A Conflicted Dreamer Escapes to Petach Tikva
Why discuss occupation, settlers, protective presence? Why mention IDF soldiers forcing non-violent volunteers to leave West Bank Palestinian villages and allowing provocative settlers to remain? Why suggest complicity with a plan for ethnic cleansing? Why refer to government policy? Why recall mainstream accusations about lack of government strategy? Why analyze lack of strategy as an agent for evading unpopular claims about what Israel has become?
Why? Because I care about who we have become. That’s why I care to address these questions, and then too, to escape them. We need criticism, not for our eradication, but for our growth.
That criticism of Israel is part of the underpinnings of my being, with my values rooted in soil cracking like arid desert sands in August, that will swallow you into its depths when winter rains flood the terrain. Geology of seasons seasons. Underpinnings stretched to northern landscapes, where receding Lake Kinneret shorelines await hydration with resurgent winter waterfalls.
Living in imagery. Taking the detour evading dead-end discussions.
A friend or two from abroad committed to non-violence, ending Israeli occupation, activists sharing more than a little with me ideologically. Yet, their discussion of support for US resolutions to deny all weapons and defense systems sales to Israel elicits my unpremeditated response: But Iranian weaponizing remains uninhibited? When Iran attacks next, Israel shouldn’t have what it takes to defend itself?
Change in the balance of power will change the dynamic. A voice telling me that works, skeptically listens to their argument that disempowering Israel will mitigate Iranian intentions of aggression. Cynically (who, me?) considering in my mind that Israel can fulfill its role as a “light unto the nations.” First in line for vulnerability? Acquiescent to annihilation? Who’s next among the nations violating human rights and fighting armed conflicts to be deterred by this dream method, after Israel survives it? Just a matter of systemic restart. I get it.
But I don’t.
Dead-end discussion. It didn’t recalculate the route.
But it’s one dish of chopped liver, exchangeable for a piece of gefilte fish.
Seasoned with criticism, but has it been severed from my underpinnings, and concern for our continued existence on an improved, recalculated route?
Seeking escape from the questions and the August heat, we headed for the Petach Tikva Museum of Art. Current exhibits include one featuring Orit Hofshi. Having seen her work at other museums, we presume we’ll like this. The blatant influence of Edvard Munk on Hofshi’s work nurtures that internal, incessant scream piercing my ears through nights and moving my fingers across the keyboard through days in recent years.
The exhibit curator, Irena Gordon, notes the Munk influence, before elaborating on Hofshi’s composition entitled, “Deliverance.” An image reflecting a Kathe Kollwitz etching, another relating to Edouard Manet responding to a work by Goya, and input from an Anselm Kiefer woodcut are evident. The text adjacent to the piece speaks of allegory, movement, and dance, assigning one of its images to an “ongoing dialogue with [its] genealogy … in art history.”
Another piece, “Rubbing,” draws on a printing transfer technique pioneered by Max Ernst, noted “as a means of awakening the unconscious.”
Ongoing dialogue, in my mind, engages images in history, and connection to this land, and others’ connections to this land. The allegorical escape route on artistic pinpoints of woodcut protrusions, scraping scabs from my wounded soul, invariably aggravating artificial dormancy in unconscious scenes.
Perhaps there’s sensibility in the progression to the Dani Michael Rosenberg exhibit, also curated by Gordon. The essence of one piece is an Oscar Wilde quote:
“Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight. And his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
Open to interpretation. And association. And I think about dreaming, about disabling armament to end violent conflict. And I tremor at the thought of the dawn to be seen. Or another dawn.
Harriet Gimpel – August 21, 2026