Israel is the Latin Kingdom

Why does the Jewish state punch so far above its weight?

Israel has a population of ten million. This is about the same size as Switzerland, Austria, the UAE or New York City, and not much larger than that of Singapore or Hong Kong. Unlike the UAE, it does not possess much oil; unlike Singapore, it’s not located at a strategic maritime chokepoint; and unlike Hong Kong, it is not the gateway to a great commercial civilization. Why, then, does Israel command such stupendous real estate in the Western mind?

Hardly a day goes by without a reminder that no other nation plays such an outsized role in Western—not just American and German—diplomatic, military and cultural affairs. The intensity of political, military, and economic support Israel receives from the United States and other Western nations is unmatched by relationships with any other state of comparable size or strategic position. Why, then, does Israel punch so far above it’s weight?

Chomsky attributes Israel’s outsized influence to its role as regional policeman, viewing Israel primarily as an American client state and “surrogate.” While this may explain the US-Israeli special relationship, it does not explain why Israel punches so far above its weight in the Western imaginary, nor does it explain the policies of other Western nations, many of whom have been repeatedly at odds with Washington over other questions.

In the aftermath of the Iraq debacle, Jonathan Cook argued that Israeli influence had to do with the outsized role played by Israeli thinkers in the neoconservative movement. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that Israel punches far above its weight because of the vast influence of the Israel lobby in Washington. Again, these hypotheses can only explain US policy convincingly, and perhaps, if you stretch the argument, even the role that Israel plays in the American imaginary. But they cannot hope to explain why Israel punches above its weight in the Western imaginary and in the policy bias of Western countries.

Ireland, perhaps because of its history of anti-colonial struggle, was quite literally alone among Western states to clearly condemn the unrestrained Israeli assault on the population of Gaza. Even states with a demonstrated willingness to stand at odds with Uncle Sam like France, kept “message discipline.” Meanwhile, no country in the Global South stood behind Israel in the same way, and almost all condemned it much more vocally than any Western state besides Ireland. So, the explanatory burden here is quite strenuous. The hypothesis must explain the great anomaly of the broad global pattern, not just US, British or German policy.

In what follows, I will argue that an alternate and more compelling explanation for the anomaly emerges when we consider Israel as a contemporary analogue of the crusader state—a Western beachhead in the Holy Land. Like the Latin Kingdom, Israel is a settler-colonial outpost of Western civilization bang in the middle of the Islamic world; indeed, exactly where the Latin Kingdom was located. As we shall see, this framing goes far in explaining why Israel punches so far above its weight in the Western imaginary, and therefore in Western policy.