In the first few months of 2020, I dated a Regular Guy from Oklahoma. Or Wisconsin. He may have actually been from Nebraska. He was definitely American and had a Regular Guy name, a Regular Guy beard, and a Regular Guy job. I was in grad school at the time because I needed a mid-twenties side quest and because I, unlike Regular Guy, was full of ambitions.\n<\/p>\n
I had won lottery tickets for What the Constitution Means to Me and took him as my plus one for our first date. We talked about film and he listened intently as I described all of the different scripts I was working on for school. I didn\u2019t have much free time back then, but he didn\u2019t mind and would even drive me to class if it meant spending time together. Regular Guy was thoughtful and we had a great \u201cwe\u2019re not seeing each other seriously although you know all of my friends\u201d dynamic.\n<\/p>\n
As Regular Guy drove me to campus one day, I joked about Americans who put Ketchup on their scrambled eggs. I laughed at my wit and culture but sensed an awkward silence coming from the driver\u2019s seat. Regular Guy liked ketchup on his scrambled eggs.\n<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I would have dated Regular Guy if I had actually wanted to be dating. He was good company.\u00a0 I think of him fondly as someone who sent me decent music and never added any conflict to my life. We always knew we had a short-term expiration date. Neither of us expected that to be brought on by COVID.\n<\/p>\n
Regular Guy and I kept in touch for a bit while the world ended. We had a couple of social-distanced hangs, but I don\u2019t think either of us wanted to commit to the end of the world together. Things fizzled out naturally, but I remember him as the calm before the storm.\n<\/p>\n
Israel is not Oklahoma. It\u2019s the size of New Jersey, a state I\u2019m fairly certain Regular Guy was not from, yet everyone seems to have an opinion on it. Most people on the planet have never even heard of New Jersey. There\u2019s something those in the whole Israel\/Middle East space forget, and that\u2019s that the issues we\u2019re hyper focused on are not as unique as we think. On second thought, I think that\u2019s something most of the world forgets.\n<\/p>\n
This week my phone lit up with BREAKING NEWS notifications announcing that Israel had passed another round in Eurovision, a music competition mostly watched by American Jewish mothers. Jews celebrate every Eurovision advancement like the escape from Egypt. Why do we care? That\u2019s a rhetorical question. I know why we care. Sometimes I wonder if we should.\n<\/p>\n
There is a lot that makes Israel very much not like Oklahoma, starting with the fact that I don\u2019t know the first thing about Oklahoma outside of the 1943 musical, Oklahoma! Still, I\u2019m told Oklahoma doesn\u2019t have ballet classes inside of bomb shelters, which my school in Ra\u2019nana did. I bet you\u2019ve never heard \u201cNever have I ever taken a ballet class from a bomb shelter\u201d, before.\n<\/p>\n
Oklahoma doesn\u2019t have compulsory military service. I think Oklahoma borders Kansas, or Arkansas? Regardless, nobody is accusing Oklahoman settlers of escalating regional tensions. When I tell people that my parents wanted to leave Colombia in the nineties because it was unsafe and that the Israeli government welcomed us with gas masks for the whole family, they think surely I can\u2019t be serious. Fun fact, I once shared that with a guy on a first date. He ended the night by saying \u201csee ya later\u201d and not texting me again.\n<\/p>\n
Regular Guy and I never spoke about the Middle East. I think the only time he had left the continental US was to go to Cancun, which doesn\u2019t count if what you were doing involved a beach and a margarita in your hand. The only thing remarkable about him is that he hasn\u2019t unfollowed me considering how political my content has gotten.\n<\/p>\n
There\u2019s blame to go around for Israel\u2019s seemingly exceptional status. Some of the obsession is geopolitical. Some of it is theological. Some of it\u2019s just the internet rewarding outrage until every conflict starts feeling like early 2000s reality television. But what if part of Israel\u2019s suffering comes from participating in its own mythologizing? What if in our attempt to show the world how good we can be, we\u2019ve accidentally trained it to keep its eyes on us?\n<\/p>\n
It would have been easy for Regular Guy and I to find meaning where there was none. I remember saying goodbye to him on March 13th, the day I got to campus and murmurs of an extended Spring break were roaming the halls. We got on the phone that night and laughed off something we were both about to take very seriously. Keeping in touch as if we needed to be in each other\u2019s lives felt doable, but it quickly became a nuisance for both of us. He was having COVID parties, and I was hand-making face masks for my friends.\n<\/p>\n
Every Jew\/every ambassador of Israel has a few go-to lines when discussing Israel. \u201cThe gay capital of the Middle East!\u201d, \u201cThere are Arabs in the Knesset\u201d, \u201cIt\u2019s the most moral army in the world!\u201d These lines feel more like affirmations than talking points and do the exact opposite of what we hope they will. Our determination to make Israel out to be the greatest country on Earth reeks of desperation, and anyone determined to be an Israel-hater can smell it.\n<\/p>\n
I know why Regular Guy and I felt a momentary need for meaning making. When I told him over Face Time that I didn\u2019t think we were sustaining a healthy dynamic, I knew I was ending the only stress-free thing I had. He knew it, too. But bringing our situationship down to Earth is what lets me think back to him and say, \u201chey, that was just alright.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Maybe Israel doesn\u2019t need to be the light unto nations. It deserves the dignity of being ordinary. I think that\u2019s what I liked about Regular Guy. He never needed to be important to justify existing. I want Israel to be like Oklahoma, to have a 3.3 rating on Letterboxd and be completely forgotten about unless you happen to drive through it.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tJessica Ghitis is a Jewish-Colombian writer and educator based in Los Angeles. An alum of the American Film Institute Conservatory, she swapped the traditional entertainment track for something far less scripted after the October 7 attacks, blending storytelling and advocacy to push for sharper and more nuanced coverage of Israel in Latin American media. She collaborated with networks like NTN24, Telemundo, and Univision\u00a0to amplify the voices of hostages and their families during the war, including organizing delegations of hostage families to meet with American politicians and press.
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\nJessica has worked with organizations such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Fuente Latina to combat antisemitism, and has taught Hebrew school while serving on the Executive Committee for ANU: A New Union in the World Zionist Congress.
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\nShe is an IPF Atid Charles Bronfman 2025 Convener and currently works with Hayes Brothers Films and First-Look, a platform helping screenwriters get discovered. On her Times of Israel blog, she writes about geopolitics and modern dating with equal obsession\u2014unofficially calling herself \u201cCarrie Bradshaw of the Middle East.\u201d
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\nA historical fiction writer, Jessica believes stories don\u2019t just reflect reality\u2014they shape it. Still, she\u2019d often prefer fictional drama to the real kind.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first few months of 2020, I dated a Regular Guy from Oklahoma. Or Wisconsin. He may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[9581,10725,2492,16687,39437,26026,37],"class_list":["post-114124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-american-jewry","tag-anti-zionism","tag-antisemitism","tag-coronavirus","tag-dating","tag-eurovision","tag-israel"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116574663589751312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}