A reader writes: “Dear Mr. Engelhard. I happen to be a big fan of Bill Maher and always felt that he never got his due among us Conservatives.
‘’Until I came across your brilliant piece about him in the collection of your op-eds in Writings.
“Please, for the sake of Israel, get your article published again to assure a wider audience.”
Okay, as follows…Let us now praise Bill Maher…by Jack Engelhard…June 1, 2021
Bill Maher at his best - “Hamas’ negotiating position is, you all die.”
One clip here, another one here, and you will find Maher roundly critical of the media, and in full support of Israel.
This gets a nine-point Wow. Ten points when he tells his audience, “Israel did not steal anybody’s land.” Then adds that the Jews have been in Israel for centuries.
We’ve been waiting for a breakaway hero from among the stale political entertainers. Never thought it would be this guy. Bill Maher? Yes, Bill Maher.
You never know.
Where’s this been during the hatefest?
Due to Israel’s chutzpah to defend itself, the sleeping giant of Jew-hatred was reawakened, led by The New York Times, a paper that prints only the news fit for Hamas.
Says Maher, “It was frustrating for me that there was no one on Liberal Media to defend Israel, really. We’re kind of one-sided on this issue.”
On moral equivalency and the Palestinian Arabs getting the better of it, Maher goes straight to the facts: “Hamas’s charter says they just want to wipe out Israel.”
You know this. I know this. But do they know this, the people who know nothing?
But at last.
A voice in the wilderness… au contraire to John Oliver and Trevor Noah, who have already taken and wasted their best shots, and never saw Maher coming.
Do not underestimate Maher’s influence.
He comes from the Lenny Bruce school of merciless pinpoint satire… as we knew it in the 1960s.
That’s the kind of funny that hurts for being so true.
Maher reaches the young, the uninformed, and the misinformed, and his message infiltrates even mindless Liberals.
He is a Liberal himself, but not that kind; the kind stuck in the mud of political correctness.
Maher can swing either way, as he has done since 2003, weekly, on HBO. His zingers can be confounding, as when he said the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards.
At the same time, he can be highly critical of Islam… to the amazement and chagrin of his Liberal guests and audience.
Maher is one of those rare Liberals - maddeningly but refreshingly unpredictable.
Those are his people. Liberals. So he speaks their language. They understand him, and they believe him, and they trust him.
So when he takes a position at odds with their orthodoxies, attention must be paid. How many viewers see Israel in a different light after watching his show last week?
How many no longer trust the media, nor believe Palestinian Arab propaganda after he scorched them both with biting wit?
How many with their minds shut had their eyes opened?
I’d say plenty, and I have never been a fan.
Over the years, some of us on the Conservative side tuned him out. Perhaps too fast? The liberties he took at our expense was just too much.
I’m still no fan, but got to say, all is forgiven, after coming through like this…in this climate…when all around us is antisemitism.
We have a saying, “In a place where there are no men, be a man.”
Along came Bill Maher.
Now available, a collection of Jack Engelhard’s op-eds, “Writings.”
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
From the esteemed John w. Cassell: “Jack Engelhard is a writer without peer, and the. conscience of us all.”