The Arab_Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Rynhold

  The approach adopted here is eclectic and “bottom-up,” driven by the requirements of the empirical case at hand. On the one hand, it looks at long-standing consensual elements of political culture encapsulated in America’s national identity, as well as in its shared values and orientations. On the other hand, it analyzes the impact of changes and divisions in American political culture, including the evolution in the ways key subcultures relate to Israel and the Arab-Israel conflict. In each case, the attitudes and orientations of the wider public, as well as the approaches of, and discourse among, intellectuals, opinion formers, commentators, and communal, religious, and ideological elites, are surveyed and analyzed. The attitudes of the former are drawn primarily from many public opinion surveys, whereas the approaches of the latter are drawn primarily from media and public statements that make up the discourse on the subject. While the focus is contemporary, the historical foundations of different approaches are also traced so as to demonstrate the depth of their cultural roots.

  Contents and Structure

  The focus of this book is American political culture, and attitudes and approaches to Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, rather than U.S. foreign policy per se. The emphasis is on predispositions, rather than the nitty-gritty of U.S.-Israeli relations itself. While this book does not assess the relative importance of cultural factors in determining U.S. policy compared to other factors – such as the pro-Israel lobby – it does look at the way cultural factors inform both U.S. domestic politics and American strategy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  In order to understand the place of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict in American political culture, it is necessary to analyze it in two different ways. First, American attitudes toward Israel must be assessed in a holistic sense and compared to the attitudes of other comparable Western countries, in order to get a sense of what unites Americans and distinguishes them from other nations on these issues. This is done in the first chapter, which focuses on the cultural foundations of American support for Israel and the development of contemporary attitudes; these in turn are compared and contrasted to contemporary European attitudes. Among the questions addressed in this chapter are: Why are Americans more sympathetic to Israel than Europeans, and why has the transatlantic divide over the Arab-Israeli conflict grown?

  Second, American political culture must be broken up into a number of key subdivisions that signify core cultural and political divisions in America, and/or groups that are especially concerned and active regarding Israel and the conflict. The most important political and ideological division in America is between Democrats and liberals on the one hand, and conservatives and Republicans on the other hand. Whereas in the past this divide was largely irrelevant to Israel, it has now become increasingly significant. Given that presidents often pay more attention to public opinion among their own supporters than to the public at large,28 clearly this division warrants serious analysis, and this is undertaken in Chapters 2 and 3.

  Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the divide within the largest and most important religious group in America – Protestants. About half of all Americans continue to identify as Protestants. Religion counts in American politics, and as is explained in the first chapter, Protestantism has a particularly important role in American political culture in general, and with regard to Israel in particular. The central dividing line among American Protestants is between the Protestant mainline church and evangelicals. This divide has become increasingly important concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict. Evangelicals provide the largest base of American support for Israel, and they have become mobilized and highly organized for this cause. In contrast, the strongest base of anti-Israel activism in American society is centered in the mainline Protestant churches, which have been at the forefront pushing the campaign to divest from Israel. Consequently, it is important to examine this divide among Protestants in depth.

  The final group analyzed in this book is the American Jewish community, the backbone of support for Israel in America. While constituting less than 2 percent of the American population, American Jewry’s political influence is magnified by the fact that they are far more engaged in American politics than other ethnic and religious groups, voting in far higher proportions, generous in funding political parties and races, and historically highly organized and active in support of Israel. This is not simply a question of political power, but also more subtle kinds of influence. Because American Jews are understood to be the most invested in Israel, wider American debates about the Arab-Israeli conflict are influenced by debates over the issue among American Jews, much of which takes place in forums that are not specifically Jewish, like the New York Times.29 Consequently, what goes on inside the community is of great significance to the U.S. relationship with Israel. Chapter 6 examines the growing gap among different Jewish groups in the level of attachment to Israel, while addressing the question of whether American Jews, and especially the younger generation of American Jews, are growing more distant from the Jewish state. Chapter 7 focuses on American Jewish attitudes to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the growing divide within the organized Jewish community over the peace process.

  Finally, the conclusion brings together all the different strands referred to above. It addresses the political significance of the “Israel paradox” for U.S.-Israeli relations, with the key question being: will rising support reinforce the pro-Israel tendency in U.S. policy, or do growing divisions signal the weakening of the special relationship?

  Overall, each of the chapters is structured in a similar manner. First, they explain the demographic and political makeup of the relevant group. Second, they provide the historical and cultural foundations of approaches to Israel and the conflict within the group. Here the impact of identity, ideology, theology, and/or strategic thinking is examined, as appropriate. These sections focus mainly on elite approaches, though they also help explain the orientations of wider elements of the public. Third, the chapters survey public attitudes within each relevant group toward the conflict from the early 1990s until approximately 2010; in many cases the elite discourse in the relevant media and/or among key organizations is also assessed for the same period. Finally, each chapter demonstrates how cultural factors feed into politics and policy, with the focus on the way culture informs politics, and not on a detailed analysis of U.S. policy per se.

  Throughout the book an important distinction is made between a gap and a divide in opinion. An opinion gap exists when both sides share a basic orientation, the difference being one of degree. An opinion divide exists when the sides adopt opposite positions on an issue, or when one side has a strong opinion pointing in one direction and the other side is equivocal. Finally, a number of recurring questions are addressed. These help provide some overarching benchmarks that aid comparisons across the various groups. They include the following:

  Do sympathies lie more with Israel, the Palestinians, or neither/both?

  Who is more to blame for the conflict?

  On whom does the onus primarily lie, in terms of acting to try to resolve the conflict?

  What are people’s preferences in terms of key issues at stake in the conflict, such as Palestinian statehood, settlements, and Jerusalem?

  How important is the Arab-Israeli conflict to American interests compared to other issues in the Middle East, like terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and radical Islamism?

  How active should the U.S. be in relation to the peace process?

  Should the U.S. take sides in the conflict? If so, whom should it support?

  Should the U.S. apply heavy pressure on one or both of the parties?

  The upcoming chapter looks at how American and European publics answer these questions; but before it does so, it explores the cultural foundations of Americans’ support for Israel.

  1 Like U.S.: American Identification with Israel

  Cultural Foundations and Contemporary Attitudes

  There is no nation like us, ex
cept Israel.

  —Ronald Reagan1

  Introduction

  American sympathy for Zionism and the State of Israel is widespread, long-standing, and deeply rooted in American political culture. This orientation not only predates the creation of professional pro-Israel lobbying organizations; it actually preceded the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1948, Jews constituted fewer than 4 percent of all Americans. Even if every American Jew favored Israel, no more than 10 percent of American supporters of Israel could have been of Jewish origin in that year. By 2009, Jews were estimated to be only 1.8 percent of the population, accounting at most for 3 percent of Israel’s supporters in the United States.2 Consequently, the answer to the puzzle of American sympathy for Israel does not lie on the Lower East Side of New York; rather, it is deeply embedded in the very foundations of American national identity and political culture.

  The chapter begins by identifying the main strands of American identity and political culture. It then explores the way in which those strands have informed positive orientations toward Zionism and the State of Israel. Subsequently, American public opinion toward the Arab-Israeli conflict is surveyed and contrasted with Western European attitudes, with the focus on the first decade of the twenty-first century. This transatlantic divide is then explained in terms of broader cultural differences between America and Western Europe.

  American Identity and Political Culture

  There are two main strands of American national identity: the ethnoreligious foundation provided by the white Puritan Protestants who founded the country, and the American creed of classical liberalism.3

  According to Anthony Smith, national identity is usually constructed on the foundations of a preexisting ethnic identity.4 In the American case, the preexisting core consisted of white Protestants out of which developed a strong populist sense of American national identity associated with rugged independence, an honor code, and military pride.5 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, whites still made up more than 70 percent of all Americans, and Protestants (black and white) still constitute the largest religious group by far.6 In the past, this white Protestant identity often carried racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic undertones, but since at least the 1970s these prejudices have declined significantly. At the same time, core cultural orientations associated with this identity have spread beyond their original ethnic bounds to incorporate many blacks and Hispanics – the two largest ethnic minorities in America – who serve in the American military in disproportionate numbers.7

  Alongside this, American identity is also based on a set of beliefs. As G. K. Chesterton remarked, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.”8 According to Lipset, “the revolutionary ideology which became the American creed is liberalism in its eighteenth and nineteenth meanings”:9 individualism, meritocracy, democracy, and the free market. Key to this creed is the belief in American exceptionalism, according to which America’s allegiance to freedom and democracy make it an exceptionally good country. In 2010, three-quarters of Americans agreed that America’s history and constitution made it unique and the greatest country in the world. As Herman Melville, the nineteenth-century novelist, put it, “We Americans are the peculiar chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.”10

  Influenced by Puritan millennialism, some argue that the creed requires an active foreign policy to build a new liberal world order – Wilsonianism11 – while others interpret the creed in a passive sense, according to which America should serve as a “shining city on the hill,” an example that others should emulate. Aside from this, the fusion of Protestant millennialism – with its sharp dichotomy between good and evil – and the American creed informs a moralistic tendency to divide the world into good nations associated with American values and evil nations associated with antidemocratic values.12

  The Cultural Roots of Americans’ Support for Israel

  Protestantism, the Hebrew Bible, and Gentile American Zionism

  The historical legacy of Puritan Protestantism is a major foundation of the pro-Israel orientation in American political culture. The Reformation led to a new emphasis on reading the Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible. The Puritans, who left England to set up colonies in America, were among the Protestants most committed to Bible study. They believed that it was important to read the Bible in the original Hebrew in order to understand it properly. Subsequently, the study of Hebrew became a core subject in the early American universities, being compulsory at Harvard from its founding in 1639 until 1787. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale from 1778 to 1795, delivered his commencement greetings in Hebrew. He also made Hebrew a compulsory part of the curriculum at Yale. James Madison spent a year studying Hebrew at Princeton. Samuel Johnson, the first president of Columbia University, concluded that Hebrew was essential to a gentleman’s education. By 1917, fifty-five institutes of higher education in the United States taught Hebrew. Hebrew is to be found on the university seals of Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale.

  This contrasts with the great universities of Europe, where the focus was on the classical languages of Latin and ancient Greek. Aside from this, the Bible in English translation was the most widely read book in the colonial era and nineteenth-century America. More than a thousand places in the United States are named after biblical places; during the nineteenth century, thousands of Americans visited the Holy Land and millions more read reports of these travels.13

  The Bible has also played a significant role in American political culture. The biblical idea of a covenant informed Puritan political thinking and subsequently influenced the framing of the Constitution itself.14 In addition, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams submitted a design for the seal of the United States that depicted the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.15 To this day, biblical images adorn many national buildings in Washington, DC, including the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and the Library of Congress.16 Biblical metaphors also regularly crop up in presidential inaugural addresses. Thus, Jefferson spoke of “that Being … who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life”;17 Lyndon Johnson declared, “They came here, the exile, the stranger … They made a covenant with this Land”;18 while Bill Clinton referred to an America “guided by the ancient vision of a promised land.”19

  This emphasis on, and familiarity with, the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language laid the groundwork for an inclination to support Zionism, even before the founding of the modern Jewish Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, in 1819 John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote, “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”20 He was by no means alone. For example, the nineteenth-century scholar Prof. George Bush, an ancestor of both presidents, was also a proto-Zionist.21 Moving forward to the middle of the twentieth century, when Clark Clifford, the White House chief counsel under President Harry S. Truman, presented the case for U.S. recognition of the State of Israel to the Cabinet in 1947, he quoted God’s promise to the Jewish people in the Book of Deuteronomy. According to Clifford, Truman was a student of the Bible who believed that it gave the Jews a historical claim to statehood in at least part of its ancestral homeland.22 Subsequently, Truman referred to himself as a modern-day Cyrus – a reference to the ancient Persian king who had restored the Jewish people to the Holy Land after the Babylonian exile.23 Lyndon Johnson was also raised on the Bible, and this informed his support of a Jewish right to a homeland in Palestine.24 Knowledge of the Bible was not the driving force behind Johnson’s or Truman’s policies toward Israel, but it informed part of their mind-set, as it did for Bill Clinton. The Clintons visited Israel in 1980 as part of a church group, and in his memoirs Clinton recalls his pastor telling him that God would not forgive him if he abandoned Israel.25

  This o
rientation is not confined to former presidents. About half of Americans consistently believe that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. This includes not only three-quarters of white Protestant evangelicals but also majorities of black and Latino Protestants, as well as a quarter of mainline Protestants and about a third of non-Latino Catholics. Indeed, there is a strong correlation between belief that the land of Israel was given to the Jewish people by God and support for the State of Israel.26

  Protestant Millennialism and Biblical Prophecy

  As noted earlier in this chapter, Protestant millennialism has played a major role in the forging of American political culture. Consequently, aside from the impact of the Bible per se, the belief that the State of Israel plays an important role in the Second Coming of Jesus is also important. This belief became central to Protestant evangelicals in America toward the end of the nineteenth century, in the form of premillennial dispensationalism. Dispensationalism originated in Britain, but it gained much greater currency in America, in part because of the deep-rooted American identification with biblical Israel. One leading American evangelist at the turn of the twentieth century, William Blackstone, developed the idea the United States had a special role in this divine plan: that of a modern Cyrus, to help restore the Jews to Zion.27

  At the dawn of the new millennium, nearly two-thirds of all white Protestant evangelicals in America believe that modern-day Israel fulfills the biblical prophecy about the Second Coming. Of even greater significance is the influence of this doctrine among other groups in America. Thus, about half of all blacks and Hispanics, a quarter of non-Hispanic Catholics, and about a fifth of mainline Protestants also believe this.28 This is indicative of the way in which pro-Israel elements of America’s core ethnoreligious political culture have spread way beyond their original boundaries to become a part of the wider culture. Sympathy for Israel is lowest among atheist Americans, but even here Israel is consistently more popular than the Palestinians.29