My week in writing

I started the week with a blog post responding to Justin Bieber’s questionably appropriate message in the Anne Frank House guestbook, arguing that while not necessarily tasteful, it could be utilised in a positive way.

Back on rather more serious matters, I covered the once-a-decade announcement of the Granta young writers list, interviewing five of those who were honoured and discussing whether we were seeing a revival in the Anglo-Jewish literary scene. Staying with literature, I wrote about AM Homes making the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the writers who were named as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in America.

I spoke to an artist about how his grandfather;s immigrant experience had prompted a sculpture of an upside-down-alien (now on display in London) and covered the annual Rich List, which marked its 25th birthday this year.

In domestic communal news, I reported on Laura Janner-Klausner’s decision to turn down an invitation to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral and heard from her why she felt it appropriate, and looked back in the archives at how the community marked Winston Churchill’s death.

Over in the comment section, I was pleased to commission a piece marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and looking at the wider history of resistance, which was illustrated with a breathtaking rare photograph from inside the ghetto.

Justin Bieber and Anne Frank: Why the fuss? (The JC)

Dear Kitty (as Anne Frank never wrote),

“I’m soo sick of being stuck in hiding, because my dad keeps telling me to turn down the volume on my Justin Bieber CD. If only I could get out to go and see him on tour…”

Clearly, Anne– the teenage diarist forced into hiding by the Nazis, who eventually died at Bergen Belsen – had more serious considerations than the average 21st century western teenager. In her diary, perhaps one of the most well-known examples of Holocaust-era testimony, she wrote of an everyday existence blighted by fear, death and hatred.

How tragic, knowing what became of her, to read her words: “Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles.”

Yet those who have read Anne’s diary will recall that, for all that her life was unlike many young people then and since, she was in many ways a typical teenager – frustrated by her mother, confused about boys. She could be petulant, she could be irrational. In another life, it’s not a stretch to imagine she might have been – as Bieber claimed this week – a fan of some fairly atrocious music. One of the many tragedies of her story is that she never got the chance to be embarrassed by her teenage passions.

Bieber is facing opprobrium for writing in the Anne Frank House guestbook that “Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.”

The correct response to a tale of persecution – to wonder whether the victim would have liked your latest video? Not to most of us, attuned to the sensitivities of discussing the Holocaust. As Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, noted, his message left her “a bit lost for words”.

Gillian Walnes, co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust UK, issued a sterner rebuke. “This is a place where Anne Frank spent two years,” she said. “Now 70 years later a pop singer is trying to hijack this for his own self-aggrandisement.”

She has a point, not least that Justin Bieber didn’t reach stratospheric levels of success without being a shameless self-publicist. If his visit had been purely a visit – rather than, at least in part, a publicity stunt – we wouldn’t even have heard about it.

Of course it trivialises the Holocaust to talk about whether one of its most famous victims would have been a fan of a singer with ridiculous hair; far more crucial to reflect on the piles of human hair, seized by the Nazis from their helpless victims, preserved at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Of course the legacy of a girl who died before her 16th birthday for no other reason than being born a Jew, deserves more than contemplation as to how she would have spent her weekends if they’d been hers to spend.

Yet look on almost every news site around today. Yes, there are headlines about Bieber. But there are also headlines about Anne Frank, and the Holocaust – articles that his mostly tween fanbase would be unlikely to peruse without Bieber’s photograph accompanying them. Anne is even a trending topic on Twitter.

And it matters. It matters because in 2009 a survey revealed that one in 20 British kids thought Hitler was a football coach, and because in a decade, there won’t even be survivors left to talk to them at schools, or grandparents around to share their memories. It matters because when Baroness Thatcher died, the interest of a confused generation was piqued mainly by a tweet from Harry Styles. It matters because children listen far more to their role-models than they do to well-meaning teachers.

We can lament that as a sign of a generation brought up on reality TV and 140 characters of trash, or we can see it as an opportunity, and look to these “stars”, with their poor spelling and ignorant remarks, and recruit them to spread the word about important issues. They’ll do it if it gives them good publicity; teachers and organisations should seize on that.

We’ll never know whether Anne Frank would have been a “belieber” and, if we had the chance, I’d hope it wouldn’t be the first question we’d put to her. But if even one 14-year-old asks his parents or teachers today about why she lived in an attic, or reads her moving diary, then we’ll have Justin Bieber and his ridiculous remark to thank.

My two weeks in writing

Last week saw Israel go to the polls for a general election. Following the surprising show of support for centrist Yair Lapid, I wrote for the Independent about how he was essentially “the main character of Aaron Sorkin’s as-yet unwritten series about Israeli politics” and expressed my hopes for the future.

With Holocaust Memorial day on the horizon, I challenged former Respect parliamentary candidate Lee Jasper on his comments comparing Israel and the Nazis, a comparison which was made later in the week by Liberal Democrat MP David Ward. In particular, his use of the phrase “the Jews” drew condemnation and a swift rebuke from party officials.

Elsewhere, I covered the row over a particularly gruesome Sunday Times cartoon attacking Benjamin Netanyahu – then wrote for the Independent about why I felt it was not antisemitic, merely unpleasant.

I  also interviewed former BBC presenter Robin Lustig on his distinguished career and why he is such an advocate of Twitter, covered the lunch of a new parliamentary probe in electoral misconduct and looked into why a holocaust education programme is not available in Northern Ireland. I also spoke to MP John Mann about his visit to Hungary and his thoughts on the rise of an extremist party there.

The fruits of my recent trip to Glasgow were also visible this week, with an extended report on the future of Scotland’s sole Jewish school, Calderwood Lodge, which has been the subject of a particularly fraught disagreement.

In Optima, to mark the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I looked at the continued cultural significance of the novel. And I also questioned whether the tradition of changing a name after marriage was still relevant in the 21st century – not that I have made up my mind yet.

Scarfe’s cartoon may have been unpleasant, but was it really anti-Semitic? (Independent)

What is anti-Semitic is always unpleasant, but what is unpleasant is not always anti-Semitic. That was my take on Gerald Scarfe’s now infamous cartoon, depicting the Israeli Prime Minister wielding a bloodied knife over a wall dripping with blood and crushing presumably Palestinian victims between the cracks.

The image, published in the Sunday Times, would have put me off my breakfast, had I been reading the paper over breakfast. As political cartoons go, it’s not much for subtlety; the clear message is that the Israeli leader is an obstacle to peace and responsible for vast amounts of Palestinian bloodshed.

Now I’m no cheerleader for Netanyahu. In my view his continued support for settlement construction is obstructive and worrying, and my hope is that he will form a more moderate and peace-seeking coalition going forward. But you don’t need to be a Phd student of the history of the Middle East and the ongoing conflict between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours to know that the situation is just a little more complex than Mr Scarfe’s cartoon would have us believe.

If nothing else, the imagery of the cartoon – a wall cemented by Palestinian blood – is profoundly offensive, given that Israel’s controversial security wall (or fence, as much of it actually is) was built not to keep Palestinians as victims but to stem the tide of suicide bombers intent on causing mass bloodshed in Israel.

But antisemitic? Much of the commentary and discussion about the cartoon has been over its supposed association with the ancient blood libel against Jews; whereby Jews were accused of killing Christians to use their blood for religious rituals at festivals. Perhaps the most famous example of a blood libel occurred in thirteenth century Lincoln, when 18 Jews were hanged after being falsely accused of the murder of a local boy. So it’s not exactly baffling that a depiction of flowing blood, next to cartoons of innocent people being attacked by the leader of the Jewish state, might raise eyebrows among anyone with a basic awareness of history.

Still, plenty of historic bloodshed has had nothing to do with Jews, and cartoonists like Scarfe are known for pushing the boundaries of taste. Scarfe’s drawing, while undeniably unpleasant – and hardly a nuanced depiction of the political reality (where is Hamas in this picture?) – is not to my mind antisemitic.

The problem is the timing; publishing a cartoon castigating the Israeli Prime Minister on the one day the world has set aside to remember the Holocaust and its six million Jewish victims hardly screams of sensitivity. Scarfe may well not have known when the cartoon would appear, as he has claimed, but the editor could not have been blind to the date – after all, the paper’s explanation of the inclusion points to a feature criticising Holocaust-denier David Irving in the magazine of the same issue.

The point is that the Holocaust still means something. It is not just another news story, one tragedy among many, destined to become nothing more than tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.

The Holocaust signifies humanity at its worst. It is not just a word, not just a useful comparison. It is millions of men, women and children shorn of all dignity, starved, denigrated and slaughtered. It is the brutal and systematic murder of millions, the persecution of an entire people for no reason other than their religion.

And it is still in living memory for a good proportion of the population. For many of those objecting to the cartoon today, it is the tragedy of those ancestors they never met, the grandparents and relatives who were gassed at Birkenau or lined up for slaughter at Auschwitz, the friends and loved ones who did not make it out alive.

And the day, the one day of the year, on which we recognise that and pledge for it never to be repeated is not just a convenient news hook, something for cartoonists or ignorant MPs to use as a peg for a point about the political situation in Israel or anything else.

When we allow a day of memorial for the victims of genocide to become a political tool, something has gone wrong. I do not believe the Sunday Times is in any way antisemitic, or that Gerald Scarfe is. But the cartoon is still deeply, deeply unpleasant.

To see the original and read the comments, click here.

Yair Lapid is the kind of pro-peace politician the Middle East is crying out for (Independent)

I joked earlier that Yair Lapid is, essentially, the main character of Aaron Sorkin’s as-yet unwritten series about Israeli politics. By which I did not mean that he would inevitably find the key to the stalemate in the Middle East – as President Bartlet so memorably managed in The West Wing – but that he is attractive, charming, media savvy and media friendly (he is, of course, a former journalist), and that above all, he comes across as largely sincere in his beliefs.

As West Wing fans will know, Sorkin’s politicians tend to be the heroes, championing the right and good. If Lapid comes anywhere close to this, that surely is good news for Israel and for all those who want to see it thrive and build a peaceful, stable future with its neighbours.

On Tuesday Lapid’s Yesh Atid party claimed 19 seats, more than expected and enough to make it the second biggest player. In the run-up to the Israeli election, when Lapid’s chances of winning a substantial number of seats seemed dim, especially against the trajectory of the right-wing, uncompromisingly pro-settlement Naftali Bennet and his Jewish Home party, one of the questions was whether this untested politician could walk the walk quite as well as he could talk the talk.

Lapid is a smooth, modern politician in the Obama mould, able to make rousing speeches and engage with the everyday voter and their concerns. He is corruption-free, comes across as affable, and is well-known to voters by way of a regularly broadcast slot. And like Barack Obama, his perspective has been shaped by his personal story; he too published a memoir, Memories After My Death, telling the tale of his Hungarian immigrant father’s journey.

Israel, in common with most electorates that invest disproportionate faith in the abilities of one individual to transform the political landscape, has been disappointed before. It is not entirely surprising that after various well-intentioned dreamers ultimately failed to bring about real change, many Israelis turned instead to more pragmatic, expedient politicians like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet Lapid, with his commitment to working with both the most staunchly religious and the most ardently secular, and his desire to work not just for a two-state solution but for domestic progress, belongs in that first category. His victory speech – “I hope to change things for the better. For 30 years, this country has been about left versus right. Now we want to change things on the inside: national service, education, housing, a middle class that cannot finish the month” – could have been written by Sorkin, or spoken by Obama.

He is an idealist – a clever, politically attuned one for sure, but he is not a career politician (although in true Israeli style, he is the son of one). Enjoying success and stability as a journalist, he did not have to enter the muddy waters of Israeli politics.

He has not been particularly vocal in terms of foreign policy – although he vowed last year not to join any government opposed to diplomatic negotiations on the peace process – but the consensus is that he is pro-peace, and the suggestion is that he is at least aware of international opinion and how Israel can damage itself with settlements or stubbornness.

That is not to say he is only a naïve dreamer; he is aware there is no perfect solution – “we’re not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians, but for a divorce agreement we can live with” – but appears at least to believe an imperfect one is possible.

Perhaps Lapid is no different from the scores of other ambitious and self-serving politicians who have gone before him, flying in on an “outsider” tagline only to become as “insider” as the rest. Perhaps – and as yet it is unclear whether he will enter the coalition or become the main opposition player – all the hopes and aspirations shared on the campaign trail, from drafting the strictly Orthodox into army service to building a fairer economy, will disintegrate once the messy business of governing gets in the way.

Only time will tell. But, after months of scaremongering about a sharp rightward turn for Israel, it can only be positive that a moderate centrist who still believes in all that “hopey changey” stuff has emerged as kingmaker. For a country founded on the dreams of figures like Theodor Herzl, Rav Kook and David Ben Gurion, Lapid’s rise can only be a good thing for Israel and for the wider region.

To see the original and read the comments, click here.

Delta’s fantastic Frankenstorm social networking

With tickets to New York to fly last Tuesday night, at the first reports of the Frankenstorm (or Hurricane Sandy, for those not on Twitter) I started to question whether I’d get there. By the Sunday afternoon, with flights being cancelled all over the shop, evacuations of huge areas of land and states of emergency declared in several states, getting there looked even less likely.

So I decided to tweet Delta, the airline I was due to fly with, to find out how to proceed if my flight was cancelled. Their account looked fairly active (plenty of companies have Twitter accounts that haven’t been touched for weeks or even months) and I thought it was worth a try. At this point, my flight was still set to depart as scheduled, but I wanted to know their policy on refunds and rescheduling.

So far, so impressive. First thing on the Monday I did as they asked. More flights were being cancelled and the news about the storm wasn’t good, but my flight was still supposed to go ahead.

So I got on with my day, until late afternoon – with the news out of the East Coast getting progressively worse – when I checked my flight. “Cancelled” it read, in glaring letters. I followed the steps showing me how to reschedule online, but inevitably that didn’t work. After a lengthy period on hold, we discovered that having booked through a travel provider, Delta’s UK staff were not prepared to help. But the provider claimed not to know of the cancellation (then closed for the day, with no option for an out-of-hours solution) leaving us in a Catch 22 situation.

So I sent a tweet.

After another 40 minutes on hold, I checked my phone. Delta had replied, and I couldn’t have asked for them to be more efficient. After asking for my confirmation number, they soon responded with an offer of a flight for Thursday, with a stopover in Boston. Not only that, but they offered to extend our flight free of charge a day later than we were originally due to fly back. I asked for them to email a confirmation, and within 15 minutes I had one in my inbox. I checked my reservation online, and voila – my new details were in there.

The fact that I was able to change my flights – during the worst storm to hit the East Coast in a century – is a credit to Delta. But if I’d only tried via the phone line, I’m fairly sure I’d still have been at square one after the storm hit. The fact that I did this via a set of Twitter messages is fantastic. This is exactly why social media is so important for companies. Delta should be congratulated on a job well done.

My week in writing

With a show at the Tate this year, the Pre-Raphaelite painters are enjoying something of a renaissance. After being alerted to a lecture that was taking place in London revealing that William Holman Hunt – one of the movement’s founders – had lived in Jerusalem for several years and painted there, I decided to investigate further.

As I discovered, Holman Hunt built a home and a life in the Middle East; a daring feat that none of his fellow Pre-Raphaelites attempted. Not only that, but a look back in times revealed him to be on a par with Theodor Herzl in his passion for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the region. His letter on the subject, in which he offered to pay some money to3ward such a scheme, made for fascinating reading.

This week, I also followed up on the ongoing dispute over Jewish education at Calderwood Lodge in Glasgow, and received reassurances from several venues set to host Israeli dance company Batsheva next month that the tour would go ahead, despite the efforts of boycott supporters. And in another look back at the past, I learnt about the refugees from Nazi Europe who were able to stay in Britain by working as servants.

In Comment I discussed whether the British Jewish community should drop the tradition of observing two days of the festivals, and published two thought-provoking pieces on Ed Miliband and the disturbing trend of “Price Tag” attacks by extremists in the West Bank.

Away from the JC, I wrote for the Independent’s “Independent Voices” section on the embarrassing Jewish Mum of the Year programme on Channel 4, questioning the purpose of such television. In Optima magazine I discussed the growth in the use of sleeping pills and other remedies for insomnia.

Jewish Mum of the Year: Yet another TV programme which supports stereotypes

I wrote a piece about the Channel 4 series for the Independent’s new Indy Voices site:

“I feel like we’ve been Gypsy Wedding-ed,” a friend complained on Facebook last night.

“Now I know what it’s like to come from Essex,” said another. My reaction to the first episode of Channel Four’s Jewish Mum of the Year competition? Not my community, again.

The show, essentially a contest in who can best conform to the worst stereotypes about Jewish women, comes hot on the heels of other Jewish-centric documentaries, including Paddy Wivell’s BBC Wonderland programme about the Orthodox community of Stamford Hill, A Hasidic Guide to Love, Marriage and Finding a Bride and the follow-up, Two Jews on a Cruise, and Strictly Kosher, ITV’s study of Manchester’s most colourful Jews.

Of course, other communities have also come in for scrutiny, from the “hilarious” nuptials of Irish Travellers to the activities of the youth of Essex, Liverpool and Newcastle. Life in a minority can be fertile ground for comedy writers, as the seven-series run of The Kumars at No. 42 shows.

When Channel Four advertised the second series of Gypsy Wedding with the tagline “Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier”, they came in for a fair amount of flack, and last week the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it was irresponsible, offensive and reaffirmed negative stereotypes. The deputy chief executive of the charity that publishes the Travellers Times criticised the series for making the community “look totally feckless, not really to be taken seriously as an ethnic group”. “It just confirms prejudices,” said Jane Jackson.

In truth, I’m not sure taking a look at a minority group for entertainment is necessarily offensive, or in any way made with racist intent, but I do wonder what the point is.

Read the full version of this somment piece on the Independent website.

My week in writing

This week was our Rosh Hashanah issue, a bumper edition for the New Year.

I spent part of the week working on a follow-up to the story broken by my former colleague Jessica Elgot last year, about the historic approach to the burial of stillborn babies by synagogue authorities.

A year on, it was wonderful to find out how attitudes have changed and see first-hand that parents have been able to erect memorials after discovering the truth of where their children were buried. It is still unspeakably heartbreaking to see rows of graves for babies who never got a chance to live, but it is undoubtedly right that the families can mark those they lost in this way.

This week I also wrote about the MPs using the legacy of the Iraq war to draw conclusions about the Iranian threat, a boost to scientific collaboration between Britain and Israel and the decision to honour the founder of the Paralympic Games by naming a medical clinic in the Olympic Village after him. When I interviewed Sir Ludwig Guttmann’s daughter earlier this summer, she told me how proud her father would have been to see his dream realised in the city where it all began. If there is one (non-athletic) legacy of London hosting the Games, it is that the phenomenal story of a refugee who changed so many lives has been widely acknowledged.

I blogged about conspiracy theories, Mossad and the tragic Al-Hilli murder, concluding that “questions are not the same as ancient conspiracy theories, rolled out time and again to point a finger at the Jews”. With rumours swirling this week that the filmmaker behind the film denigrating Mohammed was Sam Bacile, an Israeli Jew – rumours that of course turned out to be nothing but a slur, with the producer identified as a Coptic Christian from California – this is sadly a point that needs reinforcing.

In Comment this week, I expressed my despair over the endless cycle of boycotts and protests that occurs, it seems, whenever an Israeli artist or performer is invited to Britain. I was also pleased to feature an essay by the British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, in which he argued that Israel must fight a battle of hearts and minds for the British centre. Perhaps the most poignant paragraph was when he remarked: “I wish I did not have to address the threats to Israel or reaffirm that Britain believes in Israel’s existence and legitimacy – the British envoy to Sweden never has to say that we support Sweden’s right to exist.” If only the Middle East could get beyond arguments of existence to work for concrete progress and a two-state solution. The costs of failing to do so are only to clear; this week we ran my interview with Marsha Gladstone, whose teenage son was killed by a suicide bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv ten years ago this month.

Last but not least, on Friday I received a lovely thank you letter from Lord Janner, following my interview with him about his work to transform Holocaust education in this country. He’s an inspirational figure and it was a pleasure to speak to him.

The Granville Gunman and Twitter

If, as I do, you live on a small and rather insignificant road in suburban north London, it’s not an everyday occurrence to see said location being reported as the scene of a crime. Especially not when the situation involves a stand-off between a gunman and armed police officers.

But today my little tiny road got its five minutes of fame. It started with a tweet from Barnet Police, a tweet that piqued my interest.

Within minutes, Twitter (albeit a limited number of geographically concentrated users – it’s not  a huge road) was abuzz. The police followed up with an explanation: “Police had reports of a man believed to be in possession of firearm. Police are trying to bring this to a peaceful conclusion.”

The Shomrim, the Orthodox Jewish security network, swiftly added this detail: “Armed Police are restricting access. Avoid area if possible”.

And then the rumours went a-swirling, some factual, others totally nonsensical. According to various sources, including local press and interested onlookers, the lone gunman was in his mid-50s and recently unemployed, on the 14th floor of a block of flats. Residents were being evacuated, or refused entry to the road. There were police helicopters, television crews, and this little gem, courtesy of the Times Series newspapers; ““He put a bottle of Jack Daniels, a tin of spinach and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale down and said ‘There’s a little present for ya’.”

A few hours later, there seemed to be no clear resolution. I headed home, wondering whether I’d be allowed back into my flat, visions of various police dramas running through my head.

As it turned out, all was quiet on the Granville front, although the road was awash with policemen and, curiously, a fire engine. A police officer at the other entrance to the road said it was fine to go through. I asked whether there was any update and unsurprisingly, he remained tight-lipped. But minutes later, safe in my building, Barnet MPS tweeted again:

And so ended the drama of the Granville Gunman (as I hashtagged him), though the police will no doubt release more information in due course. A bit of excitement for the residents on a cold January afternoon, but nothing serious.

But the incident offers yet more proof of Twitter’s influence. As a journalist, I’d probably have found out about this sooner rather than later, even had it not been for Barnet police’s tweet. But most members of the population don’t have access to police press departments and many, if not most, don’t follow the local media religiously.

Social media does many things – and certainly, as today’s events demonstrated, it can misinform or spread panic – but as a way of getting information to the public promptly and efficiently, it’s pretty darn effective.