America has long held a special place in its heart for Israel. The mutual affinity between the two states extends over half a century, and has served many purposes, from extending America’s sphere of influence during the Cold War to creating the foundational logic of the War on Terror. American imperialist and capitalist interests continue to see Israel as a useful and dependable ally in the Middle East—one uniquely amenable to American geopolitical and economic ambitions. As former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig once put it, Israel is “America’s largest aircraft carrier which could never be sunk.”

Israel, in turn, deftly leverages its relationship with the United States to the tune of hundreds of billions in aid, material support for its ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Palestinian people, and highly lucrative contracts with the American military-industrial complex. Year after year, Israel develops new technology that American cops, military forces, and intelligence organizations use to further their pursuit of violent domination and exploitation on both a domestic and international scale. This technology goes for a high price, sold as “battle-tested”—that is, tested on Palestinian civilians.

Continuing its longstanding romance with the Zionist regime, America is heavily involved in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza; it is the architect of the material conditions facilitating Israel’s daily crimes against humanity. Stripped of American arms and aid, Israel would begin to crumble, struggling to carry out the massacres that have become daily routine. It has historically taken U.S. presidents little more than a threatening phone call to get Israel to change its tactics, but America’s romance with the Zionist project has become so deep that any such possibilities have been thrown out tout court. The Gaza genocide is both Israel’s and America’s genocide, together hand-in-bloody-hand.

There is a powerful symbolic dimension to Israel’s relationship with America. Israel’s actions signify American empire’s unchecked id—America’s most deeply buried desires, thrust to the forefront. 

Israel proudly hoists the banner of genocide, of racial supremacy, and of settler-colonial expansion. Likewise, America originated with and thrives on the very same violences, but it now represses their centrality by donning the mask of justice and right. In other words: Israel is an America that does not pretend to be anything other than it is. The long-standing affinity many Americans hold for Israel, then, is entirely unsurprising. Birds of a settler-colonial feather flock together.

Is it any surprise that Israel shows itself as everything America pretends not to be? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent many of his formative years in the suburbs of Philadelphia before returning to Israel to enlist with the Israeli Defense Forces. Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish supremacist originally from Brooklyn, was responsible for the infamous 1994 “Cave of the Patriarchs” massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers. Many of the most extremist settlers today residing in the West Bank are American emigrants.

These American settlers are free to release their inhibitions and relentlessly brutalize those they view as lesser, echoing white America’s hatred of migrants and nostalgic yearning for Jim Crow. But the America of reactionaries and open racists is not the only America reflected in the Zionist mirror.

Joe Biden, the face of polite liberal society, is an unrepentant mass murderer. His hands are stained with the blood of tens of thousands—soon, hundreds of thousands—throwing into horrifying relief the hypocrisy of America’s so-called rules-based international order. Biden orders food airdropped into the same prison camp he helps starve; he feigns remorse over innocent deaths his bombs and bullets are responsible for; he grandstands about pushing Israel to behave more “humanely” while blocking international efforts to halt Israel’s transformation of the Gaza Strip into a veritable death camp. 

An Arabic proverb aptly captures Biden’s mode of liberal hypocrisy, a hypocrisy close to the heart of American liberalism as a whole: “he kills the victim and walks in his funeral.” Biden is the perfect representative of America, loudly proclaiming its own righteousness while feasting on the lifeblood of the oppressed and downtrodden.

Israel’s leadership has taken an entirely different tact: reveling in genocidal rage and delight. While continuing to peddle the standard lies and lazy justifications for the sake of Israel’s international reputation, Israel’s leaders are more straightforward with their intentions when speaking to a domestic audience. 

In its provisional measure against Israel’s genocide at the International Court of Justice, South Africa presented numerous examples of genocidal rhetoric from Israel’s government, top military brass, popular journalists, and even major celebrities

For example, Israel’s Minister of Social Equality & Women’s Advancement recently stated, “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza.” . In November, the deputy speaker of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) urged the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to “burn Gaza” to the ground. Last April—many months before October 7th—Israel’s Finance Minister complained that a Palestinian community in the West Bank should have been “wiped out” by the IDF. These are only three of innumerable examples of blatantly genocidal speech amongst Israel’s leaders. 

It may be hard to imagine any Americans but the most fringe reactionaries speaking so bluntly in public, but the words of Israel’s leaders better speak to America’s real nature than any empty displays of concern from Biden and his ilk. To put it another way: Israel speaks the same words that would be spoken by an American empire stripped of its superego.

The difference between Israel and America? Israel unapologetically embraces its bloodthirsty, sadistic drive for domination—in stark contrast to the American empire, which denies this same drive while embodying it at its core.