Middle East policy
To Israel with love
Aug 3rd 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Why America gives Israel its unconditional support
AP
ANYBODY who doubts the size of the transatlantic divide over Israel should try discussing the Middle East conflagration in Britain and then doing the same in America. Everybody watches much the same grisly footage. But, by and large, people draw very different conclusions. The emphasis in Britain is overwhelmingly on the disproportionate scale of the response. Americans are much more inclined to give Israel the benefit of the doubt—and to blame Hizbullah. Some Jewish organisations are so confident of support for Israel that they even take out slots during news programmes, pleading for donations.
Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified—though a majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%) thought that America was doing “about the right amount” to deal with the conflict. An earlier USA Today poll found that 53% put “a great deal” of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel.
Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians.
The political establishment is even more firmly behind Israel than the public is. Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning Hizbullah and affirming Congress's support for Israel. The House version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution, sponsored by 62 senators—including the leaders of both parties—passed unopposed.
Indeed, the parties are engaged in a competition to see who can be the most pro-Israeli. Twenty or so Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, the House leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate leader, demanded that Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, retract his criticisms of Israel or have his invitation to address Congress cancelled. (Mr Maliki, strongly backed by the administration, was eventually allowed to go ahead.) Several leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have addressed pro-Israeli rallies. The contrast with the simmering rage within the Labour Party over Tony Blair's support for George Bush could hardly be more marked.
Pro-Israeli forces command the intellectual high ground as well as the corridors of power. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer issue column after column ridiculing the notion of proportionality and stressing Hizbullah's responsibility for civilian casualties. Most middle-of-the-road commentators question the effectiveness, rather than the morality, of Israel's actions. Out-and-out critics of Israel are relegated to the sidelines.
Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right. AIPAC, which has an annual budget of almost $50m, a staff of 200, 100,000 grassroots members and a decades-long history of wielding influence, is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington, mightier even than the National Rifle Association.
“Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in the whole world,” says Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister. The lobby, which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and their staffs. (The Washington Post reports that Roy Blunt, the House majority whip, has been on four.)
The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming.
Religious-right activists are trying to convert this latent sympathy into political support. John Hagee, a Texas televangelist who believes that supporting Israel is a “biblical imperative”, recently founded Christians United for Israel. Last month he brought 3,500 people from across the country to Washington to cheer Israel's war against Hizbullah. Mr Hagee's brigades held numerous meetings on Capitol Hill; both Mr Bush and Mr Olmert sent messages to his rally.
These pressure groups are clearly influential. Evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the American electorate and are the bedrock of Mr Bush's support. Congressmen take on AIPAC at their peril. But they deal with well-heeled lobbies every day. And the power of the religious right can hardly explain why Democrats are so keen on Israel. Two other factors need to be considered: the war on Islamic radicalism, and deep cultural affinities between America and Israel.
Seeing themselves in Israel
Americans instinctively see events in the Middle East through the prism of September 11th 2001. They look at Hizbullah and Hamas with their Islamist slogans and masked faces and see the people who attacked America—and they look at Israeli citizens and see themselves. In America the “war on terror” is a fact of life, constantly reiterated. The sense that America is linked with Israel in a war against Islamist extremism is reinforced by Iranian statements about wiping Israel off the surface of the earth, and by the political advance of the Islamists of Hamas in Palestine.
But the biggest reason why Americans are so pro-Israel may be cultural. Americans see Israel as a plucky democracy in a sea of autocracies—a democracy that has every right to use force to defend itself. Europeans, on the other hand, see Israel as a reminder of the atavistic forces—from nationalism to militarism—that it has spent the post-war years trying to grow beyond.
Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found 42% of Americans strongly agreeing that “under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice” compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were far lower.
Yet all this unquestioning support does not mean that America will give Israel absolute carte blanche to do whatever it wills. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was visibly shaken after the tragedy in Qana where at least 28 civilians, half of them children, were killed by Israeli bombs. There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these anxieties are expressed by the “realist faction”. Chuck Hagel, a Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with Israel “cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships”. Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the president's “birth of a new Middle East” optimism about the crisis. Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathing columnist for the Washington Times, says that “We ignore world opinion at our peril.”
A few cracks are starting to appear. But they are still insignificant in the mighty edifice of support.
