Three of Israel’s most experienced security experts have generated a conclusion about the motivation and the drive of Mr. Netanyahu and its Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who are salivating at the prospect of a war with Iran, led by the Neo-cons and Chicken Hawks of Washington. Yubal Diskin, who recently retired as the head of the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence), indicated that he had no faith in the current Israeli leadership’s capacity to conduct a war. Earlier the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, declared that the idea of attacking Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” And still more recently, Israel’s current military chief, Benny Gantz, warned that decisions about going to war should be done “carefully,” out of historic responsibility and without “hysteria.” The question that outsiders now ponder is, what exactly is the influence of the predisposition to be messianic in the current Likud leaders in Israel. The term messianic implicates a number of possible interrelated meanings. For example, it could mean pronoia, God complex, grandiose delusions, megalomania, narcissism, or a persecutory delusion. None of these meanings suggests the temperance and restraints of reason.

Looking at the idea of a messianic complex in the context of Israel, the fears generated by sober specialists has to be taken seriously. Mr. Netanyahu, the leader with a god-like complex, has come over to the U.S. to spread his divine wisdom to his American flock led by his neo-conservative acolytes as well as the obedient flocks affiliated with AIPAC and related interest groups. To our knowledge, not a squeak has emerged from the pro-Israeli Lobby in Washington, or the neo-conservatives think tanks that even suggests a hint of disquiet at the possibility that the orchestrating cheerleader from Israel Netanyahu is moved by a messianic delusion of leadership infallibility. The most immediate danger to global security is that Israel has a huge stockpile of thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. That a person with a god complex, grandiose delusions, and a dose of megalomania to reinforce his messianic narcissism would appear to be the reason that unusual as it is, three sober and rational Israeli security specialists are calling attention to the dangers that such a personality orientation brings to the problems of restraint in the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

Apart from the dangers of a nuclear loose cannon hanging out in Tel Aviv, the messianic orientation has other deficits for seeking to find the most peaceful and mutually beneficent solution to the problems relating to Israel and the Palestinian people. One of the central beliefs of the messianic personality in Israel is a believe that God has personally given the people of Israel all of the lands now occupied by the Palestinians. Indeed, one of the most central believes of the messianic, god-complex driven, right-wing Israeli is the believe that the rights to Judea and Samaria area rights given directly by God to them. In this, there is no room for settlement. The ruthless pursuit of such a fantasy or delusion is quite clearly a prescription that regards peace as a sideshow. Additionally, the aggressive pursuit and expansion of settlement activity in Palestinian territories is clearly a policy of stealth annexation in violation of one of the most well established rules of modern international law: that the acquisition of territory by conquest, is prohibited.

The expansion of territory via settlements is promoted by another startling god-complex delusion: that Israel, including Greater Israel, must be a purely ethnic Jewish state. At the present time, that would suggest that the 1.5 million Israelis who are not Jewish have no rights in Israel even though they are Israeli citizens. Does God demand ethnic cleansing as an ultimate religious objective for the salvation of human kind? If God were to demand this, what kind of God are we talking about? The very modern idea of the state is that the rights and duties of everyone in it are determined by citizenship and not religion, language or ethnic pedigree.

It will be obvious that the messianic leadership in Israel today is leading Israel in a direction that is the opposite of where it ought to be. It would be vitally important that American interest groups not be seen to aid and abet in this direction, which points only to negative consequences. The American Jewish community has been given an important signal, and it is time that their voices be heard as voices of moderation, and rational restraint rather than voices of intolerant and delusional fantasy.