Why is israel so important to the us

By May , Zionist provocations and land grabs led Jewish-Arab skirmishes to blow up into an all-out battle. The haganah [Zionist military organization] strategy was to take possession of territory allotted to the Jews under the UN plan and to strike out along routes to isolated Jewish settlements in Arab areas.

They quickly took many of the towns and means of communication. In these areas the Zionist state apparatus was put into place and on 14 May [David] Ben Gurion proclaimed a State of Israel in the territories under Zionist control. Truman recognized the new state. As World War II ended, capitalist competition was rapidly globalizing.

That would have required ongoing direct rule, which would have been fantastically difficult — and expensive — to support from thousands of miles away. Anti-imperial struggles erupted across the region, threatening to expel Western powers. These uprisings meant a highly unstable region, which made for a terrible investment climate.

Still worse from the American point of view, many of these nations were moving closer to the Soviet Union. The United States was forced to seek allies in the region. To pull Arab countries into its orbit, it argued that capitalist democracy was superior to Soviet Communism for their development.

A central motivation for Arab nationalism was an opposition to Israeli intervention in the region. Israel proved its ability to militarily overpower its neighbors. If made an ally, American power brokers realized, the United States could use Israel to exert control indirectly.

In return, Washington got what was effectively a US military outpost in what American military strategists determined was the most important region in the world. No price tag was too high for what the United States got out of the deal: an indigenous intelligence service; troops, trained and familiar with the territory and ideologically committed; and all the weapons they would ever need, there in the Middle East. There was no need to convince the US public for a military incursion or to deploy the US military thousands of miles away.

Billions of dollars the United States sends to Israel wind up coming back to its military industry. In , Israel still had not abandoned the territories it snatched in from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel further inflamed tensions by refusing to remove its military, threatening more of the kind of regional instability that Washington loathed. But the United States had more limits to its influence than at any other time since rising as a superpower.

Many things were not going well for Washington. For instance, when Israel along with France and Britain invaded Egypt in , the United States sided against Israel, pushing the invaders to leave. And the US for years opposed, and worked actively against, Israel's clandestine nuclear program.

Even when the US did come to support Israel, it was more about cold strategic calculation than the domestic political support you see today. The US-Israel relationship grew "by leaps and bounds" after , a ccording to Barnett, owing largely to "a changing US containment and strategic posture.

This strategic justification came down with the Berlin Wall. What kept it going? The US became increasingly involved in managing disputes and problems inside the Middle East during the Cold War, and it maintained that role as the world's sole super-power in the 90s.

Stability in the Middle East continued to be a major American interest, for a number of reasons that included the global oil market, and the US took on the role as guarantor of regional stability. That meant the US saw it as strategically worthwhile to support states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, which saw themselves as benefitting from an essentially conservative US approach to Middle Eastern regional politics.

The US also supported the status quo, so it supported them accordingly. This view of Israel as a "force for stability" helps maintain US support, according to Brent Sasley, a political scientist at the University of Texas, "in the sense that Israel can stabilize what's going on in the Middle East.

If there's fear of Jordan being undermined by an internal or external enemy, the United States sometimes turns to Israel to pose a threat to that threat. America's self-appointed role as manager of the Middle East also landed it the job of Israeli-Palestinian peace broker. There's no other party that's capable, and no other party that's interested.

American policymakers have seen US support for Israel as a way of showing Israel that the US is still taking its interests into account during negotiations, and thus convincing Israel that they can safely engage in peace talks. It's meant to draw the Israelis to the negotiating table, and keep them there. Together, these strategic factors explain why America's approach to Israel has been broadly consistent for at least the past three administrations.

Despite the vast disagreements between the George W. Bush administration versus the Clinton and Obama administrations on foreign policy, they've both supported military and political aid to Israel. And they've both crossed Israel when it wasn't in the US' strategic interests: Bush refused to support an Israeli strike on Iran, and Obama repeatedly clashed with Israeli leaders on West Bank settlements.

All of this isn't to say that American presidents and foreign policy principals are necessarily right to believe these things. It's within the realm of possibility, as some argue, that US support for Israel undermines regional stability and compromises America's status as neutral broker during peace negotiations. The point here isn't to endorse the official US view, but describe the line of thinking that's been so influential in driving the American foreign policy establishment's approach to Israel.

Jewish and Christian groups rally for Israel in New York. US support for Israel isn't just about strategic calculation and foreign policy interests, or at least not anymore.

For a long time, at the very least since the s, it's also been about domestic politics and the way American politicians read American voters. Congressional votes on issues relating to Israel are famously lopsided. Subscribe to our newsletter. Strategic Reasons for Continuing U.

Support There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel has advanced U. Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine.

Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. It has served as a conduit for U. Israeli military advisers have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara. Israel has missiles capable of reaching as far as the former Soviet Union, it possesses a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, and it has cooperated with the U. These include the following: The sentimental attachment many liberals—particularly among the post-war generation in leadership positions in government and the media—have for Israel.

Through a mixture of guilt regarding Western anti-Semitism, personal friendships with Jewish Americans who identify strongly with Israel, and fear of inadvertently encouraging anti-Semitism by criticizing Israel, there is enormous reluctance to acknowledge the seriousness of Israeli violations of human rights and international law.

The Christian Right, with tens of millions of followers and a major base of support for the Republican Party, has thrown its immense media and political clout in support for Ariel Sharon and other right-wing Israeli leaders. Based in part on a messianic theology that sees the ingathering of Jews to the Holy Land as a precursor for the second coming of Christ, the battle between Israelis and Palestinians is, in their eyes, simply a continuation of the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines, with God in the role of a cosmic real estate agent who has deemed that the land belongs to Israel alone—secular notions regarding international law and the right of self-determination notwithstanding.

Mainstream and conservative Jewish organizations have mobilized considerable lobbying resources, financial contributions from the Jewish community, and citizen pressure on the news media and other forums of public discourse in support of the Israeli government. Although the role of the pro-Israel lobby is often greatly exaggerated—with some even claiming it is the primary factor influencing U.

The arms industry, which contributes five times more money to congressional campaigns and lobbying efforts than AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, has considerable stake in supporting massive arms shipments to Israel and other Middle Eastern allies of the United States.

The widespread racism toward Arabs and Muslims so prevalent in American society, often perpetuated in the media. This is compounded by the identification many Americans have with Zionism in the Middle East as a reflection of our own historic experience as pioneers in North America, building a nation based upon noble, idealistic values while simultaneously suppressing and expelling the indigenous population. The failure of progressive movements in the United States to challenge U.

So when did it become unequivocal? Were there other developments that played a role? There was also the war that ended with Israel defeating Egyptian and Syrian forces.

Has that influenced US aid to Israel? Is this all just about practical geostrategic stuff? What role has public opinion played? Has that sympathy wavered at all? But Israel still holds far more sway in the court of US public opinion.

Some legislators say most recent US deal could be used as leverage on Israel to end violence. From: Inside Story. More from News. Should nations go nuclear to save the planet? Tunisia MP sentenced to jail in landmark MeToo case. Most Read.