Lions and lambs

FRIENDS can be taken for granted. Enemies require individual attention.

During World War II, for example, Gen B.L. Montgomery fought against the German Gen E. Rommel. Montgomery kept a photograph of Rommel in his caravan HQ. He explained later: “I used to look at it and say to myself, ‘What sort of guy is that?’” Similarly, today’s Arab leaders should keep a copy of the autobiography of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by their bedside. They should know the man who, like some shrill wartime siren, causes them recurring insomnia.

Bibi: My Story (2022) is a self-portrait of Netanyahu’s lifelong commitment to the state of Israel. Its subtitle could have read (to borrow Winston Churchill’s witty remark about Montgomery) ‘In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable’. Netanyahu has tasted both, in unequal measure. He has survived to become, at the age of 77, Israel’s longest serving leader.

He recounts how, when considering his first bid for prime minister-ship in 1996, he asked his father Benzion (academic editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica) what should be the prerequisites for leadership. Vision? Flexibility? His father replied: “Education. A broad and deep education. Otherwise you will be at the mercy of clerks.” Netanyahu studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and took a course simultaneously at Harvard University. His professor at MIT recalled: “He was very bright. Organised. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done.” Later, Netanyahu took a business degree at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

His true education, though, began after he joined the Sayeret Matkal, the special forces unit of the Israeli army. During his five-year tenure there, he learned “black operations, irregular warfare, counterterrorism and reconnaissance beyond Israel’s borders”. His two brothers also joined the Sayeret Matkal.

Netanyahu’s true education began when he joined the army.

In 1976, he lost his adored elder brother Yonatan (Yoni) during the rescue of 102 hostages held at Entebbe airport in Uganda. Yoni was the only casualty. His death changed Netanyahu who devoted himself to what he describes as “a public battle against terrorism”.

Netanyahu’s long career is too expansive to recount here. His book covers over 650 dense pages. Three constants emerge from it. The first is his reverence for his race. He explains: “The history of the Jewish people spans over four millennia. The first thousand years or so are covered in the Bible [.] It is during the first two centuries of Arab rule that the Jewish people ceased to be a national force in their own land.” This leads to his assertion that “it is not the Jews who usurp the land from the Arabs, but the Arabs who usurp the land from the Jews [.] The Jews are the original natives, the Arabs the colonialists”. (Netanyahu’s italics.)

Netanyahu’s conviction will resonate with Indian advocates of Hindutva, whose ‘Karl Marx’ — V.D. Savarkar — wrote in his treatise Essentials of Hindutva (1922): Hindus enjoyed an “ethnic nationalism [.] No people in the world can more justly claim to get recognised as a racial unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews”.

The second constant is US support for Israel since its creation in 1948. Not every American president has viewed Israel through dollar-tinted glasses. Bill Clinton admitted defeat after Netanyahu’s electoral victory in 1996: “We did everything we could to bring you down.” Donald Trump’s unfailing support for Israel is more than his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner could wish for.

In December 2017, Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He has now pitted Mu-slims against Mus-lims and disunited the latter as no Cru­sader had done. He is hand in nuclear glove with Netan­yahu in an illegal, unwinnable war against Iran.

The third constant, an obsession in Netanyahu’s life, is Iran. Thirty years ago, in 1996, he alarmed a joint session of the US Congress with: “The most dangerous regime is Iran, that has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy. If this regime were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my own country and the Middle East, but for all mankind.”

Netanyahu leavens his hefty memoirs with a joke about Henry Kissinger who achieves the miracle of keeping a lion and a lamb in the same cage. Kissinger explains his feat: “You put a lion in a cage, and you put in a new lamb every day.” Netanyahu confesses a lifelong habit: “Every day I still write down tomorrow’s tasks and cross off what got done from yesterday’s list.” The retired US Gen Wesley Clark has said that the US too had a list — of seven countries it planned to take out in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran.

Is Pakistan the next lamb?

The writer is an author.

www.fsaijazuddin.pk

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2026

if you want to get more information about this news then click on below link

More Detail