‘Giant’ and Criticism of Israel
I was on my way to see the play Giant when an LED-light-clad advertising trucks rolled by, as they are wont to do on Broadway and Times Square. The truck flashed between different criticisms of the war with Iran; what caught my eye was that the word Israel was in quotation marks-‘Israel’, not Israel.
On one hand this is an example of the tenacity humans have to ignore the truth. Israel has millions of citizens and is a member of the UN. It clearly exists, even if one does not agree with its actions or even its right to exist. In fact, calling for its destruction is acknowledging its present existence. On the other hand, it is exceedingly easy to see why Israel is referred to this way.
I am a Jew and I know that Israel means He Who Wrestles With G-d, it is the name bestowed upon Jacob after he wrestled with an angel the night after fleeing his father-in-law. Jacob literally fathers the twelve tribes of Israel, so to call an area in the southern levant the land or state of Israel is to assert a unique tie between Jews and that area. The anonymous truck hirers refer to Israel by its name because that is the most effective method to communicate the subject matter but add quotation marks to deny Israel dignity and legitimacy. Hamas uses this same playbook; it never refers to Israel as but instead refers to it as The Occupation, The Zionist Entity, and other such innuendos.
What I thought then, as I do now, is that refusing to call Israel by its name goes beyond reasoned criticism. It is a denial Jews ‘ culture and history, it attempts to cast us from the one home we’ve ever known while saying that our yearning to live there has no justification. Roald Dahl seemingly makes the opposite argument. In his inciting book review he states that every Jew has a duty to oppose Israel-almost precisely because of what the truck tried to deny. His argument is that Jews bear responsibility for Israel’s action because of our special bond with Israel.
So how do these views reconcile with each other? Do Roald Dahl and the truck sincerely have different ideological starting points for their criticism of Israel? As it is revealed at the play’s seminal moment, they don’t. Dahl drops all pretense and says “even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason”. The core view both Dahl and the truck display is hatred of Jews and anti-semitism has always been bipolar.
Jews are criticized both for being welfare-exploiting burdens on the state and money-grubbing billionaires; Jews aren’t white to white supremacists and are white to anti-colonialists; Jews both don’t assimilate enough and insidiously worm our way into society; Jews both have no connection to Israel and are held responsible for its actions.
