This latest escalation in violence has killed at least Palestinians, including 61 children, while ten Israelis have died, including two children,. From the beginning. In part because of personal ties. But there were also strategic considerations driving the decision. The Middle East, with its oil reserves and strategic waterways think the Suez Canal was a key battleground for superpower hegemonic influence.
The US was taking over from severely weakened European powers as the primary western power broker in the Middle East. That is partly rooted in the aftermath war in which Israel defeated the poorly led armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and occupied the rest of historical Palestine — as well as some territory from Syria and Egypt.
Partly to drive a wedge between Egypt and Syria and thwart Soviet influence, the US used the aftermath of the war to lay the groundwork for a peace deal between Israel and Egypt that was eventually cemented in You bet. Bear in mind, Israel is not exactly in need of aid. It is a high-income country with a thriving high-tech sector. Like all things foreign policy-related, public opinion, money — and the influence money buys in politics — have also played a role in US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians.
American public opinion has long tilted in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians, in part because Israel had a superior PR machine. But headline-grabbing, violent actions by pro-Palestinian groups such as the Munich Massacre in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were killed also generated sympathy for Israel.
Destroying holy sites is not an act of peace. Hamas rocket attacks are not an act of peace. Israeli government airstrikes are not an act of peace. Former President Donald Trump, who moved the U. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and helped broker recognition of Israel by several Arab countries, assailed Biden's response to the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
Nearly all Senate Republicans urged Biden to "unequivocally" support Israel's right to defend itself, and "immediately" end negotiations with Iran on economic sanctions relief linked to talks on Tehran's nuclear development program. The Republicans said Tehran is "supporting" terrorist activity by Hamas against Israel. They are targeting Israeli civilians and cities, including Israel's capital Jerusalem," 44 Republican senators wrote in a letter to Biden.
Search Search. Undermining its claim as a perpetual victim would lose Israel its go-to justification for military attacks. Her advisors also worried it would alienate the United States, an assessment later confirmed by secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
The Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israel, striking on different fronts and each seeing early victories. But Israel was able to fight back, scoring air and sea wins and driving the Egyptian and Syrian armies back. To draw in US support, Meir ordered planes with nuclear missiles to stand by on alert.
It worked: Nixon ordered weapons and supplies to be airlifted to Israel. The supplies arrived just as Israel was starting to get the advantage, trapping a section of the Egyptian Army with no access to food or water. Israelis were eager to destroy the cornered Egyptians, but were stopped by Kissinger. The Israelis complied. After the war, Kissinger continued to work on the Israelis to withdraw from some Arab lands. Kissinger saw the situation as a strategic opportunity.
Israel had again demonstrated definitively that it could militarily dominate other nations in the region and keep its enemies at bay. But Israeli might was dependent on Washington for funds, weaponry, and diplomatic cover. And the United States got to position itself as the only force that could keep Israel in check. Kissinger was not alone in recognizing this value. With this good cop, bad cop routine, the US-Israeli relationship settled into its current form. And it reinforces the understanding that Israel can do whatever it wants, with the United States the only force capable of holding it back.
This is a tidy arrangement for the United States and Israel. The United States is able to exert its influence without direct involvement. And Israel continues on its course: settlements, military bombardments, displacement, and murder of Palestinians. Thankfully, there is increasing space in this country to describe and decry the injustice that Israel inflicts on Palestinians. Israeli aggression is all too predictable at this point, but something entirely unprecedented happened this week in Washington, DC.
Usually, an Israeli attack is an occasion for Democrats and Republicans to come together in support of Israel, a collective blind eye turned toward injured, dead, and displaced Palestinians. They're major constituencies, respectively, in the Democratic and Republican parties. And both are overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
There are nuances here: evangelical support for Israel tends to be more uncritical than Jewish support. For instance, a majority of reform and secular Jews — 65 percent of the American Jewish population — disapprove of Israel's expansion of West Bank settlements. And Jews under the age of 35 are the least likely to identify as Zionist though a majority still do.
On the other hand, the older and more conservative Jews who aren't entirely representative of the more liberal body of Jewish-American public opinion toward Israel, have a lot of clout with national politicians. They express strong desire to vote based on the Israel issue and are clustered in Florida and Pennsylvania, large swing states in presidential elections.
By contrast, 31 percent of white evangelicals think the US has reached the right level of support, while 46 percent want the US to support Israel more. Add evangelicals, Jews, and broad public support together, and you get consistent, bipartisan support for Israel. Neither survey is particularly statistically rigorous , so don't take the specific rankings too seriously. Is the group actually steering US politics and foreign policy in a direction it wouldn't go on its own?
The two eminent international relations scholars argued that there's no way to explain the US-Israel relationship, from an IR perspective, other than as AIPAC and its allies pushing the US to act counter to its own interests. They reject that either strategy or shared values fully explain the US support for Israel, so lobbying must. This argument is hugely controversial, including among international relations theorists.
Some argued that The Israel Lobby creepily invoked classic anti-Semitic tropes of Jews secretly controlling the government. Others dismissed it as, in one particularly memorable phrase , "piss-poor, monocausal social science.
One of the main criticisms of Walt and Mearsheimer's thesis is that they don't present very much direct evidence that AIPAC lobbying influenced specific votes. Another criticism is that Walt and Mearsheimer premise their thesis on the argument that Israel is neither strategically nor morally worthy of American support, and so policymakers must be supporting Israel because they've been coerced into it by AIPAC, whereas a number of policymakers will tell you they earnestly believe the alliance is worthwhile absent lobbying.
Critics also argue that the definition of "Israel Lobby" beyond AIPAC used in the book is so large as to encompass basically the entire American foreign policy establishment. Whatever you think of this debate, it can be easy to get lost in a binary between "the Israel lobby is all that matters" and "the Israel lobby is irrelevant.
AIPAC doesn't always win. For instance, it lost a major fight in Congress when it pushed for more sanctions on Iran in February ; the sanctions were likely designed to kill the ongoing US-Iran nuclear negotiations. AIPAC's influence is a product of financial resources and power, sure, but also of choosing to push for policies that have public support and are consonant with American grand strategy in the Middle East.
A rally against the Gaza offensive in New York. Bilgin S. It's hard to know where one driver of America's Israel policy ends and another begins. For instance: early in his administration, President Obama pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt settlement growth in the West Bank; Netanyahu resisted this in part by rallying his allies in Congress.
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