of what you are told, hear, receive by e-mail, or in the post should be completely disregarded; that people say things that they mean at the time, but don't follow up on; that Israel is abrupt, because Hebrew is abrupt (no wonder the Russians find it difficult - their language is so much more convoluted than Hebrew) and that apart from the good Lord you are completely on your own, then your own resilience comes into play.

And with that realization, you can allow yourself to be gracious to people who have insulted you a second ago, because they probably didn't really mean it. They just wanted to let off steam after all! For Israel is still a young country, not yet 60. And the young are both fickle and seeking for affection. Which is why they tend to let their words run away with them, some of the time.

So on that note, have a good fast!

Chatima Tova to all my Jewish readers.

The ghastly Burmese regime and what you can do about it

Now for something completely different.

Many moons ago, in 1991 to be exact, I was commissioned to write a book on the Jews of Spain for the publishers

Aris & Phillips

http://www.arisandphillips.com/ap/index.htm?CFID=43010887&CFTOKEN=48761088

That particular book never got written in the end. However, when I learned from

Lucinda Phillips

that her sister-in-law

Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma

had just won the

Nobel Peace Prize

and that they couldn't get involved as the dreadful Burmese regime were already accusing Suu of colonialism for being married to Michael, Lucinda's brother (a therefore a Brit), I embarked on a plan of action.

This involved getting Liverpool churches, as well as local radio involved, as well as using the good offices of the Centre for Continuing Education at Liverpool University, where I taught Hebrew. Despite misgivings about Chinese retaliation, the Centre was helpful, and so were the Liverpool University PR people.

Then, out of the blue, I received an invitation from the Nobel Committee to attend the Nobel Peace Prize itself and the local Liverpool Allerton newspaper wrote a nice article about this.

The Bishop of Liverpool invited me round before I left for Norway and asked for a report when I returned. And then, on December 5th, my husband's 40th birthday, we flew out, leaving his mother in charge of the kids.

This was possibly the only time in my life that I've been treated as a VIP - little did I know that the Oslo peace talks were taking place clandestinely, and being Jewish was a positive plus for once. The Nobel Committee were absolutely fabulous. They also invited me to attend the parallel conference for Past Peace Laureates and Distinguished Guests. I met

Desmond Tutu (very unimpressive: no wonder - he had just founded Sabeel and obviously had a problem with Jews),

Eli Wiesel (tired out and beseiged by journalists),

Red Cross representatives (cold and distant) and the

Dalai Lama (a radiant presence).

The Dalai Lama understood at once. After warmly embracing me, he said that as I Jew, I could be of great help in publicising the plight of the Tibetans and the Burmese and urged me to carry on with the work when I returned to Britain.

The rest of the week was also a dream. I had not brought any fancy clothes, but even though there was an Ibsen Gala attended by the King and Queen, I was allowed in in my rags and totally inappropriate snow boots and was sat next to dear Lucinda, sister of Michael Aris.

Anyway, on return to Liverpool, I founded the

Liverpool Burma Support Group and was phoned up by various people in the House of Lords who wished to be patron, as well as the local MP, David Alton. The then Mayor of Liverpool was also extremely helpful, and I persuaded Liverpool University's Student Union to name a room after Aung San Suu Kyi. Ironically it was the bar, which would have tickled the fancy of teetotal Suu.

However, we gradually found that there were differences between Burmese factions resident in Britain and that they found it difficult to work together. In addition, they felt that some of the non-Burmese NGOS and pressure groups were using the situation for their own ends. Some of the behaviour I encountered reminded me of the Jewish community as well. And I wonder if this inability to work as a team in a professional manner is actually a characteristic of most immigrant groups. This can't be quite true, as the Muslim community in Britain manages to conceal their differences and come out fighting in support of their own -often pernicious - philosophy when it suits them.

But when I was invited to attend a Burma conference in Berlin, sponsored by the German government, and found officials there comparing the monstrous regime in Burma to Israel and blaming the Jews and Winston Churchill for the Holocaust, I knew something was wrong. Subsequently, we moved to Manchester and I heard very little from anyone about Burma after that.

However, recently here in Haifa I have received a copy of

Burma Campaign News

and in response to my e-mail, Anna Roberts of the Burma Campaign sent this reply:

Dear Irene

It would be great if you could highlight the campaign on your blog.

An event to consider might be a reading or performance of ‘The Lady of Burma’ – a new one woman play about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi:

<http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/merchandise.html>

We organised readings of the play around the world for Suu’s birthday this year -

<http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P257> - and would like to have even more performances for next year’s birthday - we will try for a Guinness World Record! Next year will be a big year as it’s the 20th anniversary of the 1988 uprising.  If you’d like any more information, just let me know.

With best wishes and thank you for your support.

Anna

These are the details of the Burma Campaign, and I'm sure they would be delighted to receive any support.

<info@burmacampaign.org.uk

Meantime, Burmese Buddhist monks have been taking the very brave step of marching in protest at the regime's continued outrages. Here is the BBC on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7004074.stm

And here is The Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2482952.ece

and here:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/faith/2007/09/burma-monks-in-.html

I shall be sending this blog to the German Embassy here in Israel and do hope they have now revised their view of Israel and their own culpable responsiblity for both World War II and the Holocaust.