Is Roald Dahl the Most Anti-Semite Anti-Semite Ever?
Did Dahl's opposition to to Begin and Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon condemn him forever?
Many peoples are good at holding grudges for an inordinately long time, but you have to respect the Jewish ability to get other people to care about their trivial grudges, like this four decade old umbrage against children’s author Roald Dahl for getting angry over Menachem Begin’s and Ariel Sharon’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
You might think Zionists would merely admit that 1982 wasn’t their finest hour and merely try to to move on to a different topic rather than mount a play starring the great John Lithgow as Dahl about how his getting irate over 1982 is proof of anti-Semitism.
Speaking of finest hours, Dahl’s came in 1941 as an RAF fighter ace who shot down at least five Axis (Nazi German and Vichy French) warplanes during Britain’s defeat in the eastern Mediterranean. (It’s easier to make ace while your side is winning.)
But, from the New York Times theater critic:
‘Giant’ Review: As Roald Dahl, John Lithgow Is a Study in Monstrosity
In Mark Rosenblatt’s play, a powerful portrayal of the beloved children’s book author who almost gleefully exposes his bigotry.
By Helen Shaw
March 23, 2026
It’s nearly impossible to go into “Giant,” the Broadway play that opened on Monday at the Music Box Theater, without knowing what will happen. I suppose that the devoutly spoiler-averse might watch it knowing only the bare minimum — that it stars John Lithgow, or that it won three Olivier Awards in London, or that the playwright Mark Rosenblatt has written a portrait of the children’s book author Roald Dahl. But, and I say this wearily, is it possible to be surprised anymore? Tell me you’re drafting a play about a great man, and I bet I can finish the sentence.
The trouble this time is antisemitism — clearly documented, and, in certain moments in “Giant,” quoted verbatim. We don’t need to quarrel over “was he or wasn’t he”: Dahl’s family apologized in 2020, 30 years after he died, for “lasting and understandable hurt.” As a result, Rosenblatt’s task in his psychologically deft, if dramatically blunt, play is to imagine the moment of discovery of his prejudice. I kept thinking of one of those cutaway diagrams of an oil well that shows how crude oil is forced out of the bedrock and into the air. Was there anything that could keep that ooze in the ground?
Oh, boy …
Over the course of a summer afternoon in 1983, Dahl shifts from one persona — a cantankerous but lovable author — to another self, one kept deeper down. …
He certainly looms over his lunch guest, Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), a sales director from his American publisher, sent on a crisis-management trip to Dahl’s home. The star children’s author has reviewed a book about the Israeli military’s 1982 bombings of Lebanon, and, after explaining his horror at civilian (and child) casualties, Dahl has — in a shocking and deliberate elision — called all Jewish people a race of “barbarous murderers.” His publishers now need him to apologize … so that bookstores will continue to carry his books.
It’s almost as if the plot of the play depends upon the anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the media.
The reality is …
Paywall here.
