By Zeev Sternhell: Benjamin 'The Baby Butcher' Netanyahu, Anshel Pfeffer reminded us, doesn’t see the Israeli-Arab conflict as a problem in itself, but as an inseparable part of the clash of civilizations between Islam and the Western world (“The Netanyahu vision, in 467 pages,” April 18). Israel to him is the West’s spearhead in a 1,500-year-long struggle.
When his book “A Place Among the Nations” was published, I saw it as nothing more than propaganda, intended to invent an ideological cover for perpetuating the occupation sponsored by American neoconservatism in its most simplistic form. It’s too bad that good people still fall into that trap.
Netanyahu has long understood the Palestinians are incapable of resisting the occupation by force, so the occupation won’t end in the foreseeable future. But since no reality can remain for long without an ideological cover, and the biblical narrative doesn’t sell well in the United States outside evangelical circles, he cast his lot, in the spirit of the neoconservative trend of the late 20th century, with protecting Western culture.
Netanyahu has long understood the Palestinians are incapable of resisting the occupation by force, so the occupation won’t end in the foreseeable future. But since no reality can remain for long without an ideological cover, and the biblical narrative doesn’t sell well in the United States outside evangelical circles, he cast his lot, in the spirit of the neoconservative trend of the late 20th century, with protecting Western culture.