Saeed Naqvi | In Middle East’s endgame, where will Israel finally be left standing?
The brutal realism of Tarantino’s Django Unchained may well cause the weak of stomach to throw up. A white plantation owner in America’s Deep South, seated on a sofa in his living room, watches two burly slaves wrestle to the grim end or at least until one of them has gouged out the other’s eyes.
Outside, a pack of hungry dogs, larger than wolves, are let loose on a slave who tries in vain to clamber onto a tree.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods”, laments Lear in the wilderness, “they kill us for their sport”. Replace “gods” with “whites” in Shakespeare’s line and put it in the mouth of a bleeding black slave at a climactic moment on Broadway or the West End, and the actor will get multiple standing ovations.
All standing ovations pale before what Benjamin Netanyahu coaxed out of the US Congress. They wouldn’t stop rising like there were nails on their seats.
This wasn’t the first time Mr Netanyahu had joint sessions of the US Congress riveted on him. It submitted to his choreography four times, one more than Winston Churchill’s record. At one time, President Barack Obama had opposed his presence in Washington. Mr Netanyahu defied the White House and addressed the session anyway, one ovation after another. The egg on Mr Obama’s face was stark.
What explains Israel’s extraordinary influence in Washington? I have interviewed Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Mr Netanyahu. There is no doubt that Mr Netanyahu knows his America better than the others. There are simple reasons. His stints at Harvard and MIT gave him a wide, influential network, which he assiduously cultivated. His stint as Israel’s UN ambassador in 1984-88 helped consolidate his links with Jews in New York and California. After Tel Aviv, New York has the world’s largest, most influential Jewish population.
Analysts say the US Jewish lobby keeps US foreign policy totally aligned with Israel’s interests. Studies have shown how deep the lobby’s tentacles are all across the US establishment.
Shameful is a mild word to describe representatives of the American people doing jumping-jack exercises, with a mixture of military precision and uncommon obsequiousness. Do people not matter in American democracy when Israel is involved? Is it exclusively a circus of capital, donors and lobbies? The National Rifle Association will thwart any reform even though gun violence kills 12 children every day in America.
The “Nakba” (catastrophe) of 1948, when Israeli villages were emptied of Palestinians, was horrible. There have been similar horrors down the line. But the endlessness of current brutalities is, ironically, a harbinger of a better future for Palestinians.
All previous “Nakbas” were a function of Israeli self-confidence. Israel knew all its tantrums would be overlooked, sometimes encouraged, by the sole superpower. Former US defence secretary Caspar Weinberger’s definition of Israel as America’s “unsinkable aircraft-carrier in the Middle East” was apt -- only so long as the US was an uncontested superpower.
In 2008, after Lehman Brothers came down like the Titanic, there has been no arrest of the hegemon’s decline. Many US institutions have lost their sheen, such as the military-industrial complex.
This much-touted complex has not enabled the US to win wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and we remember vividly the messy departure from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of occupation. The military-industrial complex can help destroy countries, not win wars.
One purpose of provoking Russia’s Vladimir Putin into the Ukrainian theatre was for the US to recover lost prestige. The opposite has happened. President Joe Biden has had to bow out for unfortunate reasons; while Mr Putin, holding Xi Jinping’s reliable hands, is looking plausible as a global statesman, the two navigating Brics way beyond the G-7.
Seen in this perspective, the 2024 “Nakba” is different. On all previous occasions, Israel could take for granted the absolute support of the sole superpower. Today the hegemon, which carried imperialism on its shoulders, is in free fall. The Israeli establishment is well aware of the altered circumstances.
Meanwhile, Mr Netanyahu has placed himself in a corner. He cannot dismount the tiger because the tiger will devour him if he does. So, he must fight on, albeit keep bombing Palestinians. He must keep fighting for another reason: he has promised total victory over Hamas, an impossible proposition by all calculations.
Any ceasefire short of total victory will be tantamount to defeat. The Palestinians will be in wild celebration (160,000 deaths, going by Lancet’s calculations) notwithstanding. The US, which is staring at defeat in Ukraine as well, cannot allow the Israeli “aircraft-carrier” to sink. That will be a nail in the collective coffin of the West.
People forget that America’s relations with Saudi Arabia came long before the State of Israel was born in 1948. It was in 1945 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Shah Saud, founder of the Saudi monarchy, met on the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal to ratify agreements on how Arab oil will be shared by the West in exchange for guarantees of security in the Cold War.
When the Cold War ended in 1990-91, the Iranian Revolution, the Shia axis and Islamic terror were brought into play to scare the Arabs -- to keep the oil for security policies in place. But ths situation has changed. Therefore, Saudi Arabia, nudged by China, has shaken hands with Tehran. It has, effectively joined the Global South. This Israel can’t do. At China’s behest again, all Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah included, have agreed to join hands for managing Gaza after the war is over.
Wait a minute. The other day the Ukrainian foreign minister was sighted in Beijing, a capital most friendly with President Putin. What on earth is going on?
