WE HEAR YOU, MICHAEL DOUGLAS - JUNE 15, 2015

WE HEAR YOU, MICHAEL DOUGLAS

Michael Douglas, in Israel to receive the Genesis Prize, needs no introduction. He is big enough and famous enough to take care of himself.

But something happened. Not to him, but to his son, Dylan, and that’s when it really hurts.

Somewhere in Europe, as Douglas described it for the LA Times, 14-year-old Dylan came crying to his father about a verbal attack that took place at a swimming pool. A man took note of Dylan’s Star of 

David and proceeded to launch an anti-Semitic tirade.

Imagine the pain. This happened last summer and still today, Douglas is worked up with indignation.

He says something must be done about anti-Semitism. Agreed. He says this can only happen in Europe. Here I totally disagree.

Try making “Exodus” today. Let me know how it goes. Good luck.

First of all, there is plenty of that going around within the United States, if we dare come to terms with what’s really happening along our campuses.

Second, we need voices exactly like that, like those of the Hollywood rich and famous, people like Michael Douglas, to speak up, yes, to denounce anti-Semitism – but it is not enough to be against something. That gets you nowhere. More important is to be FOR something, and to be for Israel would be a good place to start.

Immediately another Douglas comes to mind – Kirk Douglas, Michael’s dad. If any Hollywood actor needs no introduction, this is the man, and what a man. Thank goodness we still have him with us at 98 years old. He is the final link to Hollywood’s Golden Age – and he is a Zionist.

He was a Zionist when everybody was a Zionist – and damn how times have changed!

Back in 1960, Otto Preminger gave us “Exodus” starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. Let’s not quibble about the details. This was a Zionist film. Hollywood was not afraid to make it and there were no boycotts against the film, or against Israel.

Did I already say times have changed? Try making “Exodus” today. Let me know how it goes. Good luck.

The mood was so different back then because Israel was presented as a romance, a love story between a Land and its people.

That’s the theme of every Hollywood movie…boy gets girls, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back.

The Jewish people get Israel (Biblically), lose Israel, win her back. What a story, and back in the 1950s and 1960s it was a story that could be told, and nobody told it better, in 1966, than Kirk Douglas in “Cast A Giant Shadow.” This film gave it all, the pioneering spirit of the early founders, told with facts and emotion.

Who else was in that terrific movie? Frank Sinatra. Only Herzl himself was more of a Zionist than the Italian Kid from Hoboken. Sinatra's profound dedication to Israel was at a time when Israel was popular -- and why was it popular?

Because we had people like Sinatra and Kirk Douglas and Marlon Brandoand John Wayne…and so many others who stood tall for Israel.

To stand for Israel is different from standing against anti-Semitism. People – especially the young – need a cause.

Against something is not a cause. For something is a cause.

At some point, from the 1960s forward, the mood changed. It’s for another time to discuss what happened and how it happened and why it happened – though for me, it started right after the 1973 War when Israel woke up late and a perceived weakness gave the anti-Semites an opening.

But that’s too simplistic. Radical Liberalism was on the move and it’s still moving and as we have learned to our dismay, Radical Liberalism and anti-Semitism – this is a marriage made in hell. In short, we lost the voices, the big voices, the glamour voices that speak for Israel.

Jon Voigt, bless him, yes, and who else?

That something like 80 percent of the Jewish vote went for Obama twice, that tells you something.

That Barbra Streisand and her Hollywood claque keep funding-raising for Obama, that tells us something maybe even bigger.

In America, pop culture IS culture, and when Israel can find only one or two friends within the Hollywood elite, somebody else must step up.

Let it be Michael Douglas.

Or let it be David Mamet. This Pulitzer Prize winner is our foremost playwright and a top-notch screenwriter. One day he decided that enough was enough. He quit toying with the façade of being “a brain-dead Liberal” and announced himself squarely as a Conservative and staunchly on the side of Israel. He lost friends. You should have heard the geshrei in The New York Times.

Nobody said it would be easy. These are tough days and tough times to be Jewish, and it’s even tougher to be pro-Israel.

We can’t wait for an end to anti-Semitism. This will always be with us. But for a start to reinvigorate Jewish pride, Jewish muscle, there is only this…

Love of Zion.

Let’s hear it expressed resolutely from voices that count – while we still have a voice. Yes, before it’s too late.

Novelist Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestseller “IndecentProposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. His latest work is “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Website:www.jackengelhard.com

This article first appeared in the monthly magazi

BERNIE SANDERS FACES NPR McCARTHYISM - JUNE 12, 2015

NPR’s 20 million weekly listeners got a taste of what McCarthyism must have been like back in the 1950s.

That’s when people were ruined by insinuation and if that wasn’t enough, it was demanded of them to “name names.”

In other words, they were expected to bring down friends and family members as well.

Some may remember this type of bloodcurdling language from the Wisconsin Senator: “I have here in my hand a list…”

The “list” (of allegedly “known communists”) was meant to terrify people, and it did.

Those tactics came back in style a few days ago when WAMU radio host Diane Rehm used a tone that sounded like a Joe McCarthy witch-hunt.

In an interview with Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders she stated as fact, “Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.”

Sanders, the junior Senator from Vermont, Jewish and politically Independent, was asked a question that never came up for Obama at NPR.

Rehm’s program begins at WAMU and is broadcast throughout NPR’s 900 affiliate stations. In his Village Voice confessional, “Why I Am No Longer A Brain-Dead Liberal,” playwright David Mamet scored National Public Radio's “National Palestinian Radio.”

Sanders, therefore, should not have been totally amazed at finding an interview turned into an inquisition.

 “Well no,” Sanders protested. “I’m an American.”

Sanders is a self-described Democratic Socialist. He is running for the White House as a Democrat and is expected to have no chance against Hillary Clinton for the nomination. On Israel, Sanders snubbed 

Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli Prime Minister addressed Congress. 

His platform, it’s been said, would cut aid to Israel. He’s on record as saying Israel “overreacted” to the 30,000 rocket attacks that came from Gaza.

Still, he gets no favors or soft-pedaling from the PLO-favoring Left. Proof that even anti-Israel Jews are still Jewish no matter what side they take.  

But as a young man, Sanders, now 73, spent a few months on a kibbutz.

Was she asking Sanders to “name names?” Was she asking him to denounce “fellow travelers?”
Is that what got him flagged by NPR? Or, forNPR, is friendship with Israel a bridge too far?

Sanders appeared stunned by Rehm’s faulty information. Rehm explained that she found him on a “list.”

Shades of McCarthy? Or did the “list” fall into the hands of Diane Rehm from the new and improved McCarthyism.

"That's some of the nonsense that goes on in the Internet,” Sanders replied, obviously irritated at being ambushed by BDS rumormongering.

Rehm apologized several times during the interview and even after the interview for presenting as fact erroneous material.

But it gets worse.

Rehm persisted, asking Sanders if there are other members of Congress who may have dual citizenship, or is it “part of the fable.” 

Fables linked, no doubt, to the BDS business of spreading falsehoods throughout Social Media…and whatever works to scandalize and oppress.

Was she asking Sanders to “name names?”  Was she asking him to denounce “fellow travelers?”

This does stink of McCarthyism.

“I honestly don’t know [about others],” Sanders hotly replied during his cross-examination.

The experience may have taught Mr. Sanders that being on “their side” is no safe harbor. He should not have been caught by surprise.

But it can work both ways.

As a successful journalist and as a proud Arab-American, Diane Rehm ought to know better than to touch her very own third rail.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. The new thriller from the New York-based novelist, The Bathsheba Deadline, a heroic editor’s singlehanded war on terror and against media bias. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com