David Mamet likes to rile people. The playwright who brought street talk from the alleys of Chicago to Broadway, and upset theater-goers with plays about sexual harassment and white-black relations in America, has assumed a new public persona: that of a neoconservative fighter who is out to shatter the "dogma" of the liberal left and defends Israel aggressively. His book The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (Sentinel HC, 2011) establishes the nexus between the current wave of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism, especially in the West, including attempts at denying Israel’s very legitimacy.
David Alan Mamet in the eyes of many is America’s greatest living playwright, as well as a successful screenwriter and movie director an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director. Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984). He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
Zalman Shoval writing in the Jerusalem Post finds that Mamet, like many in the US today, though probably less so among the usual Hollywood and Broadway types, has in recent years come full circle from starry-eyed liberal to determined conservative, giving short thrift to most of American liberals’ “sacred cows,” in particular ridiculing many of the programs and policies of the current administration with regard to education, economics, health-care, multiculturalism etc.
What makes Manet’s new book especially important, certainly for Jews, and what sets him apart from some other Jewish intellectuals, is his straightforward, clear-headed and clear-eyed approach to all things Jewish and Israeli. A proud and committed Jew, he closely identifies with the State of Israel, referring to its enemies as “our opponents.”
Mamet was born 64 years ago in Chicago to Jewish parents, Lenore June (Silver), a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney who specialized in labor law. Mamet relates that he grew up in a neighborhood of Jewish immigrants. “I didn't know anybody whose grandparents were born in America." But the aspiration in his home was to move away from the Yiddish roots and assimilate into American society. His younger sister, Lynn, noted, "The virtues expounded were not creative but remedial: let's stop being Jewish, let's stop being poor. There was a great deal of pressure for us to be the best Americans we could be."
Manet in his book points out that “the truly disquieting enormity of Israel is [to American Liberal Jews] its existence, because of which a largely anti-Semitic world forces them to choose. They, as opposed to non-Jews, are forced to have an opinion on a difficult and dangerous topic; and they would rather not. They are angered neither at Israel nor at world anti-Semitism, but at ‘the Jews.’”
Mamet doesn’t mince words, e.g. “many Liberal Jews (are likely to believe) the statements of Hamas rather than those of Israel”; and “the State of Israel is, in itself, an incurable affront to the Left, for it is a demonstration of the possibility of choice... the free men and women of Israel persevere in spite of the Left’s casuist carping and bellicosity and displeasure, backing their convictions with their lives, an intolerable affront to those preferring equality to liberty.”
As Mamet explains further, “there is, historically, much rancor on the Left against the existence of the State of Israel, and frequent mention is made, and, more destructively, implied, of Israel's ‘aggression.’ But what does the State of Israel want? To be left in peace within its borders. What does the Arab world want? To destroy the State of Israel...!
“Western sympathy for the Arab cause, then, can only rest upon a sliding scale of Humanity – the Arabs, and, thus, their demands, being of a weight sufficient to nullify those of Israel, though the former want slaughter and the latter peace....”
Also, “while Israel is willing to concede any scant and still-disputed land, the Arabs want all of Israel.”
The question “what has Israel ever wanted except peace within its borders is greeted, largely, in the West, by the response: Shut up, I’m watching the news.”
He then explains that many Leftists feel they “may gain status by embracing the ‘Arab cause’” – with the Liberal West exhorting “the citizens of Israel to take the only course which would bring about the end of the disturbing cycle of violence – which they hear of in the Liberal press. That course is abandoning their homes and country, leaving with their lives, if possible, but leaving in any case.”
Mamet asks: “Is this desire anti-Semitism?” He replies: “You bet your life it is.”
A correspondent for the Financial Times was offended at Mamet's characterization of the British establishment as a gang of anti-Semites. "I'm not going to mention names because of your horrendous libel laws, but there are famous dramatists and novelists over there whose works are full of anti-Semitic filth," Mamet said.
In an interview with Aluf Benn of Haaretz and published on Jan. 13, 2012, Mamet said: "My interest in Israel," he replied, "came from discovering my vast interest in Judaism. It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
Mamet says that in the past, he took little interest in politics. From his perspective, supporting the Democrats was the default option. "My dad, who worked for the trade unions, voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential elections. I asked him, 'How did you do that?' And he replied, 'I thought he was the better guy.'"
And you voted for Jimmy Carter?
"God forgive me, I voted for Carter. I mean, there's a hell I'm going to for that. Did you read his book ["Palestine: Peace not Apartheid"]?"
David Mamet has a way with words in his powerful defense of the State of Israel. This capability is experienced by the reader in his article for Wall Street Journal published on December 13, 2011 and titled “Israel, Isaac and the Return of Human Sacrifice.”
As Iran races toward the bomb, many observers seem to think the greater threat is the possibility that Israel might act against its nuclear program. Which raises the question: What should it mean if, God forbid, militant Islam through force of arms, and with the supine permission of the West, succeeds in the destruction of the Jewish State?
1) That the Jewish People would no longer have their ancestral home;
2) That they should have no home.
Since its foundation Israel has turned the other cheek. Eric Hoffer wrote that Israel is the only country the world expects to act like Christians. Some Jews say that the Arabs have a better public relations apparatus. They do not need one. For the Liberal West does not need convincing. It is thrilled merely to accept an excuse to rescind what it regards as a colossal error.
How may they still the resultant anxiety? The Left's answer is the oldest in the world: by appeal to The Gods. But how may The Gods be appeased? The immemorial answer is: By human sacrifice.
The essence of the Torah is the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac. The God of Hosts spoke to Abraham, as the various desert gods had spoken to the nomads for thousands of years: "If you wish me to relieve your anxiety, give me the most precious thing you have."
So God's call to Abraham was neither unusual nor, perhaps, unexpected. God had told Abraham to leave his people and his home, and go to the place which God would point out to him. And God told Abraham to take his son up the mountain and kill him, as humans had done for tens of thousands of years.
Now, however, for the first time in history, the narrative changed. The sacrifice, Isaac, spoke back. He asked his father, "Where is the Goat we are to sacrifice?" This was the voice of conscience, and Abraham's hand, as it descended with the knife, was stayed. This was the Birth of the West, and the birth of the West's burden, which is conscience.
Previously the anxiety and fear attendant upon all human life was understood as Fear of the Gods, and dealt with by propitiation, which is to say by sacrifice. Now, however, the human burden was not to give The Gods what one imagined, in one's fear, that they might want, but do, in conscience, those things one understood God to require.
In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another's. As Realpolitik, the Liberal West's anti-Semitism can be understood as like Chamberlain's offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism. On the level of conscience, it is a renewal of the debate on human sacrifice.
Further Reading:
Is Thomas Friedman of the New York Times a closet anti-Semite?
Glenn Beck: The controversial Fighter against Hatred towards Jews and Israel
