Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.

No contemporaneous or primary source for this statement has been found. Its earliest located publication is the advocacy column "The US–Israel Saga" by Yoram Ettinger (11 May 2005); Michael Oren repeated it in Foreign Policy (25 April 2011) as Haig's "observation 30 years ago", citing no source. At his January 1981 confirmation Haig instead described Israel as a "strategic asset". The "aircraft carrier … cannot be sunk" metaphor predates his term: Stephen Bryen of JINSA wrote in 1980 that Israel could be "a substitute aircraft carrier — one that cannot be sunk" (Congressional Record, vol. 126, pp. 5673–5674).