55 Comments
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Tomas Pajaros's avatar

aszhat Patinkin. We can finish his sentence for him: "I support Israel's right to exist but not their right to defend themselves from even the most rabid, animalistic terrorists in history"

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C. Stone's avatar

Dear Mandy Patinkin,

You think that Israelis have been in the revenge business for so long that they have lost their way, lost their morality, lost their dignity. You are wrong. Israel has been in the trying to survive and thrive business since the second it became a Jewish state in 1948 and was blitzed by five Arab armies. The Jews were in the being pogromed, chased and ghettoized business for millennia prior to Israel’s rebirth as the Jewish Nation. In the last 77 years Israelis and Jews around the world have been in the Am Yisrael Chai business. Great actor that you are Mr. Patinkin my advice is this, stick to your script. Once outside of its constraints you sound infantile and are putting Jewish lives at risk.

You are in the entertainment business. Palestinian terrorists are in the slaying Israeli civilians business.

Hamas terrorists are in the killing Jewish babies and raping Jewish woman business. Iran is in the incinerating Israel business. Yet, it is the actions of the IDF which make you feel unsafe?

Here is some more advice. Lock your door and be thankful a Houthi missile is not flying up Central Park West. At least not yet.

I see your Princess Bride quote and raise you a Menachem Begin quote.

I think a person from the Jewish diaspora who says the Israel’s actions are putting the lives of Jews outside of Israel at risk is selfish. Frightened is the elderly widow in Tel Aviv being told to rush to a bomb shelter double time. Frightened not by the incoming missile but because her grandson is on reserve duty and her husband fell in Lebanon.

“No one will frighten the large and free Jewish community of the United States” (Menachem Begin)

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Philosopher Poet's avatar

I thought I’d never say this of another Jew. Because of his ‘public’ proclamation is he publicly claiming I do not want to associate myself with the Jews of the world and I am publically divorcing myself with all that is Jewish ? How is this stripped down poor excuse for a Jew stoop to the depths of practically denying the Holocaust

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Peter Himmelman's avatar

There are 19 b’rachot in the sh’monah e’srei. Enough said.

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Yosef Rosenfield's avatar

Daaaaamn

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Philosopher Poet's avatar

Well said - thank you.

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Ms. Billie M. Spaight's avatar

OMG! I remember Mandy Patinkin from YENTL; he was so beautiful. And then on Criminal Minds, which he quit because he said it was "too violent." If one is to truly have so-called "balance," then one cannot just give half of the picture. We know HAMAS started this war. And you are 100% correct when you say that the suffering on both sides is a result of WAR. That is what a WAR is. I said that to a friend of mine and she accused me of being a MAGAT! No WAY! It is more understandable when someone who is a NONJEW and not from this country says dumb things that can be pretty offensive! But Mandy? Nope, no excuses. If he wants to balance out everything, then let him include HAMAS' atrocities and the hostages in his summations. He may disagree with Netanyahu. I often do, but when people throw around words like "genocide" and "Nazis" to describe Israel, that's beyond the beyonds. They can say that the WAR is brutal--it is. But it does take two sides to fight one and it takes one side to start one. Mandy ought to know better. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

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Michele's avatar

Excellently, flawlessly written, I hope somehow he finds this piece and reads it and weeps. He deserves it.

I remember on one episode from the series Homeland, where he played Saul Berenson, the curmudgeonly and often lesser CIA agent to Carrie Matthison. In the show, he visits his sister in Israel (she is a "settler" and in the show he manages to take a few swipes at her lifestyle and the government. a complete non-sequitur and was apparently only in the show perhaps to curry favor among the anti Israel crowd...which of course begged the question..why did he have to play a Jewish character). I remember hating him more than ever and that was years ago....I have watched Homeland 2 more times completely through and I always leave the room when he visits his sister in that singular episode where he lost me forever. He has always been someone who (to me) seemed to suffer from HS girl FOMO. it was as though he was a big star...but then, was he really a big star??? I never could land. I will say that every single one of these Hollywood Jews who take more time to spread hate towards Israel than to defend their Homeland lose more and more of the Jewish crowd. We don't need them..their "voices" are only pollutants of which we already have enough.

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Aviv's avatar

That silly argument that’s always made about how much we suffered from the Nazis therefore we must… What exactly? Offer our throats to the Muslim sword lest we be too victorious? People need to realize that this breed of Islam in Gaza, and indeed at these very moments in Syria, is Nazism with a religious zeal. You have to destroy it!

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JFunk's avatar

So many US Jews don’t really understand the extent of the propaganda they’re being fed through the traditional media and are easily persuaded by this. Unfortunately, it looks like most of them are agreeing with him. There needs to be a way to get across the information that the Liberal community is spinning a narrative about Israel that is deeply based in antisemitic lies. If we can’t do this, we are in trouble.

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Doug Israel's avatar

Out of the book forever. Keeping silent is one thing. Publicly attacking Israel is another. He's no better than Roger Waters. Maybe worse since it is a betrayal from him.

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anne reisman's avatar

Agreed

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alexander.helphand's avatar

There is a certain type of Jew that loves everything Jewish except other Jews. The 19th blessing as referenced so perfectly was added the last, and is directed only at other Jews. It starts and the slanderers should have no hope. What a great series of posts.

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Martin Golan's avatar

Perfect!

It makes me think, perhaps I am not alone.

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alexander.helphand's avatar

well thank you sir

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Amy Federman's avatar

You've articulated my thoughts and feelings exactly. Thank you.

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An independent observer's avatar

I almost believed the tears and the tremble in his voice. I am still not 100% convinced it was acting. There are many like him: liberal Jews claiming they care about Israel’s existence but do everything to undermine it. It is difficult for them to take an honest stand. In Russian, we call it “sit between two chairs”. The equivalent is “have it both ways”. I loved him in Homeland. But in this dangerous troubling time we should not be that forgiving and should call it what it is: cowardice and conformism.

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War for the West's avatar

He’s one of those people who seemed much smarter before he began opining on the world. Many actors confuse the pose they develop as a character in their own life with reality…He’s just not that smart or well informed.

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Liora Jacob's avatar

The day Hamas disarms, surrenders and releases all hostages is the day the war ends, as everyone knows full well, and that has been the case since Oct 8. The blood of all dead civilians is on the hands of these savages and their clueless useful idiot supporters in the West.

If only such supposed humanitarians crying crocodile tears cared more for Palestinian lives than they despise Jewish ones….

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Elsa's avatar
2dEdited

Of the many excruciating moments since Oct 7th this outburst, this foaming at the mouth, was one of the hardest. Thank you for taking it on. I have tried not to cross this line for fear of creating an even greater split in the Jewish people. הס וחלילה. Yet we live in a time when it is possible for Jews to walk the streets of Jerusalem. Down through history, down through time ... in our lifetime, this is an unfathomable miracle! May we remember and protect this gift and all the lives given for it.

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Dennis A Gura's avatar

Yet these are then sentiments I hear coming from the mouths of many committed Jews, bedeviled and confused by Israel's continued presence in Gaza, with not much intelligible framing of either short term or long term tactical or strategic goals. I don't think that he - Patinkin - is responded to that conundrum: it is about emotions and appearence. But it is difficult to mount a convincing counter-argument when then Israel presentation of the case is so terribly broken, and self-contradictory. His comments expose the failure of Holocaust education, in which that sui generis event is mistakenly universalize, on the one hand, and on the other, show that we still need to make the Zionist argument inside the Jewish community, and demonstrate the necessity of Jewish power, and allow that the exercise of power inevitable leads to painful and perhaps even morally dubious consequences. The Jewish anti-Zionists revel in Jewish powerlessness, and their discomfort with Israel, which existed before 10-7, was a discomfort at Israel's power and the exercise thereof altogether.

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Mordechai Schiller's avatar

Feh!

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Mr. Ala's avatar

You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.

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