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Biographers typically have an affection for their subjects. Sometimes so much so that they descend into hagiography. No danger of this from Haaretz writer Anshel Pfeffer, an extreme example of the debunking biographer. Typical of his snarky style: Netanyahu “had given up on Israeli journalists being honest enough to present him as the country’s only true leader.”
What is striking about Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu is the author’s refusal to give Netanyahu credit for nearly anything. Few dispute that as finance minister under Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu made important reforms to Israel’s economy. The ever critical Haaretzadmitted, “He succeeded beyond all expectations. His decisiveness, courage and rectitude in pursuing unpopular but important policies succeeded in stabilizing Israel’s economy.”
Yet even here Pfeffer claims Netanyahu’s impact “has been exaggerated,” with the previous Rabin government deserving the real credit for the investments that led to Israel’s high-tech boom.
In view of Pfeffer’s stubborn adherence to the moribund peace process, it is not surprising that his major criticisms of Netanyahu center on his views and policies in relation to the Arabs. Given Pfeffer’s own bleak view of Israel (he has elsewhere described Israel as “a dysfunctional society fighting an uphill battle—one that it often loses—against racism and corruption”), it is ironic that he repeatedly complains of Netanyahu’s “bleak” view. Pfeffer considers it bleak because of Netanyahu’s common-sense belief that “real peace can only come when the Arabs recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist” and that is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes.
Pfeffer complains that Netanyahu is “dragging his feet” with the peace process, with the only peace he is willing to consider “one where Israel bullies the Palestinians into submission.” Pfeffer blames the failure of the Oslo Accords largely on Israel, dating their collapse to reactionary violence starting with Baruch Goldstein, a religious Jew who killed 29 Muslim worshippers in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in December 1994. In so far as he mentions Arab involvement, he blames the terrorism on Hamas. Pfeffer seems utterly blind to Yasser Arafat’s, or now Mahmoud Abbas and the entire Palestinian Arab leadership’s inability to come to terms with Israel as a Jewish state. On May 10, 1994, months before Goldstein’s actions, Arafat famously declared in a Johannesburg mosque that the Oslo Accords were but a tactical step toward Israel’s elimination and called for jihad to liberate Jerusalem.
Hemispatial neglect is a medical syndrome following a stroke, in which the patients behave as if half of their body, indeed half of their world, does not exist. They will eat only from one side of a plate, read only from one side of a book, shave or put makeup only on one side of their face. It’s a remarkable condition. It’s also one that afflicts much of the Israeli journalistic community. Pfeffer, like so many of his colleagues, only sees one side of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is political hemineglect.
