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| Does Sacha Baron Cohen Understand Israel? | Does Sacha Baron Cohen Understand Israel? |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| TEL AVIV — I first met Col. Erran Morad 25 years ago. Well, sort of. | TEL AVIV — I first met Col. Erran Morad 25 years ago. Well, sort of. |
| Morad is the fictional brainchild of Sacha Baron Cohen, the famous prankster and comedian, who has been stirring controversy with his new show “Who Is America?” The colonel, one of several of Mr. Cohen’s new alter egos, is an ultra-macho ex-Mossad agent who travels around the United States duping Israel-loving conservatives into embarrassing themselves, for example by pulling down their pants to fight terrorists. | Morad is the fictional brainchild of Sacha Baron Cohen, the famous prankster and comedian, who has been stirring controversy with his new show “Who Is America?” The colonel, one of several of Mr. Cohen’s new alter egos, is an ultra-macho ex-Mossad agent who travels around the United States duping Israel-loving conservatives into embarrassing themselves, for example by pulling down their pants to fight terrorists. |
| So of course I didn’t meet the real Morad. But I met a Morad. Or someone resembling him. | So of course I didn’t meet the real Morad. But I met a Morad. Or someone resembling him. |
| My wife and I were young Israeli volunteers in a small North American Jewish community. One day, we got an invitation to a lecture by a retired Israeli military officer. He was in America trying to boost Israel’s image. And his tools were his thick Israeli accent, his brash manner, and his captivatingly dry observations. “You know,” the retired lieutenant colonel told his crowd of mostly elderly Canadian Jews, “we could throw all the Arabs into the Jordan. But the world won’t let.” I assume he meant Jordan the country, not Jordan the river, but who knows. | My wife and I were young Israeli volunteers in a small North American Jewish community. One day, we got an invitation to a lecture by a retired Israeli military officer. He was in America trying to boost Israel’s image. And his tools were his thick Israeli accent, his brash manner, and his captivatingly dry observations. “You know,” the retired lieutenant colonel told his crowd of mostly elderly Canadian Jews, “we could throw all the Arabs into the Jordan. But the world won’t let.” I assume he meant Jordan the country, not Jordan the river, but who knows. |
| This lieutenant colonel became a part of my family’s folklore to this day. We use his phrase as an absurd excuse for our simple failures. “I truly tried to convince the pigeons to get off the balcony,” I might say to my wife, “but the world won’t let.” | |
| We found so much humor in our Morad (and in case you wonder, yes, I do remember his real name) because he seemed outdated even then, in the mid-1990s. Like an effigy from the ’50s or maybe the ’60s, back when Israel was still thought of as a land of camels and Uzis. But we weren’t that country any more two decades ago — and we are certainly not that country today. Today, the military is not as dominant in Israel’s culture as it used to be, and Israel is more Westernized, more capitalist, more focused on trade and high-tech innovation, and less rugged, than it was in its early years. Morad is a caricature of our past, not our present. | We found so much humor in our Morad (and in case you wonder, yes, I do remember his real name) because he seemed outdated even then, in the mid-1990s. Like an effigy from the ’50s or maybe the ’60s, back when Israel was still thought of as a land of camels and Uzis. But we weren’t that country any more two decades ago — and we are certainly not that country today. Today, the military is not as dominant in Israel’s culture as it used to be, and Israel is more Westernized, more capitalist, more focused on trade and high-tech innovation, and less rugged, than it was in its early years. Morad is a caricature of our past, not our present. |
| And yet, we cannot escape the image. We cannot escape the suspicion that there are still some Morads in our midst: Brave commandos who become political leaders or arms dealers or pundits; Israelis who are blunt, macho, crude, boisterous, pompous and trigger-happy; Israelis who forget to shed their uniformed mentality even when their services are no longer needed. | And yet, we cannot escape the image. We cannot escape the suspicion that there are still some Morads in our midst: Brave commandos who become political leaders or arms dealers or pundits; Israelis who are blunt, macho, crude, boisterous, pompous and trigger-happy; Israelis who forget to shed their uniformed mentality even when their services are no longer needed. |
| What’s the damage for us? Does it help Israel to have this blustering, masculine image, or does it hurt it? | What’s the damage for us? Does it help Israel to have this blustering, masculine image, or does it hurt it? |
| We still have dangerous enemies, so maybe keeping this stereotype going is useful. We seem tough after all, with our big muscles and love of guns. On the other hand, the Morad caricature makes us look bellicose and pigheaded, if not downright absurd. And it probably makes us seem hideous to many Americans, especially young ones, especially liberal ones — the Americans with whom Israel already has an image problem. | We still have dangerous enemies, so maybe keeping this stereotype going is useful. We seem tough after all, with our big muscles and love of guns. On the other hand, the Morad caricature makes us look bellicose and pigheaded, if not downright absurd. And it probably makes us seem hideous to many Americans, especially young ones, especially liberal ones — the Americans with whom Israel already has an image problem. |
| Of course, Morad is more a representative of America’s peculiarities than he is of Israel’s. And what we learn from him is a little troubling: Israel’s most avid supporters in America might like us more as crude machos than as start-up entrepreneurs. They might even prefer our satirized fossils to our real selves. | Of course, Morad is more a representative of America’s peculiarities than he is of Israel’s. And what we learn from him is a little troubling: Israel’s most avid supporters in America might like us more as crude machos than as start-up entrepreneurs. They might even prefer our satirized fossils to our real selves. |
| How bad is Mr. Cohen’s satire for Israel? Well, that’s really besides the point. American satire isn’t meant to be good for Israel. The last thing we should do is get offended and defensive, repeating the mistakes that Kazakhs made when another Cohen character, the notorious Borat, made a laughingstock of their country. And besides, I get the impression that Morad’s high jinks make most Israelis laugh without much guilt or worry. (To find out more, I tested it on a sample of two young soldiers: my sons. They cracked up.) | How bad is Mr. Cohen’s satire for Israel? Well, that’s really besides the point. American satire isn’t meant to be good for Israel. The last thing we should do is get offended and defensive, repeating the mistakes that Kazakhs made when another Cohen character, the notorious Borat, made a laughingstock of their country. And besides, I get the impression that Morad’s high jinks make most Israelis laugh without much guilt or worry. (To find out more, I tested it on a sample of two young soldiers: my sons. They cracked up.) |
| And what about our own character, what about the possibility that without realizing it we, Israelis, really are all Morads? When I was working on this article, I called a friend of mine, a former paratrooper, to get his thoughts. “Are there still a lot of Morad types in our country?” I asked him. And then he gave me the answer that made it all clear: Every Israeli who serves in the military knows that we still have Morads. But for every idiotic Morad, we also have two prankish Cohens. That’s why we can afford a laugh. | And what about our own character, what about the possibility that without realizing it we, Israelis, really are all Morads? When I was working on this article, I called a friend of mine, a former paratrooper, to get his thoughts. “Are there still a lot of Morad types in our country?” I asked him. And then he gave me the answer that made it all clear: Every Israeli who serves in the military knows that we still have Morads. But for every idiotic Morad, we also have two prankish Cohens. That’s why we can afford a laugh. |
| Shmuel Rosner (@rosnersdomain) is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer. | Shmuel Rosner (@rosnersdomain) is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer. |