<<Two photographs adorn the office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike -- in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies -- than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.>>
There are other words for "fierce nationalist" that Will chose not to use. One is "chauvinist" and the other is "ultra-nationalist" or, "ultra." And this is ironic because . . .
<<One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he...>>
During the Dreyfus Affair, which divided France, it was the ultra-nationalists and the chauvinists who fought against the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish officer fraudulently convicted of treason; the "eruption of anti-Semitism" which "dismayed" Herzl so much, was the anti-Semitism of the chauvinists and the ultra-nationalists.
That Netanyahu is a "fierce nationalist" who keeps Herzl's photo on his office wall is an irony which completely escapes Will's attention, indicates to me that neither Will nor Netanyahu knows his ass from a hole in the ground. Fuck the both a them.
