“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

“I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.”

Like many of you, I’ve been a fan of Mandy Patinkin for a very long time. Of course, the famous quotes above come from his remarkable performance in The Princess Bride, the 1987 movie based on the William Goldman book. I’ve enjoyed his performances in drama and comedy, and I have found him informed and cultured, while being both empathetic and versatile.

This week, I watched a clip of Patinkin speaking about his feelings regarding antisemitism and the Gaza war. In the clip, he makes several statements, and he even quotes the “revenge” line I shared above. He accuses Israel, and specifically Prime Minister Netanyahu, of “endangering Jews all over the world.” He also says that it is unconscionable for Jews - Israelis - to take what was done to us and “...turn around and do it to someone else.”

My first inclination was a flash of anger, at yet another ignorant, uninformed Hollywood talent leveraging a mass audience to advance a dangerous agenda. And, perhaps, that is exactly what he did. But then I thought about it a bit deeper, and I realized that far from ignorance, what was evident was cognitive dissonance and a self-referential bias that reflects a worldview shaped by scripts and screenplays rather than existential decisionmaking.

Let me share at the outset, many of us are conflicted about Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has made several courageous decisions in his tenure, and many displaying foresight or practicality. Yet as I have written before, Prime Minister Netanyahu - as well conceived and executed as the campaigns against Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria may be, and as right as the hyperfocus on Iran’s agenda has been in his leadership - has still not answered for his failure in the 13.5 out of 15 years preceding 10/7 as Prime Minister to foresee and forestall the threat presented by Hamas.

Additionally, no matter which side of the judicial reform and draft exemption issues (and others that have not healed existing divisions in Israeli society) you fall on, his decisions - among those of others - on these matters, have contributed to the divisions and societal fractures that helped to create the vulnerability that Hamas exploited. I’m not in a position to calculate responsibility, but I can see that it exists to some significant degree. Finally, the Gaza campaign has not had the kind of clarity that other parts of the war have had. Could the Prime Minister have given it such clarity, and thus shortened the campaign? Perhaps so.

So I don’t write as an advocate for him, nor as a prosecutor.

When you see the world - even your small, Jewish corner of it - as it might appear in a Hollywood script, you can take your onscreen revenge fantasy-turned-reality and project it onto another, or onto a whole country. When your screenwriter - who you quote - makes your story about revenge, you can’t see any other motivation. And when you are so invested in a social, political, or even psychological agenda that can leverage and invert the legacy of the Holocaust to suit a political agenda, you’ll use it - like a script - investing it with all the rage and angst that you gave to Inigo Montoya. And you will invest as well your legitimate grief over the suffering of Palestinian children in Gaza with the tried, tested and successful strategy of Hamas, even if you abhor them, as I am certain Patinkin does.

Sadly, this larger than life figure has failed the test of reality. The Soviets had a phrase to describe those who advanced an element of their agenda even if they were not ‘on board’. They called them “useful idiots”.

I’ve quoted Haviv Rettig Gur several times. He’s neither left nor right, he’s often been a critic of the Prime Minister, and his insight has been a clarifying lens through which all of this can be understood. As he has said and written, the narrative has changed. Israelis will not countenance an enemy on their borders with intent, expression and demonstration that they want to kill every single Israeli. No Prime Minister, of any political stripe, will last a month in office for a generation to come if he or she doesn't adhere to this truth.

So, my dear Mr. Patinkin, it isn’t about revenge. As you might have told Christopher Guest’s character, Count Rugen, if your script was a reflection of reality, when someone threatens to kill you, and has tried to do so, believe them. By invoking “revenge” you demonstrate your utter unfamiliarity with the Israeli psyche and the powerful loyalty and commitment of a generation of passionate Zionist young men and women who are putting their lives on the line.

What I take even more issue with was his statement that Israel and the Prime Minister are “...endangering Jews all over the world.” What a tortured and twisted understanding of antisemitism he has developed, perhaps so he can comfortably shoehorn it into his politics.

As Rettig Gur recently wrote, “When an elderly Jewish woman was burned to death at a hostage protest, when a Jewish couple was shot down…these are not protests of Israeli policy. They are hate crimes. And they are not caused by Netanyahu. They are caused by antisemites.” Mobs on New York streets were baying for Jewish blood even before the IDF advanced into Gaza in late October 2023. Bloodthirsty pogromists rampaged through Dagestan airport searching for Jews before there were many casualties in Gaza. This hatred was not caused by Netanyahu or the IDF. And it is the responsibility of the haters to curb their hate, not the Jews. It is our responsibility to make the hate costly.

Few of us have the luxury of seeing the world through a screenplay or a sheltered Hollywood perspective. Frankly, I thought that Patinkin was perhaps capable of going beyond that. I fear I was wrong. In any case, for all of us, Patinkin’s emotional screed should be an object lesson. Even people we admire can be wrong, misled, ignorant, and useful tools for the truly genocidal. We can reach out to try to dialogue with them or educate them, or not. But we should have no illusions: they can and do endanger us by amplifying the Hamas strategy, no less than a masked vandal or a tenured academic harasser. Can we let them do so without a response, even if we liked them?

Inconceivable.