Probably the oddest rivalry in international politics today is that between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not because of any excess of personal animosity between the two; at worst, there seems to be a cold indifference to each other at work in their relationship; but rather because of how extraordinarily similar the two men actually are.

Obviously, they are not similar in terms of their beliefs or backgrounds. Netanyahu is a scion of the closest thing Israel has to the Kennedy family (unless one counts Moshe Dayan’s profoundly dysfunctional brood). His father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, besides being one of the most influential historians of Jewish history in the twentieth century, was one of the founding fathers of the rightwing Revisionist faction of Zionism, which later became the opposition Herut Party and then the largest faction of the Likud. (Well into his nineties, the old man is still very much alive, and while I was living in Jerusalem we coincidentally shared a barber. Encounters with history indeed.) Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan, was a veteran of two wars and a decorated commander in the Israeli special forces who became a national hero after he was killed in the 1976 raid on Entebbe. Shortly after Yonatan’s death, a series of letters he wrote to family and friends were published in book form, becoming a touchstone for a generation of Israelis.

Obama, on the other hand, was the son of a brief marriage between two college students, one American and one Kenyan. He never really knew his Kenyan father, who rose to small prominence in his native land before disintegrating in a haze of alcohol. His mother took to globetrotting, sometimes with and sometimes without him, and he was raised mostly by his suburban, middle-class grandparents.

In terms of politics and ideology as well, the two men could not be further apart. Netanyahu is a dedicated neoliberal, a believer in military strength and the necessity of the use of force, and thinks that peace can only be attained when there is a balance of force and a balance of fear between nations. Obama is a lifelong social democrat; a skeptic of the free market; a believer in the power of dialogue, disarmament, and good will to achieve peace between nations; and thinks that military force is just as often the problem as it is the solution.

On the surface then, the two men could not seem more different. One is rightwing; born into, if not wealth, at least privilege; and convinced that the world is a dangerous place in which force is usually the only language anyone understands. The other is leftwing, from modest circumstances, and convinced that the world can not only be improved but perhaps perfected by human effort.

On second look, however, there is a surprising kinship between the two men. Both are articulate, intelligent, charismatic, and most of all telegenic politicians. Gifted rhetoricians, both are known for their speechmaking abilities and gift for appearing effortlessly smooth in high-pressure campaign situations. In the case of Obama, this is well-known, as the man’s entire career has been largely based on image and rhetoric; but in the case of Netanyahu it is equally striking. Indeed, in the era before television came to Israel (only about twenty-five years ago) a politician like Netanyahu would not have been possible. For most of its history, Israel’s leaders have been aggressively uncharismatic, plain spoken party officials or military men. Netanyahu is a product of the new, more globalized, Americanized, prosperous, and media-driven Israel; one in which image is just as important as reality, if not more so.

Just as they have enjoyed the benefits of their media-friendly images, however, both Obama and Netanyahu are well acquainted with its drawbacks. Put simply, both men often appear to be decidedly vacuous, empty, and sometimes inept once the cameras are turned off. Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, back in the late ‘90s, was such a disaster that it took him a decade to crawl back to the office, and even then he achieved it only by the skin of his teeth; losing the election to Tzipi Livni and the Kadima party but gaining the prime ministership through the quirks of Israel’s proportional election system. As for Obama’s drawbacks, they have been the primary topic of American political discussion for months, and need not be recounted here.

More significant than this is the kinship between the two men’s relationship to the past. Both of them are deeply influenced by being part of minority groups with long histories of suffering and oppression. Netanyahu’s Judaism is decisive in his view of himself and of history, so much so that it sometimes arouses the ire of those Israelis who think that Zionism’s success ought to have mitigated at least some of this lachrymose attitude toward the past. At least one Israeli columnist recently accused Netanyahu of speaking “like a Jew and not an Israeli,” a dichotomy that those unacquainted with the history of Zionism and Zionist thought may find confusing, but which is unquestionably a part of the current debate over Israeli identity.

Obama’s relationship to his African-American ancestry is just as decisive. Indeed, judging by the frequency with which he invokes it, even on somewhat inappropriate occasions such as the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, his status as the first black president of the United States is something that he does not only consider a personal accomplishment but a transformative moment in human history. Certainly, it is exactly that for his supporters, who see him as the consummation of the struggles of the civil rights movement and, for those with a particularly long view of history, abolitionism and the Civil War itself.

And yet, Obama and Netanyahu share another, paradoxical quality in this regard. The groups to which they belong have had a decisive influence on their identity, and yet neither of the two men are completely of these groups. Indeed, they have both spent large portions of their lives outside them. As mentioned above, Obama was not raised in a black community, but for the most part by white, middle-class suburbanites. It was not until his college years that he began to identity with the black community and eventually chose to become a part of it. In the same way, while Netanyahu’s familial and ideological ties to Israel are profound, he has lived large portions of his life—especially during his childhood—in the United States, and the influence of Anglo-American culture on him is unmistakable. There is no doubt that he is more like an American than an Israeli politician; something that has caused him some serious problems during his political career, with rumors flying that he was born in America (he wasn’t) and a certain derisory attitude toward his excellent English, which strikes some Israelis as irritatingly foreign.

The most important connection between the two men, however, and perhaps the source of the tension between them, is that they are both messianic politicians. In the case of Obama, with his various apocalyptic invocations of waters receding, ridding the world of nuclear weapons, and humanity entering upon a “new world,” this is obvious. Netanyahu’s messianism is more subtle, but no less intense. It appears most prominently in his book A Durable Peace, but it is invoked implicitly and explicitly in his speeches as well. Put simply, beneath his veneer of realism Netanyahu is a believer in the Democratic Peace, the idea that eventually all the nations of the world will become democracies and this will end war and conflict forever. And like Obama, he believes that this can be accomplished by conscious human action, including military force.

In this sense, both Obama and Netanyahu are tragic figures. Neither Obama’s new world nor Netanyahu’s democratic peace are ever going to actually happen; and what the fallout may be from this disillusionment is impossible to predict. In all likelihood, it will go harder for Netanyahu. America likes its leaders to have a bit of tragic messianism to them, but Israelis tend to be more skeptical (or cynical, depending on your point of view) about such things. What is certain, however, is that the current impasse between the two men is less about practical politics or diplomacy and much more about two competing and incompatible messianic visions — both of which, unfortunately, are doomed to failure.

Benjamin Kerstein is Senior Writer for The New Ledger.