By Lloyd Levy
EILAT, Israel — What a tonic to escape for a few weeks from the darkness of Britain to the light that is Israel. Britain is dark, not merely because it is winter and the weather this winter has been dreadful, but dark in its growing anti-Semitism.
Almost weekly in Britain we have public figures trotting out ancient Jewish conspiracy theories. This week it was reportedly Lord Ahmed, who blamed a recent Court action for a traffic offense, as being a Jewish conspiracy.
A week or two ago it was a Member of Parliament reportedly coming out with an anti Jewish diatribe.
Leading newspapers occasionally publish cartoons that show Israelis eating children or wallowing in blood, which are taken straight from Nazi and Middle Ages iconography.
Yet here in Eilat, it is nearly 100 degrees, and the country is undergoing a historic moment with the new Coalition government now in place. Israelis have voted in a new generation, in the persons of Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennet, who now become absolutely major players in Government.
The voters no longer want to ignore internal problems that have been festering for decades, unattended to because of external threats. Israel faces no serious threat from its immediate neighbours. Egypt and Syria are disintegrating, and the Palestinians are split between Hamas and PLO.
Thus the Israeli electorate has now turned to trying to solve internal issues, such as the concessions over army service, marriage, and education, that some religious factions have had for very many years.
The old vested interests are being replaced, albeit no doubt by new ones.
Ironically, the “Arab Spring” has come to Israel big time, yet the surging democratization the name implies was only ever a fantasy in the western media as far as the Arab World itself is concerned.
*
Levy is a businessman who divides his time between London and Eilat. He may be contacted at lloyd.levy@sdjewishworld.com