Cornel West: Netanyahu is “xenophobic to the core”

…by Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor

I don’t usually agree with Cornel West, but he certainly nailed it back in 2014 when he said unapologetically that Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. One can say that war criminals are almost certainly psychopaths. They deliberately violate the law and kill civilians, torture prisoners, obliterate the livelihood of civilian populations, and often rape their victims.[1]

War criminals don’t care whether you live or die. All they care about is their unbridled passion. They cannot subordinate their will or lust to reason; they want to turn reason upside down. We have already seen that those are apt descriptions of people like Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and more recently Theresa May. Cornel West would include Benjamin Netanyahu here. He said:

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, not because he’s Jewish, but because he has chosen to promote occupation and annihilation.”

In other words, being a war criminal is an act of free will. Netanyahu can decide the moral world and political order by surrendering his passion to practical reason. West continued:

“A Palestinian baby has exactly the same status as a white baby in white Newtown, Connecticut, as a black baby on the east side of L.A., as a Jewish baby in Israel. Every human being is made in the image of God.”

West continued to say: “There’s an intimate connection between mendacity and criminality, between lies and crimes against humanity.” These are historically rational points, specifically with respect to the Middle East. On these issues, we support West completely. West made it clear that Palestinian humanity “is rendered invisible in the corporate media.” West brought in the moral issue to the political table which made his point quite even more rational: “this is ethical, this is spiritual with political consequences.”

According to West, people like Netanyahu have essentially crippled the working class both in America and the Middle East through what one ought to call diabolical activities: “We suffer in this age from an indifference toward criminality and a callousness to catastrophe when it comes to poor and working people.”

West is certainly participating in reason here. America and much of the Western world would not have been in this sorry state of affairs had we not opened the Israeli floodgates in the Middle East.

So, wouldn’t it be nice to see Benjamin Netanyahu behind bars for the rest of his natural life? This man has been put on trial numerous times for corruption, and he is still getting away.[2] He is going to repeat the same vice again, and again, and again. The only way to show this man that you can’t fool everyone is to lock him up. Forever.

[1] For further studies on this, see Antonio Cassese and Paola Gaeta, Cassese’s International Criminal Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 60-68.

[2] Yaron Steinbuch, “Benjamin Netanyahu pleads not guilty as corruption trial resumes,” NY Post, February 8, 2021.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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