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Dear Friend,
Here, my friends, is a very powerful and moving documentary on Bibi
Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.
I highly recommend viewing this PBS production. It is also timely
as Israel goes to vote in the next few days to elect a new Knesset and
the big question that hangs is whether Bibi will be re-elected for
another term.
The timeline in this documentary is focused on the period of the
Obama administration, 2009 -16. And Netanyahu’s “war” is his struggle
with the Obama administration that openly began to disavow, as how
Bibi at least perceived it, the long-standing special strategic
relationship with Israel when Obama openly pivoted toward Iran.
But what is striking in this documentary, apart from the
confrontation between Netanyahu and Obama, is the story of the Israeli
prime minister. Bibi is a controversial figure in both Israel, and in
America and the West. It is a given that when someone is consequential
then controversy follows.
Bibi is consequential. But I will say more.
Bibi is a man of fate and destiny. He is already the longest
serving prime minister of Israel. It is, however, what he represents
in ideas and in the politics he has pursued as an Israeli devoted to
the defence of his nation’s historical and strategic interests in a
world where Jews are regularly pilloried, where anti-Semitism
persists, and where Jews have been threatened as no other people with
mass annihilation.
History is no longer taught in schools and colleges in terms of
“great men and women” whose calling, devotion, persistence,
sacrifices, courage make the difference for good or evil.
Professional historians abandoned the writing and study of history
from the perspective of individuals who became the embodiment of a
particular moment in the rise and fall of a nation’s story and,
instead, poured their professional effort in amassing the view of
history from the perspective of the anonymous mass of people in
society’s progress and breakdowns.
The result is that whole generations of people have come of age and
lived their lived their lives with little understanding of how
essential it is to know and draw lesson from the study of history of
the importance of role of individuals in the lives of people. A
diminution of the role of individuals is not ironically a diminution
of the people themselves, and a people reduced to an anonymous mass in
sociological terms eventually become incapable of discerning
“greatness” among themselves, appreciate “greatness” in others, aspire
for “greatness” and inevitably morph into mediocrity.
I guess I am meditating here on what has happened to Canada and
Canadians in my lifetime as a Canadian. And to contemplate on
Canadians at this juncture of Canadian history while witnessing, in
contrast, American politics as President Trump calls upon his people
to "make America great again" and how a great many have responded
stirred by the calling of "greatness" that flows strong in the
national bloodstream of the great republic.
This dumbing down is Marxian historiography, of Marx’s turning on
its head Hegel’s view of history served by “great” men as, when he
observed, that he had witnessed history from his window in Jena when
he saw Napoleon ride through the town before the Battle of Austerlitz
in 1806 as the “world spirit” on the move.
There is always an “x” and a “y”: “x” as nation or people and “y”
as individual, and it is in the dialectics in the Hegelian sense of
people and leader that there is “greatness” born and blossoms. A great
leader senses the essential purpose in the lives of his nation and
gives that purpose tangible and distinct shape and how its
consummation, as a Hamlet would say, is to be devoutly wished and
fulfilled.
Jews against immense odds have proven to be a great nation, and
greatness is an offspring of a great people. Bibi is very much a child
of the Jewish nation determined to survive and succeed.
This is a story that stands out, as I perceived, in this
documentary about Bibi Netanyahu.
And the other story that also stands out is the growing differences
between Jews in North America, Jews who surrounded and supported Obama
and continues to be invested in the Democratic party that has become
visibly and unabashedly a haven of anti-Semites, such as Congresswomen
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and those Jews of Israel, especially
those for whom Netanyahu is their leader, their man of destiny.
Salim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W-xxpXzAC0
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