Brian of London here and I’m back in Israel. While I was away skiing in France I passed 3 years since I became an Israeli. So much happened while I was away but because I had only limited connectivity (iPhone and iPad worked at the hotel but not my Mac – I’ll write about that later) so I had trouble keeping up. Skiing and looking after kids is hard work and I didn’t have any energy for following depressing news from Israel.
I did talk to people on chair lifts and hopefully I changed a few impressions about Israel. So many people have such distorted views: I did sit with one person from the UK who had come to Israel with an open (but initially negative) mind. He had that reversed by spending 10 days in Israel. That was good to hear. French people I spoke to would tip-toe up to the topic of Islam but were very nervous talking about it. Clearly many, many people see a problem but don’t know how to express themselves. Somehow we need to retain the ability to criticise the ideology without criticising all the Muslims: our media does it’s best to make that impossible in most peoples’ minds.
And as we read of a shooting at a Jewish school in France today, it seems Europe is not a friendly place for Jews these days.
