Jack Engelhard (צילום: מתוך האתר האישי)
Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.comGood thing it only lasted three days, that AIPAC Policy Conference. On the fourth day someone could have gotten up to dismantle Israel altogether.
As it was, during the gathering in Washington, in which everybody came, someone speaking for this group billed as pro-Israel insisted on dismantling Israel only by half. (What a relief…all things considered.) The rest goes to the Arabs who already control 99 percent of the Middle East…and still not enough.
Well not enough for the Arabs…and even some Jews in leadership positions think that Israel still has so much more land to give from the remaining one percent.
This leader in particular would be the CEO of AIPAC, Howard Kohr. He said Israel will never live securely “until she’s at peace with her neighbors.”
So that’s Israel’s fault?
How about first things first – such as the fact that throughout the Arab world, the Arabs can’t get along with each other.
How about first things first – such as the fact that throughout the Arab world, the Arabs can’t get along with each other.
Israel is nowhere in the picture when it’s Syria against Syria, Iraq against Iraq, Jordan against Jordan, Yemen against Yemen, Lebanon against Lebanon – Arab against Arab everywhere!
Yes, THESE are Israel’s neighbors… people plunged in bloody conflicts with themselves…yet somehow it falls on Israel to make peace.
From another neighbor, Turkey, we find its president urging a six-year-old girl, a child, to die as a martyr.
That, not Disneyland, is the Jewish State’s neighborhood…if someone would please tell AIPAC, at least its top brass, about this. I would.
So it’s no wonder I never get invited to these things, to which come the best and the brightest from here and from the Jewish State. Since I wasn’t there, but only read some of the remarks, I can only assume that most think of Israel in terms of King David, which is my view, rather than the terms of Mahmoud Abbas, which is, obviously, Howard Kohr’s vision.
That partly explains why I never get invited. Or maybe they already know that I prefer the life of a recluse, another way of saying, as I say it in the new novel “News Anchor Sweetheart” about a man who is out of sorts with the world, can’t get with the program – “Some people just don’t, you know, fit.”
Plus the fact that I don’t own a tux…and even my one good suit needs tailoring…and my wife won’t let me wear jeans.
Or, that I don’t think much of these conferences where nothing really gets done except speeches and fine dining.
Some are wise, like Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, and some are foolish, and so Howard Kohr had more to say: “We must all work toward that future: two states for two peoples. One Jewish with secure and defensible borders, and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future. Today that dream seems remote. This is tragic.”
No, when a Jewish leader talks like that – that’s tragic.
We begin to understand why people like me get left out, since I’d likely turn impolite, and even downright Biblical.
I’d quote from the Book of Exodus, where Moses, alarmed at the Golden Calf, declares, “Whoever is for G-d, to me!”
The rest, the idol-worshipping mixed multitudes, he divided by destroying them. If you don’t read Scriptures, you saw it in the movie.
I’d therefore suggest that since AIPAC chose as its champion a man who lives and dreams for the day when a “Palestinian” flag flies over Israel…and others, like me, tremble at the mere thought of it…therefore I suggest that rather than divide Israel in half, AIPAC needs to be divided in half.
The half that, like Howard Kohr, who dream of a “Palestinian” state, they know where they can go. The other half, as Moses said – “To me!”
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
Just released is his augmented HOLLYWOOD EDITION of “News Anchor Sweetheart.” Engelhard wrote the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
