A Necessary Special Relationship

The US and Israel

When looking at the strange partnership between President Trump, the caricature of a New York businessman who has swindled his way through life, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, an arch-manipulator and liar, one is bound to reflect on its place in the historic relationship between the United States and Israel and where that relationship stands now and where it is headed.

And that relationship certainly appears at the moment to be on the cusp of a radical transition. To wit, a few weeks ago 40 US senators proposed that America stop selling Israel D-9s, large bulldozers used these past months in leveling much of Gaza’s infrastructure and swaths of its buildings and currently in use to do much the same to many villages in southern Lebanon. A somewhat smaller number of senators, 37, at the same time called on the Trump Administration to halt the sale of certain types of munitions to the Jewish state. The Republican majority, with some help from Democrats, defeated both bills.

But before October 2023, when the Islamists of Gaza, led by Hamas, invaded southern Israel and the IDF began responding with massive air strikes and, eventually, a ground invasion, such motions would have been dismissed as absurd flights of fancy and would have garnered only a handful of votes. But the tectonic plates underlying American policy-making now appear to be gradually shifting.

We may be witnessing a mere momentary fluctuation on the graph, or these senatorial motions may be signaling a historic change in the US-Israel “special relationship.” Certainly, under the impact of the war in Gaza, there has been a shift in public opinion among Democrats, especially among the young. And at the radical or extremist edges of both the Democratic and Republican parties there is even a questioning, if not an actual rejection, of Israel’s actual right to exist. This week, for example, The New York Times forthrightly joined the Israel-is-evil mob by publishing Nicholas Kristof’s flimsily-grounded article charging the Jewish state (IDF, Shin Bet, police, prison authorities, settlers) with systematically raping Palestinian prisoners, also by specially-trained dogs - apparently as a counter to a broad-based, thoroughly researched report just issued by an independent Israeli commission on the Hamas’s mass rape of Israeli women and girls during the massacre of October 7, 2023.

And, of course, there has been an accompanying surge of antisemitism in the US (as across western Europe), with Jews being gunned down or in and near synagogues and antisemitic slurs are almost daily given a public airing, things unheard of in the five-six decades since the Holocaust.

We are now in uncharted waters. Over the centuries many colonial and post-colonial Americans have supported the idea, to many at the time far-fetched, of a return of the Jews to the Promised Land and the re-establishment there of Jewish sovereignty. Initially the idea was rooted in religion and Scripture and in an identification of sorts with what, from the end of the 19^th century, was known as Zionism. The idea, often called Restorationism, of the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, was preached or foretold by the biblical Prophets in response to the double expulsion of the Children of Israel from the Land of Israel many centuries ago by the Babylonians and the Romans and was adopted by Americans brought up on the Old Testament. They identified with the ideal notion of a “shining city on a hill,” a new Jerusalem - which the Prophets had foreseen but that the Zionist enterprise never actually became, except on the margins (the kibbutz movement, aid to developing African nations, advanced scientific accomplishment) - and with a frontier society bounded and threatened by what they regarded as “heathens.” Restorationism captivated the minds of such luminaries as John Adams and John Quincey Adams and more recently took hold among politicians such as Harry S. Truman. One source even said that Lincoln at one point spoke of Restorationism as “a noble dream.”

Britain’s prime minister during the First World War, David Lloyd George, once said that he knew the geography of the Holy Land better than of his native Wales. Hence it was no surprise that his government in November 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain pledged support for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine

In 20th century America, Democrats led the way in practical endorsement of the Zionist goal. Woodrow Wilson supported the Balfour Declaration as soon as it was enunciated and it was President Truman who endorsed the establishment of a Jewish state soon after the end of the Second World War. At one point Truman even compared himself to King Cyrus, the Persian monarch who repatriated Jews from their exile in Babylon in the late sixth century BC.

But not all Democrats were similarly minded. Roosevelt, Truman’s long-ruling predecessor, was highly ambiguous, indeed cagey, when it came to Zionism. And Truman himself, while clearly moved by the Holocaust, proved somewhat ambivalent when it came to the brass tacks. He supported the UN General Assembly partition vote in November 1947 endorsing the establishment of a Jewish state (alongside an Arab state) in Palestine, and in 1948 was the first head of state to recognize the State of Israel, indeed within minutes of its declared establishment). But Truman was also attuned to the arguably weighty arguments of Zionism’s opponents, who included the Defense and State departments, the CIA and the oil lobby. They said that supporting a Jewish state would undermine American-Arab relations and America’s position in the Middle East. And while Truman hailed the commonality of values and interests between the US and Israel (democracy, resistance to Communism, etc.), he flatly, consistently refused to arm the Zionists\Israel at their moment of greatest peril, when assailed by the Palestine Arabs and the surrounding Arab states in 1947-1948 – while the Arab states, at least until May 1948, enjoyed a steady supply of arms from America’s democratic allies, Great Britain and France. Under Truman the FBI even arrested Zionists attempting to smuggle arms and volunteers to Palestine\Israel.

While the Arab world and leaders continuously criticized America for unquestioningly backing Israel, a coldness actually set in between the two countries. Truman himself repeatedly backed UN-imposed truces that were detrimental to Israel’s war-making in 1948. And in the following years, his Republican successor, President Eisenhower continued the arms boycott of Israel, lest this antagonize the Arabs - despite the fact that Egypt and Syria, from 1955, were massively armed by America’s Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. Before 1956, Eisenhower repeatedly pressed Israel to give up part of its territory for peace – though the Arab leaders, like Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, had no desire to make peace. And in 1956, after Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt in the Egyptian-provoked Sinai-Suez War, Eisenhower joined the Soviets in threatening Israel with sanctions to force it to withdraw from these newly-occupied territories (while the Soviets threatened to nuke the Jewish state) – and Israel duly withdrew.

A major change came about with the return of the Democrats to power, setting the trajectory of American-Israeli relations – the so-called “special relationship” - for the following half-century. John Kennedy was the first American president to arm Israel - with Hawk anti-aircraft missile batteries. Then came President Johnson, who in 1965-66 approved the sale of Skyhawk attack jets and tanks. The devastating Israeli victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War reinforced the image of Israel as a useful, powerful ally – and major American arms sales followed.

The succeeding Republican presidents, while not emotionally attached to Israel, were equally impressed by Israeli military prowess – everyone likes success. Israel was seen as a bulwark against Soviet penetration in the Middle East and a counterweight to the regional Soviet client states. And then and later, American administrations understood that its so-called Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, unlike Israel, were politically unreliable and militarily worthless.

In response to the Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israel in October 1973, the Yom Kippur (or October or Ramadan) War, the US, under Nixon, launched a massive airlift of weapons and munitions to assist the embattled Israelis , matching, as it were, the Soviet air- and sea-lift to its Arab clients. Since then, the US has given Israel 3b$-4b$ in economic and military aid annually. No doubt Washington was partly motivated by the fear that should Israel approach defeat in a conventional war, it might resort to using nuclear weapons (weaponry that Israel had produced despite American objections and interference). The financial largesse was also prompted by Israel post-1973 willingness to cede territory to Egypt in exchange for peace. And, of course, the financial largesse to Israel benefited the American economy as almost all the money was spent on aircraft, armor, guns and munitions manufactured in American factories by American workers.

Paradoxically, the US-Israel special relationship, beyond helping to counter the Soviets in the Cold War, also strengthened America’s position in the Middle East and deepened its relations with a host of Arab countries. Sure, the Arabs publicly proclaimed that Washington was biased in favor of Israel – but in order to extract concessions from Jerusalem they understood that they had to get Washington’s ear and sympathy; only the US could get Israel to make concessions. Hence, as the Yom Kippur War drew closer, and (definitively) in its immediate wake, Egypt’s President Sadat jumped ship, abandoned the Soviet Union and joined the American camp. And thus, in the unfolding negotiations that ultimately led to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979 – which has held to this day - it was American mediation that got Israel to give up Sinai in exchange for peace under Kissinger’s and then President Jimmy Carter’s prodding. At the same time, seeing the superiority of American weaponry over Soviet manufacture, Sadat switched his arms acquisition to America, consolidating the Egyptian-American bond.

Since then, various Arab countries have coddled the US or joined its sphere of influence, including the Palestinians, understanding that no one else can halt or at least constrain Israel’s annexationist ambitions vis-à-vis the West Bank. Admittedly, that has had only limited success these past decades – though, to be sure, without the American obstructionism, Israel would long ago have formally annexed that mainly Palestinian-inhabited territory. And still, the Palestinians continue to look primarily to Washington for succor. Even the jihadist, Ahmed a Sharaa, who heads the new, post-Assad administration in Damascus, is now knocking on Washington’s door to persuade Israel to remove its troops from southern Syria – and, perhaps, eventually give up the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied back in 1967 (and since settled with tens of thousands of Jews).

America over the decades has supported dictatorships around the world, including in the Middle East, out of a variety of political, military and economic interests. But I believe it is in America’s interest, on moral and political grounds, to support fellow democracies – and Israel, whatever its faults, and despite the current Israeli government’s efforts to subvert the country’s democratic norms, is still a fellow democracy and deserving of American sustenance.

But, leaving aside ideological kinship and moral imperatives, American material interests have also benefited directly from the partnership with Israel. Not much is visible in the intelligence exchanges between the two countries, which have helped the US combat Islamist terrorism around the globe. (The joint Israeli-American Stuxnet virus operation earlier this century to destroy or retard the Iranian nuclear project is one case that did publicly surface.)

But, more visibly, it was Israeli air power, deployed at Washington’s request, that in 1970 saved the pro-American regime of King Hussein during the Palestinian uprising (“Black September”), when Syrian tank columns invaded northern Jordan.

In effect, Israel has long served as a kind of dependable American “aircraft carrier” or forward outpost in the Middle East, and without US troops being stationed on the ground, except for the very limited deployment of one or two air defense missile batteries and radar facilities (unlike, say, in the case of Germany and South Korea, where tens of thousands of US troops have been deployed for decades). Most recently we have witnessed direct Israeli help to the US military. Driving past Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv a few weeks ago I saw row upon row of American air-refueling tankers lined up on the tarmacs – the planes that made the American (and Israeli) February-April bombing campaign against Iran logistically possible. And that war itself, a joint American-Israeli operation, highlighted the depth of the American-Israeli partnership. True, the campaign served Israeli interests, but it also served American interests as understood by the Trump administration and, largely, by the American military and intelligence communities – to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. The war is unpopular in the US in large measure because of America’s recent military failures in the prolonged Middle Eastern wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; because Trump himself is unpopular for a variety of reasons; and because Washington failed to prepare the country politically, ideologically, and militarily for the war and to explain its necessity. And Trump so far has failed to direct the war to a successful conclusion, which could arguably have been achieved had American-Israeli bombings extended to the destruction of Iran’s power plants, transportation infrastructure and oil and gas installations.

But it remains true, in my view, that America’s interests continue to include the overthrow of the Islamist regime in Tehran, which sees the US (Trump or no Trump) as the “Big Satan,” and its replacement by one more amenable to reason and democracy; and to shut down Iran’s nuclear program that directly threatens Washington’s allies but ultimately the West itself. The egregious, repeated attacks during the recent war on Britain‘s Akrotiri air base in Cyprus was an augury of things to come should the ayatollahs remain in power and Tehran be allowed free rein. Britain, after all, declined to join America in its war and on various levels hindered the American war-making – and yet was assailed. Iran, simply, hates “the West,” and Britain is part of that West.

In short, despite serious political difference over, for example, the political future of the West Bank, American and Israeli interests, over the decades, have been in alignment, and while the Trump presidency may be an aberration in American history and Netanyahu’s premiership is, hopefully, an aberration in Israeli history, there remains a solid base, ideologically, militarily and politically, for the continued American-Israeli “special relationship,” above and beyond the weird special relationship forged over the decades between the two countries’ incompetent and, frankly, obnoxious leaders.