Netanyahu Seeks Redemption for His European Soul

Carolina Landsmann, haaretz.com

At least he's trying to. But the Arabs are evil in the prime minister's eyes, while the Jews and the Europeans are like-minded, despite the Holocaust.

Image from article, with caption: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife Sara, French President Francois Hollande and his companion Valerie Trierweiler at Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, November 17, 2013

Excerpt:

It’s impossible to explain in terms of consciousness the fact that of all the people across the globe it was Benjamin Netanyahu who said “Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews at the time.” It’s impossible to turn what Netanyahu did into a discussion on the interpretation of historical facts, or to understand his words as an accident in public diplomacy.

The prime minister of the State of Israel said it, a historian’s son whose entire worldview is rooted in the memory of the Holocaust and recognition of anti-Semitism almost as a metaphysical reality without which it’s impossible to describe the world. There simply is not a satisfactory explanation for the fact that it was he who said what he said. ...

Netanyahu ... seeks redemption for his European soul. The heart isn’t capable of understanding, even after 70 years, how dark barbaric forces infiltrated Western culture at its peak, and how, as the Austrian Zweig put it, the good Jewish bourgeoisie that so contributed to Viennese culture was completely destroyed as a sign of thanks.