A fellow writer, no friend of Israel, Trump or Putin, asked if I knew who wrote that line. He needed to know because, he said, it turned him around about everything.
No friend of mine, either, by the way…until now.
“That line is so true,” he said. “It had a powerful impact on me. A eureka moment.”
So he wanted to know if I knew who wrote it, the line that amounts to a knock on Obama and a tribute to Putin and runs:
“A Russian campus is safer for Jews than an American campus.”
Sounded familiar for me, too. Wish I’d said that, and golly, I did.
After all the writing you do, once in a while something clicks.
I came across it from the usual search and found it running as part of a column I wrote December 22, 2016, with the title, “Why real Americans love Putin.” Oh, Brother! Was that asking for trouble, back then, as well as today, what with Trump being shellacked left and right – and Putin in attendance as America’s designated villain.
According to my math, that’s almost two years ago when that column was posted. Trump had won and was a month away from taking office. But does the writing still stand?
Well the topic is current enough, thanks to the hysteria raging throughout the land because the Democrats have found the outrage of the week…more like two years, actually.
You are not safe in America if you support Trump…and woe unto you if your disdain for Putin is insufficient.
But it’s a risky business going over your own archives, whether your books or your columns. Do you dare open that door to the past? You don’t know what you’ll find.
I was under the same spell when a new publisher came along and I had to re-read “Indecent Proposal” for typos and was pleasantly astonished with a voice I hardly recognized as mine. Who wrote this, you ask yourself. Where did such heat come from…what heart…what soul…and you try to learn why some novels, like this one, succeed so big, and others don’t.
What’s the secret? Is there a formula? No, there is no formula and that’s the secret – which is to write fearlessly, even dangerously for your vision of the truth.
You will attract critics, make enemies, but so what?
Which brings us back to the column of 2016 that was dangerously favorable to Putin; were you right or wrong and if you had to do it again, would you? What would you change?
Nothing much, I have to say, after going over the piece rather carefully.
True, there is always a sentence or two, a sequence you’d like to have back. You wish you hadn’t said that, or had said it differently or better, or not at all.
But on the whole, I’d leave the piece as is, considering that it was written during the Dark Age of Obama, a time when there was no pro-Israel voice to be heard.
So I find nothing to change, for example, in a passage like this –
“Putin, call him a gangster, but he’s good to the Jews. He won’t tolerate anti-Semites. He pals with Chabad rabbis. His judo masters are often Jewish.”
I’d write that again today…and this –
“The childhood teacher he loved most was Jewish. He weeps when he thinks of her. Tough guys are allowed to cry.”
I find no flaw in that, either…or this –
“He calls radical Islamic terrorists radical Islamic terrorists.”
Obama would never go that far. Putin does. So does Trump, so onward we wrote –
“Isn’t partnership with Russia on a number of fronts preferable to war – hot or cold?”
Followed by --
“Yet the Democrats, the same weenies who need Teddy Bears to comfort themselves against Trump, keep harping for confrontation with Putin.”
All that, and more, from two years ago – and, a Russian campus is STILL safer for Jews than an American campus.
We’re betting on Trump to catch up with BDS and SJP to change this.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He is the author of the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and most recently the two inside journalism thrillers “The Bathsheba Deadline” and “News Anchor Sweetheart, Hollywood Edition.” Engelhard is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com