The Israeli newspaper Haaretz offered a novel new idea for solving the age old “Israeli-Palestinian mess” on Tuesday — hand the whole issue over to Marie Kondo.
In an editorial for the paper, contributor Adrian Hennigan said Kondo’s success at bringing people together and sparking joy on her Netflix hit “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” might be enough to move the needle on the famously intractable geopolitical issue.
“We need to give her a far bigger challenge for season two than rearranging millennials’ sock draws: Solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Hennigan wrote. “Given her obvious skills at getting people to do things they never previously wanted to, who better than Kondo to drag Israeli and Palestinian leaders into the same room and get them working together on cleaning up this mess?”
Hennigan went further, indulging in a bit of Kondo fan fiction, about how the Japanese lifestyle guru might manage such temperamental personalities as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
“‘Mahmoud, Benjamin,’ I see her saying (let’s just assume Messrs. Abbas and Netanyahu are still in charge at this point),” he wrote. “‘I want you to touch the map of the Holy Land and identify only the parts that spark joy. When you feel the item that sparks joy to you, you feel ‘Ching!’ Mahmoud, did you really feel that when you touched Ra’anana?’”
It’s unclear, however, whether Kondo or Netflix would be up for the challenge. A rep for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.
Once an obscure Japanese organizing consultant, Kondo has rocketed to fame in recent years with the publication of several books on organization. Her most famous, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” has been a worldwide bestseller and was released in the U.S. in 2014. In January, Netflix “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” which has since become a surprise hit.