"they have always maintained that Israel has no right to exist"

Listen to the audio (5 min 54 sec)

Transcript

Just ten minutes’ walk from bustling downtown Jerusalem is the district of Meah She’arim, home to the most inaccessible ultra Orthodox Jewish community in the world. It is a labyrinth of narrow, winding alleyways, and the apartment blocks are rickety, cramped and overcrowded. This is a poor community where life is dominated by religious conservatism and a dislike for outsiders. Enter this neighbourhood improperly dressed, and you risk being pelted with rubbish or stones, or even attacked with mace gas.

In the heart of this labyrinth is a prominent building with a large black flag hanging horizontally from the roof, symbolising a state of perpetual mourning. On the walls are signs in Hebrew, English and occasionally Arabic: “Zionists are not Jews, only racists,” says one. “Arabs yes, Zionists no,” says another. “Zionism is the holocaust of the Jewish nation,” says a third, and finally: “we mourn the 62-year existence of the state of Israel.”

This is the headquarters of the Neturei Karta, or “Guardians of the City,” one of Israel’s most controversial radical sects. Their male followers look no different from other Ultra Orthodox Jews, wearing black coats and hats, and bushy beards and ringlets. They live in Jerusalem and have been there since before Israel was established, but they have always maintained that the State has no right to exist.

Inside the building, amidst the sound of chanting from a distant room, and surrounded by bookshelves that strain under the weight of leather-bound scriptures, sits Rabbi Meir Hirsh, the leader of this organisation. A diminutive man in his late forties, he conducts himself with an air of considerable gravity. “God exiled us from our land two thousand years ago because of our sins,” he tells me in a surprisingly sonorous voice, “and He forbade us to return until the Messiah comes. The Zionists have rebelled against God’s will, captured Israel and turned it into a secular state, destroying the very root of Judaism. For as long as the State of Israel exists, “ he continues, “I will be telling the world that true Jews hate Zionism and everything it stands for. This is my life’s mission, like my father before me.”

It is significant that Rabbi Hirsh mentioned his father; he has recently died, leaving his son to shoulder the burden of leadership alone. Moshe Hirsh was a legendary figure, who led the Neturei Karta to prominence over a decade ago when he accepted a position in Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian cabinet, as Minister for Jewish Affairs. In this role, Moshe Hirsh argued consistently that Jews should be living as minority religious communities within an Arab-controlled state of Palestine. “For thirty years I never left my father’s side,” says Rabbi Hirsh as the sound of chanting rises and falls in the background. “He was a righteous man, and a close friend of Arafat. During the intifadas we met Arafat every two weeks. Arafat was a wise leader, and very genial.” And, the Rabbi insisted, absolutely not corrupt.

It is the substantial links between the Neturei Karta and the Palestinian factions that alienates them from mainstream Orthodox opinion.  Although some Orthodox groups have a degree of sympathy with their rejection of the secular Israeli state, consorting with the enemy is one step too far. In recent years, representatives of the Neturei Karta have been ramping up their high-profile relationship with Israel’s most hostile neighbours. In 2006 they were welcomed with open arms by President Ahmadinejad in Iran, and this year they spent the Sabbath as honoured guests of Hamas, after entering the Gaza Strip with an aid convoy. The photographs from events such as these are striking. The sight of black-clad Ultra Orthodox Jews being embraced by Ahmadinejad and Hamas leaders can only stick in the throat of the vast majority of Jews around the world.

“Our Arab friends have never shown us any anti-Semitism,” says Rabbi Hirsh, “because we have no quarrels with them. Through using our influence with Hamas and Fateh, we have been able to stop many suicide attacks. We tell them they should be targeting soldiers, not ordinary people.”

I put to him that it is a tribute to Israel’s democracy that the Neturei Karta is tolerated at all. He shrugs. “We exist because God wills it,” he says simply.

I find it a relief to leave Meah She’arim and rejoin modernity. With the aid of an Arabic coffee, I sit in a café and reflect. The existence of the Neturei Karta is symptomatic of the complexity that surrounds one of the most intractable conflicts in the world. This is a region where politics is as tangled as the Gordian Knot, and resists all attempts at simplification.

'Bus Boy' by Jake Wallis Simons

'those infuriating little orange diamonds'

Ok, so I know it’s the election tomorrow. The most important election for a generation and all that. But it gets right up my nose when my neighbours put political signs up in their windows.

Several of my neighbours here have done that this week. All Liberal, as it happens. You know, those infuriating little orange diamonds. But what’s so liberal about intimidating your local community for political gain? Do they really think that, as I’m about to put a tick on the ballot sheet, I’ll be hypnotised by weeks of subliminal suggestion and be magnetised towards the Lib Dem box? As it happens, I’m a swinging voter. I’m not sure which way the prevailing winds will blow when I cast my ballot tomorrow. But I think I might vote Tory, just because my neighbours don’t want me to.

And what if I was a Tory? How would I feel then? Would I dare to put a ‘vote for change’ sign up in my front window, in defiance of the burgeoning sea of Liberalism lining the houses where I live? And if I did, what then? Would I be ostracised? Would people stare through me, walk past me? Would they smash my windows in the middle of the night, or put a flaming turd through my letterbox?

I know what you’re thinking. If you were a Tory, you would deserve it. And maybe you’re right. But my point still stands: election or no election, people should keep their political opinions to themselves. This shameless bullying has to stop.

Now I’m off for a sherry and a duck shoot.

NB: As it turned out, Winchester went to the Tories — a surprise result. Obviously those Lib Dem stickers had the same effect on everyone else as they had on me! –JWS

'Bibi may have changed'

News is breaking this morning that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has caved in to US pressure. Sources report that he has tacitly agreed a freeze on the controversial plans to build several hundred new Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo, East Jerusalem. This shows a flicker of hope. Not only does it — tentatively — bode well for renewed peace talks with the Palestinians, it also shows that Bibi may have changed. Or at least, he has learned from past mistakes.

In 1996, when Netanyahu was last in office, Bill Clinton faced him down on a similar issue. Netanyahu, through evasive political maneuvering, sought to both placate and defy the US administration. The result was disastrous for the Israeli leader; at the first opportunity, the Israeli public voted him out of office, citing his handling of US relations as their primary motivation.

This time round, history has repeated itself — but thankfully, only up to a point. Netanyahu, in moving towards a compromise with the Americans that will enable forward movement, has shown that at last his traditional belligerence has been tempered by pragmatism.

Nothing is ever certain in the middle east. Tomorrow’s news may demonstrate that Bibi has changed his mind, and re-authorised the settlement construction in the face of US pressure. But today, at least, it seems that we’re looking at a new Bibi. And we can warm our hands around a small — and increasingly rare — flame of hope.

NB: The reports on which this blog post was based later proved premature. Netanyahu did not, in fact, cave in; he simply offered a temporary freeze on construction, which did not satisfy Washington. For Netanyahu to drop the building plans completely would have put him in extremely hot water with members of his coalition back in Israel. Subsequently, the Israeli premier stated that ‘construction in Jerusalem is like construction in Tel Aviv and we have clarified that for the American government’. So the story rumbles on. >sigh< –JWS

'the muffled drums of war have been gathering volume for some time'

“Netanyahu thinks he is the superpower,” remarked Bill Clinton bitterly in 1996, “and we are here to do whatever he requires.” Today, as the Americans and the Israelis refuse to budge on the fraught issue of settlements in East Jerusalem, this statement rings truer than ever. US-Israeli relations are at a historic low. But the current standoff is about much more than settlement-building. Underlying it is Washington’s concern that Netanyahu’s repeated gestures of provocation—like the establishment of Jewish heritage sites in the Palestinian territories—are drawing the region towards a conflict unprecedented since 1948. And this time there is a nuclear dimension.

The widely-reported Israeli “insult” to the US—announcing renewed settlement construction just as Vice President Joe Biden was in the country announcing peace talks—was so audacious that Obama’s tough response has been largely supported, even in overwhelmingly pro-Israel America. The same was the case for Clinton in 1996. This time, however, US-Israeli differences run far deeper. The muffled drums of war have been gathering volume in the middle east for some time, and Obama is seizing the chance to send a clear message: that the US will not be drawn into conflict by the Israelis.

Much has changed as a result of Israel’s near-defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in 2006. Traditionally, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has enjoyed a mythical status, based on a history of devastating operations such as the surprise attack on the Egyptian air force at the start of the Six Day War of 1967 (the entire fleet was destroyed before they could even leave the ground); the commando incursion into Entebbe in 1976 to rescue the Jewish hostages (Netanyahu’s elder brother was the only commando killed in the raid); and the audacious bombing of Saddam’s secret nuclear reactors in 1981. Not any more. Filled with renewed confidence, Hezbollah has since been resurfacing the roads near Israel’s border; next time the sabre is rattled, men-at-arms may be transported with far greater ease and efficiency. Israel, in turn, has intensified flights over Lebanese airspace. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, gave these operations a chilling significance: “we see Hezbollah expanding inside Lebanon and its growing influence, political and otherwise,” he said. “We wish to make clear to the Lebanese leadership that we see everything, and we will hold the parties which cause increased tension responsible.”

Yet such threats ring increasingly hollow. Although Israel attempted to restore the IDF’s battered reputation through the use of awesome force in Gaza in 2009, what these school-bully tactics really indicated was how vulnerable Israel is feeling. The assassination of the Hamas gun-runner in Dubai in January, which made headlines across the world, is another case in point. Every petty shoplifter is aware of the need to avoid CCTV, yet these highly-trained Mossad assassins neglected to avoid the security cameras. Could there be any doubt that a breadcrumb trail was being laid to Jerusalem? Clearly, the Israelis are desperate to gain the upper hand in the propaganda war. They are jittery and starting to overcompensate.

And with good reason. In a development that has far-reaching implications—and is of grave concern to Washington—the middle-eastern powers are beginning to align to a degree never seen before against the Jewish state. In February, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convened the latest in a series of meetings of all the major players in Palestinian militancy, seeking to reconcile their differences in order to unite against Israel. This has been mirrored throughout the region. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has started to warn, for the first time, of an alliance between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas in the event of war.

During talks with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad, the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” Emboldened by this, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem delivered a stark warning to Israel. “I tell them, stop acting like thugs,” he said. “Do not test the resolve of Syria. You Israelis, you know that war at this time will reach your cities. If such a war breaks out… it will indeed be total war.”

It’s impossible to tell how much of this is bluff. Nonetheless, Israel’s choice of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh for assassination in Dubai indicates that the strengthening of their enemies’ alliances is what most worries them: Al-Mabhouh was responsible for smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza, and as such is symbolic of this new level of cooperation.

When pressing for tougher sanctions against Iran in Febraury, Netanyahu’s logic was revealing. “At least we will know it’s been tried,” he said. In his mind, at least, it appears that military confrontation with Iran is inevitable. He has previously claimed in Moscow that “we are not planning any wars.” Ahmadinejad, on the same day, said Israel is “seeking to start a war next spring or summer.” Obama’s biggest concern is that all of these statements may be right. After all, everyone knows that Israel prefers not to wage war in the winter.

'I was determined to give as good as I got'

Denis Avey, even at the age of 91, cuts a formidable figure. More than 6ft tall, with a severe short back and sides and a piercing glare, he combines the pan-ache of Errol Flynn with the dignity of age. This is the former Desert Rat, who, in 1944, broke into — yes, into — Auschwitz, and he looks exactly as I expected. He removes his monocle for the camera, and one of his pupils slips sideways before realigning. It is a glass eye. I ask him about it. He tells me that in 1944, he cursed an SS officer who was beating a Jew in the camp. He received a blow with a pistol butt and his eye was knocked in.

If Avey’s story is difficult to believe, it is worth bearing in mind that it is not without precedent. In 1944, the British PoW Charlie Coward, a sergeant-major from the Royal Artillery who had attempted escape 14 times, infiltrated the camp dressed as a Jewish prisoner to gather intelligence from a British Jewish naval doctor interned there. After the war, Coward testified at the IG Farben trial in Nuremberg. His life story was made into a film The Password is Courage in 1962, starring Dirk Bogarde.

Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust authority, is in the final stages of researching aspects of Avey’s story with the intention of granting him the title of Righteous Among the Nations. “For obvious reasons this honour cannot be based on Avey’s word alone,” says Susan Weisberg, spokeswoman for Yad Vashem. “Each case must be substantiated by eyewitness testimonies and archival documents of the period.”

Avey, born in 1919 on an Essex farm, lived a rough-and-tumble lifestyle and grew into a daredevil. “I once jumped from a branch 45ft high, just for the thrill of it,” he says. “I had a shock of red hair and a temperament to match.”

He also had an affinity for the underdog. As head boy of his school, he used his physical strength to protect the weaker boys. “If there is one thing I’ve always abhorred it is bullying,” he says. “I could dish it out back then. Legislation wouldn’t let me now.”

These traits would serve him well at war. In 1939 he volunteered for the Army — because he was too impatient to wait a week for the RAF. “I ended up in the 7th Armoured Division, the original Desert Rats,” he says. “We operated behind enemy lines in Egypt. In 1942 we were ambushed. I was wounded and taken prisoner by the Germans.”

Avey was a troublesome prisoner. In the summer of 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz, in Poland, and interned in a small PoW camp on the periphery of the IG Farben factory. The main Jewish camps were several miles to the west. “I’d lost my liberty, but none of my spirit,” he says. “I was still determined to give as good as I got.”

But he knew immediately that this was a different order of prison. “The Stripeys — that’s what we called the Jewish prisoners — were in a terrible state. Within months they were reduced to waifs and then they disappeared. The stench from the crematoria was appalling, civilians from as far away as Katowice were complaining. Everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew.”

Remarkably, Avey was able to think beyond the war. “I knew in my gut that these swine would eventually be held to account,” he says. “Evidence would be vital. Of course, sneaking into the Jewish camp was a ludicrous idea. It was like breaking into Hell. But that’s the sort of chap I was. Reckless.”

According to the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, Avey’s hunch was right. “Auschwitz would not become known as a place of extermination until the spring of 1944,” he says. “When the world found out, there was outrage. After the war, British war crimes investigators were desperate to find PoWs with information about the camps.”

Avey’s audacious plan was made possible by Ernst Lobethall, a German Jew from Breslau, who worked alongside Avey at the Farben factory. Although fraternising was forbidden on pain of death, the two men became friends. “We spoke out of the corner of our mouths,” Avey says, “a difficult thing to do in German.”

He discovered that Lobethall had a sister, Susana, living in England. “I wrote to my mother, who told Susana that Ernst was alive. She posted 200 cigarettes to me via the Red Cross. Miraculously, four months later, they arrived. The cigarettes were worth a king’s ransom. Ernst suddenly became rich.”

With the cigarettes, Lobethall was able to buy boots and scraps of food that would later save his life. He also used them as bribes to help Avey to gain entrance to the Jewish camp.

“Despite the danger, I knew I had to bear witness,” Avey says. “As Albert Einstein said: the world can be an evil place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. I’ve never been one to do nothing.”

The operation was planned meticulously. Avey found a Dutch Jew with a similar physique and persuaded him to exchange places for a day. Avey knew that they marched past each other at the same time every week. “The Nazis were rigid, you see,” he says. “To them orders were orders, to be carried out exactly. That was what allowed me to find a way round them.”

Avey shaved his head and blackened his face. At the allocated time, he and the Dutch Jew sneaked into a disused shed. There they swapped uniforms and exchanged places. Avey affected a slouch and a cough, so that his English accent would be disguised should he be required to speak.

“I joined the Stripeys and marched into Monowitz, a predominantly Jewish camp. As we passed beneath the Arbeit Macht Frei [work makes you free] sign, everyone stood up straight and tried to look as healthy as they could. There was an SS officer there, weeding out the weaklings for the gas. Overhead was a gallows, which had a corpse hanging from it, as a deterrent. An orchestra was playing Wagner to accompany our march. It was chilling.”

They were herded through the camp, carrying the bodies of those who had died that day. “I saw the Frauenhaus — the Germans’ brothel of Jewish girls — and the infirmary, which sent its patients to the gas after two weeks. I committed everything to memory. We were lined up in the Appellplatz for a roll call, which lasted almost two hours. Then we were given some rotten cabbage soup and went to sleep in lice-infested bunks, three to a bed.”

The night was even worse than the daytime. “As it grew dark, the place was filled with howls and shrieks. Many people had lost their minds. It was a living hell. Everyone was clutching their wooden bowls under their heads, to stop them getting stolen.” Lobethall had bribed Avey’s bedfellows with cigarettes. “They gave me all the details,” he says, “the names of the SS, the gas chambers, the crematoria, everything. After that, they fell asleep. But I lay awake all night.”

In the morning, Avey joined other prisoners for a roll call, followed by “breakfast” — a husk of black bread with a scrape of fetid margarine. “It wasn’t enough to sustain life. Everything was designed to make you waste away.” They were formed into groups and marched out of the camp, again to the accompaniment of an orchestra.

“When we passed the shed again, I slipped in to meet the Dutch Jew,” he says. “That was hair raising. Although I trusted him, I couldn’t be sure that he’d turn up. And if an SS officer had looked in the wrong direction at the wrong time, that would have been it.”

The changeover went smoothly, and Avey returned to the PoW camp. “The Dutch Jew perished, but I’m certain that this short reprieve prolonged his life by several weeks,” he says. “Whether that was a good thing, I don’t know.”

In 1945, as the Soviet Army closed in, the Nazis abandoned the camp and herded 60,000 prisoners in the direction of Germany, in what would become known as one of Death Marches. Avey, who by then was suffering from tuberculosis, was among them. Around 15,000 prisoners died on the way. “The road was littered with corpses,” he says. “I saw a chance to escape and seized it.”

He found his way to Allied lines and was transported back home. Two days before VE Day, he arrived at his parents’ Essex farm half-dead with exhaustion and sickness. They had not expected to see him again.

If Avey’s story still sounds implausible, there is no doubt about the help he gave to Lobethall. Last year the BBC screened a moving documentary, during which Avey learnt for the first time that his old friend had survived the war and died in New York in 2001. Before his death, Lobethall recorded a video testimony for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, during which he emotionally recounts how his life was saved by Avey’s initiative and Susana’s cigarettes. This is the only moment that I see Avey’s steely façade falter.

“I was hospitalised for two years after the war,” Avey continues. “In 1947, I went to the military authorities to submit my information about Auschwitz. Their eyes glazed over. I wasn’t taken seriously. I was shocked, especially after the risks I’d taken. I felt completely disillusioned, and traumatised as well. So from then on I bottled it up, and tried to piece my life back together.”

Sir Martin Gilbert says: “By 1947, the trials of Nazi war criminals had been and gone. The war was over and people just wanted to get on with their lives. There was a whole mind-set of not really wanting to know what had happened any more. Many people had stories that nobody was interested in. It must have been very painful.”

Readjusting to normal life was hard. Avey became addicted to adrenalin, racing fast cars, travelling to Spain for the running of the bulls. He was plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. Even today he shows signs of trauma. He always carries an expensive gold watch, so that “if ever I find myself in a fix again, I’ve got something to fall back on”.

Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, when eyewitnesses are dying out and Holocaust denial is burgeoning, Denis Avey’s extraordinary tale has finally found its moment. “I’m talking to you so it will do some good,” he says fiercely, pounding his fingers on the table for emphasis. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

'a bit of a banker'

When the Chilcot Enquiry came on the television last week, I was in the waiting area of an office complex. Blair was on, and the volume was off. Not being able to hear what he was saying, I found myself focussing on how he looked. His body language was assured and domineering, with the trademark broad shoulders, floodgate hands and zipping-up fingers. But most striking of all was his complexion. Gone was the slightly grey, rather haggard face that had graced our screens daily until it was replaced by the loose-hung Brown visage in 2007. In its place was a Blair with a tan. Not a sun-bed tan, or a makeup tan, or an artificial spray-tan. A genuine, skin-pigment tan. It made him look smug, and insincere, and tremendously rich. He looked like a bit of a banker.

In the run-up to the Chilcot Enquiry, Nick Robinson remarked that Mr Blair was being prepped by various ‘friends’ in tactics and the art of evasion. Was I the only one to wonder what old Spinning Tony could possibly have left to learn on these subjects? Nevertheless, a great deal of forethought had obviously gone into his appearance in the Chilcot dock. So how did his wardrobe assistant, or personal grooming adviser, or whoever, neglect to note that the man’s overt tan was the moral equivalent to a flashy Rolex on the wrist of an RBS Director? Surely they must have tan-remover for emergencies like these? Or some form of herbal grey-out? Couldn’t Cherie have leant him Carole Caplin?

The public are angry at Mr Blair. So angry, in fact, that his newly bronzed countenance has eclipsed the pasty mugs of scoundrel MPs as the focus of the nation’s wrath. And with good reason. Not only has Blair fudged, manipulated, squirmed and spun his way from here to Baghdad and back again, he has been quietly amassing a fortune on the after-dinner circuit (not to mention the book deals). None of us, of course, would give up the opportunity to earn money by talking guff. But then, we weren’t the ones who were responsible for sexing up the dossier and sending hundreds of our troops – not to mention the Iraqis – to their deaths.

The Blair team neglected to appreciate that their man needed to look wan, contrite, ashen, as if he were feeling some modicum of the pain in the hearts of the bereaved families sitting behind him. He needed to smile rarely, if at all; he had to demonstrate, in his body language as well as his words, that he was treating the enquiry with the gravity that befitted the thousands of innocent deaths. Instead we had the tan, the gleaming teeth, the swagger. What all this communicated, of course, in a way that Blair’s highly polished words never would, was a central, shocking truth. In a modern democratic country such as ours, one man is beyond the reach of the law. Blair is untouchable, and obviously he knows it.