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Jewish Journal

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February 17, 2015

Age of Hysteria: The Reel Story Behind Mr. Netanyahu Going to Washington

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

There is a deliciously cinematic quality to the entire speechgate drama. Prominent pro-Israeli lobby groups have attempted to frame the scene as being something out of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln movie: a noble, far sighted, embattled president vs. a rude, uncouth, divisive Israeli leader who is little more than a mouthpiece for a cabal of grim, narrow minded, manipulative Republicans.

In fact, the lead up to Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress on March 3 more closely resembles the plot to The Karate Kid.

Much like Daniel LaRusso, the Israeli premier has drawn the ire of J-Street, the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and other members of the pro-Israel Iobby – let's call them the Cobra Kai – by cozying up with someone considered to be off limits.

In the Karate Kid, Daniel starts dating Ali Mills, an attractive high school cheerleader who happens to be the ex-girlfriend of the arrogant Johnny Lawrence. In real life, Netanyahu has seemingly abandoned Israel's traditional American allies by cultivating a growing list of conservative Democrats, American rabbis, and Christian pro-Israel groups.

Indeed, the shrill reaction of some self-proclaimed pro-Israel political lobby groups to an Israeli leader who has the temerity to not kowtow to its wishes brings to mind a line from Bob Dylan's 'Tombstone Blues': “The hysterical bride in the penny arcade. Screaming she moans, 'I've just been made'”.

Back to the movie. Johnny and his Cobra Kai gang torment Daniel repeatedly, savagely beating him until the wise and wonderful Mr. Miyagi intervenes and single-handedly defeats the attackers with ease. Amazed, Daniel asks Mr. Miyagi to teach him to fight. 

Over the last few days, a real-life hero and sage has stepped in to defend Netanyahu from the unremitting onslaught of supposed pro-Israel advocates in the United States who claim that the greatest national security issue of our time — the inking of a deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran — should not be open to debate.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has taken out full page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post, warning President Barack Obama not to sign an agreement with Iran that would allow it to develop its nuclear program.

In addition, Wiesel has implored Obama to “put aside the politics that have obscured the critical decisions to be made. Surely it is within your power to find a solution that will permit Israel’s Prime Minister to deliver his urgent message. Will you join me in hearing the case for keeping weapons from those who preach death to Israel and America?”

In The Karate Kid, Miyagi proposes that Daniel enter the All-Valley Karate Tournament, where he can compete with Johnny and the other Cobra Kai students on equal terms.

On March 3, Benjamin Netanyahu will enter another lion's den of sorts: a United States Congress where a growing list of Democrats are threatening to boycott the Israeli leader's speech.  

This real life drama will have one of two endings.

If successful, Barack Obama, with the support of America's 'pro-Israel' groups, will turn America’s Israel policy into a partisan issue after nearly a century of bipartisan Congressional consensus.

Or, the American public will protest, using a scissor leg technique to trip up an Obama administration Middle East policy that strayed far from the American consensus.

The secret to how this story will end lies in the minds and hearts of America's good and decent citizens, not in the hands of a few unaccountable pro-Israel lobbyist who are, despite loud protestations to the contrary, merely carrying water for the Obama administration.  

Age of Hysteria: The Reel Story Behind Mr. Netanyahu Going to Washington Read More »

Hollywood’s necessary not-niceness

Leave a Comment / Marty Kaplan, Opinion /

The billion people who will watch the 2015 Academy Awards got a great gift last week from Amy Pascal, the recently fired co-chair of Sony Pictures, who “>revealed – reportedly by North Korea — in retribution for “The Interview,” Sony’s gross-out comedy about the justifiable assassination of an actual, living head of state, Kim Jung-un.

Some of the juiciest exchanges were in emails between Pascal and producer Scott Rudin about director David Fincher, who was abandoning Angelina Jolie’s movie version of Cleopatra to helm (it seemed at the time) Rudin’s movie version of Steve Jobs.  Pascal pleaded with Rudin to call Jolie to mollify her.  Rudin replied that Pascal was as much behind the Fincher redeployment as he was, and that the suggested “masturbatory call is a wank I have no time for.”  “Shut it down,” he ordered Pascal, “it” meaning Jolie. “Do not f—ing threaten me,” Pascal replied.  “Watch how you talk to me,” responded Rudin, who called Jolie “a minimally talented spoiled brat… a camp event and a celebrity and that’s all.”

These hacked emails represent just the tip of the not-niceness iceberg that Pascal says makes Hollywood work.  No doubt there will be some who are exceptions on view on Sunday at the Oscars.  Some of the winners who’ll tell their toddlers how much they love them may actually be as lovely in their business lives as they are in their acceptance speeches, and some branches of the industry (agents and managers come to mind) are entirely sincere in sucking up to their clients and the people with the power to hire them.  But I think Pascal’s take on the industry’s id is largely fair. Politeness is a bad business model for entertainment.

(Disclosure:  I’ve known and liked Amy Pascal for decades.  Her husband has been a friend for even longer.  If that disqualifies me from arguing that she’s right about the weirdness needed to make Hollywood work, please do not f—ing read any further.)

For nearly four years I was an executive at Disney, a vice president of production for live-action feature films.  I spent almost eight more years there as a screenwriter and producer.  My first boss at Disney, Pascal’s equivalent, was Jeffrey Katzenberg, and when I arrived at the studio from Washington, D.C., where I had spent most of eight years as a speechwriter, Katzenberg told me that the best way to learn my new job was to shadow him – to sit in on his meetings, listen to him on the phone, accompany him to breakfasts, test screenings, media junkets, negotiations, to see behind the curtain and learn how it’s done.

I thought of that apprenticeship when I read Pascal’s Hollywood’s necessary not-niceness Read More »

Terror is a perfect reason to move to Israel

Leave a Comment / Israel, Rosner's Domain, Rosners Domain-mobile, Worldwide /

To be honest, I have to acknowledge a certain prejudice: I find it quite perplexing that there are Jews in Europe at all, that there are Jews living there willingly just 70 years after the Holocaust. So I have to write carefully about the Jews of Europe, knowing that I find them difficult to understand.

I do understand that from a certain European viewpoint, Jewish and non-Jewish, the call for European Jews to abandon their culture, their homelands, their neighbors and their communities and to flee is Israeli chutzpah. It is also a devastating call for surrender. What I wrote a month ago about Israel and the Jews of France remains true today for the Jews of Denmark: “A government that never misses an opportunity to lecture the Western world about the pitfalls of surrendering to terrorism is proposing exactly that — surrender — to the Jews of France.”

The murder of a synagogue guard in Copenhagen, the vandalizing of Jewish graves in France and the ugly comments made by a very senior former French Minister — a Foreign Minister — all these have reheated the debate (that never truly had a chance to cool down) about the future of Europe’s Jews.

Following these events, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said — not for the first time, but his formulation of this message seems to be getting a little bit bolder after every new incident — that “Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews. … I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew.”

Of course, Netanyahu is factually wrong. Israel is not the home of every Jew — Denmark is the home of some Jews, and so is France. But when Jews in Europe feel uncomfortable with Netanyahu’s calls for aliyah, it is not because of any factual errors — it is because of the way such calls frame their choices and their loyalties. Those who want to stay in Europe have no desire to be seen by their neighbors as temporary dwellers. They have no desire to be looked at suspiciously — as if their loyalty is split between two countries. Simply put: Israel’s attempt at rescuing them is endangering them even further. So some of them are disappointed by Israel’s conduct, and some are even angry.

“Terror is not a reason to move to Israel,” Jair Melchior, Denmark’s chief rabbi, told the Associated Press, adding he was “disappointed” by Netanyahu’s comment. Of course, he is entitled to feel disappointed. But, like Netanyahu, Melchior is also factually wrong: Terror is a reason to move to Israel and always has been a reason. In fact, Israel was established for this exact reason — to be a safe haven for Jews from European terror. Surely, it’s not a place in which there is no terror — Israel cannot claim with a straight face to be a terror-free zone for Jews. But it can easily claim to be the only place in which Jews don’t have to rely on the protection of the likes of former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas.

Melchior’s comment caught my eye because it is representative of a relatively new misconception about Israel’s true nature. Jews who no longer feel threatened (because they live in the United States), or do not want to let threats be a definitive fact in their lives (because they live in Europe), or don’t want to feel that they are forced to live in a Jewish shelter (because they live in Israel) prefer to look at Israel as a land of choice. Not a safe haven in the brutal sense that ignited Israel’s establishment, but rather one optional Jewish haven out of many.

Israel — to follow such a perception — is one of many fine alternatives in a marketplace of Jewish existences. It is more comfortable for Diaspora Jews to feel that way — because this perception diminishes the centrality of Israel as a player in the Jewish world. And it is more comfortable for Israeli Jews to feel that way, too — because it turns Israel from a gloomy fortress of Jews to a shiny beacon for Jews.

Yet what we’ve seen in Europe in recent months crashes this rosy perception. It is a stark reminder that Israel is still the only place in which Jews have some control over their future, and is a stark reminder that the question of the safety of Jews — the naked, brutal question of the physical safety of Jews — is still a highly significant one.

So, of course, one could still argue that for the Jews of Denmark it would be a wiser choice to rely on the protection of the Danish government, and for the Jews of France and Belgium to rely on the protection of their own respective governments. And, one could still reject Israel’s calls for aliyah while claiming that Israel is not exactly safe for Jews — not necessarily safer than other places.

These are tactical questions of threat assessment. Netanyahu believes that in the long term Israel is the safer place; other Jews might have a different view. But these tactical questions should not distract us from the ugly truth that was recently brought to the fore in Europe.

Yes, it would be great for Jews to want to come to Israel not because of terror, but rather because it is a great place to live. And it would be great for Jews to have as many havens as they possibly can. And it would be great to have an Israel that only needs to be a beacon and doesn’t need to be a fortress for Jews. But, sadly, we are not there yet. 

Terror is a perfect reason to move to Israel Read More »