[This is the third part of a four-part series. To read more, see Parts 1 and 2 here.]

Josef Olmert: Hello. Good to see you again, to talk again to my followers, my watchers, my readers. So today, we are in our third episode in the four-episode series that I have about the US–Israel relations, and this is an episode that will lead us to the current situation, with particular emphasis on the situation under President Donald Trump.

But I just want to remind us that I said last time that this episode would be more about delving more deeply into the forces, particularly in the US, which shaped these special relations that we have described already in the first two episodes, what I call the interesting relationships at the beginning, and then the special relationships. So when we talk about the relationship with the US, we have to say that in the 1950s, after the recognition of Israel by Harry Truman, the establishment of diplomatic relations, basically the 1950s were dominated by the Republican Party under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And one has to say that at that time, the Eisenhower administration could not really be considered to be too pro-Israel, or even pro-Israel altogether. In some ways it was; in many other ways, it wasn’t. John Foster Dulles, the architect of American foreign policy at that time, was definitely not a friend of Israel.

And when the US looked at the situation in the Middle East and looked at it from the perspective of the Cold War, the idea that really dominated American foreign policy in the 1950s was much more like an alliance with pro-West Arab countries. What they tried to establish — the Baghdad Alliance — failed, but they tried to do it. And then came the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, following the pressure on Israel to withdraw from Sinai in the Sinai War, which was basically, again, anti-communist, but was not based on any alliance between the US and Israel.

American Jewish support and cultural solidarity

Josef Olmert: So one has to say that even though the Israelis already in 1958 were very helpful to the West by allowing British airplanes to fly to Jordan over Israeli territory in order to help what seemed at that time to be a danger to the existence of the regime of the Hashemite King Hussein in Jordan. It was the result of what happened in the Middle East after the Syrian–Egyptian alliance — the unity — and what seemed to be the Soviet penetration to the very core of the Middle East through the leadership and charisma of Nasser, this anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel Arab leader.

But in the US itself, already in the 1950s we see the creation of the coalition that would be very helpful to better relations between the US and Israel. That was composed of various elements. And in the first place, it was the American Jewish community. The American Jewish community already in 1948–49, during the War of Independence and even before the beginning of it, showed a great deal of support to Israel. There were many, many American volunteers who came to fight on behalf of Israel, including pilots that were the beginning of the great Israeli Air Force, one should say. There was this famous Colonel Mickey Marcus, or Michael Stone, that was recruited by the Zionists in the US and by Israel to become a commander in the Israeli army. And then it was his tragic death by mistake in an accident that happened. He became the hero of a later movie called Cast a Giant Shadow. The star of this movie was Kirk Douglas himself, a great supporter of Israel — he just died a few years ago when he was over 100 years old.

But we saw the main components of this coalition, alongside the American Jewish community. In the 1950s, they established a famous organization known as AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where basically the alienated were connected more with the Democratic Party rather than with the Republican Party. To give you an example which is not always known, the American labor movement, the AFL–CIO, under the great leadership of George Meany, was tremendously supportive of Israel. Meany said that the AFL–CIO are the greatest supporters of Israel in the world, no less than that. So of course he was supportive of the Democratic Party.

But also in the minority communities in the US, there was more support for Israel at that time. And if we go from the ‘50s to the ‘60s and even a bit later on, we see that at least two very significant key figures that were really fighting, struggling for human rights, civil rights in the US, and equality are very pro-Israel. One of them was Martin Luther King, no other, who said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and was supportive of Israel. He got a lot of support from the Jewish community. We remember the rabbi Asher Meza marching alongside him and other prominent Jewish leaders. Take even Cesar Chavez, the great Mexican American leader of the migrant farm workers, who was also very pro-Zionist. He was attacked for this by leftists who couldn’t agree with the fact that he was pro-Israel.

Take even in the field of culture, the cultural world, a guy like Harry Belafonte, the famous singer and activist. They were so pro-Israel, singing “Hava Nagila,” “Re’eh Na,” “Ma Tovu,” “Ma Na’im” and so on. Sammy Davis Jr. and others.

Evangelicals and the republican realignment

Josef Olmert: So you could see the beginning of the creation of this pro-Israel coalition that would become more significant in the 1970s, when you started to see a change also in the Republican Party. And part of this change had to do with the move among evangelical Christians towards the adoption of their doctrines that would lead them to become very pro-Israel. Take, for example, the famous leader Billy Graham, who visited Israel in 1960.

Later on, when we heard the recordings of President Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis, we heard some unpleasant comments made by Billy Graham about Jews to the ears of the president at that time — which I’ll come back to a little bit later on — to the evangelicals. Which, yes, it was not good. But in the overall context of creation of a pro-Israel coalition, people like Billy Graham at that time, and other people later on, played a very significant role.

So we see a change also in the Republican Party, and this change became very, very significant — particularly in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was instinctively pro-Israel. Not from an evangelical Christian perspective, but from the perspective of, “Here it is: It’s a world conflict between the good guys and the bad guys. Israelis are on the side of the good guys. They’re our friends. They are against the Soviet Union, so Soviets are against them.”

So the Republican Party was changing in all kinds of respects, and Ronald Reagan symbolized it. Less so his successor, Bush the father, as opposed to Bush the son later on. So we see a situation whereby, as of the 1970s, in Congress, for example, the support to Israel is becoming the feature, of what would be the main pillar, perhaps, of the pro-Israel sentiment in the US and the basis for the special relationship: the bipartisan support. Bipartisanship was very significant, and it had to remain like that. We shall see what happens as we get closer to our situation. Part of it we’ll say today, part of it we’ll leave to the last episode.

But the fact of the matter is that even when you could see the shaping up of this coalition, composed of people in both parties — in Congress, in great support of Israel — you also had, at the same time, the elements that in recent years would become much more influential than what they used to be at that time. Not so much in the Jewish community — the anti-Zionist elements within the Jewish community were mainly focused around the Reform movement in the old days. Later on, what was called the American Council for Judaism and other such organizations in the 1950s, ‘60s — particularly after the Six Days War — and during the campaign conducted by so many important American Jewish organizations, basically the American Jewish community, in support of Soviet Jewry and the campaign to let our people go from the Soviet Union.

So the Jewish community in the 1960s, ‘70s was really moving very strongly towards the side of support for Israel. Not necessarily organizations like the American Jewish Committee or the American Jewish Congress or even the ADL would say, “We are Zionist organizations,” but they definitely were very, very pro-Israel. So their way of showing pro-Israel was by support for every legislation that would be pro-Israel in Congress — the support for financial and military aid to Israel, and all kinds of other aspects of the relationship.

But you could see elements that were already at that time starting to create this nucleus, or the roots, of what would be anti-Israelism later on. Isolationism in the Republican Party, fiscal conservatives of one kind or another, nativist politicians. Much later on — more recently — you could hear people like Ron Paul, for example, or even before him, Pat Buchanan, as examples of the fact that even in the Republican Party, as it was moving more and more towards a more pro-Israel approach, you still had these elements of strong isolationism and even, I would say, nativist politics that were anti-Israel.

Democratic drift and the decline of bipartisanship

Josef Olmert: You could also see changes starting to develop within the Democratic Party by the rise of the left wing in the party. That would include, as of the 1970s, ‘80s and onwards, elements that otherwise were previously very pro-Israel. One example of it is what happened to the people around Martin Luther King Jr. He was pro-Zionist, he was pro-Jewish, he was pro-Israel. And some of the closest people to him later on would develop overt anti-Israel positions and even on occasions anti-Semitism, such as the famous or infamous ugly comments by Jesse Jackson about “Hymietown” New York. And even people like John Lewis, the legend Lewis, that changed the tune about Israel.

And the same would happen also among other minority communities, or in the Hispanic community, and so on and so forth. So you could see that while in Congress there still was very strong support for Israel based on bipartisanship, you could also see and hear the forces that would be against it, that on occasion seemed to be very marginal, but because of changes in American society later on, would become much stronger.

From the Israeli perspective, it was obvious that Israel needs to maintain bipartisan support. It was obvious. That was a main pillar of the approach. That was the strength of it: the bipartisan support. And it had to be kept.

There were occasions in which the late Menachem Begin, for example, strongly reprimanded the junior democratic senator visiting Israel by the name of Joseph Biden Jr. He also reprimanded the republican Charles Percy. And after, during the Reagan administration, there were some diplomatic problems between the two countries, when Begin knew how to criticize strongly, let alone maybe even attack, policies of the Reagan administration. So it was clear that while the Israelis were trying to maintain their policy of bipartisanship in terms of American support to Israel, when Israeli leaders needed to criticize democrats and republicans, they would have done it, but always within the context of maintaining the basic framework of bipartisan support for Israel.

And that’s something that we have to bear in mind. When you look at this support to Israel and you look at republican senators, for example, from places without any Jews — in Wyoming and Montana, there are very few Jews — saying whatever they say about supporting Israel, it puts in perspective all these comments — I would say antisemitic motivated attacks — on AIPAC being bribing all those politicians. I myself heard on occasions politicians from both parties saying, “They say that I’m in the pocket of the Jews in my state.” “I was looking for Jews in my state — I hardly found any!” So obviously, there was always this sense that the support to Israel was not without its critics and attacks on it. AIPAC became the symbol of this support to Israel and was therefore the target of a lot of criticism that was motivated also by antisemitic motives, like “the Jews maintain only one loyalty, first loyalty is to Israel,” “the first steps of those who support Israel as opposed to supporting the US.”

Now, let’s face it: The alliance with the US was based on two key pillars. One of them was the sense of common values, common political heritage. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is like us, it’s like the US. It’s a liberal democracy. We have problems with this or that Israeli policy, but altogether, it is a country that we can associate with. It is on the right side of history. Then the other side of it was the strategic, political, military, common interest between the two countries that were not without their problems on occasion, particularly when there were Likud governments that tended to be more towards the right wing — but not only.

After all, it was a Likud government that made peace with Egypt when the president was Jimmy Carter. And other Likud governments did accept American requests/pressures on other occasions. For example, during the first Gulf War, when Yitzhak Shamir, the very hawkish Israeli prime minister, agreed with President George H.W. Bush that even if there would be Iraqi missiles fired on Israel — and Israel knew there would be — if it wasn’t chemical warheads, there wouldn’t be an Israeli response, so as not to turn this war into an Arab–Israeli war, something that Saddam Hussein wanted.

That was a big service from Israel to the US. Not every country would like to see 42 Scud missiles falling on its centers of population and not reacting because they succumb to the interest of a bigger ally — in that case, the US. Just wanted to say, Shamir at that time — trust me, I know — was under heavy pressure from his defense minister, the great, late Moshe Sharett — who said, “Israel has to react. We cannot lose our power of deterrence.” And Shamir said, “No.” The overall interest of maintaining the alliance with the US was more important.

Yes, Israel had 12 requests from the US at the time. Eleven of them were fulfilled. One was not. Let’s move on beyond that.

The growing divide: American Jews and Israeli politics

Josef Olmert: So the point really is that the coalition that existed in the US that was supportive of Israel — that was enhanced and strengthened by the ongoing, gradual but consistent mobilization of the Christian evangelical community in support of Israel, alongside the other traditional forces of support — really laid the groundwork for what was really considered to be almost like an automatic alliance. You knew that the US would veto any anti-Israel resolution in the UN, in the Security Council. You knew that Israel would always vote with the US when it came to important situations for the US. You knew that Israel would always consult, or at least try to consult, with America about particular big, big national security decisions.

What happened — and we see it already in the late 1980s, 1990s and onwards — is that there are starting to be changes. In the Jewish community — yes, even today, the Reform movement is members of the World Zionist Organizations, and they are Zionists in their way. But when you look at the Reform movement of the ‘60s, ‘70s — how it moved from its traditional kind of problematic notions about Zionism, about the Jewish state or Jewish nationalism, to the new crop of rabbis that would become more significant in the 1990s, in the beginning of the 21st century onwards — you see a difference. You see a difference even in the conservative movement. It always was the mainstream of support for Israel.

You could see differences that would affect the academic community in the Jewish community. You could see it in universities. I saw it personally. I experienced it in my own situation when I came to talk in universities and in spending sabbaticals. What happened was a combination of various factors. I will just mention two — not necessarily the most important ones; there are many others — but it’s a topic that has to be discussed in a separate way. It’s such a big topic: the American Jewish community and Israel.

One of them is the growing strength of a new ideology that was propagated by many in the Reform Movement — and also, but less, in the conservative movement — the tikkun olam ideology. It is the “repairing of the world” as the number one Jewish mitzvah, the Jewish challenge. Something that I personally am very much opposed to. I consider it to be an attempt to justify, without saying it, a kind of running away, perhaps even stamping on the part of others, from the sense of: “We are Jews, therefore we support Israel, because this is the state of the Jewish people, and we feel we’re part of the Jewish people.” The element of tikkun olam has become very significant — taking one element in Judaism, making it so significant. It’s a very significant development in the Jewish community. One has to accept it.

Now, the other element is the decreasing support among certain age groups, particularly youngsters. Now here I should say, first of all, it’s true. One can see it, particularly if you are in the academic world and you come across students. But the explanation to that is not different from what other ethnic groups in America feel about their own country — the mother country, so to speak — when you talk about the third or fourth generation in these communities. And the Jews are not, in a way, much different than others.

As you get more and more away from the memories and legacies of their own country or the mother country, you develop different attitudes toward it. And I noticed that among people in my classes as a professor — of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Lebanese Americans and so on and so forth. But the fact of the matter is that you could see the beginning of erosion in Jewish support for Israel — again, a minority among the Jews, but one that has become more vocal.

At the same time, the evangelical movement became very significant in the Republican Party. People like Jerry Falwell in the Moral Majority; Pat Robertson; John Hagee, the Pentecostal — a great supporter of Israel in San Antonio, Texas — and others. And what happened was that when these elements in the Republican Party became more and more important and significant in affecting republican approaches and policies — yep, that’s something that we have to say. Take states in the South, where, for example, in South Carolina, in every primary that you have, people define themselves as republicans or democrats, evangelicals and so on. It’s a republican state, and 75%–80% of republicans in South Carolina say they are evangelicals. So you can imagine the level of support for Israel in a state like that.

But the growing support of these evangelicals encouraged something that would lead to what I would consider to be a great, if not even huge, problem for Israel. The fact that these trends in the American Jewish community were coinciding with what seemed to be the growing dominance of right-wing parties in Israeli politics, the Likud party in particular. It’s something that also affected the operation of AIPAC, which became more and more associated with pro-republicanism, if in a way. More and more Israeli governments, led by the right wing — particularly under Netanyahu, as of 1996–1999, but much more so after 2009 — became more and more associated with an AIPAC that seemed to be more republican. And it could be justified, in fact, because the Republican Party became more pro-Israel. So those who are pro-Israel are becoming, in a way, more pro-republican. But the majority of the Jewish community in America did not go along with it.

And the problem there was — there were many problems behind it, but one that I would like to mention and emphasize is: Many American Jews, by the claim for supporting liberal democracy and all that comes with it, found it difficult, if not impossible, to support wholeheartedly, strongly a state like Israel that is dominated by right-wing and religious parties. And governments that are supported by parties like this that are, in Israel itself, mostly supported by the Mizrahi community — the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. That has become a cultural problem that would lead to political consequences.

The idea that Israel, as it is developing — in the 1970s, much more so in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s onwards — is not the Israel that we would like it to be. And that, of course, opens the Pandora’s box of all this situation of the relationship between Israel as the center of the Jewish world and Jewish communities abroad. What are the limits of the ability and the willingness of Jews outside of Israel to support Israel when they don’t like what’s happening in Israel? That’s a big question. I have to mention it. It’s not something that could be kind of brushed under the carpet, you know, because it is an unpleasant topic to discuss.

And the fact that things like this happened as I described created a growing crisis between Israel and the Democratic Party in particular, and the constituent groups of the Democratic Party that traditionally used to be so pro-Israel — among minority communities, among the labor movement, for example — it’s nothing like it used to be. Things changed.

MAGA, Woke politics and the Trump situation

Josef Olmert: I will end now by saying: It is very easy to pinpoint blame on a particular politician — in that case, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel for 15 years, 16 years almost, after 2009, and before that, three years, 1996–1999. The problem is that when situations are developing the way I describe them, the responsibility of the Israeli leadership at the time should have been to minimize the problems, to try to balance them off, rather than exacerbate them by going with the stream and adopting what seemed to be a very pro-republican approach. And something therefore that would deepen, extend and widen the gaps between Israel and Jews abroad.

But as I said, movements within American Jewry were not disconnected from the overall changes in American society, demographic and others. But I will just end with a teaser to the last episode: I can say that in the last 15 or 20 years, or maybe less, two mass popular movements emerged in the American political scene: MAGA on the one hand and the woke movement on the other hand. The two of them, for different reasons, are not conducive to the alliance between the US and Israel.

And we are going to see in the last episode how their impact and influence deepened very much the trends that I started to relate to, or that related to, toward the end of this episode. So I leave you with that, and we shall meet again for the final episode: How it is under Donald Trump, with the background of the Biden administration, and so on and so forth, within the context of the current wars in the Middle East involving Israel. And I say “wars” because it’s not just the war in Gaza. Thank you.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.