Adressing Hair

Non-Chassidim tend to be miserably misinformed as to what actually goes on inside our community yet for some reason many seem fascinated by our lifestyle and customs. With my perspective clouded by my own hang-ups I tend to cover up much of what would seem interesting or special to the outsider for fear of having it, and by extension me, labeled quaint. So when Terence, one of my goyishe colleagues, asked to see a bar mitzvah I waited until one of my more secularised friends made one and wrangled him an invite to that.

It was a fairly nice affair and the food was about as good as can be expected with a Kedassia Hechsher (certificate of extreme kosherity). The men, of course, sat separately from the women but the potted separation wall was not watertight so the newly liberated Chassidim could join the closet and repressed homosexuals in discreetly proving their manhood by determinedly peering through the palm fronds at the fairer sex in mastication.

There are very few modern-chassidic families on the Hill. It tends to be individuals who have personally chosen to relax the arbitrary rules somewhat who form the bulk of this grouping. The ultra-traditional uncles, aunts, grandparents and siblings of this proud father were thus decidedly less so although they clumsily hid it behind loud, jovial Mazeltovs and convivial expressions of satisfaction that everybody could make it. The speeches pointedly ignored his parents and determinedly impressed upon the child how important tradition is, what wonderful and holy people his great-grandparents had been and how much he too can achieve if he only opens his heart to experience the sweetness of the true Torah way.

The patronising undercurrents were indetectable to non-yiddish-speaking Terry and he and his friend came away full of how nice and close everybody is, what interesting customs and food we have and what fun it must be to be a Chassid and have parties like this all the time. Terence presented his ‘fail-proof’ gift of a CD voucher from HMV and I chose not to mention that it would most likely be rescued from oblivion by the father of the Bar Mitzva; the boy himself in all probability never having stepped inside a ‘goyishe music shop’.

His companion, a clinical psychologist, who I later learned had been miffed when the waiter informed her that wine was available only for the men, declined to be drawn on her impressions of the gaggle of yachnes who shared her table and her only remark, as my wife and I walked them to the tube, was that the ladies there all seemed to have the same hairdresser. The discussion about Chassidic women and wigs that ensued put paid to talk of any other subject. She, it transpired, had never realised that my wife wears one although she has met her often enough.

“So why does she wear a wig then?” she asked.
I explained that, as her hair is one of the sensual and most beautiful features of a woman, a married one does not flaunt it in public but reserves it for her husband. I added, as we are trained to do, that to the uninitiated it might seem that wearing a wig defeats that objective by giving her a head of even nicer hair but that as psychologist she of all people must understand that paste jewellery might look real but does not straighten the spine and bring a gleam into the eye the way 15 carats of polished diamonds would. Terry, who has dealings with other Chassidim too, was not that easily convinced. He observed that many Chassidic women take their wig off when they come home and replace it with a cloth head cover or snood that is similar to the one Muslim women wear and far from attractive. "Indeed", he pointed out, "I find they are far more attractive when they come to see me than when they are home." My wife then continued to scupper my entire argument by adding that many Chassidic women shaved their heads altogether and the snood must be a far sight prettier than a bald pate even to the most forgiving of husbands.

I could see this discussion going everywhere I did not want it to and hastily nudged my dear wife to inform her of that. With the panache I have come to expect as much as respect she immediately put paid to it by launching into the telling of an old English joke of two women on a bus.
One leans over to the other and says, “I hope you don’t mind my asking but is that a wig you are wearing?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Oh. Are you sure? I won’t tell anyone.”
“Well it is not!”
“Are you absolutely positive, because..?”
“Oh, Ok then. Yes it is.” She snaps angrily.
After a slight pause the other one murmurs, “Really? It does not look it!”

Hi Jinx

One of the Jewish buildings I visit on occasion is is by unfortunate necessity fairly heavily fortified. This yomtov I was practically unmasked by a security officer, warned to look out for a misfit, who almost took me out. I had to pick up something from inside and, passing by in the evening, decided to make an unscheduled stop to get it. As I approached the door a guard stepped out of the shadows and stood looking at me. I greeted him with a ‘Hi’ and walked on. He followed me up the path and stood a few steps before the door slightly hesitantly, then, as I fumbled with the number lock in the dark, he called me over.
“Good evening Sir. Where are you going?”
“In.”
“Do you belong here?”

In any other circumstances his question could have been the subject of an entire blog. I was more concentrated on the message though than his poor choice of words and I did not take him up on it. And by the way I do strongly suggest the local constabulary have a brainstorm one evening on what the appropriate terminology is in establishing how any particular Chassid fits into the kinetic kaleidoscope of black they happen to be monitoring because the way they put their questions can sometimes be cringeworthy.

“Yes. Why?”
“Do you know the number for the door?”
“Yes.”
“Can you open it for me please?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I do not have the authority to let you in.”
“I just want to see if you know it.”
“If you would have just stayed where you were you would have seen if I got in?”
My glib logicism did not impress him and he insisted on being shown that I knew the number. I did that and went inside.

He was still there when I came back out, chatting to a colleague on the street who was sitting in a car. He got out as I approached and more or less accosted me, in a friendly sort of way, as I made to pass him.
“Hi.” I said.
“Good evening Sir. Can I speak with you a moment?”
My supper was going to be of the late variety I could see and resigned myself. After the preliminary few minutes of giving my name and address and speaking Hebrew, to show I could, and silently thanking whoever convinced the Muslims to circumcise their males and thus spare me the ignominy of having to differentiate myself, we established that I was not an Arab terrorist dressed up as a Chassid but a bona fide, true-blue man-in-black.

In return for my teaching him a few insider ways of recognising one of us I got me some information of my own. It turns out the guard had had his alarm bells switched on by my atypical behaviour. “Chassidim,” he told me “do not look strangers in the eye, they avoid eye contact with me. They also don’t greet me like an equal but like a child greets a policeman. Your laid-back ‘Hi’ does not fit the profile.”

I had a very long talk with him and I do not know at what stage it stopped being his interrogation of me (if it ever did) and became my interrogation of his of me. I learned a lot from it though and I now know why I always get such special treatment in the airport and why the Israelis take so long in letting me through. I don’t fit the accepted profile for a Hiller and I now know why.

Good Bye.

Chewing the Cud with Cloven Tongues

A guy whom I knew well when he was younger has developed into something of a personality. If I am not always proud of him I try at least to be proud for him because he did once really mean well. Now of course he has power and that does corrupt a man hard and fast. He has many powers vested in his hands, a heavy burden indeed for one who has little experience in the dealings with other men. He must make decisions on the spot, I reason, and sometimes overlooks the potential pitfalls of any seemingly minor mistake. If it is true that there is divine guidance, I ask him in my thoughts, and our Rabbi's decisions are therefore infallible that should make it even easier to have an appeals system because then what can there be to hide?

I believe that honesty and openness are the foundation and the cornerstones of justice and that no truly God fearing society can operate in secret and maintain its honour. In Stamford Hill there is a tendency towards ayatollaism that has to be stopped. None of us want Iran-style councils of bearded religiousists arbitrarily dictating standards by the reactions of their netherregional antennae.

In a modern society and having absorbed all the good of the culture surrounding us, we know we cannot have women persecuted and their children ejected from our school system just for having appealing shapes. We have watched our middle-eastern cousins as they chased each other to see who can glorify God the best. If we don’t want to wake up one morning and found ourselves the proud parents of our own criers ‘havoc’ we have to act now to maintain the balance.

Extremism is dangerous in all its forms and while everybody is free to be as holy as they wish it is incumbent upon a society to maintain the centre ground. Public funds that were not earmarked for special groups should be spent on the moderate and time-honoured true traditionalists and all groups should be encouraged to acknowledge that the centre ground is a legitimate Jewish area. All forms of segregation are dangerous and the tendency of individual groups to draw within and close ranks is unhealthy at best.

Stamford Hill does not need the imported boerism and insularism that that is becoming popular. Responsible leadership must encourage a healthy worldview and a positive attitude towards other religious streams. The positive parts of the Stamford Hill of yore were manifest. We spoke English and we got on with our neighbours. Some were more religious than us and some were far less but we still treated them as neighbours. In the YHS we had children of all different types; Gerrers Yekkes and Belzers and Sephardis and we got on with all of them too. We went to camp and we went to siyums and we met the other kids and we came out enrichened by the experience.

The climate being what it is I think anybody with half a brain must realise that the authorities will not tolerate religious councils of any sort that are completely outside their control. If we are to survive we will have to do what we Jews have been so adept at for so many generations and adapt. I don't beileve anybody is against having a responsible rabbinic council working in a transparent and justified manner. I think most of us would be happy having certain rules and regulations built in to the sytem. Nobody wants to see Stamford Hill losing what makes it special. I am however soundly against a system of trials-and-errors leadership where only the frummest one wins and where individuals are arbitrarily imposing their own irrational standards upon an unwilling public.

Now here is the odd part: He has agreed with me on every single one of these points when speaking to me (if maybe not in these specific words) yet I don't believe I have ever heard such sentiments uttered by any of our personalities. What am I to think?

Us Limeys

We did what was expected, we smiled and begged forgiveness. Of course none of us asked for forgiveness from our enemies; what could be more crass than putting someone on the spot like that? But we did politely beg all our best friends’ pardon and added at least one ‘surprising’ choice just to prove how very good we're being. So when we stepped up to Kol Nidre, feeling almost proud of our humility, we shed our genuine tears with saintly servility.

No matter that some family of sods sitting further back near the door happen to be watching their lives go down the toilet. “Who knew better than me how they had it coming to them? After all if they had listened to me in the first place they would never have been in this ‘shtuch’. If they would have asked my advice they would have done the right thing in the beginning and none of all this would have happened. But they had to be clever. They have to do things their own way. Nu! They did it their own way, so now we ordinary folks can shrug our shoulder and say “Sorry Mate, yer own bleedin fault!” and then turn back to our humble haughteur.

“Oh and just look at those Plimsolls on that child. If my children went out in shoes like that I’d… Something really should be done about that father. He seems to have a child every year and he doesn’t earn enough to buy shoes for them. Actually I should speak to Whatshisname about that. We should be thinking about paying him more. He will leave him Ch”V and it will cost us a whole lot more. Anyway, the kids need to have shoes.
Hey, what am I doing? Thinking business again, I am supposed to be thinking of tshuve”. The mind shifts back into its puritan pride.

It’s true that we don’t all have management positions or the power enough to hurt others directly. Those of us who don’t, often don’t have the ability to help those who got hurt either. But we, all of us, know we are ignoring something. We all know there is a little something that really should be done… Kol Nidre does not absolve us of that. You cannot be sitting in the same building as another whom you know to be crying out for help and ignore their call while you beg for yourself.
“Still, I do believe I did rather a lot of good this year and though I will, of course, show just the right amount of genuine remorse over the course of the coming day I don’t really feel He has any reason to show anything more than a token resistance before awarding me the full set of social benefits as befits a person of my rank.” You consider to yourself in your reasonable righteousness.

“Anyway, it’s good that that I managed to avoid ‘him there’ when he was doing the rounds of his forgiveness. Imagine if we had suddenly met face to face? Actually I am a bit surprised he feels happy going to Kol Nidre without having my forgiveness. Some people have a nerve! In his place I would never contemplate going towards Yom Kippur without having even tried to get my forgiveness. I wouldn’t give it of course. How could I? It would be like saying he was right all along. I couldn’t even! It would be like stabbing my own family in the back. I don’t even think He would want such forgiveness. But he should have asked. Shoyn, we can’t all be menschen. I have to continue with my complacent complaint."

And to think they say we have to learn to integrate!

No More Mr Nice Guy

So British academia has decided to try again to arrange a boycott of Israeli universities. Tony Blair is being advised to scrap Holocaust day and Red Ken gets away with comparing the Israeli army to Hamas. Meanwhile the government is advised that their foreign policy is to blame for the ‘growing resentment and rising radicalism within the Muslim community. You might quite fairly ask how these affect a Chassid living on the Hill, our yeshivas are not recognised anyway, we do not rely on the holocaust to define our Jewishness and Ken has never been our favourite politician anyway? The combination of all these is however sending a very clear message to British Jewry despite the fact that in their typically ingratiating manner Established British Jewry refuses to enunciate it in public.

The reason our wishes, feelings and sensibilities are being ignored is because everybody, from the Foreign Minister down to the mugger on the street, knows that the Jews will not fight back but bend over backwards to prove what model citizens they can be even as the BBC regularly slams our country as some bastard-state. Even as the British government sends officers to the airport to arrest the generals who risked their lives protecting us from the terrorists who have sworn to annihilate us, while terrorist clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi are invited to London and given the red-carpet treatment. Like our parents and grandparents in Europe we will determinedly remain silent and good while our rights and lives are stripped away, salami-style, slice by slice. Meanwhile the Muslim community, with none of our snivelling desire to please, will soundly prove that if they do not get their way they will bomb us, together with our hosts the crusaders (the new muslim in-word for Christians or westerners), to hades.

We will stand around smiling as the BBC invites 'Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan, of the Al Quds newspaper based in London, onto Dateline London, a weekly talkshow, to explain that Hamas is entitled to bomb civilians in Israel because it is called resistance. I actually did write to complain, seeing as Tony Blair had announced that all calls to terrorism anywhere were illegal and would be punished. It seems however that I had misunderstood; it was calls to kill WASPs that are illegal. Jews have to understand that they are different. A glib reply from the BBC informed me that they do not take responsibility for what interviewees say.

I am not sure what it will take for the EBJ organisations to actually realise that the water landing on their faces really is gooey spittle and admit it. How long it will take before they realise that all the years of ‘contributing to the community’ and proving to all sundry how ‘normal’ we are were a waste of time. That if we had had been a little more strident and unapologetic we might not have been such a walkover. What they can do about it now is another question. It would be illegal and foolish to argue for a more violent approach for our cause, just as foolish indeed as not to acknowledge it would help. What is realistic however is to take a page out of the American book and stop being so nice.

The real reason I say this is because I am watching the same thing happening in a microcosm called Stamford Hill. Some machers with more power than sense have started a campaign of denying admittance to the religious schools of girls whose mothers commit cardinal sins like wearing denim or looking too pretty. Sadly, because the very act of fighting back is likely to result in permanent pariah status for their entire family, nobody is prepared to fight back openly and the result is that a group of sad innocent little girls cry themselves to sleep each night dreaming of the dubious honour of going to the YHS or Beis Yaakov. The Rabbinate claims it is powerless to help although face to face they admit they disagree with this policy. How more British could they get?

Next week is Rosh Hashana. As we go to shul and contemplate the past year and the possibilities for the coming one I hope we all take a moment to consider what the result of our silence and inaction is and resolve to use the power we do have, whether it is persuasion or influence or just the power of the formerly silent masses, to help us all. British Jewry and Stamford Hill deserves better.

Sixth Sense

As an exercise in objectivity I was once given a newspaper report to read about the political situation in the UK. Its headline read “41% of Britons express confidence in the government’s handling of negotiation with Sinn Fein” (the political wing of the Irish Republican Army), or words to that effect. We were asked to write alternative headlines with the same information. Surprisingly enough, in our group of five only one came up with the obvious variation the coach was looking for. “59% of Britains express no confidence in the government’s handling of negotiations with Sinn Fein.”

A naïvely provocative email I received through the kosher grapevine gloatingly declares: “On August 15, 10,000 patriotic Jews were expelled from their homes and made refugees in their own country to fulfil the dictates of the US sponsored Road Map to Peace. There are approximately 6 million people in Israel .10,000 divided by 6,000,000 equals 0.00167.

“Two weeks later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in the southern U.S. and laid waste and complete desolation to the City with a population of 500,000. US News agencies are openly calling those displaced by the hurricane "refugees. There are approximately 300 million people in the United States. 500,000 divided by 300,000,000 equals 0.00167!

“Coincidence?
"Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, fulfil His word!" -Psalms 148:8”

It does not take a rocket scientist to pick holes in the mathematics. There were no 10.000 evacuations nor were the evacuees made refugees. The disengagement was as much a surprise to the Americans as it was to us and the entire population of New Orleans was not made homeless just for starters. Still devotees of the gematria (kabbalistic numerology) in Chassidistan willingly accept such drivel as the gospel’s word and divine proof of the ‘rightness’ of their cause.

Unfortunately we the ultra-orthodox, for all the time we spend studying those, often mind-numbing tracts and developing our ability to rebuild the complicated, logical reasonings of the Talmud, have no real training in demolishing an argument or picking it apart. Doing that to Talmudic logic is a one-way ticket to purgatory. Which is why I have to say, with all due respect of course, that to manipulate the learned elders of our community and get them to accept anything you like is child’s play, providing you choose your words right. Believe me, I have done it!

I was therefore only mildly surprised when the supreme leader for life of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth (a.k.a. the local Chassidic Rav) issued a decree a week before the disengagement forbidding the tying of orange ribbons to car aerials in Stamford Hill. Did our own street-savvy Rabbis feel it was too provocative for Londoners to see such open displays of disobedience to the democratically elected Sharon? Unlikely.

The four books of the Shulchan Aruch that function as the basis for all Halachik law are famously joined by the fifth: Common sense! Mine tells me that this was either an ingratiating sop to themselves to the marginal anti-zionists or a pathetic misjudgement of the sentiment on the street, that would prefer to see real issues addressed instead of children’s horseplay with ribbons. Still there is hope. Recent unofficial polls show a strong 20%* of members has faith in the Rabbinate and their ability to effectively manage and represent our community.

*Poll carried out on 5 subjects. Please take a possible sampling error of around 3% into account

The Disenchantment

As a vocal supporter of the disengagement the first pictures coming out of there have moved me more than I would have imagined. Contrary to many of my Chassidic friends, though by all means not all, I have always felt the presence of settlers in Gaza to be a mistake. It has been the death of far too many Jews, both the settlers themselves with their innocent little children who could not choose to be there and the soldiers forced to protect them. It was thus faintly disturbing to me, struggling to maintain the objectivity I yearn to properly develop and is vital to my survival among my British friends, to find myself intensely moved by the sight of those deeply religious people so desperately and earnestly clinging to the hope that God will come to their rescue in the last minute. My heart goes out even more to those who resigned themselves early and left, crushed. I have felt their pain.

I have to express my admiration for the devotion and the true commitment to an ideal that many of these religious settlers have displayed, although my innate scepticism does make me wonder how much of it is an American characteristic in its Jewish manifestation. It is hard to escape the fact that most of them seem to speak English better than Hebrew. Still they have put their lives on the line for something they passionately believed in and it heartbreaking to see them contemplating the notion that God really is not going to give them what they so believe He wants. The fact that they are so impervious to the plight of their neighbours living in squalor nearby is explained away by many of us as being a result of the atrocities carried out by the Intifadists. Maybe true, but explanations are no solution to the dehumanisation in our society this occupation must take the blame for. This is also sad testimony to the fact that religion can be a dangerous tool in irresponsible hands.

The world tends to see Chassidim (except for the Satmarers who claim to be anti-Zionist yet this evident only when things go sour) as radically right wing. The truth is a bit more complicated than that. While practically all Chassidim will probably agree with Satmar that the Zionist State is not a God-given present signifying a Historic return or Redemption, most, including much of Satmar, will admit to feeling an extremely close and deep-rooted connection to their historic homeland. It is not the soil-based farmer's love of land that the Pioneers developed and the Jewish Agency has nurtured though. We are not exposed to that in our schools so I doubt one will see the grief here on the hill that is surely being experienced by Jews all over the world. We also tend to see things more from the Halachic perspective and home in on the requirement to sacrifice all to protect lives. The disengagement when it argues ‘more security’ has a willing audience among us that was not apparent in the devious games the representatives we elected played with our voice.

For us the question boils down to whether the dismantlement of the settlements and withdrawal from those territories, originally designed as a punishment measure when Arafat was alive and what now looks suspiciously like a reward for terror, will actually bring about an end to the tragic loss of life that we were almost getting used to. I know that the promise of a return to violence announced by Hamas today is given in true faith, literally and figuratively, and the question really is will they be allowed to. I have to note that the grudging, petulant reaction of all the Palestinian spokesmen today does not bode well. I have not been blessed with the blind faith the settlers seem to have in abundance so I can only hope and pray that this is one of the times He chooses to listen to us and gives us all a little break.

Talking of which I am now signing out for a few weeks.

The Dress Code

The holidays are once again approaching. The one time of the year when it is acceptable to throw off the stifling yoke of our Chassidus delectus and officially put time and effort into having a good time. A holiday village is chosen from the list of places where it is known a minyan (ten men who get together for prayers) will be available locally. Ostensibly this is because one is supposed to pray with the required forum every morning and evening but my suspicious mind keeps noticing that the ones so extremely careful to have a minyan nearby are often the same ones who, when in town, prefer to chat with their friends outside while the ten get their job done inside.

The next thing to arrange is the wardrobe. Those who know Chassidim well will know that sartorially we are still somewhere in the darkest regions of sub-civilised Europe; our trademark long, dark suits now, ironically, being produced by the Hungarians as they break all records in dragging themselves forcefully into the very centre of the developed world. Those who know Chassidim intimately will know that our fashion statement carries on through all the way to the North Pole, by way of knee length white knickerbockers. Still, come August, and with the fumes of the Hill replaced by the bracing sea air, they put their hair up under a baseball cap, remove their topcoats and tread out incognito in their baggy suit pants, white shirts, pale yellow tzitzis and tailored waistcoats, often with a pair of clip-on sunglasses to make them look real cool.

Actually, although I do scoff a little, I do owe much to my garb. The Chassidic dress code by being so distinctive and quaint does look, to the lay person, like it conceals a Rabbi within. In the years that I was studying outside London I used to ride the train a lot. On the long inter-city rides I used to enjoy striking up conversation with fellow passengers. The atmosphere and the very fact that we knew we would never see or hear from one another again was conducive to some very frank and open conversations with people who must have felt they were talking to a Rabbi.

I spent hours counseling people for a multitude of sins I know nothing about. I once spoke to an Irish man who wanted me to agree with him that even when he used contraceptives against the wishes of his ‘Holy Father’ it was not wrong if he did not feel it was wrong. He called them French letters and I of course had no idea what he was on about. I agreed with him wholeheartedly that God would not mind him using his letters at all as long as he felt it was right - although as a Brit I secretly felt He would much prefer a letter from any other nation!

I was also recently surprised to learn that because we are seen as gentlemen of the cloth we are also privileged to be treated as such by many goyim. Just as it is not cricket to hit a woman but it is cricket to hit on her the same is true for a Rabbi. Indeed I must now begin to suppose that it is not only due to my winning ways that I have managed to sail unscathed through the storms my reckless tongue has sometimes unleashed.

I hope that my fellow Chassidim, as they hit the coast this year, will have the good sense to realize the impression they are making and appreciate and return any favour wherever they meet it. I pray even more fervently that they don’t abuse it, Heaven forbid, in a time when in the eyes of many the difference between one religious fanatic and another is only kappel-thin. My final prayer is that whatever they do they should please, please do it in a different village to the one I’ll be in.

Purple Hearts

Watching the meeting between the Muslim leaders and Tony Blair with the other government leaders really got me thinking. I was imagining in my minds eye how it would have looked had their current problem been ours. Suppose, instead of just producing the occasional isolated nut like Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, the settlers had started an organized campaign of killing or suicide bombing. We would all, naturally, be quick to point out that there is no justification in the Torah for this and indeed the Torah categorically forbids it! I suspect after the tenth incident nobody would believe us and all our protestations would fall on dead ears, just as the statements coming from the Muslim Leadership do now.

Of course the Chief Rabbi and his board would be joined by some others like, maybe Rabbi Gloria Nuerberger and the Editor of the JC, in a BBC studio to explain in our name that we profoundly abhor what was happening in the name of our religion. Then the Chief Rabbi would explain learnedly why it could not possibly be the Torah that was justifying such acts. Meanwhile in our home we would be laughing up our sleeves (ever so discreetly while the cleaning lady is around) at how all of a sudden he represents our religion for us while we do not consider the foods he eats to be kosher and we would not allow him to officiate at one of our weddings.

Let us get real. The people we saw nervously avoiding looking at the multitude of international TV cameras as they rang the bell at Number Ten do not represent the religious Muslim youth either. Whom they might represent, however, are the normal people of Arab origin who live in the capital and I believe it is important that we do extend our hand in friendship to them. Nobody knows better than we do what it feels like to be in a country where you don’t feel welcome. Furthermore our interests and theirs are much closer to each other than most people would imagine.

It is true they have duly earned our skepticism. The fact that their condemnation, of all the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Islam up till now, had to be drawn from them like pulling teeth speaks for itself. Still I believe that many if not most UK Arabs (it is impossible for me sitting next to one on the train to know if he is a Muslim or not) are against suicide bombings in principle. I was indeed very gratified to hear the one woman delegate at that meeting declare to the cameras that she roundly condems any suicide killing whether they occur in Iraq, Palestine or London. I dare say they don’t actually lose much sleep over what they might see as the occasional suicide bomb in Israel, but then, how many of us lie awake at night for the innocent citizens of Bagdhad? The fact does remain that the Muslim population of London is here to stay and so are we. We could bear a grudge and live under increased pressure for the next few years or we could extend a hand in friendship to those that are brave enough to take it.

The anti pullout movement in Israel came up with a scheme, actually borrowed from the architects of the Orange Revolution, for using the colour orange to symbolise their resistance to the disengagement plan. Far too late, supporters of the plan replied with blue ribbons to publicly counterbalance the enormous mass of orange-everything that seemed to spread like fire across the land. Indeed fashion outlets are complaining that it is becoming difficult to sell any orange clothes as people see the wearing of it as a political statement. What a delicious irony that the ones standing for withdrawal are the ones using zionist blue. I am a staunch supporter of such symbols because they tell me where I stand. When I am next to a group of teenagers wearing orange headbands I would of course not mention my personal opinion that disengaging is probably the smartest thing Israel has done since engaging, while I would be happy to say it to someone with a blue ribbon on his car aerial.

It is a shame that Londoners have not come up with a symbol to signify friendship. Something like an Our Nation England campaign, dedicated to creating better understanding between all the different ethnic groups in London. Their logo could be a purple smiley face to show that sex, colour and religion don’t matter. Anybody wearing that symbol would have singled him/herself out as someone who was willing to be friendly to anybody else who was interested too while the monies collected by selling the articles could be used to further the cause by organizing events where getting to know the other could happen. I believe giving people the opportunity to break out of the mold and come forward as a moderate might bring surprising results. It would certainly be more helpful for London and Londoners than all those inflammatory and divisive statements our Mayor Ken Livingstone is so intent on making.