Israel

A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

Noa Tishby

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982144951
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A "fascinating and very moving" (Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The Social Network ) chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most interesting countries in the world—Israel. Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5, 700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts?Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. But "this is not your Bubbie's history book" (Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher ). Instead, offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her "passion, humor, and deep intimacy" (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor ) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland's evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel's creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.

PART I DREAM

CHAPTER ONE A BRIEF HISTORY OF ME

AND WHY YOU CAN TRUST ME WITH THIS STORY

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT… YOU KNOW THE REST

It takes a second for a person to realize that their life has changed forever. As I was standing there, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Israeli military, with my back against the wall, nervous and sweaty, it dawned on me that this was it. My life would never be the same.

The evening had actually started out fairly chill. It was my younger sister’s twelfth birthday, and my dad, stepbrother, and I were taking her and her friends ice skating and to get some McDonald’s at the mall. I wasn’t on alert. A mall didn’t sound like something threatening or problematic. It was just my sister’s birthday—and it would change my life.

But before we move forward, let’s take a step back. My name is Noa Tishby, and I was born in Israel. I was raised in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, in a middle-class, politically active family that can trace its lineage through the creation of the state. My grandmother was one of the founders of the first kibbutz (a collective farm; more on this later) in Israel, my great-grandfather was the founder of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and my grandfather was Israel’s first ambassador to West African countries and served as a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations.

Needless to say, this left a strain of intrepid curiosity in my DNA. Growing up, I accompanied my parents to various protests and demonstrations, and we had ministers and ambassadors over for dinner several times a month. Politics was all around me, which is why it was somewhat surprising that I decided to go into the entertainment industry.

I started having the urge to act as a child. Like, a really young child. I used to see kids on TV and I just knew that was what I wanted to do. No one from my family was in the industry, and my mom, being the ninja that she is, neither knew nor cared much about it (a fact that remains true to this day). Supportive yet flummoxed, she said what any normal mom would say: “When you grow up, you can do whatever you want.” So I waited until I was all grown up, a wizened twelve years of age, and started taking myself to places in Tel Aviv where I heard that casting directors roamed the land. I found my first crappy agent, who sent me on the bus to auditions. I didn’t ask my parents; I just did it.

Around the age of thirteen, I started booking national commercials and TV appearances, which, ultimately, led to my parents’ discovery of my extracurricular activities. I enrolled in my first drama class, and it was love at first sight. I got hooked.

I got a drama scholarship from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and spent most of high school participating in school plays and musicals. Upon graduation, I did what (nearly) everyone in the country does: I joined the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). National service was, and still is, mandatory for most Israelis; and since, at the time, soldiers in the IDF were not allowed to work outside of the service, I put my career on hold. But that didn’t mean I gave up on my dream. Instead of buckling down on my push-ups, I auditioned for the military’s performance corps—the entertainment troops. Funny as it may sound, the troops are extremely selective. Their audition process is the theatrical equivalent of Krav Maga. Seriously. It took several grueling months for the military to decide that instead of putting me into a Nikita-type position, or alternatively, making me serve coffee to a random commander, they could use my singing skills. I was in!

I might not have been the most kick-ass secret agent, but I was a valued member of The IDF Circus Show (don’t ask, but there were no elephants involved). Every day, we drove from one military base to another, and every night we performed sketch comedy and covered hit songs. Basically, a nightly USO tour. The novelty wore off pretty quick, but the view from the back of the bus was priceless. From the Golan Heights to Hebron to the Gaza Strip, I saw how people lived and how the military worked. The army was indeed a true melting pot, and I got to see places and meet people I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet otherwise. It was also where I was introduced to the magical method of “threading,” or plucking your eyebrows with just a single thread. It, like the service itself, changed my life forever.

Toward the end of my service, I received a call from my agent about a couple of job prospects. The first was incredible. I was offered the part of Rizzo in a new stage production of Grease, directed by the biggest director in the country and starring the biggest names of that time. Just so we are clear, I was obsessed with Grease. Obsessed. I knew it by heart, I loved the role of Rizzo, and I was beside myself with excitement. The second offer was to audition for a pilot for a new TV show. The casting director was looking for a sixteen-year-old ingenue, and at just over nineteen I made perfect sense.

I went to the audition and waited outside with all the other teenagers. They didn’t give us texts—or, as we call them, “sides”—to memorize in advance; they just handed us a piece of paper on the spot to do a “cold read.” I scanned that text, and man, it was crap. It was the most clichéd phone conversation between a teenage girl and her mom, and it wasn’t to this little brat’s liking. When they called my name, I walked into the room, sat down, and asked the director if I could improvise. He was a bit shocked, but he said yes, so I threw the text on the floor and improvised a call, miming holding a phone to my ear and everything. When I finished, the director looked at the monitor, then looked back at me. “Can you smile for us, please?” I did. He looked at the monitor again, looked back at me, and said: “I have a role for you, but it’s not this one.” I didn’t get the role of the innocent teenage girl. I got the role of the main villain. The main love interest. The main bitch.

With both of these offers on the table, I went to my commander to beg for a break. I told him about the musical and the pilot and asked if, maybe, I could start my career while completing my service like a good soldier girl. He didn’t even pause to think about it. The musical was a no. Performing Grease onstage every night would take me away from performing for the soldiers every night. But that little TV show? Fine. It was only a pilot. He told me to go film it and come back. And so I did. That career move was one of the biggest turning points of my life.

Grease came and went without leaving any lasting impression on anyone. However, that little pilot turned out to be the dictionary definition of an overnight sensation. The show, Ramat Aviv Gimmel—named after one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Tel Aviv—modeled itself after American prime-time soaps of the era, Melrose Place and the like. It took place in a fashion company, and I played the new hotshot designer brought in to revamp the brand, who, naturally, had an affair with the head of the company and subsequently got entangled in a series of delightful catfights with the CEO’s older and superchic evil wife. It was silly, over-the-top, and the Israeli audience devoured it. The show became a massive hit.

Ignorant of this all, I was still in the bubble of active military service. My fellow soldiers ribbed me about playing an older vixen on that TV show, but other than that, it was all business as usual. Until that fateful day at the McDonald’s.

This is how my journey began, back in the nineties, my back against the wall, my father and stepbrother dragging me away from a pile of kids screaming out my character’s name (Daphne, if you’re wondering) and begging for an autograph in those simple pre-selfie days.

AN AMERICAN DREAM

By the time I turned twenty-two years old, I was a full-on veteran of the Israeli entertainment industry. I booked the role of Anita in the Habima National Theater’s production of West Side Story (a huge upgrade from Grease!) and put out a number one R&B album in English with my boyfriend (the first time in Israel a local artist sang in English!), all while shooting the number one show in the country. My days started at a 5 a.m. on the set of Ramat Aviv Gimmel and ended around 12 a.m. after my nightly performance of “A Boy Like That.” I didn’t sleep much, and I loved every minute of it. I was even offered a gig hosting the Israeli equivalent of The Tonight Show for the summer, and I considered taking it—until I had a not-so-chance meeting at a restaurant in Tel Aviv.

It was a sticky July day when I received an invitation for me and a guest to attend a dinner party hosted by the Israeli mega producer Arnon Milchan. My head spun as I envisioned Arnon seeing me, talking to me, and saying unequivocally, “I will make you the next Julia Roberts.” He did produce Pretty Woman, and that seemed like proof enough that this would be my long-awaited ticket to LA.

I’d actually been dreaming of America since I was a preteen (it wasn’t just a Hollywood thing). My first fantasy of the country came in second grade, when I was stricken by a plague of lice. I mean, a lot of lice. So many lice that my pillow sometimes seemed like it was moving all on its own. No matter what my parents did, we couldn’t get rid of them, and the only clever idea my father came up with was to give me a buzz cut. A BUZZ CUT! At the age of eight it was pretty dramatic, so, yes, you could say I was fully traumatized. I went to school in a hoodie and dreamed of the day I could flaunt my horse mane of a ponytail again. It took me months to get used to my new gender-fluid look (before it was a thing), and in the meantime, I planned my big escape—I would grow my hair and move to a new school in America, where the kids would never know of my lice-ridden past and where I would speak English with a full-on American accent.

It had taken a little over a decade, but my fantasy was finally coming true, and I was ready—American accent and all. I went to Arnon Milchan’s event with my plus one—my dad, naturally—and when we arrived, I positioned our party of two at our own little table. A few minutes passed before Arnon came over to say hello, and just like that, I started speaking to him in English. He picked up the cue and, after a short conversation with me and my dad, invited us to a meeting the following day.

At that meeting, Arnon informed me that, short of handing me roles, he would try to help me out, and that I must move to Los Angeles. He said the following line, which stayed with me for years: “If you make wine, you need to live in France. If you make watches, you need to live in Switzerland. And if you are in show business, you need to live in Los Angeles.”

DING.

I heard him. Loud and clear.

Four months later, I resigned from Ramat Aviv Gimmel, stopped recording my second album, dropped out of hosting The Tonight Show, left the role of Anita to my understudy, left my apartment and my boyfriend of three years, packed two suitcases, and got on a plane to Los Angeles. Clearly, I was a little cray.

Now let me just state what is by now pretty obvious to all of you—I did not end up becoming Gal Gadot. Not even close. My career in the US had some amazing breakthroughs, like signing a six-record deal with a major record label, and some epic fails, like having that label fold when the music industry crumbled at the turn of the millennium. I did work consistently, booked a few roles here and there, and got a lot of fans in the industry, but I also did not book many roles and got frustratingly close to even more of them. I regularly became a strong second choice for major parts, which left me with, well, basically nothing.

I was always an entrepreneurial person, even as a kid. When I was in high school and didn’t get accepted to a teen singing group, I started a competing one on my own. We put on a rock musical about the life of King David that became a cult phenomenon and went on to have a ten-year run. I needed to be creative and involved, and as such, I grew intensely frustrated with the LA waiting game, along with the general expectation that, as a young woman, I should sit prettily and quietly until my number came up, or didn’t. So I started looking for projects to create and produce. I read in an Israeli newspaper about a new Israeli TV show that was making waves in the country. It was called Be Tipul, and it was about a therapist who, for half an hour, simply sat in a room with other actors and had a therapy session. Talking heads. “What a brilliant concept,” I thought. And this was how I found my first format.

A format? you may ask. Let me explain. In television lingo, content is divided into two main fields, scripted and non-scripted. Scripted shows are every drama and sitcom you know, and non-scripted shows are reality shows, game shows, etc. Shows that literally do not have a script. Traditionally, the non-scripted format has been easier to “adapt” to international audiences, which is why pretty much every country on earth has their own version of American Idol. In the scripted world, however, it’s a bit trickier. Scripts need to be translated, rewritten, and culturally adapted to each new territory. A year or so prior I’d had a role on a sitcom for NBC that was based on a British show called Coupling. This is not a brag, but proof that even though scripted adaptations weren’t done much at the time, I knew it could be done. And I knew that Be Tipul could be the first show from Israel to do it.

I organized a meeting with the creator, and I told him straight up that I was going to sell his show to HBO. He seemed puzzled. At the time, this was a completely bonkers idea. Not only had no one ever done this before with an Israeli television show, no one had ever even thought of doing it.

I ended up selling In Treatment to HBO. I coproduced the show with Mark Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson, and we filmed 155 episodes that ran for three seasons, got nominated for twelve Emmy and Golden Globe awards, won a Peabody Award, and got renewed for a fourth season in 2020. This paved the way for Israel to become a TV format powerhouse; and, for a second, Israel became the country that sold the highest number of TV formats to the US, even more than the UK.

From a struggling actress waiting her turn, I became a struggling actress and a producer to be reckoned with. Apparently these two things are not mutually exclusive.

A TURKISH NON-DELIGHT

I was opening up major channels of communication between Israel and America, but still a lot of people seemed to not know where, or even what, Israel was exactly. The realization that Israel had a massive PR problem came up as soon as I started coming to the US and speaking to, well, people. I realized that what was common knowledge to me was total news to almost everyone. Just because I knew about Christopher Columbus, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t mean that anyone knew Israel’s history, its background, and the dangers it dealt with on a daily basis. It didn’t mean that anyone knew who Israelis were. I was shocked. I mean, Israel was such a hot button issue for so many people around the world, surely if people have such strong opinions about a country, they’ll be somewhat familiar with at least some basic facts, right? My gosh, was I wrong.

I encountered misinformation in all forms, even from the most well-intentioned and properly educated people. One day, while hanging with my old crew of young actors, writers, and directors, a successful up-and-comer you all know who would go on to win many awards, an Oscar among them, sidled up to me.

“So, you’re from Israel!” she twanged.

“Yes, I am,” I replied.

“Well, I was just wondering, how do your parents feel about you?”

I looked at her, confused. “I’m pretty sure they’re proud of me,” I said. “Why, is there something I should know about?”

She blinked, head cocked to the side, and continued. “I was just wondering how they feel about you being, you know, modern and all, without all the headgear,” she said, making circular hand movements surrounding her face and head, in what can only be explained as the charades description of a hijab.

To set the record straight: while rocking a hair covering can be a choice ranging from tradition to modesty to self-expression, hijabs are mainly worn by Muslim women in the presence of men outside their family. While I love a badass accessory as much as the next woman, my experience with headgear is limited to a sunny day or Burning Man (for more on that, see chapter three).

Stories like this repeated themselves in hundreds of variations for years to come. Over and over, I would find myself telling the story of Israel. Explaining that we are not, in fact, Afghanistan. Explaining how the country came to be, how the borders came to be, drawing hundreds of maps of the region on hundreds of napkins at various dinner parties. I had to explain how freaking modern Israel is ...