America’s Changing Views on Israel
Bard College professor and Wall Street Journal foreign
policy columnist Walter Russell Mead has written three books in one. The first
is a history of the U.S- Israel relationship, the second a history of American
foreign policy and the third is a recent history of domestic politics in the
United States. In Mead’s view all three are inter-related. This book is above
all on the how’s and why’s of the American view on Israel. I write this just as
President Biden has left the middle east after visiting Israel and Saudi Arabia
signaling a reconfiguration of the region’s chessboard.
At the outset Mead completely debunks the view that
U.S.-Israel policy is controlled by the so called “Jewish Lobby.” To be sure
there is a pro-Israel lobby, but it is far from controlling and it suffers from
as many failures as successes. Further American presidents, Nixon, Reagan, W.
Bush, and Trump who did much to cement the relationship between the United
States and Israel were decidedly unpopular among the largely liberal Jewish community.
Mead starts his history in the late 19th
century where a group of Philo-semitic Protestants articulated the support for
a return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. Steeped in the bible and the
classics these Christians thought it was only natural for the Jews to have a
state of their own especially after Greek independence earlier that century and
the creation of new Rome in the form of Italy. These views predated Herzl’s
Zionism.
Mead goes into great detail the policy arguments that
took place in the Truman Administration concerning the formation of the State
of Israel. His Secretaries of State and Defense were firmly against it, but
Truman finally came down on the side of independence. Much was made at the time
of the importance of the Jewish vote in the upcoming 1948 presidential
election. However, Truman needed the support of the liberal internationalists
under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt who viewed the success of the U.N
resolution on Israel to be critical to that organization’s future. Truman
needed to keep Roosevelt from supporting the far-left candidacy of Henry
Wallace.
Of interest in 1948, Stalin, motivated by his need to
make trouble for Britain and the United States in the middle east, gave the
greenlight to Czechoslovakia to sell arms to Israel. Those arms made the
crucial difference in Israel’s war for independence. It also supplied hard
currency to the Czech’s who desperately needed it after turning down Marshall
Plan aid.
As difficult as it seems today, the American Left was
the home to most of Israel’s support in the 1950’s and 60’s. Israel, for all
practical purposes, was a struggling socialist country supporting the
dispossessed Jews of Europe and the Arab world. However, today the Left sees
Israel as militaristic, capitalistic settler-colonialist state. It seems that
the American Left just loves to penalize Israel’s success in building a modern
state in an otherwise impoverished middle east. Those are the very attributes praised
by the “Jacksonian evangelical Zionists” of the American Right.
Nevertheless, Mead leaves much out of his history. Not
much is said about the 1956 Suez War where Eisenhower backs Egypt against
Israel, France, and Britain; the 1982 Lebanon War which turned American public
opinion against Israel, and the taking out of the Iraq nuclear program. Mead
resumes his discussion U.S.-Israel relations in the 2000’s and highlights the
failures of the magical thinking of George W. Bush’s neocons with the Iraq War
and Obama’s with respect to the Arab Spring, Iran, and Israel. Ironically
Obama’s missteps in region led the Abraham Accords and burgeoning alliance
between Israel and the Sunni Arabs.
Although Mead supports the need for a Palestinian
state, he like most others doesn’t present a roadmap to getting there. Regardless,
Mead has offered up a work of history at its best.
For the full Amazon URL see: America's Changing Views on Israel (amazon.com)
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