The Whys and Wherefores of Hollywood’s Israel Distortions

Edward Rothstein’s reply is a seminal essay on the “defensive retreat” into a “utopian dream of transnational universalism,” in the false hope of avoiding anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism by abandoning the mission “that America once projected and that Jews (and Israel) have represented.”

He sees the retreat not only in Exodus and Munich, but also in Saving Private Ryan and The Fabelmans, and he finds Top Gun: Maverick an “intriguing hybrid”—“the type of hero and the type of victory that have long been associated with America and Israel,” but also, like Saving Private Ryan and The Fabelmans, a retreat into individualism. Indeed, he writes, Top Gun: Maverick champions “the rule-breaking individual, the maverick who ignores the chain of command.”

Mr. Rothstein ends his astute analysis by concluding that this defensive retreat is ineffective: “the hatreds of [America and Israel] persist no matter how we might try to avoid them and retreat into the universal.” One might take his argument even further and observe that such a retreat is also counterproductive. In 2018, at a Poland-Israel Hanukkah reception, held as a joint celebration of 100 years of Polish and 70 years of Israeli independence, Israel’s then-ambassador Ron Dermer noted the danger of the retreat into the universal: