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Did you notice who was sitting next to Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress?

The Prime Minister told us why Wiesel was there. “Your life and work inspire us to give meaning to the words ‘never again.’ And I wish I could promise you, Elie, that the lessons of history have been learned. I can only urge the leaders of the world not to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

But, now, watch the Netanyahu speech. Go to the 35:20 mark.

Do you see who is sitting next to Wiesel? Yes, that’s Professor Alan Dershowitz — the famous Jewish attorney and activist.

That’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s world-view.

On the one hand, there’s Elie Wiesel – the great moral symbol of Jewish suffering and victimhood.

And on the other hand, there’s Alan Dershowitz – the symbol of Jewish defiance and defense – a man whose memoir is titled (appropriately) Chutzpah.

Like him or hate him (are there any other choices?), Prime Minister Netanyahu did an admirable job of telling Congress why he loses sleep about Iran. I am going to leave it to others to analyze the political implications of Netanyahu’s speech, including the reasons for Boehner’s invitation, as well as the implications for the speech for the Israeli elections.

No doubt about it: Bibi Netanyahu is a polarizing figure. In some ways, he is the mirror image of President Obama. Many on the American and Jewish right hate President Obama. He is fundamentally incapable of doing anything right.

But many on the left hate Netanyahu. In fact, over the last twenty-four hours, I have heard formerly-reasonable people refer to Bibi with vulgarities so vile that they’d offend a gangsta-rap performer.

Let’s call it Bibi-phobia.

What’s it about?

Benjamin Netanyahu stirs up something very deep within the Jewish soul. For centuries, the bullies of the world stole the Jews’ lunch money. Bibi is the guy who walks you home from school. For many Jews, that is precisely the source of his appeal.

But for other Jews (and some gentiles), this is a problem. Prime Minister Netanyahu single-handedly shreds all of the old Jewish scripts. He is not a cringing figure out of a Hasidic tale. He is not Tevye. He is not Woody Allen. He does not apologize for himself, his people, his state, or for what he believes to be in their best interests. He is a Jew straight out of “Inglorious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino’s fantasy counter-history of World War Two, in which a fighting corps of American Jews lay waste to the Third Reich.

In that film, Winston Churchill says: “Don’t mess with the Jews.” Bibi is that Jew you don’t mess with.

Here is how Bibi put it: “The days when the Jewish people remains passive in the face of genocidal enemies – those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We have restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. For the first time in a hundred generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves.”

That is certainly one definition of Zionism. It is not the only one. I prefer the notion that Israel is the laboratory for Jewish values and ideas. Zionism also means that Jews — and only Jews — can define their own reality. And that is what Benjamin Netanyahu does.

Many American Jews are imbued with Jewish spirituality (full disclosure: I am one of them). Netanyahu reminds us that Jewish spirituality is not (always) about singing the Hebrew equivalent of “Kumbaya.” Hatikvah is the national anthem of the Jewish people. It is about the hope of the Jews to be a free people, in their land, in Jerusalem. It is definitely not “Kumbaya.”

When anti-Semitic terror struck in Europe, Bibi reminded European Jews of the core meaning of political Zionism. One hundred and twenty years ago, Theodor Herzl got the memo. He heard the mobs in Paris crying out for “death to the Jews.” Herzl didn’t have to wait for cartoonists to be murdered. Right then and there, he knew that Jews should not be the Blanche DuBois of the nations: “I’ve always had to rely on the kindness of strangers.”

Yes, Netanyahu sometimes comes off as arrogant, overbearing, obnoxious, and other harsh adjectives. Perhaps. OK, so he’s not Ghandhi. But, then again, Ghandhi counseled the Jews of Europe to commit mass suicide, so as to rouse the conscience of the world.

No thanks, Mahatma.

Finally, Netanyahu pushes American Jewry’s most sensitive historical button.

It’s about dual loyalty.

In 1950, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion got into a public debate with Jacob Blaustein, the president of the American Jewish Committee, one of American Jewry’s premier defense organizations.

Blaustein was concerned. Would the new State of Israel require that all Diaspora Jews make aliyah (immigrate to Israel)? Because if that were to happen, this would lead to accusations of dual loyalty.

And that charge is a big “uh-oh.” Pharaoh was the first to raise it: “In the event of war they may join with our enemies…and rise up from the land.” (Exodus 1:10) Haman, the arch-villain of the holiday of Purim, said: “There is a certain people…whose laws are different from those of any other people.” (Esther 3:7) In the early 1800s, Napoleon raised it with French Jewish leaders: “Do the Jews born in France, and treated by the law as French citizens, acknowledge France as their country?”

Not to worry, Ben Gurion told Blaustein. Yes, aliyah is desirable, but that’s for the individual Jew to decide. Ben Gurion affirmed that American Jews have only one political loyalty – to the United States. He made it clear: the State of Israel speaks only on behalf of its own citizens, and does not presume to speak for Jews who are citizens of any other country.

As the Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi put it: “I am in the West, and my heart is in the East.”

American Jewish political loyalty is above reproach.

But the American Jewish heart is a dual-chamber heart — divided between United States foreign policy, and the deepest fears of the Jewish people.

That’s why Benjamin Netanyahu makes us crazy. He reminds us of the struggles that go along with being a Jew in the modern world – torn in several different directions, forced to struggle with deep issues of identity.

Which, by the way, is what Israel means – Yisrael – a people that struggles.