Benjamin Netanyahu Is Almost Certainly a Psychopath

…by Jonas E. Alexis

Last January, Israeli news commentator and former politician Yossi Sarid published an article entitled, “This Israeli Politician is a Psychopath. Guess Who.” This is basically an easy question.

If you are new to VT, here is a clue: the article rhetorically asked, “Could the various Knesset slates be housing people who should be receiving [psychiatric] treatment?”[1]

The article moves on to provide some definitions of a psychopath based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

One of the definitions includes, “Repeated lying for the purpose of gratification, confusing reality and imagination.” The article proceeds to ask, “Do three or more characteristics remind you of anybody?”[2]

The Sarid did not point his finger to a specific person, but in a subsequent article, it was pretty obvious that he was talking about Benjamin Netanyahu,[3] who has a long history of lying[4] “for the purpose of gratification.”

Sarid was not the only writer who saw that Netanyahu was quickly precipitating to the psychopathic level. Journalist Pepe Escobar wrote in 2013:

“Iranian missiles will hit New York in ‘three to four years.’ A nuclear Iran is like ‘50 North Koreas.’ This could be the sound of a deranged, dangerous sociopath, or this could be the sound of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly.

“Compare for yourself. Last week we had Iranian President Hassan Rouhani calling for the world to surf a WAVE (as in World Against Violence and Extremism). This week we had Bibi saying that was a ‘cynical’ and ‘totally hypocritical honey trap.’

“Israel has disrespected no less than 69 UN Security Council resolutions and has been ‘protected’ from no less than 29 more, courtesy of US vetoes.

“It has been occupying sovereign territory of Lebanon and Syria without giving a damn to UN Security Council resolutions.

“Israel signed the Oslo Accords promising to stop building for good, any new settlements in Palestine. Instead, it has built over 270 new settlements. This is part of the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Palestine over the past six decades.
Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran on a weekly basis for at least three decades.

“Israel is an undeclared nuclear power with as many as 400 nuclear warheads; refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT); bars international inspections; never ratified the Chemical Weapon Convention Treaty; used chemical weapons on Gaza; and holds an undeclared stockpile of chemical weapons larger than any other nation in the Middle East.

“Iran, on the other hand, has no nuclear warheads. Iran has signed the NPT and is inspected on a regular basis. Iran has not invaded another country for at least 250 years. Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, but Iran did not occupy Iraqi territory.”[5] 

According to those observers, Netanyahu is certainly a sick man. Perhaps the Obama administration is aware of that, and perhaps this has been one reason why they have withheld classified information from this man.[6] Perhaps Obama is saying,

“You know what? This man is pretty much dangerous to society and to himself, therefore it behooves us to withhold certain information from him. If he knows that we are trying to come up with a peaceful resolution with Iran and that peaceful resolution won’t be in his favor, he probably will take a jump in the middle of the night or do something equally weird.

“We stop psychopaths in the United States from killing themselves on many occasions, so it would be humane to help this man—if we can. If he plans to take that jump in the middle of the night, that would be out of our hands, and we wish him luck and farewell.

“Yes, Netanyahu is a chickenshit, but his blood pressure would go through the roof if we tell him that the Israeli regime is not worth a dime. In fact, our former Secretary of State Robert Gates concluded after years of working with the regime that Israel is indeed an ungrateful ally. We still agree with that fair and reasonable opinion.

“In 2010, I told a fundraiser for potential Jewish donors that Israel and Washington’s relations were unshakable. I spoke too soon. Jonathan Weber of Y-Net News was right: I ‘share little chemistry’ with Netanyahu. And if Netanyahu continues with this pattern, I will have to throw in the towel.”

“If Netanyahu starts acting like a gentleman or a man of reason, I will start calling him a brother. But for now he is still chickenshit. He can take that to the bank.”

Three weeks ago, Kevin Barrett published an article written by French scholar Laurent Guyenot entitled, “Israel, the psychopathic nation.” Building on the work of Robert D. Hare of the University of British Columbia (we have written about him last July), the article argues that Israel exhibits signs of a psychopathic nation.  Guyenot writes,

“The Jewish nation, as a state, but also as an organized world community, acts collectively towards other nations and other human communities in the way a psychopath acts towards his fellow men.”

Guyenot, however, makes it clear that

“I do not intend to imply that ‘the Jews’ are psychopaths, but instead that they are the first victims of a mental straitjacket imposed by their elites, who through veritable intellectual terrorism, make of them, to the extent that they comply, the instruments of the collective psychopathy of Israel.”

We would agree with this assessment. To cite again Hare, “The most obvious expressions of psychopath—but by no means the only ones—involve flagrant violation of society’s rules.”

From a secular standpoint, this description fits perfectly well with Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent behavior. This is why he continues to be on a “collision course with [the] White House over Iran” because Netanyahu constantly violates international rule. He builds a standard for himself and uses a completely different standard for everyone else.

For example, Iran has consistently followed international law with respect to its nuclear program, and even the IAEA has recently concluded after a long study that “Iran has stopped questionable nuclear centrifuge testing.”

But that again is not enough for Benjamin Netanyahu. He wants something more—something Talmudic and not essentially Western or logical, which means that he wants to split Iran into different particles.  The Jerusalem Post itself reported,

“The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has refrained from expanding tests of more efficient models of a machine used to refine uranium under a nuclear agreement with six world powers, allaying concerns it might be violating the accord.
“Netanyahu, however, released a statement insisting that the report indicates Iran continues to be engaged in obfuscation.

“‘The IAEA report again notes that Iran is refusing to reveal to the world its preparations for the production of nuclear weapons,’ Netanyahu said.

“‘Iran insists on hiding this from the international community at a time when the major powers are continuing to try and allow Iran to produce the core of such weapons, enriched uranium. These do not go together.’”[7]

What kind of evidence will this man accept? IAEA officials went to Iran, looked at the facilities to find suspicious activities and found none, but then Netanyahu is telling us that the bomb must be there somehow!

Did Netanyahu really want IAEA officials to build a bomb and argue that it was Iran’s? Or did he want those officials to bring with them Netanyahu’s own cartoon and present it to the UN as evidence that Iran was building a nuclear bomb?

What is so pathetic is that Israel is hiding hundreds upon hundreds of nuclear warheads in its basement,[8] but the United States does not have any right to hide its plan with respect to Iran from Netanyahu. If these are not infallible signs of madness, then nothing is.

Business Insider reported that “An Iran nuclear deal is coming into focus, but there’s one glaring problem.” Part of the problem was that Israel, or Netanyahu, disagreed with the deal.

Since the Obama administration sharply disagrees with Netanyahu’s stand on Iran, Neo-Bolsheviks such as Daniel Greenfield declare that the administration is “aiding Islamic terrorists.”

“Iran and Qatar are the regional powers Obama is closest to,” writes Greenfield. “What these two countries have in common, is that despite their mutual hostility, they are both international state sponsors of Islamic terrorism.”[9]

IF Brian Williams got fired for telling a lie, what should we do with people like Netanyahu, the Neo-Bolsheviks, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Kristol, Jonathan S. Tobin,  Charles Krauthammer, etc.? Why are those people still holding high positions in the media?

[1] Yossi Sarid, “This Israeli Politician Is Basically a Psychopath. Guess Who,” Haaretz, January 23, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Yossi Sarid, “Beware: Republican Jews on the Warpath,” Haaretz, February 8, 2015.

[4] See for example Akiva Eldar, “Netanyahu’s Speech of Lies,” Haaretz, September 26, 2011; Scott Peterson, Imminent Iran Nuclear Threat? A Time of Warning Since 1979,” Christian Science Monitor, November 8, 2011; John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[5] Pepe Escobar, “Netanyahu’s UN speech: Sounds like a sociopath?,” Russia Today, October 2, 2013.

[6] Michael Wilner and Herb Keinon, “US acknowledges withholding information from Israel on Iran talks,” Jerusalem Post, February 18, 2015.

[7] “Netanyahu throws cold water on IAEA report claiming Iran restraining its nuclear program,” Jerusalem Post, February 20, 2015.

[8] See Avner Cohen, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Michael Karpin, The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What It Means for the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007); Seymour M. Hersh, The Sampton Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991).

[9] Daniel Greenfield, “Aiding Islamic Terrorists Is Our Foreign Policy,” FrontpageMag.com, February 20, 2015.

Jonas E. Alexis, Assistant 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 new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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