Israelis are not cartoons. We’re real people.

Myopia now colors how the world sees Israelis — this inability to imagine that other people, living elsewhere, are just as complex as you are.

photo: Shalev Cohen/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Julie Gray, co-author of “Let’s Make Things Better” and a native Californian now living in Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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My co-author Gidon and I sit in a darkened theater at the Haifa International Film Festival. The end credits roll, and we sit in stunned silence. We have loved this film; we laughed, we smiled, we were rapt.

But the ending. What a gut punch. Somehow, even after everything, we weren’t prepared.

In the theater are Israelis from all over the country — cast, crew, hipsters, older couples, a few luminaries — and us.

I notice that I finally feel Israeli; the whole audience sits there, gut-punched.

But there’s more than being part of collective grief that made me feel Israeli: I understood the cultural references in the film. I “got” the obscure symbolism, the slang, the small asides, and the quirky characters. The former yeshiva student, now a realtor, who utters prayers for every possible scenario. The reference to Nineveh and the story of Jonah. Someone confusing Amos Oz for David Grossman. I got why that was particularly funny in context.

A couple of years ago, ahead of the release of the book Gidon and I wrote together, one of our publishers — a really, really big, storied publishing house — put the manuscript through what is called a “sensitivity read.” These “sensitivity reads” were de rigueur at the time, and this was just after this horrible war had begun. Feelings were running very, very high. Israel was burning under the magnifying glass of the war. Hell had broken loose. And so had identity politics.

I was given 29 suggestions for things that would be “preferable” for the manuscript. Things like: When Gidon says he taught Israeli folk dancing, could I please delete the word “Israeli” before “folk dancing”? When Gidon describes taking his kids to get falafel, could I please add “Palestinian” ahead of falafel? Could I please delete a reference to the presence of an Israeli flag in a particular memory of Gidon’s?

Friends, I lost my mind. I really lost my mind. It was an attempt to ethnically cleanse all Israeliness out of a memoir — about an Israeli.

The publisher was caving to pressure to make sure that nobody would be offended by the fact that in Israel, a falafel really is just a falafel — or that yes, we have, heaven forfend, a flag.

Twenty-nine proposed changes. I rejected every single one. I was willing to return my advance and absolutely die on that sword. How insane — what kind of world do we live in that Israeliness is not okay? To their credit, our editor at the publishing house not only accepted my response but apologized profusely for having put them forth to me in the first place. The unpleasant experience was turned into a teachable moment. But oh, it burned.

That was almost exactly two years ago, during which time Israeliness has been systematically reduced to some evil colonial state populated by terrible two-dimensional people.

But this is nothing new. Over the years, when I read about Israel in the international press, Israelis were consistently portrayed as blank outlines, waiting to be colored in. Frozen caricatures for your entertainment — or righteous satisfaction. As if Israelis and Israel exist as a snow globe that you can pick up and shake once in a while until the little snowflakes come down the way you want them to.

The snow globe didn’t just get shaken this time; it got smashed. What’s left looks less like a country and more like a hopped-up Hieronymus Bosch painting — all noise, blood, and demonic, bent shapes.

One of the favorite arguments of Israelis, or people who have been to Israel, is: Have you ever been there? If not, then you probably don’t know what you’re talking about. I think there is truth to this. Although I had been to Israel many times before I moved here, I had miles (and years) to go before I felt comfortable describing Israel or Israelis. Even now, I hesitate.

Humility works like that.

The counterargument is that you don’t need to go somewhere or know what the favorite snack food is (toss-up between Bisli and Bamba) or to understand the political situation, the injustice, and the need for change.

I’ll grant there’s some truth to that. I’ve never been to Nepal, but the students are onto something there if their society is being suppressed. Nor have I been to Sudan, but I certainly have an opinion about the awful war there — the opinion being, for the love of God, what is going on and how can we help?

But I don’t assume that the Sudanese don’t have poets.

We do this to other people, living elsewhere. Our experience revolves around our own culture. Americans are particularly prone to this. Our country is vast and very far from other countries. We don’t take a few days in Berlin, Paris, or Croatia as blithely as Europeans do. We are not exposed to other cultures with anything approaching the way Europeans are. American culture is huge, and yes, it gets exported worldwide. Americans may not watch the Eurovision Song Contest or be as totally addicted to (actual) football as the rest of the world, but the rest of the world certainly knows who Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is and has a favorite “Friends” episode.

So Americans must be forgiven for their myopia; it’s a natural outcome not so much of cultural hegemony but of geographic isolation.

And yet, the same myopia I once forgave in Americans now colors how the world sees Israelis — this inability to imagine that other people, living elsewhere, are just as complex as you are.

I’ve been dealing with the stereotyping of Americans for years by traveling, then living abroad, and then becoming Israeli. I remember being surprised to learn — and this is embarrassing to admit — when I first came to Israel that yes, there are game shows and reality TV here. I mean, of course there are. What was I expecting, 24/7 Holy Land broadcasting and archaeology shows? Israelis have been most decidedly voted off the global island.

Israelis, like everybody else, have their own version of everything: what’s cool, what’s in style, who is famous, who is a cultural legend, what’s popular and what’s not. We’re even politically divided just like you. That thin slice you probably already knew.

When I came to Israel 15 years ago, I made it my mission to explore Israel not just through its history or news headlines, but through its individual and collective self-expression by way of Israeli culture. I read the translated novels of both legendary and contemporary Israeli writers like Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, S.Y. Agnon, Etgar Keret, Yishai Sarid, and Eshkol Nevo. I listen to the Gal Galatz radio station and sing along to the current pop tunes and Israeli golden oldies. I go to local films, concerts, performances, and even demonstrations and political speeches.

I see the layers and layers of Israeli culture and identity, and as my Hebrew improves, my dive gets deeper. I have not begun to scratch the surface. I often don’t know a famous name when it’s mentioned, but I find out. Why is this singer so beloved? Why is this poem so popular? What’s so funny, touching, moving, and tender/sharp about Etgar Keret?

As this war nears an end, we Israelis finally, finally have an open door to let some fresh air into the toxic, crushing enormity of what we have gone through as a people. There is hope and relief in the air, but also residual shock, grief, and frankly — for me — anger.

Two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, have been reduced to caricatures to serve political and personal narratives. Palestinians as mascots for colonial oppression and Israelis as blank slates for what you condemn most. Both people deserve to exist in full color, not as symbols in someone else’s morality play.

To write people out of their own story is devastating and dehumanizing. And we do it all the time. Yet we are all other people, living elsewhere.

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