Most artists today are helpless creatures who think paint comes from tubes and clay from bags but da Vinci ground his pigments and Michelangelo forged his chisels. The Israeli artist Eran Webber too is practical. When his fellow sculpture students in Florence saw the quality of the wooden tools he made for himself, he began selling them as a sideline. For delicate modelling, like tear ducts and such, I’d be lost without the slender tool he carved me from willow more than a decade ago. 

If being raised in a Kibbutz made Eran handy, a spell in the army honed his discipline. As other students slouched in late to the drawing room, scrounging for pencil sharpeners and untangling their plumb lines, Eran’s easel would be set up, his Fabriano paper clean, his charcoals sharp. Time was precious. His grandfather was a promising artist forced to put his paints aside in the hard early years as a settler of Eretz Israel. His grandson knew that being an artist was a privilege. Eran advanced so quickly that he ended up teaching in Florence and finally returned home in 2013 to set up his own atelier in Moshav Habonim.

Last month in a story in The Guardian about the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct 7 massacre, I found myself reading about a remarkable artwork that Eran had created. Not a sculpture but an installation: “These beds are empty and under the sky,” he said. Two hundred thirty-nine in all, they fill the square in front of Jerusalem’s city hall. Each represents a hostage in Gaza. Beds of all sorts, all sizes. Most poignant of all are the babies’ cots. 

It seems like an episode from the Wild West: a savage raid, women outraged, children killed and kidnapped. A rescue mission after such a frontier massacre is the subject of John Ford’s film The Searchers. It is a kind of anti-Western by the first master of the form. John Wayne’s performance as one of the brutal men who realised America’s Manifest Destiny is memorably menacing. After his brother’s family is massacred by the Comanches, Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards embarks on a bloody quest to rescue his surviving nieces. It is a timeless story because this tragedy has played out often in history.

Three thousand years ago, an exhausted king of Jerusalem asked, “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time.” In the land of Milk and Honey, even the slaughter of infants is old news. The only novelty of the surprise attack on Israel is the scale of mayhem that occurred in one night—over 1,400 killed, more wounded, hundreds kidnapped. 

Looming over Jerusalem’s Old City is the site where that world-weary king built his temple. I was there two wars ago—a few years after the 2008–09 eruption—and access to the mount, for a kafir like me, was via the Mughrabi Gate beside the Western Wall. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. Herod’s replacement lasted less than a century before it too was destroyed, this time by the Romans. All that remains is The Wailing Wall. Even Israel’s destruction is a tradition that, “hath been already of old time.”

My pilgrimage was really a research trip. After selling my first novel, a fantasy set in Medieval Italy, I was contracted to write a sequel, which took place in Outremer—one of the Crusader States that occupied similar territory to today’s Israel. My host, an immigrant from New Jersey, knew my reasons for visiting, but I was usually vague with strangers. The term “Crusader State” can raise hackles. It’s a slur thrown at Israelis by their more erudite critics and, like most historical analogies, it’s misguided.

Founded after the Franks took Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate in 1099 AD, this embattled Christian redoubt flourished for more than a century before a resurgent Islam enveloped it. I was particularly interested in the city of Acre (Akko in Hebrew) on the northern coast which still bears a Norman architectural stamp, but seeing Jerusalem, the city that inspired the Crusaders to march thousands of miles into history and legend, was necessary. 

Demography suggests that the Anne Frank Kindergarten in East Germany, now looking for a new “more diverse” name, is a sign of things to come. We are sheltered, for the moment, from the consequences of our innocence, while consequences are something Israelis can never escape.

Although Israel suffers far more terrorism than most developed countries, I was only worried about dehydration and Jerusalem Syndrome—a temporary mania when visitors become convinced that they are the messiah. I kept a close watch on myself for any urge to walk on water as I drank as much as I could stomach. To reach the mount, you take a kind of bridge over the Western Wall. It’s a long narrow enclosed tunnel, not unlike the loading bridge they funnel passengers through to an airplane. Security checks increase the illusion that you’ll soon be in duty-free. In a way this is fitting. The mount, according to the Koran and the Hadiths, was a stopover in one of the most momentous flights in history, Muhammad’s Night Journey. 

The angel Gabriel, so the story goes, presented Muhammad with a Buraq—a white horse with wings and a man’s face. This curious creature flew Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem. Waiting on the mount were none other than Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muhammad led his fellow prophets in prayer and then ascended to heaven with Gabriel. Up there in the clouds, a kind of negotiation took place. God insisted that the devout must pray fifty times a day. Moses thought that a little impractical and advised Muhammed to ask for a reduction. Muhammad, who was once a trader, went to and fro between Moses and God, haggling it down to a more manageable five.

Nor is the Night Journey the most remarkable occurrence on the mount. Here lies the very foundation stone where the Talmud says the world began. Here, God formed Adam from Clay. Here, his son Abel offered his sweet-smelling sacrifice to God. Here, Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Here, Jacob dreamt of ladder-climbing angels. 

Geologists say the stone is late Cretaceous sedimentary but never mind those spoilsports—however old it really is, the stone covers a cavern known as the Well of Souls. Here, in the original Temple’s Holy of Holies was kept the Ark of the Covenant. In the Temple’s place now stands the gold-capped Dome of the Rock mosque. A masterpiece fusing Byzantine formality with the characteristically playful geometry of Islamic architecture, it was built after Arab armies conquered Jerusalem in the seventh Century.

No sooner had I reached the summit than I was accosted by a young Palestinian calling himself a guide. I was curious about the archaeology but the only history he was interested in sharing was listing martyrs of the last Intifada. I shook him off. He roundly cursed me. It may be holy but Jerusalem is not a city of brotherly love. One becomes used to having your arm grabbed by someone with an urgent need to display their scars and testify about wrongs done to their tribe. I like a sob story as much as the next guy but in Jerusalem, my cup soon ranneth over.

It’s always pretty testy I’m told but bad timing played a part. It was just after Yom Haatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day—and Star of David flags were everywhere, enough to make the most apolitical Arab cranky. For a decadent European like me, this kind of overt nationalism seems déclassé. It’s one of those little things that jars—an IDF soldier with a rifle playing football with some kids in the street was another—reminding one that Israelis, despite appearances, are no more European than their Arab neighbours.

Still, the nationalism of people who live in such a fractious neighbourhood is infinitely more rational than the inverted kind that is rife in Europe. Transferred Nationalism was George Orwell’s term for this delusion. “It is unusual,” he said, “for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion—that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware—will not allow him to do so.” This innate tribal instinct, denied by its natural outlet, will inevitably be “fastened upon some foreign country.” Last year’s rash of Ukrainian flags across Western Europe, now replaced by Palestinian flags, will presumably be swapped next year for that of Taiwan or some other remote land where arms dealers can make a killing. 

If those making a fetish of Ukraine seem to have read one too many Tom Clancy Cold War thrillers, some of the recent pro-Palestinian commentary internationally has a depressingly familiar subtext. The playwright David Mamet calls it, “the West’s oldest, most reliable, and most permissible sick entertainment: the call for Jewish extinction. The invitation, here, is no different from that of the carnival barker: thrills, chills, and excitement galore. It began with the fall of the Jewish state in 77 CE. Afterwards, we find the Christian libel that the Jews killed Christ, the medieval information that we slay Christian children to bake their blood into matzoh, that we were the cause of the Second World War; and, currently, that we exist to murder Muslims.”

Mamet’s polemic, I think, rather overstates how much antisemitism motivates international criticism of Israel but we can forgive a dramatist for being dramatic. Rather, the bias of Europe’s intelligentsia is symptomatic of the lingering influence of Marxist historiography. But whatever its provenance, a sympathy with “the wretched of the earth” is laudable, even if there are large blind spots—where are the tears for the suffering Muslims of Xinjiang and Yemen? Who weeps for the persecuted Christians in Azerbaijan?

The major European countries, with typical vanity, treat the Israel-Palestine conflict as a way to atone for past imperial sins and score points off domestic political rivals. In France, the prism is often the Algerian War. In Britain, the discussion is haunted by India’s bloody division between Hindu and Muslim. In Ireland, where we have no significant Muslim population and hardly a Jew left, the conflict is seen entirely through our post-colonial experience. Yes, the Palestinians are exactly like the dispossessed Catholics and the Israelis, ipso facto, are the wicked British imperialists.

Again, historical analogies reliably prove worse than useless.

Belfast is a mere hundred miles from Dublin, yet southern politicians who begin every discussion of Northern Ireland with “well, it’s complicated,” followed by a weary sigh, can somehow gaze across the Mediterranean and find binary simplicity. This leads to moments of eye-watering absurdity. Earlier this month, the Irish parliament actually voted on whether to expel the Israeli ambassador. Her crime, as far as I can gather, was being pro-Israel.

Mainland Europe’s large Muslim populations (10% in France and almost 7% in Germany officially) are a different case, where Mamet’s bleak diagnosis has more validity. In these rapidly growing communities, antisemitism of the most baroque variety is rife, coupled with an unconcealed antipathy for European liberal norms. Inevitably politicians in coming decades will cynically pander to that reality. Demography suggests that the Anne Frank Kindergarten in East Germany, now looking for a new “more diverse” name, is a sign of things to come. We are sheltered, for the moment, from the consequences of our innocence, while consequences are something Israelis can never escape. They live and die by them (as of course do Palestinians). Our self-satisfied vows of “Never Again,” our loudly trumpeted plurality and tolerance—these lamps may soon go out all over Europe, and Israelis already know how that particular story ends. 

You won’t get far however warning Europe’s creative community that Berlin’s Pride parade in 2040 is unlikely to be much fun. Artists, when it comes to the “Little Satan,” march in lockstep. I almost said goose step but keffiyeh-wearing Westerners are not, as a rule, bigots. They are simply naïve. For them, Benjamin Netanyahu is a creature of unearthly malignancy and not a mere politician who inherited the world’s biggest security problem and limited options. Irish author Sally Rooney comes across as well-informed and measured in explaining why she won’t have her latest novel translated into Hebrew: “Israel’s system of racial domination and segregation against Palestinians meets the definition of apartheid under international law.” It sounds reasonable (certainly better than rapper Kanye West vowing to go “death con 3 On Jewish People”), except that it takes Gaza as representative of the whole. 

The IDF may chafe at being held to a higher standard than Hamas, but that is one of the privileges and penalties of statehood.

The more populous West Bank has flourishing cities like Ramallah. Crucially, it has a middle class too. Some desperate people trapped in shanty towns may be willing to blow themselves up, but people with assets and a stake in society generally won’t. The West Bank will never love Israel but it could be stable if and when it gets statehood and the responsibilities that come with that.

The apartheid narrative, moreover, overlooks Israeli-Arab towns. A fifth of Israel’s population is Arab. Their towns are relatively prosperous. In Acre, which is more mixed, I watched local Arab lads do daredevil dives into the sea from those thick crusader walls. They are citizens of Israel. They speak Hebrew and Arabic. Soccer-mad Arab teens wear the same trendy brands as their Israeli counterparts. Their parents vote and pay taxes. A strangely selective apartheid.

That is no comfort, of course, for the innocent majority in Gaza now reaping a whirlwind they did not sow. Dead is dead. While talk of “genocide” is hyperbolic, for indiscriminate acts like the November 3 bombing of Jabalia camp, the over-used term “war crime” for once seems justified. The IDF may chafe at being held to a higher standard than Hamas but that is one of the privileges and penalties of statehood. Southern Ireland stayed neutral during the Troubles but in 1972, after the British soldiers shot 26 unarmed protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday, Dubliners burnt down the British Embassy. 

The banal truth is that the Israel-Palestine conflict will probably bubble on throughout our lifetime. Most well-informed commentators in the US play favourites but Darryl Cooper is even-handed; where historical parallels fail, he illustrates the dilemma with what sounds like a bleak Yiddish parable: A man leaps from the window of a burning house. He lands on another man who screams, “Let me up. I’m going to kill you!” The first man says, “I can’t let you up then until you promise not to hurt me.” The second man repeats, “Now I’m really going to kill you!” And there they remain, trapped together, forever.

Certainly, the stalemate of the last three decades would depress the most optimistic. In any given year since the Cold War ended, the Holy Land was either recovering from an unholy bloodletting or preparing for another round. These sanguinary episodes have been punctuated by peace summits. Talks were talked in 1993, 2000, 2007, 2010, and 2014. Tony Blair’s boot boy Alastair Campbell once boasted, “We don’t do God.” In this valley of tears, no one has that luxury. Negotiations may be held far from the action in tranquil places like Oslo, Genevia, and Maryland but the spiritual battleground is always God’s city, and especially the Temple Mount.

Steeped as that site is in legend, it’s recent history that really counts. In 1967, when Israel routed a coalition of Arab nations in battle, they captured Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the greatest prize of all: Jerusalem. On June 7, the cry went out. “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” The IDF’s Chief Rabbi blew the shofar beside the Western Wall. Jerusalem Syndrome threatened to go viral but the sober defence minister Moshe Dayan kept a cool head. He took down the flag that paratroopers had raised on the mount and surrendered control of the site to its Arab guards. A religious forever-war was narrowly averted but the territories captured in those six miraculous days brought problems never resolved.

Perhaps the Occupation, for all its horrors, is the least bad solution but Darryl Cooper says that attempts to find something better have been half-hearted because of America. The hegemon’s support is basically unconditional. An Israel without Uncle Sam’s economic and military muscle would have cut a deal a long time ago. No victor likes giving up land but the 239 empty beds in Safra Square show the status quo carries a steep cost. It’s a cost more than shared by the Palestinians. Israel, like a tragic hero fated to destroy himself, felt obliged with the world watching after October 7th to repay blood with blood.

And so it has, with interest. Taking revenge in such circumstances is natural. Whatever its military purpose, something dramatically punitive was a political necessity. Those who say that it only spreads the pain miss the point. Pain is the point.

But such cyclical violence finally poisons the soul. That, without being reductive, is the moral of The Searchers. John Ford was the director who made the cowboy an American everyman and John Wayne a star. The Searchers still startles because of the subversive way it uses The Duke’s iconic status. In the end, Wayne triumphs not by being better than his enemy but by being much worse. The story ends with an elegiac shot of Wayne lingering awkwardly at the doorway of his surviving family, realizing that he is unable to rejoin the civilization for which he has so savagely fought. He no longer belongs there.

A ceasefire called under heavy US diplomatic pressure has so far held long enough for more than 80 women and children to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian prisoners. It would be inhuman not to welcome the release of these hostages; equally, it would be obtuse not to see that the exchange ratio settled on may encourage more kidnappings.

While Gaza burns, most of the beds remain empty. Time, pilgrims, has never been more precious.