American Zion(ism)

Oct 20th 2010, 20:00 by D.L.

PHILADELPHIA
 
 
OVER at the American Interest, Walter Russell Mead has an important post about J Street, the Washington-based organisation that seeks to counter the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the ferociously pro-Israel outfit that is often blamed by critics of American policy in the Middle East for wielding outsized influence. J Street has been embroiled in various fundraising scandals over the past several weeks, but Mr Mead isn’t really interested in the issues they raise. What interests him is J Street’s claim that its liberal, anti-Likud stance is more representative of American Jewish opinion than AIPAC’s far more hawkish position, and that it can use that representativeness to persuade American politicians to be less reflexively pro-Israel. (J Street calls itself pro-Israel, but it advocates tough love, thinking that America should push Israel to make dramatic concessions for peace with the Palestinians.)
 
Mr Mead admits that the first half of J Street’s claim—that its positions better represent American Jewish opinion than AIPAC’s—may very well be true. But he strongly denies J Street’s second claim and the assumption that underlies it, which is that America’s pro-Israel stance in the Middle East is primarily a function of pressure exerted by the Jewish community through the "Israel Lobby" in Washington. Change the face of the dominant lobby and American policy will change with it—that’s J Street’s hope and its long-term strategy.

Mr Mead thinks the assumption is foolish. As he puts it, "Everything I know about the history of American foreign policy, the state of American opinion, the nature of American ideology and theology, and the state of American politics tells me this is wrong." He goes on:

Support for the construction of a Jewish state in the Holy Land has been an important part of American Christian and political thought going back to colonial times. The ideas of Jewish exceptionalism and American exceptionalism have been bound together in the American mind for more than two hundred years. During the Cold War, Americans gradually got into the habit of considering Israel one of our most valuable and reliable allies. In recent years this longstanding association has been substantially strengthened by the widespread public belief that the same people who most hate Israel and want to bring it down are the bitter enemies of the United States and will stop at nothing to kill as many American civilians as they possibly can.

Mr Mead is right about this, and it’s useful to be reminded that whenever someone laments the influence of this or that organisation, the properly sceptical response is to ask why those in power are receptive to being influenced in the first place. Mr Mead draws a helpful parallel to the National Rifle Association (NRA), a group decried by liberals due to its enormous political influence. Mr Mead rightly points out that the NRA would be much less powerful if politicians and (more importantly) their constituents didn’t already tend to believe that protecting gun rights is a good thing.

AIPAC would likewise wield much less influence inside the 21st-century beltway if the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts hadn’t thought of themselves as reenacting the exodus of the Hebrews from bondage in ancient Egypt. When William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower in 1620, he quoted Jeremiah: "Come let us declare in Zion the word of God." Years later, Cotton Mather spoke of the colonies as "an instrument" of the Almighty in establishing "Israel in America". These ideas entered into America’s cultural bloodstream a very long time ago, and they continue to play a crucially important role in predisposing the American people (the vast majority of whom, it should go without saying, are not Jewish) to be receptive to appeals on behalf of the more recently established Zion in the Middle East.

Andrew Sullivan is right to note that these days some of America’s unconditional support for Israel comes from Protestant evangelicals and their rather alarming beliefs about Israel’s crucial role in the unfolding of the End Times. But historically speaking, that’s a relatively small and recent chapter in a very long and much broader history of identification with Israel in the American imagination. And that means that J Street’s core strategy is unlikely to succeed. If Mr Mead is right, American politicians will continue to lean toward AIPAC’s position even if the vast majority of American Jews come to support J Street—because their unconditional defence of Israel is not primarily a function of Jewish political pressure. It is instead a function of the myth of American Zion, which has produced a peculiarly American form of Zionism.