Actually, Most Israelis Want To See Tel Aviv Nuked Also

By the Rest of Israel

The rhetoric surrounding Bibi Netanyahu’s scheduled speech to the US Congress about Iran’s nuclear program represents just one more little storm obscuring one important detail: most Israelis want Tel Aviv to get nuked.

Let’s just be straightforward about it. The place is a moral train wreck with a stifling inferiority complex. It can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be European, American, Mediterranean, Levantine, Jewish, secular, or anything else – and no matter which identity it chooses, it can never fully or effectively embrace it. Just nuke the place and spare the rest of the country all the angst and shame. I promise we’ll all be better off as a result, radiation poisoning and all. It’ll be worth it just to be rid of the awkwardness of having to witness the wannabe.

“The first Jewish city” – well, yeah, technically that’s true, in the sense that it was Jews who founded it – specifically to throw away their Jewishness. It’s a place that doesn’t know who it is, a city that no matter how hard it tries to look like Maurice Chevalier, always ends up more like Woody Allen. We’re talking about a place that got itself designated a UNESCO World Heritage site for its plethora of Bauhaus architecture – really? Bauhaus? That’s worth preserving? What’s next, an award for high levels of air pollution? For the largest number of major thoroughfares likely to experience flooding when it rains? A good post-detonation crater might do wonders for the Ayalon highway’s drainage. Then UNESCO can declare that site a work of art and fund its preservation. It would actually be an upgrade in artistic sensibility.

It would be bad enough if the place weren’t so hoity-toity about pretending to be something it’s not. Listen, the fact that you’re the only city in the Eastern Mediterranean that hosts a Gay Pride Parade does not automatically turn you into San Francisco. Except for the part where the rest of us are kind of waiting to see whether an earthquake will strike you.

All of Tel Aviv’s attempts to be like New York – a financial district, a world-renowned philharmonic, you know the drill – have managed to make the city resemble the Big Apple in one respect: everybody else hates and resents the place. Congratulations.

Remember how, after 9/11, all of the US suddenly loved New York? How, after Hurricane Sandy, the hate and resentment seemed to subside? Therein lies the key to getting the remainder of Israel to feel something positive for Tel Aviv: destroy the place.

Come on, Khamenei. We’re counting on you.