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Richard Dreyfus Is More Worried About How Jews Treat Others Than Anti-Semitism

Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
August 2019

Academy Award winning actor Richard Dreyfus said he is more concerned about “Jews not behaving like Jews” than he is about the global rise in anti-Semitism.  
 
He told the Hollywood Reporter, ahead of the release of his new movie “Astronaut,” that Jews “sound very much like our own worst enemies in trying to protect Zionism and protect our own reputations, We really need to explore what it means to be Jewish and not let it get away.” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 2, 2019).  
 
Dreyfus criticizes Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, saying that, “Most Jews are willing to celebrate their own history of being oppressed and then they’ll get up and oppress other people, so I don’t want Jews to do that.”  
 
He said: “I’m very proud of being Jewish and I’m very proud of being a cultural Jew.”  
 
Dreyfus, who starred in the popular films “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” notes that he is a distant relative of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer in the French Army who was tried and convicted of treason in 1894. He was later exonerated. The case stirred anti- Semitism in France and led Theodor Herzl to embrace the philosophy of Zionism.  
 
In the movie “Astronaut,” Dreyfus plays a retiree who wants a chance to travel, to outer space. He received the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in “The Goodbye Girl.” *



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