If there really is a secret Zionist brotherhood running the world, why aren’t I a member?
Iknow that the Iranian regime is famously confused about quite a lot of things, but if they are right about David Miliband being a member of a shadowy Zionist conspiracy, I’ll be absolutely livid. That bloody man has all the luck, doesn’t he? I’ve been waiting to be invited into the secret brotherhood of Jews who rule the world for years now. Nothing. Not a kosher sausage. Not a bignosed sniff.
Although I did once have a very weird conversation with Vanessa Feltz. It was at the party after a premiere of some sort at the London Film Festival a few years ago, and I found myself next to her in the coat queue. I asked her what she thought of the film, and she fixed me with a curious look and said, ‘Well, it was just goyim doing goyish things, wasn’t it?’ Seriously. This actually happened. I was quite taken aback. I don’t even recall what the film was. Could have been The Constant Gardener, could have been The Incredibles. Either way, it was a raging nonsequitur. I thought she was just showing off at the time, exercising her Jewdar, albeit quite strangely. In retrospect, I suppose it could have been something more sinister.
I wonder if that’s how they signed up David Miliband? It seems unlikely, but you never know. Now I think of it, I did also once meet another fairly senior Jewish female journalist who asked a lot of excitingly probing questions, but it turned out she was only trying to get me to date her daughter. And, in a spirit of full disclosure, I once had lunch with the Israeli ambassador after I wrote something rude about him. He was a fun guy. We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant, which I thought was brave on his part, although the food didn’t taste of faeces at all. At no point did he invite me to the secret control room under the Alps, or explain to me that I was actually an 11-foot lizard with destiny. He didn’t even mention Vanessa Feltz. I promise. I’d say. It just didn’t happen.
Still, far be it from me to question the wisdom of Tehran. If they reckon Miliband is part of a secret Zionist conspiracy, I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. Only, what sort of secret conspiracy would this be? Mr Miliband has earned Iranian ire by very publicly going to the Middle East, visiting Israel and criticising Iran for building the bomb. It doesn’t sound altogether secret, does it? Did he secretly conspire to do this publicly? Why? Or maybe I’m exhibiting precisely the sort of blinkered vision that gave Vanessa second thoughts. Some people, after all, reckon the Jewish conspiracy goes a good deal further than Israel. I had a letter from one such person just the other week, after writing about Rothschild, Mandelson and Deripaska meeting on that yacht in Corfu. ‘Rothschild, Mandelson and Deripaska,’ wrote my correspondent, greenly. ‘What do they have in common, eh?’ To which I replied rather irritably that what they had in common was BEING ON A YACHT IN CORFU, please do pay attention before writing in.
But no. He meant the way they were all Jewish. I was a bit surprised by this, because Mandelson and Rothschild aren’t, and it had never occurred to me that Deripaska might be. Plus, it seemed a bit dismissive of poor old George Osborne. But no, explained my correspondent, never mind all that, the important thing is the surname. You can tell they are all basically Jewish, apparently, because they have Jewish-sounding names. God, they’re cunning, these Jews. A name. It’s like a secret sign, isn’t it?
And they’re out there, all over the Western world, running things. Goldman Sachs, Weinsteins, Spielbergs, Rothschilds, Mandelsons and now Milibands, too. It’s fiendish! Although actually, now I think about it, it isn’t. In fact, I’m slightly scornful of any secret conspiracy to take over the world in which you can quite publicly identify conspirators by their surnames. I’d suggest that it is a crap conspiracy. Or, failing that, no conspiracy at all. Still, maybe I’m just bitter because I haven’t been invited in. Maybe you should ask Vanessa. She’ll know.
I’m off to Washington this weekend, for a carbon-criminal Thanksgiving. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I think I approve of Thanksgiving. British Christmas appears to have officially started about three weeks ago. In America, they’re not allowed to start Christmas until Thanksgiving is over and done with. I suppose that’s the whole point.
Anyway, I’m off to see my friend Jon, who moved out there last year because he met a girl and got a job with the BBC. He emailed me the other day, with firm instructions.
‘Very important,’ he wrote. ‘You will bring the following: 1. Galaxy chocolate (normal, not caramel). 2. Minstrels. 3. Ribena. 4. Hobnobs (chocolate and plain). 5. Proper tea bags. PG Tips preferred. 6. Fox’s Glacier Mints. Clear type essential.’ Most of this seems simple enough, although the Fox’s Glacier Mints were quite hard to get hold of, and I was vaguely worried that they’d stopped making them after Liam Fox failed in his leadership bid. It’s the Ribena that worries me. If I could take it as hand luggage, no problem, but they won’t let you do that, in case that man that the American robot just killed in Pakistan has shown you how to turn it into a bomb. In the hold, it will leak. Everything leaks.
‘It’ll be fine,’ declared Jon, who was unshakeable and testy in the face of my protest. But I’m not sure it will. How well do you know Ribena? It’s vicious. Viscous, yes, but vicious, too. When I was at school, there was an apocryphal story about somebody pouring a bottle into the boarding house’s water tank. They said the showers ran lilac and sticky for weeks. In the hold of an aeroplane, God alone knows the damage that two litres could cause. On the luggage carousel, every bag will be pink, and mine will be pinkest of all. We shall land with a big blackberry splodge oozing from the undercarriage. And just think of the environmental disaster, if the merest drop should fall into the Atlantic! Are we entirely confident that half a cup of Ribena could not tinge an ocean, from icebergs to tropics and beyond?
I’m thinking plastic bags and sticky tape, and plenty of both. We shall see.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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