It’s strange what can bring the memories rushing back. Finding a clip of Sir William Walton’s ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ for another purpose this morning did it for me.
In 1981, the Scottish National Orchestra Chorus were invited to tour Israel. The chorus needed augmenting and the call went out to the Embra Festival Chorus. Mrs M. signed up. More importantly, hangers-on were encouraged and I signed up too.
Started badly. Drove through to Glasgow Airport and stood in line for hours as Israeli security guards went through all our possessions. This was, of course, in the dear old, dead old days before 9/11 and we were just not used to such levels of intrusion. We had a Christmas gift from my brother-in-law for a Christian Arab Israeli friend (a length of tartan cloth) and they made us unwrap it entirely to check it out. There was only one black chorus member who was accompanied by his black hanger-on wife, and they took them, and only them, away and searched them privately. The tour might have ended right then, had not said black member told us all to forget it.
We landed at Ben Gurion Airport on 27th December 1981 and were bused to a kibbutz just shy of Jerusalem. Non-religious and a total joy. Friendly people who loved their country.
It was like that for the rest of the trip. Usually, totally smitten by the country and its people but, just every so often, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Mrs M. was rehearsing most of the time but I was free to wander and did. Walked miles from the centre of Jerusalem to find the flat where the friend’s family stayed and handed over the gift. They were watching Jordanian TV when I arrived and she was out. Their English was almost non-existent but I got through it with sign language and a couple of explanatory photographs of Peter with their daughter and the coffee was good.
Went to Yad Vashem and wept at the Eternal Flame but then got seriously upset about the fact that there was a room which appeared to be equating our holding camps in Cyprus with the Nazi concentration camps.
Tried to change money in an old Mandate building and almost got homicidal, firstly because the locals did not believe in queuing and kept pushing in front of us goyim and secondly because when I handed over my form, the teller crossed out ‘British’ and wrote ‘English’ for my nationality. I went to critical mass when she assured me that it was the same thing.
Actually, this is all turning into a bit of a rant and I have a lot more to write about that trip. Suffice it to say in what has become Part 1 that the trip gave me a belief in the right of Israel to exist. I am not an uncritical supporter of what they have done, and are doing, to survive but I am on their side and I don’t think that will ever change now.
I leave you, for now, with one of our very dated photographs from that trip. In those days, you could walk up to the Temple Mount, wander freely around and then take off your shoes and go into the Dome of the Rock. One of the most moving religious sites that I have ever visited.
Boadicea's Chariot 
à demain, John. It’s much too late to comment sensibly on your post.
Wouldn’t go if you paid me!
I do remember in my youff lots of people going off to work in kibbutz, never could see why considering they were gentiles and getting raped going to India overland to mong out with the harikrishnas.
Never understood any of it!
1981? I was living in Atlanta, that autumn we did Appalachia and the Smoky Mountain trail with Great aunt Anita. That was a sight for sore eyes, GAA versus the knuckle dragging prehensile toed religious nutters of the remote valleys. Beyond rubies! More like two inter galactic species meeting for the first time. Star Trek had nothing on GAA! But at least one was quite safe they never shot at whites.
CO, you conjure up visions of you starring in Deliverance….
JM, I’ve visited Israel three times – twice on biz and once as a tourist. The contrasts between them were remarkable; suffice to say that I met many unbiassed, genuinely friendly folk while working and very few while on holiday! Incidentally the mercenary arrangements surrounding the religious sites, particularly by the river Jordan, were quite sickening, leading me to understand why the NT tells of the moneylenders being cleared from the Temple.
A lovely read John, thanks for this.
*English*???? *English???* Would have liked to have seen your critical mass look. 🙂
Good evening, CO. Please rest assured that I would never dream of paying you to go anywhere. My parsimony comes, of course, with the territory (north of Hadrian’s Wall, as you well know). But I do think that my Auntie Dolly could have had your GAA for her tea –
http://embraforever.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/in-memory-of-an-unsuitable-aunt/
Still waiting for the story of the Falls Road, fur, heels and full volume, cut-glass English accent hectoring, by the way. Un bel di vedremo!
HI, Janus – exactly right and possibly explains my ambivalence. That first trip was a curious mix of work and tourism. When I was with Mrs M. on the official bits, the locals were, in the main, very friendly, welcoming and hospitable. Out on my own with the other hangers-on and doing the tourist hot-spots, we saw a different side.
I modelled myself on Sean Connery in his best Bond ever mode, Jahn1. Total sang froid but, had I but had my Walther PPK with me, she would have been history.
valzone, good evening and thanks. If it gave you half as much pleasure as your photos give me, I am happy.
Intriguing view of Israel, John. I have never visited, but your view very much tallies with friends who have. I think the undercurrent is very much to do with the perception that they have always had to fight for their existence and this doesn’t look set to change in the near future.
Difficult one but yes, I can understand why.
JM I suspect they would have amused each other.
Autumn 1995, I was, as usual, lost in a pile of medieval documents in the PRO when Bearsy phoned to say that he was being sent to America, then to Israel and back to the States …
“Not without me!”, I cried. There wasn’t much that could distract me from my research – but an opportunity to visit Israel could – and did.
I have to say that our experience of Israel differs from those here. Bearsy declared that he’d never do business in Israel again, and would echo Christina’s comments that nothing, but nothing would ever drag him back – whilst I, in my wanderings, found nothing but friendliness and courtesy.
It was an interesting trip – but it was the leaving of Israel that is indelibly marked in my memory. We booked into a pre-flight facility in Tel-Aviv only to find that we were subject to what, dare I say, was a Gestapo like interrogation for nigh on an hour. Why, they demanded did I have two passports, why didn’t I have the same name as the man I claimed to be my husband, and why was I going to the UK while he was going back to the US, and they were just the simple questions. All three of us ended up shouting at our interrogators – which, of course, did not help one bit!
During the course of this ‘interrogation’, a family of Orthodox Jews arrived, were smiled at and their luggage booked in… we queried why they were not subject to the same ‘security’ checks that we were… smug smiles was all we got for an answer.
A week after I got back to the UK, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an ultra-orthodox Jew.
As a postscript, I’d like to add that on my flight back to the UK I sat next to an ex-army Israeli. He was a very angry young man, who had only recently learnt that Israel was not ’empty’ when it was settled and wanted his government to treat with the Palestinians. It was he who directed me to look behind the Israel-settlement myth.
Morning, Boa. I have been twice, once in 1981 and once in 2006.
The leavings were markedly different. In 1981, we were driven straight onto the runway and walked from the bus to our plane. Not a single security check. I’ll explain that one later in the saga.
In 2006, we had the same experience as you. Interrogated as to our movements while in the country, asked who we had met, all our presents and purchases unwrapped and examined. In our case, it was all done very politely and with smiles but it was quite obvious that it was only foreign gentiles who were being pulled out of line and subjected to this intensive and lengthy scrutiny. There was a party of 20 elderly and bewildered Italian nuns who got the full treatment as well. It took about half an hour and all that time, Jews of all nationality, including British, sailed serenely by with only the most cursory of inspections.
Mind you, that’s exactly what would happen in our airports if we adopted the approach of profiling passengers by race or religion that is so widely advocated here. I’m not saying it might not work, but I know from experience that it sure as hell causes massive resentment in the person so profiled.
Interesting, John. I suspected we were not picked out simply because of the colour of my hair! But, you are right it left a very nasty feeling – I don’t think I would have minded quite so much on the way in, but it seemed a pointless exercise on the way out.