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Why Do So Many American Politicians Support Israel?
(Washington Post) Sam Goldman - American attitudes toward Israel have been shaped far more by debates among non-Jews than by the influence of Jewish organizations. The most important reason public officials support Israel is that the public does. In fact, approval is at a 17-year high, with 74% of adults reporting a favorable opinion. Public support for Israel is not a new phenomenon. Surveys conducted between 1947 and 1949 showed that nearly three times as many Americans sympathized with Jews over Arabs in the conflict in former Mandatory Palestine. American approval for Israel has deep historical roots in the Christian understanding of America. Leaders of Puritan New England predicted the demographic return and political revival of the Jewish people in the biblical promised land. In 1845, John Price Durbin, a Methodist who served as chaplain of the Senate and president of Dickinson College, insisted on "the undoubted fact of the restoration of a Jewish state in Palestine." In 1891, the evangelist William E. Blackstone presented a petition to President Benjamin Harrison calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Ottoman Palestine. Americans who signed included Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller, future president William McKinley, titans of industry and finance like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, and the editors of dozens of major newspapers. The writer is assistant professor of political science and executive director at the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom at George Washington University.