Why Israel Mocks the US

On the face of it, nothing justifies Washington’s almost blind support of Israel. But, upon closer examination, it all makes sense.

It was early May. The Israeli army was heavily bombing Gaza, destroying dozens of apartment buildings, schools and hospitals. Some of the world’s leading human rights groups denounced war crimes.

In addition to all the Palestinian civilians killed in the bombings, there were the countless who saw the lives they knew reduced to ashes.

During this time, in Washington, despite growing calls from Democratic lawmakers for stronger condemnation of Israel’s actions, President Joe Biden continued to give his unwavering support to the Hebrew state.

This was May 2021, during Biden’s first spring in the White House.

If this episode from three years ago already seems long ago and forgotten, it is perhaps because it is just another among so many over the decades of this conflict. Perhaps it is also because, since the creation of Israel in 1948, successive American presidents have never questioned, in any significant way, the symbiotic relationship that unites the two countries.

While the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has multiplied strikes in Gaza for seven months now and, for just as long, resisted demands for a ceasefire from a large coalition of Arab and Western nations, many remain at a loss to explain the unconditional U.S. support for Israel.

So if not just from a national interest perspective, what is the point of the U.S. continuing to be virtually the sole ally of a country that is right now so widely condemned?

It could be the simple answer is that it is not in America’s interest to do so.

Why persist, then? The answer to this is a little more complicated.

Deep Roots

To start, there is the historic dimension of this relationship. The U.S. was the first country to recognize the Hebrew state back in 1948.

Since then, a relationship has taken shape that has not just been political, it has been military, as well, with few parallels elsewhere in the world. Unraveling ties of this magnitude is no easy feat.

There is also an ideological and religious dimension, often less explained and understood elsewhere. For a great majority of Christians — especially the numerous evangelicals in the U.S. — Israel represents the Holy Land, tied to the biblical prophecy of the return of Jesus Christ in the end times.

A poll conducted by a Christian publication in 2017 revealed that around eight of 10 evangelicals were said to believe that “God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants (in reference to the Promised Land) was for all time.”

How much weight do evangelical Christians carry in American politics? In the most recent elections, the 2022 midterms, they made up 24% of the electorate.

That was more than Black and Hispanic voters combined. And it was also more than all voters in households with at least one union member.

Then there is the influence of extremely powerful interests that are both well-organized and well-connected in and around the government machine in Washington, notably business people, intellectuals and representatives from the Jewish diaspora who benefit politically and financially from the American defense sector. Year after year they push for U.S. global intervention, often military, including in support of Israel in its own conflicts and wars.

In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack ever carried out against the U.S., on Sept. 11, 2001, one former Israeli prime minister had been making the rounds of the American media, multiplying televised interviews, to put greater pressure on the administration of then President George W. Bush — himself an evangelical Christian — to strike the “empire of terror” formed by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and … Iraq, all of them great enemies of Israel.

For years the Israelis had dreamed of doing away with Saddam Hussein, a highly anti-Semitic tyrant, and his regime. They would find allies for their cause in Washington among the ultra-interventionists — notable hawks like Dick Cheney, but especially little-known, non-partisan intellectuals — and contractors from the American military-industrial complex who had much to gain from ongoing wars.

Irving Kristol, one of the fathers of the American neo-conservative movement with very close ties to evangelical circles, wrote in 1996 that with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the Berlin Wall, the United States had to find new enemy. “With the end of the Cold War, what we really need is an obvious ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can unite us in opposition.”

Last month, while at the same time “urging” the Israeli government exercise “restraint” in its military operations, Biden signed a new bill with close to $100 billion in primarily military assistance to U.S. allies.

That package stipulated that a sum of $1 billion be earmarked specifically for humanitarian aid to Gaza, with $17 billion going toward military assistance for Israel. Notwithstanding Biden’s threat last week to withhold certain weapons from Israel if it went ahead with its large-scale invasion of Gaza, the reality is that the funds are now written into law and sooner or later it will be disbursed.

In a sense, it is simply the logical progression of things.

And who was that former Israeli prime minister who, after the Sept. 11 attacks, agitated so much, and with great success, for the U.S. to invade Iraq?

The current Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.