Why America has Supported Israel—And Why Maybe We Shouldn’t

The case for supporting Israel has changed over the course of the nation’s seventy year history. And for younger voters across the political and religious spectrum, the time has come to ask ourselves whether we should blindly offer aid to the country in its every effort—or whether it’s time to hold them accountable for their present actions.

Why America Supports Israel

The history of US support for Israel can be found in any history book, or on any number of websites. Reuters has an excellent timeline of events, and notes that in 1948, President Harry Truman was the “first world leader to recognize the newly-born Israel.”

Whatever President Truman’s reasons, we are all involved, now, in supporting Israel, whether we like it or not. That’s because our own government supports them, and in representative government, that means we the voters support Israel. And it’s fair to ask why. The question is no longer about whether to support Israel’s existence. They exist, and they should.

Right up top, I need to clarify that not all criticisms of Israel are created equal. Anti-Semites, look for corroboration elsewhere. This article is not about whether people of Jewish descent deserve a homeland, because they do. All peoples deserve a place to live and be free of persecution. The question is whether we should still spend billions of dollars in aid and material to help them, no matter what.

The strongest reasons for American support of Israel are strategic. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, our alliance with Israel has helped us keep potential enemies in the region under tabs and under fire. In an ugly “how the sausage is made” kind of scenario, Israel’s involvement in so many armed conflicts also provides the US an opportunity to test our own weapons and strategies, without having to get into a conflict ourselves.

After considering these strategic reasons, however, it’s important to note that the Institute also points to six “additional factors” that have made it hard to challenge US support for Israel. Among the six, three of them stick out as particularly worrisome—the Christian Right, the arms industry, and racism.

Let’s look at each in turn. The Christian Right has always supported Israel, mostly because Evangelicals believe Israel will play a part in the End Times, and that to receive God’s blessing we must be their allies. Recently, the Christian Right has become a specific target for Israeli officials, who believe they can radicalize moderates into fanatic support for the Jewish state. As far back as 2018 the Southern Poverty Law Center had identified the dangers of fanaticized religious extremists here at home. We should be wary of a foreign affair so heavily influenced by groups that are also linked with domestic terror.

Second, we have the arms industry. In an era when owning guns has become a hot-button issue, when organizations like the NRA make it a moral or value based decision, we shouldn’t forget that the arms industry is a commercial enterprise. And here we have a think tank who has pointed out that a factor contributing to our support of a foreign nation is the money gun companies are making off of the conflict.

And lastly, most ugly, the raw racism. This article was written all the way back in 2002 (which I’ll get to in a moment). It’s fair to ask ourselves, as a country—are we still supporting Israel because we prefer them as a race over the Arabic peoples in the region? It was a factor twenty years ago—is it still a factor, now?

And now a quick note on the age of that article. We have the cases made twenty years ago for why we support Israel, despite its treaty and human rights violations. The Institute points to strategy, the Christian Right, the arms industry, and racism. We need to ask ourselves—in the last twenty years, do all of those reasons still hold water? And if they do, we need to address that.

If we still need Israel to make peace with Arabic and Muslim countries, we needaddress our foreign policy. If our foreign policy is still being determined by the Christian Right, we need to address our domestic affairs. If we’re supporting foreign conflict for money, we need to take a hard look at our values as a country.

And for the love of all that this country should stand for, if our reasoning at any level is still this motivated by race, we all, as individuals, need to take a hard look in the mirror.

How America Supports Israel

According to our State Department’s website, “Americans and Israelis are united by our shared commitment to democracy, economic prosperity, and regional security.” But why? And to what end? Given the Reuters timeline of no less than 7 different times the nation of Israel has gravely breached the peace in the Middle East, does that align with the State Department’s claim that Israelis are committed to “regional security”? If Israel is repeatedly attacking its neighbors, and in once case even attacking one of our boats in the region, killing American sailors, can we still say they are “united” with us in a mission of stability in the region?

The State website lists billions of dollars in aid and strategic assistance that we’ve given Israel. It details budget actions, deployments, and shared munitions and military development. But out of the other side of their mouths, the Department says, “The United States is also committed to encouraging increased cooperation and normalization of ties between Israel and Arab and Muslim majority states…” One is left to wonder what exactly the Department means by “committed to encouraging.” After all, in the same page that gives actual data for dollars spent on arming Israel, gives concrete examples for ushering the Israeli government into international organizations, one might guess the US government could give something more tangible than a commitment to encouragement on peace.

And here, I remind the reader that the State Department is an extension of our will as voters. Which means every American has tacitly supported giving money and weapons to Israel while they violate their agreements with us, while being only “committed to encouraging” peace.

We should not be in the business of telling sovereign nations how to handle their affairs. So this article will not touch on justifications for Israeli actions—or on Palestinian justifications. This article, rather, is to ask the question about why America should be involved. To paint the picture differently, regardless of our history of cooperation with any country, when the country violates the terms of our relationship, why should we continue our alliances with them?

This question isn’t about whether Israel should be a nation, and it’s not about which alliances we should make in the Middle East. The question is about our support of Israel through monetary, military, and strategic aid, while the Israeli military acts unilaterally in the region, irrespective of treaty.

There is no dispute that guerrilla-style fighters from Palestine have carried out acts of violence in Israel. But it’s also no dispute that Israel routinely flouts treaties by annexing territories it said it wouldn’t. This issue isn’t about taking sides in the conflict—a person can have numerous reasons for supporting, or not supporting, Israel. But support among young Americans is dropping, and Israeli operatives are focusing their lobbying on conservatives. One wonders at the correlation between those two trends.

Fighting in the region has been flaring up all through 2021. According to the BBC, Israel recently executed a jet-fighter attack in Palestine. In a statement, the Israeli Defense Forces said they carried out the attack on military installations, and that they attacked after “arson balloons” attacked Israel.

To paint the picture in less stilted language, an arson balloon is when a person floats a regular balloon, filled with helium, and attaches a lit fuel source to it. These fires cause massive damage to Israeli homes and forests. But looking at the BBC’s article, it’s clear these are individuals flying homemade incendiary devices. And the Israeli response is a fighter-jet attack.

Store-bought balloons versus fighter jets. That is how America has supported Israel.

How Americans Feel About Israel

This topic has increasingly divided Americans. If a person supports Israel, it could be a reflection of religious beliefs, moral suppositions, or national security concerns. And oftentimes, the support of Israel can cross otherwise hard and fast political lines. But one factor more than anything else has become an indicator of whether an American supports Israel—age.

Recent findings from Pew Research show that older generations are far more supportive of Israel than younger generations. Millennials register less than fifty percent support, while Boomers and older are over sixty percent supportive.

We also see the divide between supporters and non-supporters along religious lines. As I cited earlier, Dani Dayan, a former Israeli official in the United States, wrote that, “Our embassy in the United States capital has invested most of its energy in the relationship with conservatives, Republicans, evangelicals and a certain type of Jews only.” Dayan goes on in his piece to decry this policy, calling it “disastrous.” But his point stands—Israel has focused on the group of voters it feels gives it the best chance to court support from the American government, and that group is decidedly religiously and politically conservative.

But even among those targeted evangelicals, we see age playing a part. In a poll from Barna-Group, quoted by The Times of Israel, support for Israel among millennial evangelicals has dropped by more than half.

Younger Americans are asking the question I’ve made the crux of this article—why are we supporting Israel?

Should We Stay or Should We Go?

For continued reading, the Council on Foreign Relations has an up-to-date and comprehensive page dedicated to the Israeli-American arrangement. In the portion headed “What are U.S. interests in the dispute?” they cover the strategic and religious elements I spoke to, already. But then they go on, on the page, to say, “U.S. relations with Iran and the Arab Gulf states no longer seem to hinge on Israeli-Palestinian issues…” Which, by process of elimination, means that we’re still involved for religious reasons. Which leads us back to the question of whether we’re also there for profit in the arms industry. Or because of racism.

Sometimes it’s good to be led by history. Sometimes it’s good to be led by the youth. Sometimes, deciding the path forward takes a balanced approach, and admitting that there are no yes-or-no answers in life’s more complicated issues. And that’s where we might be. It’s good to know the past, and why we became involved in the Middle East conflicts. But it’s also good to listen to the younger generation, who’s not just asking questions, but telling the world that they don’t blindly support the American attitudes of their forebears.

So let us ask ourselves—why do we so heavily support Israel? If we can’t come up with better reasons, we should probably tell our leaders to change tact.