Two great insights of Walter Russell Mead’s “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People” will surprise many and make this book instructive far beyond the context of Middle East policy.
First, “the idea of a special relationship with the Jewish people and the Jewish state is a thread of American exceptionalism and providential nationalism at the core of American ideology.”
Second, “the driving forces behind Americans’ fascination with Israel originate outside the American Jewish community and are among the most powerful forces in American life. Anyone seeking to analyze American foreign policy or to reform it needs to come to grip with them.”
A brief summary of the vast array of topics that Mead examines to explain these powerful forces of American life is inherently incomplete but begins with the sources of the historically deep pre-1948 roots of U.S. policy relating to Israel. The British Reformation. The colonists’ and subsequently Americans’ increasing appreciation for religious tolerance and commerce. The connection between antisemitism and opposition to personal freedom and capitalism. Americans’ educational and cultural emphasis on ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish history and their related support for independent states for these peoples. Americans’ desire to export principles of democracy and ordered liberty and their support for liberating Jews and others from the tyrannical Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires that dominated much of Europe and the Middle East.
These historical roots of Americans’ support for Jewish settlement in their ancient homeland and for the creation of a Jewish state there, Mead also shows, developed mostly independently of Jews, mostly before Jews began to take significant steps towards these goals, and during a period when most American Jews, indeed, did not support these goals.
Mead’s examination of the period since the end of World War II has the additional benefit of connecting to today’s partisan politics. From the end of the war through about the mid-1970s, support for creating a Jewish state and then for Israel came mostly from the American left. The 1940s, however, was the high point. Since then, the American left has both moved farther to the left and steadily reduced its support for Israel. President Obama thus shifted policy in favor of the Palestinians and made the Iran nuclear deal that Israel strongly opposed.
Almost simultaneously, and particularly from the 1950s to the late 1970s, the composition and views of the American right underwent substantial change. As Sun Belt, Southern California, and Jacksonian conservatives replaced mostly East Coast establishment types as its principal constituents, and as an evangelical movement transformed particularly by Billy Graham replaced mainline Protestant churches as the most prominent faith of its members, the American right both moved further to the right and dramatically increased its support for Israel.
By the late 1970s, indeed, support for Israel on the American right was so strong and was such a uniting force that it became enshrined as a central part of its platform. President Trump accordingly “offered Israel the kind of unstinting support that the Jewish state had never previously received,” not “to placate American Jews,” but instead to unite groups within the conservative coalition whose views were otherwise growing apart (on issues such as foreign policy, economics and immigration) while simultaneously furthering his foreign policy and national security goals.
It is these trends, along with superpower competition, the end of the Cold War, the September 11 attacks, the Iraq War and other international developments, Mead shows, rather than influence by American Jews or Israel, that have been the dominant factors in changing U.S. policy relating to Israel.
Debunking the Myth of Jewish Omnipotence. In addition to examining these aspects of past and present politics, religion and culture, Mead presents a mountain of historical evidence that contradicts the antisemitic myths that American Jews and Israel control U.S. foreign policy.
Supposedly all-powerful American Jews could not stop the enactment in 1924 of legislation that sharply curtailed immigration and prevented their brethren from escaping repression in Eastern Europe.
They similarly were unable to convince Congress and President Roosevelt in the years leading up to World War II to open the doors to Jews seeking to escape from Nazi Germany or to otherwise act to stop Hitler’s persecution of Jews.
After the war, they failed to persuade President Truman to prevail upon Britain to allow substantial immigration to British-ruled Palestine by Holocaust survivors suffering in displaced persons camps – and were unable to dissuade him from imposing an arms embargo against Israel in its fight to avoid a second Holocaust in its war of independence against multiple British-armed invading Arab armies.
Mead devotes particular attention to debunking perhaps the most famous myth of American Jewish power: The legend that Truman’s interest in Jewish votes and support in the upcoming November 1948 election, along with a well-timed appeal from Truman’s Jewish former business partner, led him in May 1948 to overrule strenuous objections by the pro-Arab State Department and officially recognize Israel minutes after it declared independence.
The State Department “Arabists,” Mead explains, were not supporters of Arab states seeking to end their domination by the quickly shrinking and greatly weakened post-war British Empire. They instead were supporters of continued British influence in these states, both to strengthen Britain’s efforts to oppose Soviet influence in the region and to protect the cheap oil supplies that Britain particularly viewed as critical to reviving its war-shattered economy.
Against these concerns, Truman balanced his interests in appeasing widespread public and congressional opposition to supporting the British Empire and placating the strongest wing of his Democratic party that demanded that he support the United Nations decision in 1947 that Palestine should be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states. American Jews were only a minor factor in Truman’s decision.
The pattern of evidence contradicting the purported power of the so-called Israel lobby continued long after Truman’s recognition of Israel. American Jews and Israel were unable to prevent the Eisenhower administration from jettisoning the Truman administration’s modestly pro-Israel policy and tilting policy in favor of the Arab states that remained intensely hostile to Israel.
This pro-Arab tilt, moreover, was not exclusive to, did not end with, the Eisenhower administration. “For the most critical years of Israel’s history, when the country was weak and poor, the United States was more interested in building relationships with Israel’s bitterest Arab opponents than with the Jewish state. Only after Israel developed nuclear weapons and emerged as a regional superpower did it move to the center of America’s diplomatic agenda.”
Oil and opposing Soviet expansion into the Middle East drove the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to favor Arab states over Israel. President Kennedy, Mead notes, only decided to begin modest arms sales to Israel in an attempt to stop Israel from developing a nuclear weapons program and to discourage preemptive Israeli action against its heavily armed Arab enemies.
Yet it was such preemptive action – Israel’s dramatic victory in the 1967 Six Day War against three heavily-armed Arab states that threatened it from three sides – that redirected U.S. policy back towards Israel and “opened the door for deeper cooperation.” The significant change in policy began with the Nixon and Ford administrations that made Israel a regional partner to further U.S. geopolitical and national security interests.
It thus was not pressure from the Israel lobby that led President Nixon to authorize the arms airlift to Israel at a point of existential danger during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Nixon and most American Jews, Mead notes, shared mutual hatred for each other. Nixon instead acted to protect U.S. interests in the Cold War that were threatened by a massive Soviet arms airlift to the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi forces that were imperiling Israel.
Perhaps the event that most powerfully demonstrates the impotence of the Israel lobby, however, is of much more recent vintage. “Signing the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran,” Mead writes, “led to an all-out struggle between President Obama and AIPAC and its allies – the so-called Israel lobby. Despite the lobby’s reputation for almost infinite power and cunning, President Obama defeated it hands down.” Obama “rolled over determined opposition by the allegedly omnipotent Israel lobby.” “The point is not just that the Israel lobby lost the battle over the JCPOA. It had lost important battles before and no doubt will lose more in the future. What is more significant is that in this high-profile fight with AIPAC and its allies on a matter of the gravest importance to Israel,” Obama suffered no adverse political consequences.
This outcome, Mead notes, fits the broader pattern of Obama’s second term Middle East policy decisions. “On the ground in the Middle East, the second phase of Obama policy would be a succession of failures and setbacks without precedent in American diplomatic history… Yet in American politics President Obama’s Middle East policy was a success.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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what a FRAUD.
Do a youtube search for “cynthia mckinney israel” and listen to how when she was elected to Congress, she was asked to “pledge her allegiance to israel”.
If israel doesn’t kontrol Congress, explain how that is allowed!