Two old metaphors continue to capture how the American state sees Israel and how the Israeli state sees itself. On the one hand, Israel is “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world” (Alexander Haig). On the other hand, it is a “villa in the jungle” (Ehud Barak, Labor’s last PM).
Far from being taken as an insult, as any great people on the receiving end of such a remark would recognize it to be, Haig’s statement has come to be proudly accepted by Israeli officials: to be wielded as a reminder that “America needs Israel” (Michael Oren). The remark represented the fulfillment of the longstanding wish of the Zionist movement, going back to its pre-state era: to become the instrument of some, any large power’s patronage. No possible patron was ruled out during this era, not even the worst enemies of Jews: see Herzl’s diplomatic overtures to Tsarist Russia in the same year as the Kishinev massacre, see also the advances made by the Stern Gang towards the fascist perpetrators of the Holocaust.
In the 1960s, Israel began to settle, with some fits and starts, into a role as a specifically American “aircraft carrier” in the contention with the Soviets: from the first US arms sales in 1962 (JFK) and 1965-6 (LBJ), up to the formalization of “strategic cooperation” in the early 1980s under Reagan. However, the relationship has also been marked by a certain paranoia about keeping its place: a large power has more than one warship in a region, some of the others in the fleet might be Arab and Muslim states, and thus there are other sensibilities that must be constantly negotiated. Only recently had the calculation been introduced, carried over by Biden from Trump, that Palestine could be easily “decoupled” from the most important of these sensibilities in negotiations: an idea founded on contempt for the peoples of the Arab world.
As for Barak’s statement, one that he has been fond of repeating at different times, there is not much to say beyond noting its pure expression of the colonial outlook of the state. To the same category can be added Gallant’s line on “human animals.“ In any case, the fate of Barak’s own party leader in 1995 had already demonstrated, long before the events of the new Netanyahu government installed at the end of 2022, that things were not so great inside the “villa.“ To use his own phrase: the “jungle” prevailed there as well.
In this country, the high politics of Biden’s bear hug, aimed at shaping Israel’s actions according to US interests, are being combined with a different low “politics” for the rest of us: a ferocious and emotional campaign to sway public opinion, and intimidation against all who fail to support Israel with sufficient enthusiasm. This looks like, for example, Eric Adams falsely claiming on MSNBC that “DSA and others” were “carrying swastikas and calling for the extermination of Jewish people,” and NYC’s top Trumpian councilwoman bringing a gun to oppose a Palestine rally at Brooklyn College. What are they so afraid of? What kind of country, and what kind of economic system, needs “aircraft carriers”like Israel, and others, of all varieties?
May Day Student Organization 