עברית “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”.
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
“Riding the American Tiger” after 21 Years
“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”.
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
Remark to the new posting, October 2023
My article "Riding the American Tiger" was published in “Haaretz” on October 4, 2002, exactly 21 years before the massacre of October 7, 2023. The purpose of the article was to draw attention to the reason for the terrible price that Israelis and Palestinians are paying for almost a century, owing to the blind commitment of their leaders to implementing the American strategy of "The Clash of civilizations". Due to the current dire situation, I am posting the article again in my blog, and preface it with this remark.
The catastrophic events that continue and escalate for decades between Israel and the Palestinians in the occupied territories and in Gaza, prove how the implementation of the American strategy of the "Clash of Civilizations" is progressing in Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East. This strategy, implemented in the 20th and 21st centuries by all the American administrations, was made public in 1996 in Samuel Huntington's book, "The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order", also called, "The West against the Rest". According to this strategy, the State of Israel is called “The Jewish state", despite the fact that 20% of its citizens are Arabs, and it does not feel obliged to add the empty phrase, "Jewish- democratic". This “Jewish State” is then respectfully included in the morally superior, liberal and progressive "Western Christian-Jewish civilization”.
About the origins and nature of this self-proclaimed western moral superiority, known also as “White Man’s burden", the ideological justification of the colonialism of the British Empire, which preceded and prepared the American Empire, I refer in the article. It is important to emphasize, to prevent misunderstandings, that the forces that drive the Anglo-American world domination, are the starkly marked reversal of the true spiritual and moral forces of the English speaking peoples. I described some elements of the true essence of the American spirit in my book, “America’s Global Responsibility” (Lindisfarne press, 2003).
According to the American global strategy of the "Clash of Civilizations", between the Western Christian-Jewish civilization and the other eight civilizations, there are "Bloody Faultlines", as Huntington calls them. The most important bleeding fault lines for the liberal and democratic Christian West, are in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The first passes between Western Christianity and the Orthodox Christian Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, and above all Russia, and the second between the "Jewish state" which is part of " Western Christian- civilization", and the "Islamic civilization".
It should be noted that this strategy is not a mere political theory, concocted in idle academic heads, but global strategic action plan, implemented by all the American Democratic and Republican administrations in the course of the 20th century, long before Huntington's book was published in 1996.
Any superficial acquaintance with the American policy in the Middle East will suffice to prove that all American administrations, in the past 75 years, since Israel’s Independence, prevented all attempts at a real solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This can be easily proven. When American strategic interests demanded that "peace agreements" be signed between Israel and Egypt and Jordan, this was done without question, simply because Washington made it unequivocally clear that this demand must be obeyed. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the exact opposite takes place. Not only Washington is not initiating real solutions, but is acting decisively to prevent any solution that emerges from local initiatives. In the vast majority of cases, the US has been able to stop and prevent the next peace initiative in its initial stages, and when this was not possible, it did everything necessary to eliminate it down the road, as was done with the Oslo Accords.
As been amply documented, Washington is working through the entire world to arm all sides, to tear apart the fabric of life, trust, and fraternity among people, divide countries, societies, and communities inside and out, to create bloody fault lines that can be controlled and manipulated. Democrats and Republicans alike excel in enshrining and arming the world's dictatorial regimes over the past century, while at the same time arming their opponents, consistently applying the old and new destructive imperial principle: divide et impera! Divide and rule!.
Moreover, if we limit our remarks only to what directly affects Israel (and disregard the true causes of the bloody Iraqi and Afghanistan wars, documented in detail), Washington supported the rise of Khomeini's radical Islamic regime and the Ayatollahs in Iran during the 1979 revolution, and fight against it ever since, and supported the overthrow of the Palestine Liberation Organization rule in Gaza in 2007 by the Hamas. The fact that Washington doesn’t even bother to hide the cause of the current bloodshed in Israel and Gaza in recent years, demonstrates to what extent humanity’s moral forces have declined. It let it is take place in plain sight, that through Qatar, an American protectorate, where Washington maintains the largest American military base in the Middle East, the financing and arming the Islamic State, ISIS, and Hamas is taking place. The billions worth financing and arming of Hamas is Gaza, that started before Netanyahu’s governments, was openly done, and the routine transfer of millions of US dollars in the cash filled suitcases from Israel to Hamas was broadcasted live in Israeli TV- and at the same time Washington continues to arm Israel to its teeth with the most sophisticate American weapons, employed now in the war against Hamas and the destruction of Gaza! (The support of Hamas is another example of the implementation of the “divide and rule” strategy, aimed to divide the Palestinians, by strengthening Islamic rule of Hamas in Gaza and weakening the Palestinian authority in the west bank, to enlarge the settlements and tighten the military suppression in the Palestinian territories, to prevent any solution. This plan is realized of course with the full support of Washington).
The arming of all parties is intended to supply the ammunition that fuels the bloody conflicts on the globally crucial bloody fault lines, as shown on the map of the clash of civilizations, to ensure that all sides will always have the most advanced American weapons to ignite the conflict in repeated, bloody cycles. This guarantees that the enmity between the warring people on both sides of the bloody fault line will intensify from decade to decade. Furthermore, it is important to note that Washington also makes sure - very carefully - that in all the armed conflicts between Israel and the Arab countries and the Palestinians in the occupied territories and Gaza, total Israeli victory will never be achieved. Israel, armed to its teeth, must be stopped before achieving total victory, which could, under circumstances, create conditions for some kind of settlement. In this way, Washington ensures the outbreak of the next war.
In my article from October 4, 2002, I tried also to draw attention to the fact that this global strategic principle expresses a metaphysical and religious principle. This principle finds its succinct formulation in Huntington’s mantra, that expresses the spiritual-moral essence of the progressive and advanced "Western Christian-Jewish civilization": “We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.” It is difficult to imagine a more far-reaching reversal, a more perfect caricature, expressed in this "Western-Christian" principle, and the teaching of universal love that originated in true Judaism and Christianity: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. This is the truth behind the inhuman force, that all the governments of Israel, from left, right and middle, blindly follow and consider as “Israel’s greatest friend and protector”, from 1948 until the horrible events of the present time.
In my article from the Fourth of October 2002, I tried to draw attention to the fact that the American strategy of the clash of civilizations constitutes an ever intensifying, worsening, existential danger to the State of Israel, because the bleeding fault line between “Western Christian-Jewish Civilization” and the ”Islamic civilization”, runs not only between Israel and the Palestinians in the west bank and Gaza, but also between its Jewish and Arab citizens, and will eventually tear it apart, as happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I warned that this bloody fault line must eventually erupt into a civil war within the State of Israel, as indeed began to occur in the riots of May 2021, which could tear the fabric of Israeli life apart, as happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And yet, the ruling elites throughout the Western world, and also in Israel, from the left, middle and the right, continue to serve this strategy and hasten our demise without question.
For many years I have tried to direct the attention of people from all shades of the political, social and cultural spectrum to this existential problem of the State of Israel. I remember a meeting typical of many meetings, which took place with a senior media person, symbolizing the magnitude of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy and the tragedy of humanity today. After hearing the main points, he said: "From my experience, I know that your analysis is true." For a moment, hope arose in me, that there was someone to talk to. Then he added: "Because this is the truth, it cannot be published." In other words: "I know the truth, but I will not realize it. I knowingly choose to continue living the lie, in which I do not believe, and not the truth, in which I do believe!'
Riding the American Tiger
Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon
October 04, 2002 12:00 AM
The identification of the state of Israel with the salient interests of American foreign and defense policy and with the theory of the "clash of civilizations" that underlies it has become second nature among politicians, businessmen, ranking army officers and the intelligence community in Israel, right across the political spectrum.
Identification of the good of the State of Israel with the clear interests of the current American foreign and security policy and with the "clash of civilizations" strategy behind it has long since become an instinct among politicians, businessmen and the military, and the intelligence community in Israel from across the political spectrum. In his article, “Son of the New Middle East”, (Haaretz, August 9), Amir Oren rightly writes that "there is no Sharon plan, but there is a Bush plan that was examined through the lens of intelligence and planning in the army and approved with Sharon's stamp. Bush's speeches, but also many statements by the president and his ideological associates, became sacred scriptures, and the officers of the General Staff in Tel Aviv became their authoritative commentators, the clerics of the religion of the clash of civilizations, shared by the two peoples, the American and the Israeli."
The speech delivered by President George Bush at the United Nations General Assembly on September 12 exposed the main points of his administration's policy. Special attention should be paid to his assertion that the United States will seek to repulse any future military competitor. Administration spokesmen declare that the United States is thus assuming the right to decide on its own when a foreign army constitutes a threat and how to deal with that threat. What underlies this unprecedented approach by Washington?
The events of 9/11 provided an excellent excuse for the advocates of Anglo-American imperialism to come out of the closet. The concept of empire is the in thing in the current political-diplomatic discourse. Peace, welfare, a law-abiding regime and international order will accrue to those who seek the protection of the global Western empire, while the language of force will be employed against those who reject this protection.
What is being stated openly today guided Anglo-American policy in the 19th and 20th centuries, although then it was not openly talked about in the press.
A case in point is Max Boot, a senior editor on the Wall Street Journal, who before September 11 would never have dared adopt a line from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, the court poet of the British Empire in the Victorian era, as the title for his book: "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power." Kipling wrote his poem in 1899 in order to strengthen the hands of the young imperialists in America on the occasion of their first murderous imperial conquest - the Philippines - the first of the dozens of "savage wars of peace" that the burgeoning American empire fought in the 20th century.
In this view, the white man, the Anglo-Saxon, was the torchbearer of civilization - meaning Christian, Western, white civilization - in the face of the primitive, backward peoples of the globe. According to Kipling, the global conquests of the Anglo-American white man were the expression of a sublimely moral idealistic mission: noblesse oblige. Their task was to educate the barbarians, save the souls of the blacks, the yellows, the browns and the redskins. And if in the course of this noble mission they also raked in huge profits from exploitation, colonial subjugation and global corporatism, that was the fair reward of the just and the righteous.
The Economist, the British weekly that speaks for the barons in the City of London and their colleagues on Wall Street, devoted a special supplement in its June-July issue to the world role of the American empire. The magazine quoted Prof. Andrew Bacevich, author of "The American Empire and its Discontents," as speaking about the commanders of the U.S. armed forces in terms of "proconsuls." According to Bacevich and others, the Economist noted, America today has the same opportunities and commitments, and faces the same dangers, that were attributed in the past to empires.
Among the many others employing the same terminology is Robert Cooper, a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In an article in the London paper Observer (April 7, 2002), which generated considerable interest, entitled "Why we still need empires," Cooper argued that imperialism must free itself of its old complexes and stop being ashamed of itself. After 9/11 there is once more a clear and worthy enemy; the bewilderment that gripped imperialist circles in the West following the fall of Communism has come to an end, Cooper wrote. Now it is incumbent on the West to enlist the forces of light, the founders of the "new world order," for the war against a new "empire of evil."
The place of the Soviet Union has been taken by "Islamic civilization," which has come to the fore, amazingly, just when it was needed. Now it will be easy to make Western public opinion believe that it is essential to return to the era of the Cold War, and it will again be possible to divert vast resources to the weapons and oil industries and to the industrial-economic-political complex that is dependent on them, as well as to heighten "internal security" and reduce civil liberties in the Western countries.
In other words, Western civilization deserves the title of "the neo-liberal, postmodern empire." At the beginning of the 21st century, Cooper believes, public opinion in the West is capable of accepting this approach. This is because, as in the ancient empires, today, too, "order, culture and civilization" accrue to those who live under the protection of the empire, while those outside are at the mercy of "barbarians, chaos and disorder." In relations with those "others" who exist outside the postmodern, neo-liberal boundaries, "double standards" will have to be applied: "Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the 19th century world of every state for itself."
Israeli foreign and defense policy is now riding enthusiastically on the back of the American tiger. The right-left-center government lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of the far-reaching strategic consequences this will have for Israel. There is no doubt that the trumpets of war being sounded in Jerusalem and Washington will soon become the euphoric heralds of "victory" over the Palestinians and the Iraqis. There is also no doubt that Washington and its satellite state of Israel have the power to go on achieving such victories in the foreseeable future. However, these "triumphs" will continue to diminish the social, moral and political image and essence of Israel.
Dr Ben-Aharon is a lecturer in the development of culture and ideas, and the founder of an association that advocates a civil society in Israel.