There he is again, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi, back on US TV, now Fox News, making his case for going on with the war.
To capitulate, he says, is to threaten Israel’s survival.
He stands there without the trappings of his office, without members of his cabinet, without cheering crowds. He is a man entirely alone.
He explains why he won’t back down. To back down would be the easy way, the popular way. He would surely be far more popular if he gave in.
Submission is the way of the world, but he refuses to bend. Join us as part of the in crowd, they say pleasantly. Better, as it says, to be a live dog, than a dead lion.
Join us, they say, and forget the land you were sworn to protect. We will do that for you, as we have done in the past. Trust us. You can always count on our assurances.
That way his enemies are waiting for him to crack. Each day they expect him to crumble. They see the bags under his eyes for lack of sleep, and days of worry.
In plain view, he has got the world on his shoulders, and there is no one to turn to in a world without pity. They figure the pressure is getting to him.
Former friends urge him to call it quits. Colleagues abandon him. Some slander him. A few threaten him. But Bibi persists.
He is Gary Cooper, aka Will Kane, from the Western “High Noon.” But always in this movie it is Gary Cooper, a Marshall in a town out West.
The Miller Gang has arrived to kill him. He is the Law, but he will need help. Why not, as his bride, Grace Kelly, suggests, and then insists, just leave?
In fact, they were all packed and ready to go, to start a new life elsewhere, the same day the Miller Gang arrived.
Cooper, of course, chooses the manly thing. He will not leave. He will fight. But he is badly outnumbered and out-gunned. He will need help from the townspeople.
After all, throughout the years, he was their protector, and many were his friends.
One at a time he turns to them to help him out, and one by one, as the clock is ticking for noon, they turn him down. He is a man alone.
Bibi must know that feeling.
“High Noon,” considered the greatest Western ever, nominated for seven Academy Awards, was written by Carl Foreman, produced by Stanley Kramer, directed by Fred Zinnemann.
All were Jewish. They must have known something. Zinnemann especially. He knew what it was like when there is no help and an entire world turns against you.
He was a Holocaust Survivor.
Playwright Ionesco’s. “Rhinoceros’’ runs along a similar theme…how an entire town turns cowardly and submissive upon the arrival of a single monster.
Who will be the hero and stick to his convictions?
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” From the publisher: His novel “Slot Attendant” and his other works motivated John W. Cassell to declare “Jack Engelhard is a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Contact here
NOW AVAILABLE: The collection of Jack Engelhard’s op-eds, Writings, here
Plus, a free sample chapter of his noir gambling thriller, Compulsive, is available from his website, here.