One would have hoped that the reviewer in a Jewish newspaper would have been more attuned to the anti-Semitic undertones of this loathsome play (“Peace in the near past,” April 10). To state that “Playwright Wright deals fairly with the seemingly insurmountable barriers and opposing histories” is to ignore Camp David’s subliminal message — which character does the audience detest by the time the lights go up? It is Menachem Begin, who is accused no less than a dozen times by President Carter of stonewalling, of not being committed to peace, of being insensitive to Palestinian interests, of being committed only to land. Sadat is the soon-to-be-martyred visionary, and Begin is only interested in words of obfuscation, driving Carter to his dictionary — literally — to parry Begin’s thrust. Indeed, Begin’s character crosses the border to anti-Semitic caricature, as he dances in the Camp David woods singing an Irgun song glorifying a machine gun. The Jew is vilified when Carter thanks God we have gone beyond the “Old Testament.”
BARUCH FELLNER
Washington, D.C.
