Hell hath no fury like a universalist contradicted
The belief in a supranational order which is now very common among European élites accounts in part, writes Dalrymple, for the fury they direct against the Zionists.
A conceptual anti-EU
Israel, Dalrymple notes,
is a European state, but instead of subscribing to European supranational pieties, it pursues its national interest with determination and without apology. It is particularist rather than universalist.
Believers in universalism
brook no derogation from their principles.
The Western European superiority complex
Dalrymple points out that as a European state, Israel
is held up to a different standard from Arab states, Iran or Turkey, because European states have supposedly now reached a higher ethical stage, that of national altruism rather than national egotism, a stage which those of lesser breeds without the (moral) law, still mired in egotism, have not attained.
It turns out that
it is rather more difficult to disembarrass yourself of feelings of superiority than at first might have been supposed.