“Homeland” has lost its way and become intensely anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-terrorist. Is this surprising? No. Disappointing? Yes.
The new season opens during the transition period between the presidential election and the inauguration. The writers and producers clearly expected a Hillary Clinton win: the president-elect is a female with liberal views about Islam, Israel, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and the inner-workings of the intelligence community. While this alone caused me to flinch, it also brought a smile to my face with a moment of silent gloating.
That smile had turned into a scowl by episode five, as the show devolved into something the most ardent leftist would be proud of. In the span of five episodes, Carrie Mathison has become a dedicated First Amendment mouthpiece for those who spread the hateful, murderous message of jihad throughout social media. She has also taken on the role as strategist for Hillary—er, Elizabeth Keane, working behind the scenes to subvert the efforts of the CIA.
Saul Berenson Is a Shell of His Former Self
Sadly yet similarly, Saul Berenson has become a shell of his former self. He is now disillusioned with the CIA, Israel, and the war on terror. His focus instead seems to be on this idea that if we give Iran nuclear capabilities they will become our ally in the Middle East, refrain from building nuclear weapons, leave Israel in peace, and use the technology and money instead to better the lives of their people.
Remember, Berenson is the man who had this famous exchange with Carrie Mathison in Homeland 2:12:
Saul: [On Brody] He’s a man who put on a suicide vest, Carrie. That’s who he is, that’s who he always will be.
Carrie: I know everything he is, but it’s…it’s complicated.
Saul: No, it’s crystal clear. You cannot be with him.
Carrie: [Angrily] Who are you to say that to me?
Saul: You can do whatever you want. An intelligence officer can’t.
Carrie: Don’t you think I know that?
Saul: So you’re choosing him over us?
Carrie: [Nervously thinks for a moment] I don’t know.
Saul: You’re throwing your life away.
Here Saul was decisive, understood right from wrong, and certainly believed his purpose was to put America’s safety ahead of himself. I may not have always agreed with Saul, but at this point in the show, he was a patriot.
By contrast, in this season’s episode “The Covenant,” the writers of “Homeland” have chosen to have Saul demonize Israeli settlers for their mere existence on the West Bank. Saul travels to Abu Dhabi to learn more about a possible tip that Iran may be cheating on the nuclear deal he helped craft. While in the Middle East, he visits his estranged Jewish sister, who lives along the West Bank and recently lost her husband. I don’t recall ever hearing about Saul’s sister before. It comes off as an infuriating and unnecessary scene.
Aside from a cold and remorseless moment where Saul calls her dead husband a “fanatic” for bringing her to the West Bank where her “very presence makes peace less possible,” Saul mocks the Jewish belief in the Abrahamic covenant with God for the land as “insanity.”
Sister: He was my husband. You could’ve tried to understand his point of view.
Saul: Did he try to understand mine?
Sister: You could’ve bent a little for my sake.
Saul: There’s no bending with a fanatic. After you met him, you changed.
Sister: Moshe opened my eyes to the false life that mother and father had us living — exchanging Christmas presents with the neighbors, doing everything we could not to offend anyone with our Jewishness. Moshe made me proud to be a Jew.
Saul: He turned you against your family. He brought you to live in a place that’s not yours, where you don’t belong.
Sister: Please, Saul, let’s not do this.
Saul: Haven’t you driven enough people from their homes already? Bulldoze their villages, seized their property under laws they had no part in making?
Sister: This land was promised to Abraham.
Saul: Ah, yes. Promise. A covenant with God made thousands of years ago. Doesn’t that strike you as a form of insanity?
Sister: You don’t understand, Saul. You never have. I love the life that God has given me.
Saul: How can you love making enemies? How can you love knowing that your very presence here makes peace less possible?
Sister: I have a family, a community, a life filled with faith and purpose. Saul, what do you have?
Homeland 6:5 even opened with a ridiculous monologue from a “right-wing” radio host eagerly laying the blame for an NYC bombing on Kean’s liberal policies. Those of us outside Rio Linda know that this was an intentional jab at Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Fox News. It was so transparent that the scene more resembled a “Saturday Night Live” skit than a serious drama. The episode also insinuates the bombing probably wasn’t carried out by the terrorists, but made to look that way by our own people.
‘Homeland’ Used to Give Fans Something to Cheer About
By contrast, when Season 1 of Homeland ended, right-of-center fans, who represent more than 50 percent of the viewership, thought “Finally! A show that tells the truth. Something out of Hollywood that is nuanced, asks us to consider some complicated issues but in the end portrayed the United States as strong, competent, yet not always correct. It also portrayed radical Islam as the barbaric enemy that it is.”
For all their flaws, we were proud to have people like Saul, Carrie, Quinn, and even Dahr Adal fighting on our behalf. We were standing on our chairs and cheering when Quinn in Season 5 told us what our feckless leaders just didn’t dare say about ISIS and Islam. We don’t want to hear the attacks in Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, Fort Hood, Boston, etc., have nothing to do with Islam.
That’s because any people shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they murder and blow themselves to paradise follows the same religion and scriptures children are forced to learn, repeat, and regurgitate by Muslim clerics throughout the world. Yes, cheers went out for Peter Quinn with this exchange:
CIA official: You said a program should be renewed. I’m asking is our strategy working?
Peter Quinn: What strategy? Tell me what the strategy is and I’ll tell you if it’s working. [Silence] See, that right there is the problem because they – they have a strategy. They’re gathering right now in Raqqa by the tens of thousands, hidden in the civilian population, cleaning their weapons and they know exactly why they’re there.
CIA official: Why is that?
Peter Quinn: They call it the end times. What do you think the be-headings are about? The crucifixions in Deir Hafer, the revival of slavery? Do you think they make this shit up? It’s all in the book. Their fucking book. The only book they ever read – they read it all the time. They never stop. They’re there for one reason and one reason only: to die for the Caliphate and usher in a world without infidels. That’s their strategy and it’s been that way since the seventh century. So do you really think that a few special forces teams are going to put a dent in that?
CIA official: Well what would you do?
…Peter Quinn: Pound Raqqa (ISIS’s stronghold) into a parking lot.
That exchange is why we, the right of center fans who comprise more than half of “Homeland’s” viewership, used to love the show. It represented the 2,626 of America’s 3,141 counties who voted for Donald Trump. The left-hand turn the show has clearly taken this year starkly contrasts the show’s early greatness.
For Quinn’s service to our country and honesty, the show’s writers decided to reward him in this new season by poisoning him with sarin gas, turning him into a paranoid vegetable and leaving him abandoned by everyone but Mathison. Well, maybe the show actually got that part right. That seems to be an all-too-common fate for American patriots.
