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Jewish World Review Oct. 30, 2008 / 1 Mar-Cheshvan 5769 The End of the Special Relationship?
By
Jonathan Rosenblum
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
For those inclined to see the workings of Divine Providence in human
history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a
happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world,
it would surely have picked the world's (still) most powerful nation.
Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the
weapons needed to defend itself.
American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is
historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews, and styled
themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All
the early presidents of Yale College were Hebraists, and the College's
insignia was patterned on the Urim ve'Tumim (breastplate) worn by the Kohen Gadol (high priest).
To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the
Western world. Seventy million American evangelicals constitute Israel's
most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their
sovereignty and willing to defend against any threat to their liberty. The
state motto of New Hampshire, "Live Free or Die," captures that spirit. As
such, they admire Israel's doughty self-defense against far more numerous
enemies.
In Western terms, America is a Center-Right country. A major aspect of the
American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a
class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to
Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of
victims and oppressors, 59% view the Palestinians more or equally
sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives,
whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them,
59% view Israel more favorably.
The presence in America of the world's largest Jewish community — a
community that is both wealthy and politically active — has also shored up
American support for Israel. (That community, however, is diminishing both
in numbers and concern with Israel; many of the most active supporters of
Israel in Congress come from states with few Jews.)
BELIEF IN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, its chosenness, has always played a major
role in American civic religion. The two dominant conceptions of American
foreign policy — isolationism and liberal internationalism — are both
predicated upon an assumption of American moral superiority. Isolationists
fear contamination from the "foreign entanglements," of which President
George Washington warned of in his Farewell Address. Liberal
internationalists seek to remake the world in America's image.
Senator Barack Obama represents a third foreign policy approach — what
Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington calls the "cosmopolitan." Far
from taking American virtue as its starting point, the cosmopolitan seeks to
remake America in Europe's image.
Thus Senator Obama presented himself to Europeans last summer as a citizen
of the world, one of them. "Mr. Obama," in the words of Fouad Ajami,
"proceeds from the notion of American guilt. We called up the furies ...
." He accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness, and
seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world.
He shares the Europeans contempt for the terminology of good and evil: "A
lot of evil's been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting
evil," he says. If his heart thrilled at the sight of Iraqis twice braving
suicide bombers to go the polls, he kept it to himself. The war in Iraq, in
his view, was nothing more than a "cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors ... to shove their own
ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost
and in hardships born."
And he expresses understanding of the grievances for the perpetrators of
evil — Hamas, Hizbullah, even the perpetrators of 9/11, which he
characteristically portrayed as part of "an underlying struggle between
worlds of plenty and worlds of want" (despite the affluent backgrounds of
the attackers). He voted against a Senate bill to designate the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
Senator Obama's most fervent support has come from the university campuses
and cultural elites — where attitudes tend most to resemble those of Western
Europeans and where scorn for those who "cling to guns or religion" runs
rampant. The campuses also happen to be the redoubts of the greatest
hostility to Israel.
AN AMERICA THAT MORE CLOSELY RESEMBLES Western Europe will not be good for
Israel. Western Europeans consistently rate Israel the greatest threat to
world peace. And they are remarkably cavalier about Israel's defense of its
own existence. Recent memory does not include any Israeli response to attack
that the Europeans did not deem disproportionate. The Western European
countries have done little to prevent the United Nations from degenerating
into an anti-Israel debating society, and a number have supported or
abstained on U.N. Human Rights Council resolutions supportive of anti-Israel
"resistance" — i.e., terrorism.
Many commonly-held attitudes predispose Europeans against Israel. Western
Europe is far along a project of transferring political legitimacy from
nation-states to supranational organizations, like the European Union, the
United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Having achieved their
nation-state rather late in the day, the Jews of Israel remain proud of it.
To the Europeans, however, a non-Moslem state based on national/religious
identity appears an atavism.
Western Europe's almost religious faith in international institutions of
open membership, like the U.N., and a declining concern with national
sovereignty threaten Israel. International criminal jurisdiction has already
rendered Israeli military personnel wary of traveling abroad. Senator Obama
frequently demonstrates a similar reverence for the U.N., and has a long
list of international treaty obligations to which he is eager to submit the
United States.
Europe has adopted a stance of appeasement towards both external threats and
to Islamic minorities within. (Ironically, the United States, which offers
no special dispensation to Moslems, has done a far better job of integrating
Moslem immigrants than European countries.) Europeans' abhorrence of any
resort to military action causes them to instinctively recoil from Israel,
as the superior military power in the region.
Having moved beyond simplistic categories of good and evil, Europeans try to
take, at best, an even-handed approach to any conflict, invariably warning,
for instance, against a "cycle of violence" whenever Israel responds to
attack. Obama's immediate call for "mutual restraint" after the Russian
invasion of Georgia was a classic example of that tendency.
At worse, European sophistication favors whichever party can present itself
as the aggrieved underdog, or serves to mask an ugly cynicism, as in the
recent multi-billion deals signed by Austrian and Swiss energy companies
with Iran.
To the extent that Senator Obama's likely election betokens a move towards a
more European America, the special ties that have bound the people of
America and Israel show signs of fraying.
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JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is founder of Jewish Media Resources and a widely-read columnist for the Jerusalem Post's domestic and international editions and for the Hebrew daily Maariv. He is also a respected commentator on Israeli politics, society, culture and the Israeli legal system, who speaks frequently on these topics in the United States, Europe, and Israel. His articles appear regularly in numerous Jewish periodicals in the United States and Israel. Rosenblum is the author of seven biographies of major modern Jewish figures. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Yale Law School. Rosenblum lives in Jerusalem with his wife and eight children.
© 2008, Jonathan Rosenblum | ||||||||||
