Israel Matzav

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Mamet: 'Britain has famous dramatists and novelists whose works are full of anti-Semitic filth'

Although it dates back at least to 2008, American playwright David Mamet's transformation from liberal to conservative has recently been getting a lot of play in the media.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mamet pulls no punches regarding what he thinks of the Brits and their attitude toward Jews and Israel.

We return to politics and I suggest that his intellectual journey from liberalism to neo-conservatism has been travelled before by Jews such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. This triggers a long reflection on his own Zionism and how he thinks Israel has been betrayed by the American left.

“The speeches that Charles Lindbergh made and Oswald Mosley made in the 1930s are the same speeches that are being made today, only slightly more politely: ‘The Jews are bringing us to war. Perhaps we should give their state away.’ The liberals in my neighbourhood wouldn’t give away Brentwood to the Palestinians but they want to give away Tel Aviv.”

But attitudes in Europe to the Middle East tend to be more sceptical about Israel than American ones, I interject. Does he believe that anyone who disputes Israel’s land claims and believes in reallocation of territory to the Palestinians is anti-Semitic?

Uncharacteristically, Mamet hesitates slightly as he starts to answer and I wonder if he will back down, or at least hedge his answer. “Well, at some level ... listen ...” He throws his head back and looks briefly at the ceiling before emitting a grunt of relief as he abandons caution.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “Of course! I mean you Brits ... ” He smiles ruefully. “I love the British. Whatever education I have comes from reading your writers and yet, time and time again, for example reading Trollope, there is the stock Jew. Even in George Eliot, God bless her. And the authors of today ... 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.

“There is a profound and ineradicable taint of anti-Semitism in the British ... The paradigmatic Brit as far as the Middle East goes is [TE] Lawrence. That’s just the fact. Even before the oil was there, you loved the desert. It had all these wacky characters ... But there is a Jewish state there ratified by the United Nations and you want to give it away to some people whose claim is rather dubious.”

He's dead-on, isn't he?

Labels: British anti-Semitism, David Mamet