Netanyahu Faces Backlash After Citing Historian Will Durant’s Book — Book Suggests “Evil Will Overcome Good” and “Jesus Christ Has No Advantage Over Genghis Khan”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing backlash after invoking a historical analogy that appears to suggest that brute force, not morality, ultimately determines the fate of nations.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke his silence regarding unfounded allegations after former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who quit on Wednesday, stated in his resignation letter that Iran posed no imminent threat to America and asserted we started the war because of “pressure from Israel” and its “powerful American lobby.”
NETANYAHU: “I would like to close these opening remarks with one other (piece of) fake news. And that is that Israel somehow dragged the US into a conflict with Iran.
Does anyone really think someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.
President Trump always makes his decisions on what he thinks is good for America and what is also good for future generations.”
In the same speech, Netanyahu delivered a message about the nature of global conflict, warning that moral clarity alone is not enough to survive in today’s world.
“You know, if people want to be naive, then they don’t see the kind of world we’re living in. In this world, it’s not enough to be moral. It’s not enough to be just. It’s not enough to be right,” he said.
Netanyahu referenced The Lessons of History, the well-known 1968 work by historian Will Durant (and Ariel Durant), claiming the book proves a grim reality.
Netanyahu, in his interpretation, said:
Netanyahu:
You know, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century—someone that I admire a lot—was the historian Will Durant. Now, he wrote many volumes; I read most of them. He also wrote The Lessons of History, a very brief 100-page book, in which he said, well, history proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan.Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation. So you have no choice.
If you look at the world as it is today, you have to be blind not to see that the democracies, led by the United States, have to reassert their will to defend themselves.
Durant said in his book:
“Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative.
Like other departments of biology, history remains at bottom a natural selection of the fittest individuals and groups in a struggle wherein goodness receives no favors, misfortunes abound, and the final test is the ability to survive.
Add to the crimes, wars, and cruelties of man the earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, pestilences, tidal waves, and other “acts of God” that periodically desolate human and animal life, and the total evidence suggests either a blind or an impartial fatality, with incidental and apparently haphazard scenes to which we subjectively ascribe order, splendor, beauty, or sublimity.
If history supports any theology this would be a dualism like the Zoroastrian or Manichaean: a good spirit and an evil spirit battling for control of the universe and men’s souls. These faiths and Christianity (which is essentially Manichaean) assured their followers that the good spirit would win in the end; but of this consummation history offers no guarantee.
Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ as against Genghis Khan.”
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