Haaretz is to Blame for Bibi - Part 1: It's Not Funny

Only one thing could have stopped the Bibi phenomenon from taking over Israeli identity. Bibi is the embodiment of Judaism's ills - victimhood, arrogance towards gentiles, passivity, loudness, neurotic anxiety - and therefore his character is tailored for the Jewish soul's takeover of the Israeli spirit. He lacks only one ancient Jewish component - and in it could have lain his downfall. And it is precisely this component that is completely absent from Haaretz

The death of Jewish humor in the Holy Land. Where is your cock-a-doodle-doo? (Source)

Bibi is a completely ridiculous person. This is a claim that needs no proof, but, paradoxically, can also have no proof. There's no point in trying to convince someone who doesn't see it with arguments. Any argument against a ridiculous person only takes him seriously and legitimizes him - and that's exactly what the hysterical discussion in Haaretz has done since Bibi's first government: it changed Bibi's genre. A person who is a comic figure to his very core (including even the wife who controls her husband), who came out of some Hanoch Levin play about an Israeli politician - turned into realism. There is only one rhetorical device that could have helped against such a character, who is strengthened by any substantive discussion, and it is precisely this that has been completely erased from Haaretz: humor.

In some forgotten journalistic Bible, the ancient remedy is surely written: to deal with a leader who is so clownish - what you need to do is laugh at him. The effective tool in such cases should have been satire and parody - forms of writing that are hard to imagine today in Haaretz (certainly not as central genres on the main pages, as the Bibi era demanded). Was there one talented satirist in the entire newspaper in the last decade? (Well, maybe at a stretch, the Black Circle column). It's not scathing articles that will help against someone who thrives on raising flames and head-on confrontation, but rather venomous and surprising satire that bites from below - like a snake. Haaretz should have been an extreme left-wing marker in this sense, because no other media outlet would be more malicious towards Bibi than Haaretz. But Haaretz wasn't malicious at all, instead fighting Bibi at his own game - and thus only amplified him from a clown to a bully.

Bibi emerged stronger from every blow - because only hatred remained in the mouth, from every argument against him only the anti that builds him remained - because only emotion remains from writing (not logic), and from every criticism - only the unattractiveness of the complaining. The right saw that the left and its mouthpiece were getting angry - and went nah nah nah nah! After all, if someone is motivated by a desire for revenge against you - the last thing you should do is show how hard it is and how much it hurts you. He'll continue! The suffering and screaming discourse in Haaretz built Bibi as someone who really annoys and hurts the left.

Between the hollow that pretends to be sublime and the ridiculous there is only one step - and Haaretz stubbornly refused to cross it (with unnecessary and one-sided fairness). Where is "HaOlam HaZeh" [Translator's note: A satirical Israeli magazine] and where is Haaretz? Where is the Israeli Karl Kraus? Where is the Duck [Translator's note: Referring to a satirical column]? How did a walking parody of a prime minister become an eternal prime minister? Probably precisely because it's a parody exaggerated ten times over any politician. But from a serious discussion about the clownish, he would in any case come out victorious. Bibi's immensely exaggerated pomposity - disconnected from the nothingness of the action behind it - is suddenly perceived as meaningful in reality (yes, postmodernism), and his alienation (and Bibi was completely foreign and strange when he entered our lives - a kind of American liar mutation not from here) becomes the norm. But he's ridiculous!

Only a constant and truly humiliating wink could have reminded us of this, but Haaretz's eye was too busy with horrified looks. Bibi's character will be remembered in history as a completely ridiculous figure, and what a shame we didn't enjoy the clown in real time! After all, an inciter and seducer has no power of his own - except for his ability to change the discourse. This is a poison that doesn't work on those who laugh at it, and therefore parody is not at all a matter of laughter - it is an ancient anti-Bibi-otic vaccine. Parody grew and developed in Athens to its first brilliant achievements hand in hand with democracy. There is even a serious historical claim that the reason fascist rulers did not rise in England and France, for example, despite similar historical conditions - is that these nations had a sense of humor, unlike the Germans and Japanese, the two most humorless nations on earth (have you ever heard a Japanese joke?). The ridiculousness in pathos simply wouldn't have passed in normal (and less anal) nations.

Bibi is a huge balloon from this perspective, but Haaretz failed to provide even a pin, and the rest of the media to his right didn't feel they even needed to try. There is no substantial parodic discourse in Israel. Satire is not part of the bloodstream of journalism, despite the fact that one successful satirical video is worth a thousand opinion pieces. And so Bibi, with humorous videos of a rather low level (whose main effect is lowering - ha, a prime minister making an omelet!), suddenly looks cool, brilliant, and innovative. It's easy to score against an empty goal - and Haaretz's goal will never laugh, not at Bibi and not at itself (which wouldn't have hurt it - because in the wake of Bibi, the left also became completely ridiculous, righteous and pompous, in the absence of satire).

All this despite the fact that Jews actually have a cultural tradition of excellent humor, which is perhaps the antidote to all their deep troubles and weaknesses. American Jewry, for example, is perhaps the world leader in secular-liberal humor (and indeed there the younger generation looks completely different politically, and there is hope for the Democrats). Humor is also very important to Israelis. The people of Israel loved Sharon precisely because of his sense of humor, and the Israeli ethos loves bastards. But in Haaretz there was almost zero bastardry in the last decade, and therefore no politicians grew from the left for whom bastardry is their ethos and language. The left - serious and frowning. The right - laughing, winking, and happy. Is it any wonder the right is winning? Which side is more tempting to join? Reading Haaretz has become like drinking a bucket of vinegar. Young people want to be on the cool side, and today it's cooler to be on the right than on the left. This is how you lose the next generation in the culture war.

Trump would not have come to power if he wasn't a stand-up artist compared to his grandmother-funny opponent. Can you imagine Hillary telling a joke? Humor is not some surplus appendage to journalism and orderly arguments - it is the main thing. Because it's what allows distant positions to reach agreement - after all, the social common denominator for laughter is much broader than the logical or value-based common denominator. Humor can break through to the other side, and its crucial political role is perhaps what explains its very existence as a phenomenon unique to Homo sapiens. A person who has been publicly laughed at - this is the most humiliating social condemnation, and on the other hand, effective use of humor is considered the peak of charisma and social functioning in front of an audience (not simple at all!), and in today's mass media - political functioning. It's not just a side joke at the bottom of the gum wrapper but can be a headline - in media that's fun to read. When was the last time there was a funny headline in Haaretz? They don't even produce a parody issue on Purim. There's not even an April Fool's. And the pathetic satire that does exist is a joke. Bibi laughs that Haaretz is a sour pickle - and Haaretz is a sour pickle. Not funny?

In Haaretz and on the left, criticism and radicalism have become the intellectual currency, not humor and wit, because that's "not serious". But there's nothing easier than criticism (just going against an existing direction) or radicalism (just intensifying an existing direction). This is in contrast to creativity (a surprising new direction), the peak of which is humor (which combines the surprising with the critical and even the radical - a kind of twist that changes not the direction but the perspective: "he brought it to him upside down"). Columnists in Haaretz will almost never joke. Playful captions are in danger of extinction. The pictures don't wink at the reader. Even the headlines don't get clever. Funny writing doesn't gain prestige, not even in literature, and therefore "serious" Israeli literature is completely devoid of humor. The attitude will always be to the critical as high and to the humorous as low (the opposite!).

Would we have had political correctness here if the left had humor? Certainly not, after all, it's a completely ridiculous phenomenon, like any thought dictatorship. In exactly the same way - not necessarily the failed leader will be ousted, but the one who becomes ridiculous in the eyes of his people. That's why dictators are so afraid of humor, because there's nothing that more endangers their eternal rule than a cheeky and effective satirist. The very fact that a ridiculous ruler at levels that are unheard of has been ruling here for half a generation, that even his name "Bibi" is a parody - this is only because of the fall of the humorous genre in Israeli media.

Jabotinsky's testament to Zionism as brought through the biblical figure of Samson (in his central novel of that name) in his last request to the people was: "Tell them in my name, not two but three things: to gather iron, to put a king over them, and to learn to laugh". Samson asks the people struggling against the Philistines not only to create superior military technology and to ensure strong political rule for themselves, but emphasizes an additional vital component that he thinks is missing for the nation's revival. There's no doubt that we've fulfilled the first two parts of the testament. But they turned out quite badly without the third component.