Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 71: Why the heck does America support Israel?

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.Our current question: Why the heck does America support Israel?If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

On to the next question. Why the heck does America support Israel? I like the subtlety. This is quite likely somebody in the United States who maybe is very frustrated with Israel, maybe very angry at Israel, but also probably just wondering, genuinely. Let's get into it. The irony of the American relationship with Israel is that it's one of the few countries that had a powerful and strong and fascinating and multi-layered relationship before there was in Israel. Because America's initial relationship with Israel is actually a relationship with Jews, and frankly, the Jews that America didn't want to take into America. In 1921, America passes the Emergency Quota Act in Congress, and the doors of America are closed to Jewish immigration.

What's fascinating is that very quickly, the following year, in 1922 in September, the same Congress that closed the doors passed the Lodgefish Resolution, which basically followed on the Balfour Declaration five years earlier, by Britain and said that the United States supports the establishment of a Jewish national home of some kind in Palestine. And, you know, if you get into the history, there's a tremendous amount of religious Christian, American, Protestant. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the American Congress beginning to recommend, as a matter of policy, American support for Zionism. Both those things are true. American support for Zionism at the beginning has that religious overtone, that genuine support for the idea that Jews belong in the land of Israel. And also a genuine desire not to have so many more Jews.

Millions of Jews are fleeing Europe come to America. Fast forward to the 1930s and 40s. The Jewish desperation is growing. America still doesn't want to take in more than the two and a half million Jews it took in between 1881 and 1921. And so America begins to more seriously support some kind of a Zionist solution to the Jewish problem in Europe. if only because it doesn't see any other solution.

That puts America at odds with the British, with the British allies and friends of America, because they, of course, have the mandate for Palestine. They have the control over the land, and they don't want to upset the Arabs. And so there's this complicated game played between the Americans and the British in which the Americans are the more Zionist. But again, while making sure no Jewish foot can get into America.

And so America's doors are closed. America supports Jews going to this other place. that isn't America, and it fits. And then the Jews declare their independence in 1948. And suddenly you have a state. And Truman, who had begged the British, fought the British, to give the Jews that state. And frankly, saw the problem of the displaced persons in Europe.

You had a quarter million Jews in DP camps that the U.S. Army was feeding. It was just an incredibly expensive undertaking for the United States government in the immediate aftermath of the war. Truman wanted to get rid of the DPs, and he actually asked Congress to let them into America at one point. Congress refused. so Truman went on the next best option, which is trying to get the British to allow them into Palestine. 1948, May, Israel declares independence. There's a war. And the United States does two things.

One, declares its support for the new Jewish state. Truman recognizes Israel within 11 minutes. They make a big deal of how wonderful and beautiful and glorious this thing is. The United States also played a really important role at the UN in securing the vote for the partition plan, for the establishment of Israel, for UN support. But then the Americans also don't want to pump massive amounts of guns into the region. They don't want to lose Arab support. There is oil in Arab lands. And so they actually put Israel under an arms embargo at the country's most desperate moment in its most desperate existential war.

The Israelis end up buying those arms from the Czechs with the approval of Comrade Stalin and proceed to survive the 1948 mass invasion of Arab armies. That the Israelis survive despite the American. American arms embargo is very significant because it means the Israelis begin their lives not dependent on the United States. The 56 war is a war in which the British and the French want to take the Suez Canal back from Egypt because it's this massive strategic asset. The Israelis are the people on the ground willing to fight the actual ground war in Sinai to push toward the Suez Canal. And so the British and French, these old imperial powers, ally with the Israelis to get this done. And the Americans

do two things at once. Eisenhower forces the Israelis back after the great Israeli victory, the French and the British retreat. But what the Israelis were doing in 56, what they thought they were doing, they didn't care if the British control the Suez. What the Israelis were worried about was the fact that, unlike in 48, by 56, the Arabs had united

with new Soviet hardware around this charismatic guy selling a pan-Arab vision called Nasser. And to push back against that, to show that they had capabilities in maneuver warfare in the desert that they didn't have just eight years earlier. This was a country that until two or three years before the 56th War

was rationing eggs to children. It was a period where there wasn't enough food for the population. Israel had a third world economy and had built out a serious fighting force. Eisenhower pushes the Israelis back. The Americans nevertheless notice that the Israelis were an effective counterweight

to the Arab forces and to Soviet armies. So even as Israel is not, longer useful to the British imperialists because the Americans won't let the British play that game anymore. They suddenly are a little bit useful to the Americans who are still trying to figure out exactly what the Cold War means, what this divide of the world between the Soviets and the Americans actually means. And the Israelis turn out to be capable. Ben-Gurion made a decision. He talks constantly about America as supporting Israel, even when it's explicitly pushing back on Israel,

even when under Eisenhower's very suspicious of Israel. and he's constantly upselling, so to speak, the relationship. He made a decision that the future of the world is an American future. The world that Israel wants to live in, the Jews want to live in, the world you could prosper in, the safe world, is the American world. And so Israel would be American even if America wasn't on Israel's side. That was the strategic decision. And between Ben-Gurian and today, that has been the Israeli position.

And then in the 60s, the Cold War really gets underway. Kennedy was deeply worried that the Israelis might be trying to build a nuclear bomb. The Cold War is raw. The Cuban Missile Crisis is in those years. The Kennedy administration is in some senses the most dangerous moment the world has ever come to a nuclear-armed superpower war. And Israel might be introducing nukes to the Middle East. And the Kennedy administration, for a couple of different reasons, adopts a policy of what we would come to call the bear hug.

It feels warm. It feels like a great strategic protective relationship. But while someone is in a bear hug, they can't hit you. It's a way of holding Israel close to maintain more American influence, more American control, so the Israelis don't in American terms as the American side do anything crazy or foolish or stupid. Israel, by the early 60s, could be nuclearizing. Tiny little country that shouldn't be able to afford any of those things. I once read in a policy paper that the Iranians have spent up to now a hundred times

corrected for inflation, what the Israelis spent on their nuclear program. And the Iranians haven't built a nuke for all that expense. Somehow the Jews could put this together. And so this country of tremendous capability was also a country deeply hated in the region and a country deeply threatened. The worst thing is to have a nuclear armed state that feels deeply threatened. And the Kennedy administration in 1962 for the very first time approves the sale to the Israelis of hawk missiles, of defensive missiles that are a real upgrade of Israeli defensive capability, and are an announcement to the world, welcome to the birth of the strategic relationship. Then we have 1967, where the Israelis demonstrate not that they're capable, but that they're a

regional great power, and they can deliver knockout blows to organize, systematic plan, serious Arab invasion forces, armed by the Soviets, advanced weaponry, and the Israelis can smash through them like a hot knife through butter. That's 67. Israel is suddenly both an ally to keep close because it's valuable and also because it's capable of destabilizing. So the bear-hug logic only gets stronger after 67. Then, of course, comes 73. 73 is a war in which the Israelis are surprised disastrously. It's better fought by the Israelis. For example, the raid of attrition of Israeli forces, the number of enemy combatants killed

to Israeli combatants is actually more favorable to the Israelis than in 67. But the Israelis started with a massive Arab surprise. And what comes after 73, the Arab oil embargo that creates the oil shock in the United States, tells the Americans the Israelis are in a region and have an array of interests, namely survival in a region keen on their destruction, that means that what the Israelis decide can have a profound effect, not on American foreign policy or Cold War calculations of professors at Princeton, they could have a profound effect on the pocketbook of every American. And after that great lesson, which confirms the need for a bear hug,

after that we get into a new kind of relationship, a new kind of asset that Israel represents to an American administration. What am I talking about? Peace. Sadat of Egypt initiates this peace process. Big and agrees, but the sides are far apart and disagree on a great many things. And it takes great power investment of political capital and also some money to pull this thing together and create in 1979, the Arab Israeli peace. and what Carter showed and what Carter actually won out of that and what presidents who followed Carter learned from that is that Israel is not just an ally that is loyal to America the Israel file, we'll call it, has the potential to offer a president a great and grand and gorgeous legacy

which is peacemaking. And so after Carter, we have the Reagan years that doubling down on the Cold War when Israel becomes useful as an American ally in the Cold War where the Arabs are still on the Soviet side. And then under Bush Sr., we have the majority, we have the Madrid peace process, and under Clinton, a massive investment in the 90s of almost a decade of American foreign policy, where probably the single biggest issue, Bill Clinton wants this peace. That's the legacy he's hoping for.

And then, of course, that fails in the Second Intifada, and you have George Bush, but September 2001, 9-11, suddenly counterterrorism, the war on terror, overwhelms the American senses, overwhelms American. foreign policy. And there are few countries in the world as useful in intelligence terms, in tactical knowledge terms, few countries in the world as close as Israel. I guess that brings us just parenthetically to 2003 to the Iraq war and to claims by people who really don't like Israel, distrust Israel, just are bigots sometimes, that Israel drove America to the war. As an example, they show some footage of a man named Benjamin and Senyo. You may have heard of him telling Congress that a war with Iraq is a good idea. It's worth just saying,

and I'll say it really in passing, and people can look this up. The Prime Minister of Israel at that time was not Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister of Israel was Ariel Sharon, and Ariel Sharon counseled America against the Iraq war. He said it's a distraction from the real threat, which is Iran. The Israelis were absolutely not going to challenge the Americans on the world stage about this major central pillar of the war on terror as the Bush administration conceived it. Once the Americans made the decision, Netanyahu was called into Congress, invited by some member of Congress who supported the Iraq War, and he would make that case.

The actual Israeli Prime Minister, actual Israeli policy, counseled quietly against the Iraq War, and then went with the Americans because the Israelis are not in a position not to go with the Americans when the Americans say, this is our great policy. So if you encounter anyone who says to you something as utterly, frankly, insulting of America as the Israelis push the Americans to the Iraq War, if the Israelis can push the Americans to the Iraq War, then the americans are led by a bunch of people who just fell off the apple cart and that brings us basically to the present day all the old logic israel can destabilize the region when does it destabilize the region it's gone a long time without bombing much and then october seven happened and then israel felt the need to start dismantling from the air iranian capabilities to destroy it and to start dismantling in massive ways in air and ground forces chesbalah's capabilities to set Tel Aviv on fire. Israel has the ability, Israel has the willingness

to destabilize the region if it feels threatened. What was Biden's visit just after October 7 about? I'm not saying there wasn't real genuine feeling there. I'm saying it perfectly overlapped with American policy toward Israel, which for generations has been the bear hug. Biden held Israel close, gave Israel defensive weaponry, and then made sure. sure the Israelis understood that they would lose that American leverage, that American support, that American backing if they did things the Americans weren't willing to stomach. For example, Biden told the Israelis don't go into Raphael for four months and the Israelis froze in place.

And his threat was the missiles. His threat was the support. That's the Kennedy relationship. That's the Nixon relationship. And under Trump, that has basically continued. Trump hungers and urines for the Abraham Accords. just like carter and just like clinton and the israelis are still a stabilizing factor or potentially a destabilizing factor if they're threatened in fact it has only become more so because israeli capabilities tech economic advancement has only grown so why does america support israel there is an enormous powerful deep emotional political religious shared affinity and ethnicity with american jews and you don't need any of it to explain the relationship

If there's a president after Trump who is anti-Israel, outright openly, explicitly anti-Israel, and the Israelis are then more threatened or attacked again, what happens to oil prices when they hit back? And if the Americans threaten them, then their enemies are going to come for them all the more so, and then they'll have to hit back even harder. In the end, with the Israelis, if you want stability, Israel has to be safe. And the Americans always played the game because the Israelis were always willing to be a stable partner, as long as Israel is safe. Thank you.