John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LAZARE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Netanyahu’s Brand of Tolerance for Anti-Semitism Goes Back 120 Years
“The Israeli prime minister’s ease with neo-Nazism and revisionist Holocaust history are not as surprising as they might seem”
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/31/netanyahus-brand-of-tolerance-for-anti-semitism-goes-back-120-years/#comments
Interesting article.
I believe Netanyahu is a man just consumed by the need to be in authority, at the center, and really nothing else matters.
He's certainly not an idealist of any kind. Rhetoric about Israel and the past is just that, rhetoric. He embraces and promotes anything which can yield him power or secure his power.
That is exactly what Donald Trump does in office, and it is the way Trump most resembles Hitler. Hitler embraced some policies and ideas from even socialists if they could work for him, despite his native inclination of being a kind of corporatist, Social Darwinist right-winger.
Netanyahu worships power. Israel was his opportunity to have and enjoy it. The odd system of political parties in Israel gives him the opportunity to retain power through coalitions without ever being elected directly. The leverage of the minor extreme parties with whom he forges power-sharing agreements keeps Israel’s policies off to the extreme right consistently.
Exercising authority, for some people, gives them satisfactions not unlike sex does for ordinary people. It resembles almost a form of psychopathy. Certainly, it always involves extremely narcissistic personalities, like Trump’s or Hitler’s.
As we know, psychopaths will tell elaborate lies to help entrap their victims. They’ll do it with a smile on their faces because it is innately pleasurable for them to manipulate others. The smiles are mistaken by others for charm.
Apart from our own many observations during his years of power, we have it on the best authority that Netanyahu almost cannot speak the truth.
Some years ago, Presidents Obama and Sarkozy were caught in a off-mic exchange about Netanyahu’s lying. Sarkozy said you can’t believe anything the man says, and went on to say how he dreads even talking with him. Obama agreed, and added something to the effect, you should worry, I have to talk to the guy every day.
That last also gave us amazing insight as to the expectations of an Israeli leader in having access to America’s President. No other leader in the world, even leaders of really consequential countries, talks to the President daily. The President’s own cabinet members don’t.
There is also the reality that Israel has always cozied up to strongman figures in neighboring states. People like Egypt’s Mubarak or the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia keep their people under control and they share a surprising number of aims with Israel.
Contrary to its tiresome rhetoric about being the Mideast’s only democracy, Israel has always dreaded the rise of democracy in any of its neighbors. In every instance from Morsi in Egypt to the election of Hamas, Israel has reacted very negatively.
In this sense, Israel has been a major player in suppressing democracy in its neighbors. Of course, Israel is not itself, in any meaningful sense, a democracy. Half the people under its control have no votes and no rights and do not want to even be under Israel’s control.
As far as its actual citizens, you can only become an Israeli if you have a Jewish heritage as accepted by Israeli rabbinical authority. There is a sizable number of Palestinians with citizenship, but their status was a complete accident of the terrors of 1948, and prominent Israelis never stop speaking against them, suggesting mass expulsions and special laws. As it is, their citizenship, by virtue of various administrative rules, is a kind of second-class citizenship. Netanyahu has generously referred to them as a ticking time bomb inside Israel.
Readers may enjoy this essay of some years back:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/uncanny-parallels-in-character/
