1. Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article_email)
Benzion Netanyahu, Scholar and Father, 1 May 2012
Bibi Netanyahu's father doubted that his son was tough enough to lead the Jewish state.
by SETH LIPSKY
'Can you imagine what it must have been like having him for a father?" asked one of the writers for the Jewish Forward newspaper after an editorial dinner with Benzion Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu's son, Benjamin, had recently been elected prime minister of Israel, and we'd all been expecting expressions of paternal pride. Instead, the elder Netanyahu bluntly voiced doubt that his son was tough enough to lead the Jewish state.
That was back in the late 1990s. It was the only meal I ever had with Benzion Netanyahu, who died Monday at the age of 102. But I have often thought of the writer's question. Clearly Netanyahu's formula for fatherhood was successful. One of his sons, Jonathan, led—and gave his life in—the 1976 hostage-rescue raid on Uganda's Entebbe airport that inspired the world. Another, Ido, is a physician and playwright. And the voters of Israel lifted up Benjamin Netanyahu to prime minister not once but twice.
The thing to remember is that Benzion Netanyahu played his own role in the history of Israel and America, and he did something transcendent. He taught with particular clarity one of the hardest and most important truths that every Jewish person has to learn, namely that anti-Semitism is not about Jewish behavior. He exposed his own facet of this truth by the noblest methodology—scholarship. He pored through the pages of history to disclose the facts of the Spanish Inquisition.
The son of a rabbi and a preacher of Zionism, Benzion Netanyahu was born in Poland and was brought to pre-state Israel as a child of 10. It was after the Palestine riots of 1929, when 67 Jews were slain by Arabs in Hebron alone, that Netanyahu, then 19, made his turn toward the politics known as Revisionist Zionism. The movement was led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who is the inspiriter of the political party that became known as the Likud.
Jabotinsky's most famous essay rejected the notion that the Palestinian Arabs "are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains." He disputed the need for any agreement with the Palestinian Arabs, calling instead for an armed defense force that could protect the Jewish population like an "iron wall." Only by outlasting any hope that the Jews could be driven out of the land of Israel would peace be possible.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, with his father Professor Benzion Netanyahu on March 25.
It was Jabotinsky who brought Benzion Netanyahu to America to build support for the creation of the Jewish state. Jabotinsky had called for the establishment of such a state to be made an Allied war aim. Jabotinsky died in 1940 after suffering a heart attack at a training camp for his young followers at Batavia, N.Y. Benzion Netanyahu carried on his work, entering the political fray here as the Jews of Europe were being engulfed by the Holocaust.
According to Rafael Medoff, writing this week for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Benzion Netanyahu approached such Republican leaders as the former president Herbert Hoover, Sen. Robert Taft and Rep. Clare Boothe Luce. Mr. Medoff credits this campaign for the adoption by the GOP in 1944 of a platform demanding "refuge for millions of distressed Jewish men, women, and children" in a Jewish state and the Democratic platform that followed with a call for a "Jewish commonwealth." So Benjamin Netanyahu was standing on his father's shoulders when, in 1996 and 2011, he addressed joint meetings of Congress and won roars of approval from both sides of the aisle.
Yet it was Benzion Netanyahu's academic work that proved transcendent. Until he published in 1995 "The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain," received wisdom held that the Inquisition turned on the Jews who'd converted to Christianity—the conversos—because they were secretly practicing Judaism. What Netanyahu uncovered was that the matter was more complicated. Most of the conversos did not practice Judaism. They had actually converted, if by force, and become practicing Christians. Yet the Inquisition still turned on them.
"Never did cunning, hypocrisy and deception make greater use of sanctimonious contentions than did the Inquisition in its attack on the conversos," Netanyahu wrote in his magnum opus. He attributed the Inquisition's success to its "skillful presentation of its verdicts as the judgments of wise and righteous men who had but one purpose: the establishment of truth." If that sounds like the self-righteousness of the anti-Israel left today, it may be why Netanyahu's learning seemed so relevant to his time and ours.
There is speculation in the press now about what will be the impact of Benzion Netanyahu's death, particularly on his most famous son. "Many people who watch the prime minister believe that his father's passing will allow him to take steps toward compromise he wouldn't have made so long as his father was living nearby," writes Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic.
Mr. Goldberg has his doubts about that, and so do I. But surely whatever the prime minister decides will be a better, wiser decision for the gift that his father gave him.
Mr. Lipsky, editor of the Forward between 1990 and 2000, is editor of the New York Sun.
A version of this article appeared May 2, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Benzion Netanyahu, Scholar and Father.
2. Israel Hayom (http://www.israelhayom.com)
Benzion Netanyahu, prime minister's father, dies at 102, 30 April 2012
Born Benzion Mileikowsky in Warsaw, in 1910, Benzion Netanyahu passed away in Jerusalem Monday • Netanyahu authored an epic book on the Spanish Inquisition and edited several Jewish encyclopedias • Netanyahu is believed to have had great influence over the politics of his son, two-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
| Benzion Netanyahu, historian, Zionist activist and influential father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, died Monday in his Jerusalem home. He was 102. |
His son, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, managed to visit him one last time on Sunday night.
The elder Netanyahu was scheduled to be laid to rest at 5 p.m. (Israel time) at the Givat Shaul (Har Hamenuhot) cemetery in Jerusalem in a public ceremony.
Benzion Netanyahu was born Benzion Mileikowsky on March 25, 1910, in Warsaw, Poland. His father, Nathan, a rabbi, moved the family to Palestine in 1920 and changed its name to Netanyahu.
Professor Netanyahu was among the great historians of the Jewish people. In his research, he focused on the history of the medieval Spanish Jewish community and the history of Zionism. Among his books are a biography of Don Isaac Abravanel, a history of the Spanish Marranos (forced converts to Christianity who secretly continued to practice Judaism) and his major work, "The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain," which received global acclaim. He also authored "The Founding Fathers of Zionism" about the lives of the founders of political Zionism – Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill and Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
Netanyahu was also an expert on anti-Semitism and a great supporter of Revisionist Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who advocated Jewish military strength and the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. During his decades-long career, Netanyahu also edited the "Encyclopedia Judaica," "The World History of the Jewish People" and the "Encyclopedia Hebraica."
During the Second World War, Netanyahu lived in New York, where he served as one of the leaders of the Revisionist Zionist movement in the U.S.
In 1939, Netanyahu traveled to London to persuade Jabotinsky to relocate to the U.S., due to the belief it would be a rising global power and that it would be possible to mobilize support for the Jewish state from there. Jabotinsky died in 1940, shortly after their arrival in the U.S. Netanyahu continued to raise support for the Jewish state throughout the war and afterward.
He met with many U.S. Jewish leaders at the time, as well as with senators, congressmen, authors, poets and other dignitaries, including Dean Acheson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Upon the establishment of Israel, he returned from the U.S. and moved with his young family to Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood. He dedicated himself to his research, with the help of his wife Tzila, a native of Petach Tikva who was his life partner for more than 50 years. In 1952, the Netanyahu family moved to its home at 4 Haportzim Street in Jerusalem, where he passed away early this morning.
Due to his academic career, Netanyahu's family frequently moved between the U.S. and Israel. Netanyahu edited right-wing Jewish publications in the U.S. and earned a Ph.D in history from Dropsie College in Philadelphia. Later, he was a professor of Jewish history and Hebrew literature at the University of Denver and Cornell University, where he served as chairman of the department of Semitic languages and literature.
He was best known in academic circles for his research into the Spanish Inquisition against the Jews of Spain. His best known work was "Origins of the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain," an opus in which he argued that the crackdown on Jews was driven by racial hatred rather than just religious zeal.
Netanyahu also disagreed with scholars who argued that the Marranos secretly kept practicing Judaism after being forced to convert. Instead, he believed those Jews were assimilationists and converted of their own volition, and that the Marrano myth was fostered during the Inquisition as an attempt to prove broader resistance.
Netanyahu and Tzila had three sons: Yonatan, Benjamin and Iddo, all of whom served in the same elite Israeli military commando unit. Yonatan, known as Yoni, commanded the Sayeret Matkal unit and was killed in action during a daring 1976 hostage rescue operation in Entebbe, Uganda.
Following his death, the elder Netanyahu returned to Israel full-time. His middle son Benjamin, nicknamed Bibi, went into politics and was elected prime minister of Israel in 1996 and again in 2009. Iddo, the youngest of the three, is a radiologist and writer.
Netanyahu is believed to have had great influence over his son Benjamin Netanyahu's politics and openly criticized him when his government made concessions toward the Palestinians.
Several analysts speculated that Benjamin Netanyahu was emotionally unable to sign off on a comprehensive peace deal with Israel's Arabs neighbors as long as his father was still alive, a notion the prime minister dismissed as "psychobabble."
In newspaper interviews late in life, Benzion Netanyahu was forceful in his skepticism of Middle East peace.
"The tendency to conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won't allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn't matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war," he told the Maariv daily in 2009. "The Arab citizens' goal is to destroy us. They don't deny that they want to destroy us."
President Shimon Peres who spoke at a cornerstone laying ceremony at the Air Force's new technological college in Karmiel on Monday, asked participants to stand for one moment of silence in memory of Netanyahu. "A great historian and great Jew passed away," Peres said.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin commented on Israel Radio about the influence that Benzion Netanyahu had on his son Benjamin (referring to the latter by his nickname). "Bibi learned the pure Zionism from a man who was so close to Jabotinsky," he said.
"He was educated in a home where Zionism was a Zionism with no compromise ... though Bibi's realpolitik was much more developed," Rivlin added.
At a party to celebrate his father's 100th birthday, the Jewish Chronicle quoted the prime minister as saying, "I learned from you to look into the future."
In his own speech at the same event, Benzion warned of the dangers Iran posed as it forged ahead with a nuclear program that many in the West believe is aimed at acquiring atomic bombs.
He said Israel should be ready to strike Iran when "there is a reasonable chance of success."
The Zionist ideology that Netanyahu advocated was based on the belief that Jews had the right to live in all the biblical land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and parts of modern-day Jordan. In 2004, Netanyahu was among the signatories to a petition that called the disengagement from the Gaza Strip a "crime against humanity."
In 2011, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar awarded Benzion Netanyahu the Dona Gracia medal in recognition of his work on the subject of Spanish Jews.
3. Tablet Magazine (http://www.tabletmag.com)
Bibi’s Political Forefather?, 20 April 2012
When Andrew Sullivan and Roger Cohen link the prime minister’s policies to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, they’re getting the early Zionist leader all wrong
by Jordan Chandler Hirsch
Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky—the iconoclastic founder of Zionism’s right-wing Revisionist party and the scourge of David Ben-Gurion—died eight years before Israel’s birth, left to history as his peers went on to glory. But now Jabotinsky is back in the headlines thanks to pundits who see his philosophy reflected in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies.
The argument goes something like this: Beyond the obvious political lineage—the Likud party is the successor to Herut, which was the successor to Jabotinsky’s revisionist faction—Netanyahu’s personal history traces directly back to Jabotinsky. Benzion Netanyahu, the prime minister’s father, was Jabotinsky’s disciple and private secretary. The elder Netanyahu said as recently as 2009 that the Arabs’ existence “is one of perpetual war” and argued that Israel should beat back any hint of Palestinian nationalism with the threat of “enormous suffering.” He passed these beliefs on to his son, and, ergo, Bibi Netanyahu, like Jabotinsky, is a brutal, racist, territorial maximalist who brooks no compromise in his desire to protect the Jewish state by crushing the Arabs.
In February, Roger Cohen wrote in the New York Times that Netanyahu was “raised in the Jabotinsky strain of Zionism by a father who viewed Arabs as ‘semi-barbaric.’ ” Andrew Sullivan, in his review of Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism, argued that Netanyahu’s policy in Gaza and the West Bank, seen in light of Jabotinsky’s influence, “makes more sense … it’s a conscious relentless assault on the lives of Palestinians to immiserate them to such an extent that they flee.”
But these critics must have forgotten their history. Even a glance at Jabotinsky’s writings suggests that the Zionist pioneer was not the warmongering bigot that these pundits make him out to be. Consider the three main charges commonly brought against him:
1. Jabotinsky was a racist.
Most early Zionist leaders either did not recognize or refused to publicly acknowledge the depth of Arab nationalism and opposition to a Jewish state. They dismissed Arab violence as isolated rabble rousing and thought that adequate jobs and money would quell it. In 1921, for example, Ben-Gurion said that Arab rioters were “wildmen” and “thieves” not driven by anti-Zionist ideology, but by their leaders. Fifteen years later—likely for strategic reasons—he wrote that “the majority of the Arab population knows that Jewish immigration and colonization are bringing prosperity … their self-interest … is not in conflict with Jewish immigration … but in perfect harmony with it.”
Jabotinsky thought that this view was nonsense. “To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile,” he wrote in 1923 in “The Iron Wall,” his most famous essay. This fantasy, he argued, “comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people,” a paternalistic belief that they were “ready to be bribed to sell their homeland for a railroad network.” Jabotinsky understood that the conflict between the Jews and Arabs was not about dollars or land, but about ideology and said that Zionists harmed their cause by failing to address that fact head on. That’s why the leftist Israeli historian Avi Shlaim called Jabotinsky “the first major Zionist leader to acknowledge that the Palestinians were a nation and that they could not be expected to renounce their right to hold on to their patrimony.”
What’s more, Jabotinsky was a classical 19th-century liberal who championed full civic equality. Although he would later flirt with the idea of voluntary transfer of Arabs out of Palestine, he firmly opposed their mandatory expulsion—unlike Ben-Gurion, who, according to historian Benny Morris, hailed the notion of compulsory transfer in his diary in 1937 and, later that year, suggested in a speech that the Jewish community could “carry out the transfer [of Arab peasants] on a large scale.” In a 1940 essay, Jabotinsky laid out a systematic program of rights for the Arabs, proposing, among other things, that every Cabinet led by a Jew in the future Israel should offer the vice-premiership to an Arab. In the very fight song of the Revisionist youth organization that he founded, Betar—which declared that “Two Banks has the Jordan: This is ours, and that is as well”—Jabotinsky also wrote: “From the wealth of our land there shall prosper The Arab, the Christian, and the Jew.” Even at his most militant, he called for fraternity. Far from being an out-and-out racist, Jabotinsky was one of the only Zionist leaders to take the Arabs seriously and promote a significant role for them in the future Jewish state.
It’s true that Jabotinsky did not hold Arab culture in high regard. In the “Iron Wall,” for example, he wrote that “culturally, [Palestinian Arabs] are 500 years behind us.” But in many ways, Jabotinsky openly respected Arab aspirations far more than most Labor Zionists under Ben-Gurion.
2. Jabotinsky’s racism toward Arabs informed his maximalist demand for a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.
There is no doubt that Jabotinsky insisted on both sides of the Jordan River—not only today’s Israel and the Palestinian territories, but Jordan as well. But he did not do so out of a desire to punish the Arabs or a belief that they didn’t deserve their own state.
Instead, Jabotinsky justified his demand by invoking the need to save European Jewry from extermination. Years before the Holocaust, he sensed an “elemental calamity” approaching for the Jews of Europe. In a tragically prophetic speech in Warsaw on the Ninth of Av in 1938, he begged the crowd to listen to him and immigrate to Palestine at what he saw as “the very last moment” before catastrophe: “For heaven’s sake! Save your lives, every one of you, as long as there is time—and time is short!” Jabotinsky tirelessly carried this message with him across the continent, a desperate, would-be rescuer of its Jews.
It was Jabotinsky’s obsession with sheltering millions of European Jews, not some anti-Arab bigotry, that drove his territorial claims. Even as he expressed “the profoundest feeling for the Arab case,” Jabotinsky argued that it simply could not compare to the Jewish need for refuge. “When the Arab claim … [for] Arab State No. 4, No. 5, or No. 6 … is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved,” he said, “it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation.” Yossi Klein Halevi, a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, told me, “You can’t understand [Jabotinsky’s] thinking on the Arab-Zionist conflict, his maximalism, without understanding his role as the lone Jewish voice for emergency rescue.” To Jabotinsky, Arab desire, however legitimate, could not measure up morally to Jews’ existential crisis.
3. Jabotinsky called for never-ending war against Palestinian Arabs until they succumbed.
In referring to Jews “crushing” and “immiserating” Palestinian Arabs with military might until they break, writers like Peter Beinart and Andrew Sullivan are offering a shallow interpretation of Jabotinsky’s iron wall.
Jabotinsky first proposed the iron wall in 1923 less as a literal buffer than a demonstration of strength meant to convince the Arabs that the Jews were there to stay. Given the natural defiance of the native population to Jewish settlement, Jabotinsky understood that as long as a “spark of hope” remained that the Arabs could expel the Jews, they would not relent. Only when “there is no hope left … when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall,” he wrote, would “extremist groups lose their sway” and moderates rise to “offer suggestions for compromise.” When that happened, Jabotinsky said later, he was prepared “to let even Kalvarisky [a founder of the Brit Shalom peace movement] lead the orchestra.” But until then, any true peace would need to wait for the necessary psychological shift.
The iron wall was not meant to be an excuse for ruthless force, but a display of resolution and permanence that would eventually lead to reconciliation. According to Avi Shlaim, Jabotinsky “was not opposed to talking with the Palestinians at a later stage.” But the danger of the concept of the iron wall, in his view, was that “that Israeli leaders less sophisticated than Jabotinsky would fall in love with a particular phase of [the wall] and refuse to negotiate even when there was someone to talk to on the other side.” Sallai Meridor, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States and Betar youth member, told me that, contrary to conventional wisdom, “the iron wall article suggests that Jabotinsky was ready for significant compromise under certain circumstances. He was strongly against offering it as long as the Arabs had not given up completely on the desire to get rid of the Jews, but he foresaw that [if they did so], there could be an agreement based on mutual concessions” on the major issues for both sides. As eager as Jabotinsky was to establish Jewish sovereignty, he was just as eager to make peace with the Arabs once they recognized the inevitability of the Jewish state.
Of course, you wouldn’t know any of this from recent critics, who, by reading history backwards from the present, have demonized and simplified Jabotinsky’s legacy to attack their current political foe, Netanyahu. But if Jabotinsky really is central to Bibi’s thinking, then perhaps those critics are as wrong about the present as they are about the past.
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4. Flat World (http://flatworld.welt.de)
How the Holocaust shapes Bibi’s thinking on Iran, 22 April 2012
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu very seldomly gives interviews to the printed press. But the so called “poem” that German Nobel Laureate Günter Grass has published which fiercly attacked Israel evidently enraged the Prime Minister so much that he felt compelled to react to it in a German publication. So I and two colleagues of mine went to Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem to talk to him. The interview happened to be scheduled for Holocaust Memorial Day. And it expressed very clearly how Netanyahu’s view on the Iranian threat is shaped by an understanding of Jewish history as a “cascade of horror’s” as he put it. The German version can be found here, the original English version follows below.
Welt am Sonntag: Mr. Prime Minister, you have just come from the Knesset where parliamentarians read the names of those murdered in the Holocaust. Which names did you read?
Benjamin Netanyahu: I read the names of my late father in law’s family. He left his hometown village of Bilgoraj in Poland, the same town from which Isaac Bashevis Singer came from, and left it at the age of 18 to go to the land of Israel. He was infused with the idea of Zionism and his father came to the railway station in Warsaw and pleaded with him not to go. ,Why do you go, stay here, life is tough there, stay here’. And he brought him some cookies and said: ,Here, have these cookies, have them all the time. Don’t go’. And despite the very strong attachment he had to his father and his family he decided he had to go. They were all wiped out. He came here and built a life, had four children of which my wife is the youngest. He never really recovered from this terrible blow although he was a great bible scholar, great writer, great poet. He had received a prize for Holocaust poetry and I read one of his poems about a dream that he had of his childhood when he was at the Jewish festival of Sukkot when they build a Sukka, a hut. He remembers going back to his home and discovering that it had been taken. And that his brother who was with him was gone, everybody was gone. And he woke up drowned in tears. I read this poem and the names of the members of his family who were all murdered in the Holocaust.
Welt am Sonntag: And then you come back to your office and are giving three German journalists an interview – on Holocaust Memorial Day. Is this still strange for an Israeli or is this symbolic for how far German-Israeli relations have developed in the last 60 years?
Netanyahu: The relationship between Israel and Germany has always been tremendously powerful because of the greatest crime committed in history but also the greatest attempt to learn from the past and create a different future. I think this decision was made precisely on those grounds by Adenauer and Ben-Gurion almost 60 years ago. We have a unique relationship, because of this horrible scar on the tissue of our nation and the consciousness of mankind. But it’s something that we have both recognized and both have seized on this newfound friendship to build a different future. There are states in Asia where you have long scars from that same half century that have not healed and leaders don’t visit each other. But here, even though the magnitude of the catastrophe and of the killings was beyond compare relative to the size of our people -it was a third of our people-, but I think the fact that we’ve been able to create this bridge on these two foundations is something truly unique. I think it is unparalleled in the history of nations.
Welt am Sonntag: In a strange reversal of history Israelis today seem to be much less critical about Germany than Germans are towards Israel. Just take the issue of Günter Grass. His poem was rejected by most of the German media, but his words seem to have resonated more widely in the German public. How do you explain that?
Netanyahu: First of all I think what Grass says is an absolute outrage. That it comes from a German Nobel laureate and not from a teenager in a Neo-Nazi party makes it all the more outrageous. And it demands a very strong response. I think what Grass has said shows a collapse of moral clarity. He has created a perfect moral inversion where the aggressor becomes the victim and the victim becomes the aggressor. Where those who try to defend themselves against the threat of annihilation become the threat to world peace. And where the firefighter and not the arsonist is the real danger. Here is a simple fact that apparently has eluded Mister Grass: Israel doesn’t seek to destroy Iran, Iran seeks to destroy Israel and openly calls for it and works for it by building atomic bombs for that expressed purpose. What do we do with such statements? In every society you have extreme statements. A society is not judged by those statements but by how the leadership responds to them. And I think the fact that there was a broad condemnation by the leaders of Germany is important and positive. I am concerned that there is an undercurrent of support for this, at best it reflects a great ignorance on the facts that I have just put forward.
Welt am Sonntag: Would you call that way of thinking Anti-Semitic, the way Grass put it in words?
Netanyahu: There is something very deep there, because it’s not the normal criticism of Israel. Of course Israel is subject to criticism. Let me say this as the prime minister of Israel: I’d like to see an hour pass by, how about a minute pass by, without some criticism being voiced against Israel, not only outside Israel but inside Israel. This is an open society, criticism is our way of life. This is not the point. But this touches on the basic reversal of the truth. And coming from someone with Grass’ stature in Germany is very upsetting, very disconcerting. Now the question is: do people accept this or not? People have to respond to this. A lot of Jews ask themselves: ,If I had been in the Holocaust, how would I have acted? What would I have done? Would I have responded? Would I have organized to save ourselves?’ Every Jew asks himself this question.
Welt am Sonntag: And every German asks himself the other question.
Netanyahu: And every German must ask himself the question: How would I have behaved? Would I have raised my voice in opposition, would I have acted silently in other ways to obstruct the Nazi machine or would I go along with it? And today the issue is not the attacks on the Jews but the violent attack on the Jewish State which is accompanied by the same vilification, the same slanders. Where you believe anything about Israel even though it is easily verifiable that it is false. Today what has happened is that the most violent attacks on the Jews have been replaced by the most violent and absurd attacks on the Jewish state. And the real question that people have to ask themselves is: Would I have believed those vilifications and slanders about the Jewish people at the time because that vilification always precedes complicity. And those now who agree with Günter Grass about the Jewish state should ask themselves if they wouldn’t have agreed with the slanders against the Jewish people in the time of the Holocaust. That’s the question the Germans must ask themselves. I am glad that Germany’s leadership has responded clearly. But it’s something I hope the German people will do as well.
Welt am Sonntag: Wouldn’t it have been better to invite Grass to a critical discussion in Israel instead of declaring him persona non grata?
Netanyahu: Sometimes things are so outrageous that they have to be responded to in a different way. He went too far towards untruths and towards slander. And I think that reaction expresses it. How would Germany feel if it was showered with rockets by people who call outright for Germany´s destruction? Which is what we have around us. Iran that supports Hezbollah and Hamas who are firing on the tiny state of Israel. What would Germany do? How would the German people respond ? Well, here is how Israel responded. We don’t call for the annihilation of Iran and we don’t act for that purpose. We don’t call for the annihilation of the people of Lebanon or the people of Gaza, even though Israel is a very powerful country should it act in the way Grass ascribes to us. We don’t do that. Against terrorists who use human shields and hide themselves in schools and homes and firing on us, committing a double war crime firing directly at civilians and hiding behind civilians, Israel goes to exceptional lengths to try to target and pinpoint the terrorists themselves. What other country is doing that?
Welt am Sonntag: Chancellor Angela Merkel once said Israel’s security is “non-negotiable” for her and her government. But how serious is this commitment in practice? Do you feel you can rely on Germany and other European countries?
Netanyahu: For us there are two separate issues here. One is: Do we rely on others for our security and our survival? The answer is no. Do we seek alliances? All countries seek alliances. Superpowers seek alliances. The United States seeks alliances and certainly a small country like Israel seeks alliances as well and we welcome our close relationship with Germany and with the United States of course and with others. But do we rely on this? No. This is the central historical lesson that we draw from the Holocaust and actually from the two millennia that preceded the Holocaust when we were subjected to the whims of cruelty and savagery as no other people has been subjected to. The Holocaust was the last of a cascade of horrors that befell the Jewish people because of their homelessness and powerlessness. So we resolved to have the capacity to defend ourselves. And we appreciate the help we receive from others to that end including the help we receive from Germany. In this regard I have to say I value the assistance that Germany is giving Israel for defence, I value the fact that chancellor Merkel has acted in this regard. Just as I value her leadership in Europe. I think as a prime minister and a former finance minister facing difficult odds I know how much leadership is required to do what she is doing. And also I am very grateful for the assistance that she and her government have given us with the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, our captured soldier. One thing that I would stress is that the security relationship that we have with Germany is a two way street in ways that are probably not commonly known to the German public. Because we cooperate on matters such as intelligence and fighting terrorism over the years and including recent years in ways that have saved both not only the lives of our citizens but also the lives of many, many German citizens as well.
Welt am Sonntag: In your speech for the opening ceremony of Holocaust Memorial Day you seemed to speak almost more about Iran than about the Holocaust. And in the last few months you and other Israeli politicians and officials have with increasing frequency and urgency warned that time is running out on this issue. Has this become so urgent that it keeps you up at night?
Netanyahu: Well, it certainly keeps me busy and sometimes busy at night as well. Let me first tell you what the similarities are and what the dissimilarities are: The similarities are the calls for the destruction of the Jewish people. In the 1930s we were powerless to act, we were powerless to speak up against it. We had no representation among the councils of the nations. Well, today we do. Then there was a call of our destruction by some insane ideology of a master race and today there is a call for our destruction by an insane ideology of a master religion. But the difference is that today we have the capacity to defend ourselves. Defend ourselves also in the court of public opinion – which is what I’m doing right now. And defend ourselves physically – if the need arises. That’s my number one task and mission: To defend my people. So that the horrors of the past cannot be repeated.
Welt am Sonntag: From your speech on could get the impression that the moment Iran has acquired a nuclear bomb, you are certain they will attack Israel. Do you believe Iran is actually actively planning this?
Netanyahu: There is no question they are committed to our destruction. There is no question they will do everything in their power to do this. Look at what they’re doing without nuclear weapons: They’ve engulfed us with two poisonous tentacles: Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon. They’re supplying them with tens of thousands of rockets, thousands of which have already been fired on our cities, our homes. They’re putting in more and more sophisticated weapons there and are developing more and more deadly weapons in Iran. And they’re quite open about their express purpose of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. They also say this is the first stop. We are the small Satan, America is the great Satan. And they attack us because we represent this liberal, to them hedonistic and free western civilization. After all they stone women, they hang gays – this is a backward, dark medieval regime that imposes its tyranny on its own people. Shoots them on the sidewalk, goes into theirs homes, culls the internet, takes people away at night. This is the regime that Günter Grass has elevated to the victim in his so called poem. This is moral clarity? This is absurd! This is absurd!!! This should ring a bell. The fact that people are responding to this should mean that people don’t know: They are either ignorant or they’re wilfully ignorant. But this is absurd!!! Now, is this something new that we´re looking at? No, I’ve been talking about this for 16 years. In fact, when I first became prime minister I was invited to a joint meeting of the US-Congress and in the speech I said that the greatest threat facing mankind was the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons. Some people raised eyebrows there. Now, in the 16 years that have passed Iran has moved closer and closer and closer to achieving, to developing atomic bombs and hasn’t changed its ideology. The world will change harshly for Germany and for all of us if Iran has nuclear weapons, also because of the ability to choke the oil markets. Not only because of the ability to attack us – which, I believe, is their propensity to do. That has already been proven. But also because they will embolden militant Islamists everywhere in the world to believe that history changed and this backward and apocalyptic creed that they have actually has a chance of materializing. So you´ll see terrorism on a much greater scale than before.
Welt am Sonntag: Iran might be a vile regime but it hasn’t proven to be a suicidal regime…
Netanyahu: This is not true!
Welt am Sonntag: German Dolphin submarines give Israel second strike capability. Why should Iran use an eventual bomb against Israel and risk getting destroyed in a counter attack?
Netanyahu: The great scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis form Princeton, he has said in one of his writings that for Iran’s clerical radical leadership the possibility of mutually assured destruction is not deterrence but an inducement. They have a peculiar and bizarre belief that the hidden Imam, a religious leader who disappeared a thousand years ago, would come back just about now in a hail of fire where a catastrophic exchange is required for his reappearance. And I would not bet on the rationality of this regime. Remember, this is a regime that was born by violating one of the ancient rules: You don’t attack embassies. They attacked the American Embassy, they murdered diplomats worldwide, they support terrorism worldwide, they give weapons of great destruction to their proxies, they threaten to block the straits of Hormuz. They’re in Yemen, in the Horn of Africa, in North Africa, in Afghanistan where they’re helping kill Nato soldiers. They’re in South America. This is what they’re doing, before they have nuclear weapons, imagine what they’ll do with nuclear weapons. I wouldn’t rely on the notion that deterrence works with people of this militancy. Because there is a big difference between them and the communists, who were also committed to world domination. But the Soviets were very different: They always put their survival before their ideology. Always!
Militant Islam produces battalions of suicide bombers. They blow themselves up in busses, they smash themselves into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon. You cannot be sure in the case of Iran that they wouldn’t reverse the order and put their ideology before their lives. They perfected the technique of suicide bombers.
Is there such a thing as a suicidal regime? You can’t rule it out. I would say that the greatest threat, the greatest challenge right now to world peace is the marriage of a militant Islamic regime with nuclear weapons: Either that a militant Islamic regime will meet up with nuclear weapons or the nuclear weapons will meet up with a militant Islamic regime. The first danger is called Iran and the second danger is called a Taliban takeover of Pakistan. Either way, it will be a hinge of history: History will change, and for the worse.
Welt am Sonntag: You said you can’t rule out that Iran is going to use the bomb. Which is different from being certain they’ll use the bomb once they have it. Would you say there is a low probably and the low probability is still too risky or…
Netanyahu: Why put yourself in that position? Would Nazi-Germany have been deterred from using the bomb if they’d had it? You know the answer to that. You certainly didn’t want to get an answer to that question. We did everything everybody would in their power to make sure that such weapons don’t fall into the hands of a violent radical and messianic regime. This is common sense. It’s to gamble with the peace of the world and the lives of millions to test that proposition. Who in their right minds would let this happen? When you already see what Iran is doing? They’re just engaging right know in delaying tactics of talks that are intended to run out the clock, that’s our clear impression.
Welt am Sonntag: So those talks are just fake?
Netanyahu: So far all the talks they’ve had have been fake. So, do I see any sign that Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear program: Unfortunately, so far not. For the last 16 years, including in the last few years, they’ve accelerated their program, they haven’t stopped one iota of their program. Despite 16 years of diplomacy, 16 years of pressure, 16 years of exhortations for them to stop and quite a few years of sanctions.
Welt am Sonntag: The sanctions do seem to work at least to some extent.
Netanyahu: They place hardships on Iran’s economy, there’s no question about that. Have they weakened the regime? So far not. Because Khamenei, who’s the true leader of Iran, has tightened his grip compared to where they were three years ago in the previous elections. It’s a very comfortable election for him because he’s despised of all opposing candidates. Some democracy! And he’s terrorized the people.
But they continue to develop their centrifuges hall, their underground bunkers and they now have low enriched uranium for about five atomic bombs and they’re working their way to higher enriched uranium for the first bomb.
Welt am Sonntag: It was Israel that has called for these harsh sanctions. Many European leaders believe you should give the sanctions time to work before thinking of a military strike.
Netanyahu: Now, if diplomacy works and sanctions work: All the better. I would be the most delighted person in the world. We’d like to see even tougher sanctions. But despite the tough sanctions Iran is racing towards the bomb. It hasn’t stopped, we should recognize that. And if the sanctions don’t work I think the important policy principle is one I’ve heard expressed from the US and a number of European countries: Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
Welt am Sonntag: What’s the time frame?
Netanyahu: I’ve said a while ago it’s not days or weeks but it’s not years and I have no reason to change that statement.
Welt am Sonntag: Barack Obama has said repeatedly that the US is not going to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons. Isn’t that enough assurance for Israel?
Netanyahu: I think the critical question for us is not whether others will pledge to stop Iran but whether the Jewish state with 6 million Jewish citizens can forfeit the capacity to defend itself. For us the crucial question is to have the capacity to defend ourselves. Obviously if the threat is removed by other means, diplomatic, economic sanctions, other pressures, by others, we welcome that.
Welt am Sonntag: There are frequent rumours about your difficult relationship with Barack Obama.
Netanyahu: The relationship between Israel and the US is very, very strong. And it is strong because it is based on the allegiances of the peoples. We can have our disagreements – all Prime Ministers and Presidents have had their disagreements on occasion. But the relationship is strong because the American people see Israel basically as a society based on common values. Respect for individual rights, pluralism, free expression, free creativity, an open economy – democracy. That’s a very strong bond and I think it’s a bond that also binds us to European civilizations. Because essentially, and this is a big myopic misconception by many in Europe: The Islamist radicals don’t hate the West because of Israel, they hat Israel because of the West. Because they see us as a forward position for this free, pluralistic society that they despise and want to eradicate. They eradicated this freedom and pluralism in their own domain and they want to expand their tyranny to the rest of the world. And by the way, they openly say that. It shows that they have disrespect for Europeans when they actually divulge these things and don’t see a strong European revulsion against this. They think they can get away with it. And I think it’s the responsibility of decent people in Germany and Europe and elsewhere to prove them wrong.
Welt am Sonntag: You have said several times now that the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran is the biggest threat to Israel’s security. Yet at a time when Israel should gather all international support to confront that threat your government alienated even staunch friends and allies with what is widely seen as an obsession with the settlement issue. Why is that so important for your government that it seems to override other important strategic considerations?
Netanyahu: It doesn’t. I think here too there is a misconception. The settlements first of all are not the root of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. We had 50 years of Arab attacks against Jews. Why were we being attacked? There were no settlements? There was no single Israeli soldier in Gaza or Judea and Samaria. We were being attacked because there was an opposition to our basic presence here in any form. The attacks against us in 1967 produced our presence in the territories. What has happened is that the anti Israel propaganda has turned the aggression of Israel’s enemies into its cause. They say now that the territories or that the settlements are the reason for the conflict.
Welt am Sonntag: I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the settlements make a pragmatic solution to the conflict much more difficult.
Netanyahu: I disagree. I disagree because I think it’s eminently possible to resolve this issue, agreeing on the territorial lines. Even though it’s hard and difficult. I’ve endorsed a solution of a demilitarized Palestinian State which recognizes the Jewish State of Israel and this will require compromise on our side. But it will also require compromise on the Palestinian side. They’ll have to recognize that there is a Jewish State, just like they want us to recognize a Palestinian State. But for some reason they will not recognize that the Jewish people deserve a nation state of their own with defensible borders. I contest the idea that the settlements are the main issue – even though it has to be treated. And I’ve proposed a way to deal with it, a territorial solution is definitely possible.
The question you have to ask the Palestinians is simple: If you want a resolution to the problem, if you want a resolution to the problem of the settlements why don’t you respond to my proposition to sit down around a table and negotiate peace. Why the persistent refusal to negotiate? I think they are making a bad mistake. I think that the people of Israel would trust me to arrive with them to a peace agreement that would give us security and both our peoples peace. The Palestinians must make their peace with the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. So far they haven’t. If they will, they´ll have a partner in me.
Welt am Sonntag: The Arab world around you is dramatically changing. You were very sceptical about these revolutions from the beginning. What’s your view now, more than a year later?
Netanyahu: Let me ask you this question: What´s your view?
Welt am Sonntag: Well, you are the Prime Minister.
Netanyahu: I would’ve been delighted if the Google kids had won out. A year ago there were articles written in the international and even in the Israeli press that we have arrived at the end of days..
Ron Dermer (advisor): You could say you are not more skeptical today than your were then…
Netanyahu (laughs): I’m not more sceptical today than I was. That’s an understatement. But I had hoped, like all of you had, I harboured secret hopes that the democrats would win out. But what we see is this Islamist reign sweeping though the region. And imposition of Sharia law and it may be that the first election is the last real election which is exactly what happened in Iran. And the disconcerting part is of course that given a popular vote this first election actually reflects the will of the people.
I think there are only two places in the Middle East where the general public has a strong affinity for western style democracy and that is clearly Israel and the other is Iran. How do we know that: Well, because when they had a relatively free election three years ago, they booted these people out, and Ahmadinedjad and Khamenei forged millions of votes and tyrannized their people. The reason Iran is different because they tried the Islamist rule for the last 30 years and they know its dark misery, its brutality, its savagery and they want nothing of it. If they were given a free choice they’d throw them out.
The tragedy is the Arab peoples will have to go through this route. They went from pan Arab rule to secular dictatorship and without batting an eyelash to Islamist rule. So it may be that this way will have to pass until they try a more liberal government which I think is essential if they want to get out of the economic morass and want to lead their people truly into the 21st century.
Welt am Sonntag: Your father as a historian wrote a lot about the history of Jewish persecution throughout the ages. When you drive around in today’s Israel and look at what has been achieved since then: What is going through your mind?
Netanyahu: Well, in a certain sense we defied the laws of history. We are an old people. We are almost 4000 years old. There is a seal ring right here, let me show you (Netanyahu stands up from his desk and goes to a cabinet next to the window of his office, were historic artefacts are exhibited). This was found next to the present Western Wall, the rampart of the second temple build by King Herod, it predates it by about seven hundred years, it goes back to roughly 2700 years ago. It’s the seal of a Jewish official of King Hezekiah. And here is the name of the official: Netanyahu ben Joash. Now that’s my last name, my first name goes back a thousand years earlier. Benjamin the son of Jacob roamed the same hills with his brothers. So we have been around a long time as you can see. The reason I mentioned this is: Most of the peoples who lived in antiquity and certainly the ones as old as we are disappeared. There is certainly no record of a people that was exiled that would do what we did. Usually one of two things happen. Either they disappeared or they blended in…
Welt am Sonntag: They assimilated…
Netanyahu: They assimilated into the local peoples were they lived. The Jewish people is the only case where people refused to fully assimilate and refused to disappear. We wanted to come back for thousands of years and we established an independent life in our ancestral homeland. Even though there was a continuous Jewish presence here throughout the generations, that required really an act of tremendous will in the 19th century led by Theodor Herzl to actually get the Jewish people coming back and rebuilding a Jewish state. And we’ve succeeded against impossible odds. We’ve built a tremendously progressive country, one of the most advanced technological economies of the world. We have entrepreneurship, we have scientists, writers and playwrights and we ingathered the exiles just as the biblical prophecy said. It doesn’t mean that our future is guaranteed, because that depends really on our abilities. But when I go around Israel and I see the tremendous progress that has been made and that is being made in this modern, progressive, democratic state I think that in many ways this is almost a miracle of history. But I also know that history doesn’t give miracles wholesale, doesn’t give it freely. There is a limited number of miracles that a people can perform. And we have to make sure that we have sufficient strength to protect this miracle against those who want to wipe us away.
But ultimately we know that the reason we are here is because we found the reservoirs of will and faith to overcome the fate that history has seemed to dictate to us. I just read a slim volume by the great American historian Will Durant. He wrote eleven volumes about the story of civilization beginning with China, the oriental heritage going right up to Napoleon. He died about 40 years ago. And before his death in 1968 he published 100 pages that summarized what he learned during his life and his studies. The book was called “The Lessons of History”. It’s worth rereading today. And he says, that’s what I gleaned from it, the bad news is that numbers count and big numbers count more than small numbers. Because big states have bigger GDPs and bigger economies give you the ability to feed armies and all ultimately translates into national power. Now the good news. 20 years after the founding of Israel, Durant cites the young state of Israel as an exception of the rule. He calls it a people propelled forward by culture and faith. And I think that’s a very apt summation that applies now, close to half a century later.
We have travelled a great distance. We have great challenges before us, but none of them are insurmountable. And I think we’ve proven that.
（End）
