Ernest in Israel and Jack in North America?
I am currently in Israel to visit my family. On August 17, I snapped this picture of my father, Oded, shortly after the Israeli national anthem, hatikva, was sung at the conclusion of the huge demonstration to demand an end to the war and a deal to try to release all the hostages. My father and I were two among the hundreds of thousands of people who flooded the streets of Tel Aviv.
Those who know me from this blog as someone who calls out Jew hate and as someone who tends to stay away from criticism of the Israeli government might wonder what I was doing there—among so many demonstrators for whom Bibi and Israel’s current government are often practically a synonym for evil, corruption and destructiveness.
In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon asks Jack to explain Jack’s double identity:
“ALGERNON.
. . . Now, go on. Why are you Ernest in town and Jack in the country?
JACK.
My dear Algy, I don’t know whether you will be able to understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When one is placed in the position of guardian [for Cecily], one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It’s one’s duty to do so. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.”
Could it be that when a person who loves Israel is also a citizen of a country (in my case Canada) where most people do not know much about Israel and where negative ideas about Israel have been normalized, then one might tend to “adopt a very high moral tone” in defensive response to criticism of Israel? And could it be that because “a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness,” then when one spends time in Israel and feels the warmth and humanity of the people, then one naturally relaxes and once again feels comfortable participating in the criticism of the Israeli government?
Is this difference in attitude about criticism of Israel inside and outside the country a case of hypocrisy and unprincipled behavior—or is it a product of the human need for warmth, emotional attachment and connection as the basis for forming one’s ideas about life?
In one of the memorable exchanges in the beginning of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde asserts the centrality of pleasure:
ALGERNON.
How are you, my dear Ernest? What brings you up to town?
JACK.
Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere?
Wilde’s notion of pleasure is deeper than mere hedonism. In the context of Israel, I would refer to the heartwarming feeling that comes out of emotional attachment that draws me to this country that I love and where I grew up.
Walking side by side my father on the streets of Tel Aviv is an experience more precious to me than words can express. In this context, the harsh words spoken about the government come out of love, knowledge, experience and rootedness in the land—and contradictions are a part of a rich paradox, not the result of hypocrisy. On the streets of Tel Aviv, the yearning for human rights and peace feels to me to be genuine—not an excuse for demonizing Israel.
In contrast, too much of the “criticism of Israel” that one hears outside of Israel at best rings hollow due to naïve lack of knowledge and at worst bullies the soul with antisemitic tropes in metamorphosed forms—with the word “Netanyahu” sometimes practically operating as a synonym for Juden. Some of the statements of the world’s anti-Israel politicians remind me of AI hallucinations because they lack the depth of human experience and knowledge—and especially because they fail to register the pain of those who worked so genuinely to bring about peace but failed.
There is something about being in Israel that throws the absurdity of the many distortions that are circulating about it into sharp relief. In online reviews of clothing purchases, people sometimes write comments such as, “I really wanted to love this dress, but. . .” A review of Israel might read, “I really wanted to hate Israel, but. . .”
In the beginning of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde (who weaved many gay jokes into the fabric of his play) uses an exchange between Algernon and his butler Lane to invoke the natural attraction to quality:
“ALGERNON.
Why is it that at a bachelor’s establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
LANE.
I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.”
When it comes to criticism of Isreal, it seems that the “first-rate brand” is generally to be found in Israel—so much so that I have become reluctant to consume “criticism of Israel” that originates outside of the country. It happened to me a few times that someone outside of Israel introduced me to an Israeli critic of the government with the apparent assumption that they were shattering my indoctrination—not realizing that I was actually born and raised immersed in such materials. This is perhaps where the “Ernest in Israel and Jack in North America” phenomenon originates—from the difficulty of collaborating with a power-oriented attitude toward Israel that ultimately seems to implicitly believe that it is “okay” or “well-deserved” for Israel to be destroyed.
Rather than encouraging constructive collaboration with Israel, this criticism breeds suspicion and alienation. In my case, the feeling that critics of Isreal are indifferent to the fate of my loved ones has helped to turn me from someone who belonged to the milieu of the intensely self-critical part of Israeli society (which some say is a majority part) into someone who barely utters a bad word about Israel outside of Israel. This is because I cannot live a fully human life without the warmth that comes from love, equality and emotional attachment. And if an atmosphere is created in which it is “verboten” to put Israel and a positive word in one sentence, then I will be less likely to put negative words about Israel in my sentences either.
Perhaps Algernon’s cucumber sandwiches might help to indirectly explain the difference between loving self-criticism and hateful criticism:
ALGERNON.
“. . . .[Jack puts out his hand to take a sandwich. Algernon at once interferes.] Please don’t touch the cucumber sandwiches. They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta. [Takes one and eats it.]
JACK.
Well, you have been eating them all the time.
ALGERNON.
That is quite a different matter. She is my aunt.”
It is quite a different matter when someone who knows and loves Israel criticizes its government than when another person, in contrast, has fashioned a metaphorical punching bag out of a mythological view of Israel that has little to do with the reality of who the people of Israel are. When I speak with Israelis, I feel that they are for the most part engaged in constructive criticism. But speaking critically about Israel with a person who is inclined against the Jewish state feels like feeding a loveless ideological construct that is unlikely to do much good—and this destructiveness and lovelessness create a repulsive effect.
I wish that anti-Israel activists would not disregard the centrality of love and emotional attachment to the human experience when they assess the results of their own activism. If the astronomical amounts of money that had been flowing into Gaza prior to October 7, 2023, had been used for the welfare of the people of Gaza, then many people in Gaza today could have been peacefully living in condos overlooking the Mediterranean with fridges stocked with food. Instead, the agenda of destroying Israel has replaced the pleasures of normalcy and daily life with suffering. Why anyone who cares about the Palestinians would want to embolden the fantasy that Israel is a temporary reality is, for that reason, beyond my logical comprehension. But perhaps with time, more eyes will open to the consequences of the lovelessness of so much anti-Israel activism and to the fact that better outcomes for the Palestinians might be achieved by not allowing anti-Israel hate to produce an alienating effect that makes a mockery of the efforts of the of the majority of Israelis who want peace and normalcy.
