At some point earlier this week I looked at my ‘notes for future PCs’ and thought there was so much to comment on I wasn’t quite sure where to start. So I thought I’d go to The Hope Café in the off chance I would bump into Sami and Lisa, or one of them, and conversation might help. Sure enough on Tuesday afternoon I found them both, sitting quietly at their favourite table and, armed with a double espresso, went over and interrupted them.
“Hey! Richard, how are you?” asked Lisa; “haven’t seen you since your fortnight in Portugal”
“God, that seems ages ago now; actually, over three weeks but it was a good time and now back into our Hove routines, the weather still lovely and warm. Hope it’s not a harbinger of a hard winter as some doomsayers are suggesting!”
“I hope not too; El Niño, this autumn and into next year, has a history of extremes. Incidentally, I follow Camilla Long’s column in The Sunday Times and couldn’t believe last Sunday’s. It covered the fact that an Iman, Hafiz Ashrafi, had been given an ‘interfaith’ award by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the USA. Clearly no one did much research about his views as the award was withdrawn days later when it was discovered that he had, inter alia, praised Bin Laden!
“Actually, that’s awful, Lisa. Seems rather symptomatic of everyone turning a blind eye to unsavoury issues, just for the sake of the PR.”
“But what incensed Camilla Long, and me when I read her article, was that Sarah Mullally had welcomed him, together with his wife, who was wearing a full niqab and his daughter, wearing a facemask. Mullally was an outspoken feminist and had said she would speak out against misogyny, although ‘when misogyny physically turned up at Lambeth Palace, she said nothing.’ The accompanying Times’ photograph was extraordinary.”
“Not sure where I stand”, interjects Sami. “A complex issue for sure but seeing someone wearing the burqa on the streets of Britain is very odd. We pussyfoot around the issue, most of my friends hate the fact that women are made to wear such a medieval form of dress when they are outside.”
“I hadn’t read the article, Lisa, but I’ll find it online. I must admit whenever I see someone wearing a burqa, I feel extremely sad for the individual underneath, and feel it has no place in British society. I do know that several European countries have banned its wearing, France for instance, since 2011, and Portugal last month brought in its own ‘burqa regulations’. I think Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, summed it up quite well: “In our view, anyone who comes to Italy to build a future here must learn our language, understand our culture and respect our rules.” Same for us; this hideous form of dress, and everything that is physically and mentally attached to it, must be banned here too. As a nation we believe in the equality of both the sexes and opportunity and mustn’t use our tolerant nature to justify acceptance of this form of clothing.”
“I think I got it” says Sami, ruefully. Lisa smiles; maybe she’s already thinking of writing an article about it for The Argus. Sami continues: “You know my parents were Anglo-Indians and when you British partitioned British India into India and Pakistan we had nowhere to go and ended up here?”
“Sorry Sami! Bit before my time!”
“Exactly. A little like the present-day situation with Israel and Palestine, which you helped create with the Balfour Declaration of 1947. We can’t rewrite history in the light of what has transpired since then; we have to make the most of it, for both the Jewish population and the Palestinian nation. Genuinely I think here in Britain we support the idea of a two-state solution but get incensed when Israel ignores the illegality of building settlements in areas of the Palestinian West Bank. I was pleased when the current Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband and himself a British Jew, announced in the House of Commons that the UK would officially recognise that illegality and impose targeted sanctions and trade bans on those Israeli settlements.”
“And then there were howls of protests from Jewish groups here in the UK, sort of ‘How could you?’. They can’t have it both ways! I imagine you’ve watched the Netflix series Fauda?” (Note 1)
“We have loved the first four series”, says Lisa “and read about the problems the producers had in trying to create a fifth series which covered the 7th October 2023 attacks on Southern Israel by Hamas. Wasn’t one of the show’s previous series’ producers, Matan Meir, blown up in a booby-trapped tunnel and killed?”
“Yes, I think so. I certainly read that the sister of Lior Raz, one of the show’s creators and the actor who plays the main lead ‘Doron’, and her children managed to stay protected in their house’s bomb shelter while Hamas fighters roamed around outside. It all gets a bit personal in a nation of 10 million! We have watched this latest series and it’s very good but, having read the warnings about upsetting scenes in the middle episodes, didn’t watch it after 9 o’clock; too emotional to guarantee a dreamless sleep!”
“We must watch it, although I am aware that Palestinians see it as anti-Arab and a racist tool of Israeli propaganda. Think I read that ‘it reduces a political conflict over land and rights into a simple narrative of counterterrorism versus blood-thirsty terrorists!’”
“I love talking to you two but now I need to run; thanks for your thoughts and enjoy Fauda!”
Richard 25th September 2026
Hove
PS Two days ago, Wednesday (23rd) marked the northern hemisphere’s autumnal equinox ie the sun at midday was directly over the equator and the length of our day and night are roughly equal.
Note 1 Fauda translates to mean ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’. It’s an Israeli show following a unit of Mizrahi Jews who go undercover among their Palestinian neighbours to root out terrorist plots. Mizrahi Jews are indistinguishable from Arabs and speak both Hebrew and Arabic.
