Ethnocentrism is bound to distort a people’s relations with the rest of the world, and Israel’s doctrine of power was drawn from the depths of Jewish experience, particularly the eternal, unforgiving hostility of a Gentile world. The role of the Holocaust as the constituent myth of the Zionist meta-narrative reinforced Israel’s tendency to face “the world,” an amorphous but imposing construct with which the Jews wage a dispute that cannot be resolved through the traditional tools of international relations.
民族优越感必然会扭曲一个民族与世界其他部分的关系，以色列的实力迷信来自犹太人历史的深层经验，特别是非犹太世界永恒的、冷血的敌意。大屠杀在锡安主义元叙事中扮演着基本神话元素的角色，这强化了以色列直面“世界”的倾向，这是一个没有定型但又蔚为壮观的构造，犹太人据此发动了无法用国际关系的传统工具解决的争端。