Writer David Mamet at the premiere of 'Red Belt' at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. Photo: WikiCommons / David Shankbone.

Jewish playwright and director David Mamet took on U.S. President Barack Obama, while defending Israel, in a radio interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, which was picked up and partially transcribed by liberal media watchdog Newsbusters.

Speaking about Obama, Mamet said, “He’s a tyrant. And I give him great credit. He’s always said that his idea was to reform the United States. And, you know, like many tyrants, like Wilson and like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he believes that his way is the right way and that he’s going to implement his vision of the world and many agree with him. And he’s acting in concert with his conscience. And I applaud him for that. I just disagree with everything he’s done.”

Mamet also described his own position on Israel and the recent deal that partially lifted sanctions against Iran, coming at the political situation as a Jew from a family of Holocaust survivors.

Mamet said, “Well, I was born right after World War II and I’m a Jew. I’m a serious Jew. My grandparents didn’t leave Poland. Got killed, half of them got killed by the Nazis. Half of them got killed by Stalin and it’s clearly evident to me, from the first, that the left is going to make Israel do it’s dirty work. It’s going to turn its back on Israel until, to save the West, Israel is going to have to strike at Iran and leave the cat sitting on the fence to say, ‘See, I told you so. Look at what them Yids are up to this week.'”

As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988), and, as a screenwriter, he has received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet has also written several books about Judaism and Jewish history, including The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; and The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and anti-Semitism.

Zosia Mamet, his daughter, is an actress known for playing Jewish Shoshana Shapiro on HBO show Girls.