Demonizing Mandy Patinkin Is A Tough Sell – OpEd

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Mandy Patinkin is to receive an award from the American friends of an Israeli medical center at their gala at the Harvard Club in New York next month, and the award is rankling the right guard.

The Jewish Press— the same Jewish Press that published Lori Lowenthal Marcus’s bizarre rant about Dustin Hoffman’s Semitic nose and Emad Burnat as an alleged “Israel-hater”– seems to be demonizing Mandy Patinkin in the green-bearded image above. Because Marcus is ticked that an honor is going to someone who supports boycotting the settlements, “an American Jewish celebrity who supports economic warfare against Jews living and working in Judea and Samaria.”

Working off the original image of his impassioned speech at the Peace Now Conference in Tel Aviv last spring (at which he described America as his homeland and said, “I am certain that this peace process will prevail”), the Jewish Press morphs Patinkin into the very opposite of who his is.

Look at the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdjEALPzbwM

Lori Lowenthal Marcus knows it; she says “It is hard to listen to Patinkin and imagine anything other than that he has a warm, loving soul and just wants everyone to get along.”

But the award worries her– another soldier in Israel’s delegitimization:

Now we learn that the American fundraising arm of a wonderful Israeli institution – Soroka Medical Center – is poised to honor yet another soldier in the delegitimization war against Israel.

………..And now Jews are left with the choice of not going to a fundraiser for a wonderful, non-political medical center in Israel, or going and watching as an American Jew who encourages the economic boycott of a Jewish town is given an award.  It’s a tough choice that Jews should not make other Jews make.

Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani

Reprinted with permission, this article was published at Mondoweiss.net here: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/demonizing-patinkin-tough.html

Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. Mondoweiss is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss lives in New York state and Horowitz lives in New York City.

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