Oct 20, 2023·edited Oct 20, 2023Liked by Noah Berlatsky
I remember comedy sketches in the late 1970s about President Carter talking up the Israel/Egypt peace talks while Begin (who was Israeli PM by then) and Sadat kept trying to punch each other behind him. I remember absolutely nobody thought those peace talks would work...until they did. (That was back when the Likkud Party could actually be reasoned with.) That's one of those things Jimmy Carter never got credit for—thanks, Reagan!
I also remember that, by the time of Sadat's assassination, everybody I knew was horrified because Sadat had succeeded in rehabilitating himself so he came off as a moderating influence in the Middle East, at least to American eyes. Even SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE did a filmed piece that was horrifying and touching, rather than funny, in honor of his memory....
Sadat certainly deserved a lot of credit. One of the things that really rubbed me the wrong way about the recent Golda Meir movie is that they treated him as irrelevant; he's barely in the film.
Whichever, I think my BFF and I did better watching EXORCIST: BELIEVER, stupid as that was! And I say this as one of the few defenders of EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC.
Small correction: While Israeli relations with Egypt may have been frozen after the 1948 war, Israel did not capture the Sinai Peninsula till the Six-Day War in 1967.
There's a black and white photo of my father at a protest holding a sign saying "Sadat Is A US Puppet" that I've always wanted to know more about. It was best back then to not engage him in hot topics, and now he is gone. Thanks for providing some context!
Such an important piece here. Will it be lost in the chaos of these days. It shouldn’t.
Well done.
I remember comedy sketches in the late 1970s about President Carter talking up the Israel/Egypt peace talks while Begin (who was Israeli PM by then) and Sadat kept trying to punch each other behind him. I remember absolutely nobody thought those peace talks would work...until they did. (That was back when the Likkud Party could actually be reasoned with.) That's one of those things Jimmy Carter never got credit for—thanks, Reagan!
I also remember that, by the time of Sadat's assassination, everybody I knew was horrified because Sadat had succeeded in rehabilitating himself so he came off as a moderating influence in the Middle East, at least to American eyes. Even SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE did a filmed piece that was horrifying and touching, rather than funny, in honor of his memory....
Sadat certainly deserved a lot of credit. One of the things that really rubbed me the wrong way about the recent Golda Meir movie is that they treated him as irrelevant; he's barely in the film.
Geez! That's...selective.
Also insulting.
it wasn't great.
You already wrote about that movie, didn't you?
Or did somebody else who ALSO didn't like it...?
Whichever, I think my BFF and I did better watching EXORCIST: BELIEVER, stupid as that was! And I say this as one of the few defenders of EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC.
yep; it's at CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/26/opinions/golda-meir-movie-helen-mirren-history-berlatsky/index.html
Small correction: While Israeli relations with Egypt may have been frozen after the 1948 war, Israel did not capture the Sinai Peninsula till the Six-Day War in 1967.
bleh. I"m a dope. thank you.
No worries. Unlike you, I’m old enough to remember that war. It’s actually one of my earliest memories of a world event.
There's a black and white photo of my father at a protest holding a sign saying "Sadat Is A US Puppet" that I've always wanted to know more about. It was best back then to not engage him in hot topics, and now he is gone. Thanks for providing some context!