I recently flew to Israel on El Al, Israel's national airline. I was on my way to teach a summer course at Shalem College and to give a public lecture at the Menachem Begin Center on my new book, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025). I was surprised to discover that among the movie choices there was a Clint Eastwood retrospective. On reflection, it doesn't seem surprising.

As far as I know, Eastwood is not a public advocate of Israel although he may support it privately. The former Israeli consul general in the USA, Ido Aharoni Aronoff, reported in 2015 that Eastwood told him that "I am a big supporter of Israel." Aronoff posted a picture of the two of them together.

But the issue is less what Eastwood says than what he a

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