| Popis: |
The chapter explores the United States’ vicarious identification with Israel, arguing that since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has served as a positive identity proxy. Two features of Israeli military might have proven attractive for the United States’ vicarious identification with it: its preemptive military actions and its resounding military successes. Using generational analysis the chapter surmises that the increased connections made to Israel in the 1990s and 2000s by the United States are a result of the US Baby Boomer generation’s admiration of Israel as heroic, right, and assertive and where this image served as a formative experience for that generation at the same time as the United States was at its military, moral, and cultural nadir in Vietnam amid the broader tumult of the 1960s and 1970s. This generational take may also explain the increased tensions between the two countries and even the unraveling of the United States’ vicarious identification with Israel hereafter. |
