David Mamet
Unherd, Aug. 9, 2024
“The proximate solution to Jewish vulnerability — which I saw but did not say — was not in persuading others to think differently, but in so-persuading oneself.”
How may one today elide the choice between defending the Jewish State’s right to exist, and support for its determined assassins? One group only makes the attempt: American Liberal Jews.
I was recently invited to a presentation by IDF veterans wounded in Gaza after October 7. The organiser, a friend who taught at West Point, brought several of his cadets to hear the stories too grim to make the news, from the soldiers they might soon be fighting alongside. There were other guests; they were older Los Angeles Jews, like me.
When the floor was opened for questions, there was little more for the veterans to say; they fought to protect their country from savagery, and they were wounded. The questions, in any case, coming from Jews like myself, were predictably statements. They were expressions of outrage, followed by suggestions: the state of Israel must be helped by “Changing the Narrative”, which invariably meant “changing the minds of others”.
I don’t know how one changes the minds of others. Through 50 years of writing, I’ve regularly heard that film and drama should be enlisted in the service of good works; but no one has ever had his mind changed by a play or movie. That’s not how they function — they’re entertainment, with as little ability to alter one’s thinking as does a meal. Exodus no more reduced antisemitism than tacos clarify the border crisis.
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