Why israel is important

Bush—or, in some cases, are even further to the right—on the issue of Israel and Palestine. Therefore, while the perceived strategic imperative is at the root of U.

These include the following:. While U. Despite these obstacles, the need to challenge U. Not only has it led to enormous suffering among the Palestinians and other Arabs, ultimately it hurts the long-term interests of both Israel and the United States, as increasingly militant and extremist elements arise out of the Arab and Islamic world in reaction. Ultimately, there is no contradiction between support for Israel and support for Palestine, for Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent on each other.

This is the challenge for those who take seriously such basic values as freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Get more news like this, directly in your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter. Strategic Reasons for Continuing U. Support There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel has advanced U. Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as in Palestine. Israel has kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check.

It has served as a conduit for U. Israeli military advisers have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara.

Israel has missiles capable of reaching as far as the former Soviet Union, it possesses a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, and it has cooperated with the U. These include the following: The sentimental attachment many liberals—particularly among the post-war generation in leadership positions in government and the media—have for Israel. Other key events are believed to have happened in this important city, including: Abraham showed he was prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac, at Mount Moriah.

It was also here that Jacob Abraham's grandson dreamed of a ladder that went up to Heaven. King David captured Jerusalem around 3, years ago and made it the capital of the ancient Jewish people. And they've both crossed Israel when it wasn't in the US' strategic interests: Bush refused to support an Israeli strike on Iran, and Obama repeatedly clashed with Israeli leaders on West Bank settlements.

All of this isn't to say that American presidents and foreign policy principals are necessarily right to believe these things. It's within the realm of possibility, as some argue, that US support for Israel undermines regional stability and compromises America's status as neutral broker during peace negotiations. The point here isn't to endorse the official US view, but describe the line of thinking that's been so influential in driving the American foreign policy establishment's approach to Israel.

Jewish and Christian groups rally for Israel in New York. US support for Israel isn't just about strategic calculation and foreign policy interests, or at least not anymore. For a long time, at the very least since the s, it's also been about domestic politics and the way American politicians read American voters.

Congressional votes on issues relating to Israel are famously lopsided. The Senate resolution supporting Israel's recent offensives in Gaza passed unanimously , as many "pro-Israel" bills and resolutions do. The simplest explanation for these lopsided votes is that supporting Israel is really, really popular among voters. Indeed, Gallup data since consistently shows a much higher percentage of Americans sympathizing with Israelis than with Palestinians in the conflict:.

So it makes sense that Congresspeople would take pretty hard-core pro-Israel stances: it's reasonably popular.

But why is Israel so popular among Americans in the first place? One big reason is a perceived sense of "shared values. Religious groups are two other critically important factors. American Jews and evangelical Christians are two of the most politically engaged groups in the United States.

They're major constituencies, respectively, in the Democratic and Republican parties. And both are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. There are nuances here: evangelical support for Israel tends to be more uncritical than Jewish support. For instance, a majority of reform and secular Jews — 65 percent of the American Jewish population — disapprove of Israel's expansion of West Bank settlements.

And Jews under the age of 35 are the least likely to identify as Zionist though a majority still do. On the other hand, the older and more conservative Jews who aren't entirely representative of the more liberal body of Jewish-American public opinion toward Israel, have a lot of clout with national politicians.

They express strong desire to vote based on the Israel issue and are clustered in Florida and Pennsylvania, large swing states in presidential elections. By contrast, 31 percent of white evangelicals think the US has reached the right level of support, while 46 percent want the US to support Israel more.

Add evangelicals, Jews, and broad public support together, and you get consistent, bipartisan support for Israel. Neither survey is particularly statistically rigorous , so don't take the specific rankings too seriously. Is the group actually steering US politics and foreign policy in a direction it wouldn't go on its own?

Many have suggested a two-state solution but acknowledge that Israelis and Palestinians are unlikely to settle on borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has supported the two-state solution but has felt pressure to change his stance. Netanyahu has also been accused of encouraging Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas while still backing a two-state solution.

In a visit to Israel in May , U. President Donald Trump urged Netanyahu to embrace peace agreements with Palestinians. And in May , the U. Palestinians responded with protests at the Gaza-Israel border, which were met with Israeli force resulting in the deaths of dozens of protesters. While Israel has been plagued by unpredictable war and violence in the past, many national leaders and citizens are hoping for a secure, stable nation in the future. Creation of Israel, Office of the Historian, U.

Department of State. Israel: The World Factbook: U. Central Intelligence Agency. Palestine: Growing Recognition: Al Jazeera. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Palestine is a small region of land that has played a prominent role in the ancient and modern history of the Middle East. The history of Palestine has been marked by frequent political conflict and violent land seizures because of its importance to several major world Following years of diplomatic friction and skirmishes between Israel and its neighbors, Israel Defense Forces launched preemptive air strikes that Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity.