Continuing my journey down the Jewish/Israel/Arab history trail ...I  came across this-- taken during Anwar Sadat's historic visit (At Begin's invitation) to Israel in 1977.  Call me paranoid, but isn't Sadat's tie pattern a series of linked Swastikas? 

If you're having trouble seeing it on whatever  screen you're now viewing, here it is again...

Of course, I'm not the first to notice, and there are more than a few discussions online that toss this item around with typical internet ignorance. But nothing seems to help resolve the issue of whether this was an entirely innocent and unintentional coincidence or a blatant and malicious act of disrespect and passive aggression. From what I gleaned from The Prime Ministers, by author and longtime advisor to multiple PMs, Yehuda Avner, Sadat was viewed as sincere in his desire to make peace, and apparently was held in high esteem by Menachem Begin.  So the mystery deepens. Could it really have escaped all notice at the time?  Seems improbable.  But there it is in black and white and it appears that anyone who knows anything isn't saying. 

The Zen of Screwball...

The Swedish Movie Poster:
 Is he about to hit her with the dog?

Couldn't sleep, so stayed up late watching The Awful Truth.  1937. Cary Grant, Irene Dunne with Leo McCarey at the helm and Vina Delmar's adapted screenplay.  I'd seen it before but too long ago to remember much.  It's a classic and deservedly so--but what I didn't recall was the sly wit lurking within the seemingly glib dialogue.  Like Preston Sturges at his best, the banter is so quick and tossed away with such abandon that it's easy to miss the serious craft behind it.   Towards the end it stalls a bit, but there's this exchange which caught me so off-guard that I went online to find a transcription.  The set-up is that Grant and Dunne are a married couple who become estranged early in the picture and then after many a farcical series of flirtations and romantic adventures with others intended solely for the purpose of inflicting embarrassment and humiliation upon each other -- they're  finally reconciled with new found appreciation and perspective.  It's a classic screwball plot that culminates with this:

Dunne: “Things are just the same as they ever were, only you’re just the same, too, so I guess things will never be the same again. . . . You’re all confused, aren’t you?”

Grant: “Uh-huh. Aren’t you?”

Dunne: “No.”

Grant: “Well you should be, because you’re wrong about things being different because they’re not the same. Things are different, except in a different way. You’re still the same, only I’ve been a fool. Well, I’m not now. So, as long as I’m different, don’t you think things could be the same again? Only a little different.”

Hey Sam Beckett...put that in your pipe and smoke it!