By Khaled Diab
Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad are gifts to each other but curses on their nations. Rather than attack Iran, Israel should commit to a nuclear-free Middle East.
One may be the heir apparent of Israeli right-wing royalty and the other the son of a poor, provincial Iranian jack-of-all-trades, but Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad behave like mutant clones when it comes to their international brinkmanship and their uncanny knack of furthering their peoples' international isolation.
Both ultra-conservatives to the bone, Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad are aligned with the most conservative and reactionary forces at home. Their desperate desire to play to the choir and preach to the converted was on "eloquent" display at the UN General Assembly in September.
Ahmadinejad insultingly suggested that the West threatened "anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military actions," eliciting angry reactions not only from the United States and Israel but also, apparently, from Al-Qaida. Not to be outdone, Netanyahu succeeded in offending the entire international community when he described the UN as "the theater of the absurd" and that "automatic majorities ... can decide that the sun sets in the west or rises in the west
."
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-common-cause-of-netanyahu-and-ahmadinejad-1.399756