Next week I leave for Israel with my parents. We are going to visit my brother, who lives in a quiet part of the Israeli capital. It is some time since we have all been together and it will also be our first “this year in Jerusalem” Pesach.

Naturally we have clocked “the situation”. In a world that seeks out any and every reason to slander or discredit the Jewish state, it is impossible not to have been slapped around the face with it since Netanyahu formed his latest coalition.

Israel inspires disapproving looks and weighty shakes of the head even when it is doing its best to give its Western detractors what they want. Little surprise, then, that when it does enter a bad patch, the disapproval and use of words like “apartheid”, “boycott”, and “fascist” accelerate.

Amid the anti-Netanyahu protests last week, some of my more vocal left-wing chums felt they could not sit quietly by while I continued to prepare for a jolly time in the Negev and beers on the beach. Look! Even its own populace is up in arms! Are you really still planning to go?

At first, confusion: why wouldn’t we?

Then the familiar sinking feeling. To the non-Jew with no connection to Israel and a penchant for rubbernecking and moralising, Israel is a political football (or, wrecking ball), a bit like a dog that is relentlessly taunted and threatened then chucked out in the cold when it growls in its own defence.

Explaining my Israel attachment to non-Jews can be tricky. Too often, they simply don’t understand how it can be possible that a secular, politically clued-in person like me doesn’t really give give a toss who’s in the Knesset.

I mean, I care, and am dismayed that Netanyahu has brought into the fold parties that seem crudely right-wing, which appear to be lowering the tone of public discourse, and treating with roughness issues that should be tackled in a more sophisticated fashion.

But it would take a heck of a lot more than this to deter me from going to Israel, or dampen my desire to defend the Jewish state.

And the country would have to be in a much bigger mess than it currently is for to me think it is more wrong than it is right.

How to explain this attachment? What is it that our anti-Israel, or Israel-neutral friends struggle to understand?

For starters, most have had no reason to learn from an early age that much of the media suffer from antisemitism masquerading as criticism of Israel.
Some manage to figure this out on their own, and make the necessary mental adjustments, which I always admire.

But to many, the idea of widespread anti-Israel bias in the media is just another illustration of blind faith in Israel, gullibility from a people so blinkered by tribalism they are willing to let a country commit unspeakable acts in their name.

Then there is the weight of history.

Most of my contemporaries do not know what it’s like to come from a people that has been ravaged by perpetual and irrational violence in every century and to almost every corner of the globe.

They don’t understand, on a visceral level, how persecution, expulsion, torture, humiliation and mass murder haunt the Jewish story.

Put another way, those who are so quick to judge Israel harshly don’t really understand the significance of Israel to Jews.

Britons whose families have lived here for generations, whose names and complexions match the landscape, if you will, often simply do not get it.

Not all Jews feel as I do, of course. Not even all Jews whose own grandparents were born in Germany in the 1920s get it.

But those who, like me, grew up with an almost epigenetic sense of persecution, of what happens when you don’t have an escape hatch, also grew up with the need for Israel. I don’t mean the country simply as an idealised place in the imagination but a real nation state, with borders that must be defended by a top-of-the-line military.

A place where Jews would never again be mocked for being weak, or have to live according to the whims of others.

Several branches of my family moved to Mandate Palestine after the war, and today I have many Israeli relatives. But we are somewhat distant, and they are not the reason I will support Israel until I am the last women standing.

No, that comes down to an angry and fearful sense not just of what we are owed, but what we need and must insist on.

So next week, my parents and I will be boarding a flight to Israel, where we look forward to spending family time with my brother.

We have never doubted Israel’s dynamism and democratic spirit so we are not surprised by the protests that will probably still be taking place when we land.

And next month, we will proudly mark our exodus from Egypt with fellow Jews in our ancestral homeland.