Why is America so pro-Israel?

As Israel continues to pound Gaza after Hamas' ill-advised unilateral strike, US President Joe Biden went scuttling over to Tel Aviv in a high-stakes mid-war state visit, where he reiterated the official dogma that America is, and will always be, Israel's best friend. 

He repeated the Israeli claims that the egregious bombing of a Gazan hospital was not carried out by Israel but by Islamic Jihad as though they were the plain unambiguous truth (which is far from clear as yet), and summarily overlooked a whole host of other Israeli atrocities in the short war so far. He positively gushed in promising yet more money and arms, and anything else Israel might want. Biden has made no secret that, along with much of the rest of the world, he has some serious reservations about Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, and yet there he was, all smiles, promising undying friendship and scads of cash. 

This is standard fare for US-Israeli relations. Since the 1960s - arguably since Israel's very creation in 1948, but particularly since the 1967 Six Day War - America has courted this "special relationship". Since the Second World War, it has provided over $158 billion in unconditional aid to this small country, more than to any other nation, and provided it with the very best in military and technological products. It pays for about 16% of Israel's total military spending every year, and remains committed to maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge in the region. And, remember, Israel is not exactly a needy, have-not country; it is a high-income country with a thriving tech sector. Israel now sells military hardware BACK to America!

So, why is America so supportive of Israel, no matter what it does? From America's perspective, Israel represents a strategic stabilizing force in a fractious Middle East that the US needs to keep stable for its oil output, on which America is still surprisingly reliant. It is a friendly face among a generally hostile crowd, and a more-or-less-democratic state in a part of the world prone to authoritarian tendencies. 

They also see Israel as a countervailing force to Russian influence the region, a hold-over from the Cold War. As Biden himself said, back in 2013 when he was just a lowly Vice-President, "An independent Israel, secure in its own borders, recognized by the world, is in the practical strategic interests of the United States if America". 

So, America would like to see an "integrated, prosperous and secure Middle East", so that the oil markets stay calm, and it can turn its attention more to dealing with other problems like Russia and China. Well, I wonder how that's going?

There is another plank to the relationship, though: American support for Israel plays incredibly well back home, bolstered by an extremely well-funded pro-Israel lobby in Washington, like the politically-powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and J Street among others, which donate millions of dollars to American political candidates. 

That public support has waned some in recent years, particularly among Democrats, who marginally supported Palestine over Israel for the first time in a (pre-war) March 2023 poll. But it is still an important influence on US policy, and it will be interesting to see how the current conflict affects that support. 

There are documented incidents in which American weapons were used in Israeli war crimes in Palestine, even before this latest war broke out, and there will almost certainly be many more before it ends. Americans may start to wonder whether the "special relationship" justifies its moral (and dollar) price. US support for Israel could deter other actors in the region - like Iran, Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon - from escalating the conflict. But it could just as easily stir increased anti-US sentiment and resentment in the Middle East. And the world is, as always, watching.