Why Exactly Do Americans Support Israel? Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

Why we Americans support Israel is in the news recently—as in debates among the Right over its wisdom and propriety.

There is a growing, anti-Israel wing of the Republican Party—ranging from neo-isolationists Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene to the extreme anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi fringe emblemized by Nick Fuentes and his so-called Groypers. If not cross-examined, the growing divide will do to the Republican Party what the Squad and its neo-socialist ilk have done to the Democrat Party.

There is now a new/old trope that a “Jewish lobby” unduly influences America to support Israel against its interests.

But how true is that?

Most Americans do not live in areas—California, Florida, Illinois, or Florida—where there are large Jewish-American communities. So, their experience of Jewish culture has been limited.

Indeed, there are 342 million Americans. But only some 2.4 percent are Jewish (of which a sizable minority do not support Israel).

Despite the nonstop negative media coverage of Israel, the new Democratic Party’s undisguised hostility toward the Jewish state, and the global outrage over the Israeli response in Gaza, about 60-65 percent of Americans still support Israel, and some 70–75 percent of Republicans.

So, what do these percentages suggest to us? The vast majority of Americans side with Israel and likely do so without much knowledge of, or influence from, the views of Jewish-American citizens.

If a small “cabal” of rich Jews manipulated American foreign policy to support Israel, how would they win support in Congress for their views, if the constituents of senators and representatives were 97.6 percent non-Jewish?

The answers are easy. Most Americans support Israel because they think to do so is in their nation’s self-interest and reflective of their values. And to do so, they need no persuading from any particular Jewish pressure group.

Some of their major reasons are as follows:

1) Israel shares the same enemies as the U.S. quite aside from Israel.

In 1979, Iran stormed our embassy in Tehran and took hostages. It supplied Hezbollah with the means to blow up hundreds of Americans in Beirut, Lebanon in October 1983. Earlier that year, it had blown up our embassy in Beirut. Iran was developing a nuclear weapon to blackmail Europe and eventually the U.S.

To thwart any such attack on Europe, the Bush administration by 2008 had initiated missile defense plans in Eastern Europe with Poland and the Czech Republic to stop Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles—a project that the pro-Iranian Obama administration cancelled.

Iran killed hundreds of American soldiers during the Iraq war by supplying insurgents with shaped charge, anti-tank missiles. U.S. officers have arrested several Iranian agents inside the U.S. who were planning to assassinate a number of top officials including Trump himself and his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

In sum, the U.S. took out the Iranian nuclear plants because they had no intention of allowing the enemy theocracy to obtain a bomb and thus endangering the U.S. and its allies.

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and all the rest of the radical Islamic groups hate the U.S. and Israel equally, and for good reasons given that they offer antitheses to free societies and with long shared histories of fighting such terrorists.

2) Israel is a consensual, constitutional state like our own. It is surrounded by nearly 500 million Muslims, all of them living under monarchies, autocracies, or dictatorships, from “moderate” forms to those toxic and virulently anti-American.

In other words, Israel alone in the Middle East draws on the same Western traditions of consensual government, free market economics, and individual liberty as does the United States. When an American of any political persuasion travels to the Middle East they find Israel instantly familiar, in a way not true of visiting most of its neighbors.

3) Israel is Western—like the U.S. Its scientific community, educational system, popular culture, and standard of living are comparable to America’s. It shares the same Western values. Should an anti-Israeli American move to the Middle East, he would likely prefer to live in Haifa than in Cairo, Amman, or Beirut. Why do two million Arabs enjoy more freedom in Israel than do 498 million Arabs in Arab countries?

Why are there no longer one million Jews living in Arab countries, but two million Arabs in Israel? Are there more Jews living in Palestine or Palestinians living in Israel? Do you think Palestinians in Israeli jails were treated better or worse than Jewish hostages held by Hamas?