Ofri Ilany : Opinion What Israel Needs Is a Dose of Self-hatred
“That’s
the truth about Austria. By nature the Austrian is a National Socialist
and a Catholic through and through, however hard he tries not to be. In
this country and this nation Catholicism and National Socialism have
always been in balance – now more National Socialist, now more Catholic,
but never just the one or the other. The Austrian mind thinks only in
National Socialist and Catholic terms. And this is true also of Austrian
philosophers, who use their unappetizing National Socialist Catholic
minds no differently from their compatriots. If we take a walk in
Vienna, the people we see are all essentially National Socialists and
Catholics, who behave at times more as National Socialists, at times
more as Catholics, but usually as both simultaneously; this is why we
find them so repulsive on closer acquaintance and close scrutiny whether
we’re prepared to admit it or not.”
This
malicious text appears in the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard’s novel
“Extinction” (1986; English edition 1995, translated by David
McLintock). Having grown up in the Nazi
era, he surely had a good reason to describe his country in those
terms. Still, you get the impression that his abundant loathing of
Austria didn’t stem only from the country’s Nazi past. Bernhard wasn’t
writing in the 1940s or even in the ‘60s, but in the ‘80s – Austria’s
social-democratic period. But with or without Nazism, Bernhard
(1931–1989) absolutely abominated his Austrian homeland.
Most
of his books contain wild outpourings of the type quoted above. In his
1984 novel “Woodcutters,” he describes Austria as the urinal of Europe, a
country that has reached such a state of obnoxious dreariness and filth
as to be unbearable. He uninhibitedly slandered his homeland even when
he took the stage to accept one of his country’s most important awards.
Nor was he content with theoretical hatred: His will prohibits the
publication of his books or the staging of his plays in Austria for 50
years after his death – just so he could laugh from his grave at his
country and countrymen.
It’s
fitting to cite the example of Bernhard when we talk about the supposed
lack of patriotism among intellectuals in our own country. It’s often
alleged that Israeli writers and artists are insufficiently fond of
their country, or that they defame it abroad. It’s not rare to hear
comments like, “No country is as critical of itself as Israel,” or “We
are nation battered by self-hatred.” But such claims totally lack
perspective. With few exceptions, Israelis are embarrassingly loyal to
their country and revere it the way a toddler admires his preschool
teacher.
A
search for the Israeli equivalent of Bernhard will almost certainly
prove futile. Nor will we find parallels to the hatred vented by Edgar
Allan Poe against Americans (“a race of children of Baal and worshippers
of Mammon”) or Jean Genet’s rant against France (“Oh the word isn’t
strong enough, to ‘hate’ France, that’s nothing, it’s more than hatred,
more than vomiting up France”).
Earlier this month, Channel 10 broadcast a piece by journalist Oshrat Kotler titled “Israel in the Eyes of Its Writers.” David Grossman,
Etgar Keret, Zeruya Shalev – they all showed up and offered the usual
cloying clichés about the agonies of life in Israel and the anxieties
about the future, punctuated by genteel words of criticism. But all of
them were at pains to make clear, in one way or another, how much they
love Israel and how dear it is to them.
That’s
the way of our intellectuals. At most they’ll express hatred for a
particular element in the country or society: for Benjamin Netanyahu,
Miri Regev, the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, the Ashkenazim, aggressive
drivers, the security checks at the airport. If you hate the country,
you have to make clear that you love the people. If you hate the army,
you’ll explain that you love Jewish tradition. If you loathe Jerusalem,
you’ll declare that you’re mad about Tel Aviv. If you hate Israeli
songs, you’ll swear you’re wild about Israeli food. But you won’t find
anyone who simply hates Israel, Israeliness and the Israelis.
I
envy countries that have writers who truly hate their nation with a
seething, roiling passion. Despite all the talk about self-hatred,
Israeli culture is stricken with pathological self-love. A vivid example
is the endless preoccupation with the torch-lighting ceremony
on the eve of Independence Day. On television, in the newspapers and on
social media, people are engrossed by this vacuous ceremony as if it
were their wedding. In general, holidays and collective ceremonies
thrill Israelis in an infantile way. Even highly educated people who
consider themselves individualists have a hard time creating an
independent life story for themselves, one not subordinate to the tasks
forced on them by the state: now sit down, now be happy, now contemplate
the Holocaust, now eat cheesecake on Shavuot. The national calendar
dominates life.
Safe emotional distance
There’s
a widespread notion that intellectuals have to love their people and
country even when they’re critical of them. That argument prevails on
the right but no less on the left, which in this connection likes to
cite a quote from George Orwell about the thrill he got at the sight of
the flag waving. Fortunately, not all intellectuals sound like Orwell.
Against the backdrop of the cloying national celebrations, which recall a
fun day in a sadistic work environment, it’s worth remembering that in
certain situations the intellectual’s task is precisely to hate his
nation – even to feel nauseated by it.
You
don’t have to think that Israel is a fascist country to keep a safe
emotional distance from it. There’s no need even for overly complex
reasoning. In fact, what we have here is a bizarre paradox, because
sometimes it seems as if all Israelis feel like strangers in their own
land. The Mizrahim feel that the Ashkenazim imported them like so much
stuffing, and the Ashkenazim feel that the Mizrahim took their country
away from them. There are those who hate Arik Einstein and those who are
frustrated because his songs aren’t played enough. Still, instead of
hating the experience, everyone insists on clinging to love of the
homeland and hope for its future.
The
writer J.G. Ballard once said that what Britain needs is more
decadence. By the same token, what we can wish Israel on its 70th
birthday is more self-hatred. It might actually be beneficial.
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