I’ve spent the past 20 years studying, teaching, and strengthening the US-Israel relationship. I’m not sure what qualifications are required to make someone an expert in the area, but I feel comfortable claiming to have a better-than-layman awareness of the subject matter. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, the US-Israel relationship has its ups and downs, but it always gets past the tough times.
Many people aren’t aware of how rocky the US-Israel relationship has been historically. President Harry S. Truman, who famously rejected just about all his advisers’ objections to recognizing the state of Israel when it declared its independence – and did so a mere 11 minutes after prime minister David Ben-Gurion announced the new Jewish state – had also spent months pressuring Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders to postpone declaring independence for two years in the hopes that America could negotiate a peace deal between the Jews and Arabs. Ben-Gurion declared independence in defiance of US wishes.
After Israel went to war with Egypt in 1956, president Dwight D. Eisenhower was so infuriated with Israel that he threatened the state with war if they didn’t withdraw their forces from Egyptian territory. Israel was winning a war against its primary enemy, had freed the Suez Canal for its shipping, had strengthened its relationship with England, and its primary arms supplier was France.
Eisenhower risked all these gains by threatening military force against Israel. Under threat of war with America, prime minister Ben-Gurion succumbed and withdrew Israel’s forces from Egypt.
Although president John F. Kennedy was the first US president to provide Israel with American financial and military support – until the early 1960s France was Israel’s primary support – he too threatened the state over his suspicions that it was building a nuclear arms program. Kennedy threatened prime minister Ben-Gurion to allow American nuclear inspectors to visit Israel and verify that it wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon. The distrust between the two men did nothing to fortify the US-Israel relationship.
As the Six Day War developed and Israel’s enemies surrounded it, France, Israel’s principal weapons supplier, refused to help. President Lyndon B. Johnson could have supplied Israel with the weapons it needed but did nothing to help. At the time, Israel’s future was uncertain, and American aid in the face of Soviet arms being given generously to Israel’s Arab neighbors could have prevented war. Johnson didn’t help Israel in its hour of desperate need.
It was president Richard Nixon who saved Israel from an existential threat by airlifting tons of military supplies during the Yom Kippur War, but he was an antisemite who made life incredibly difficult for prime minister Golda Meir. The contentious relationship between the US and Israel during the Nixon-Kissinger era is well documented.
Nixon’s successor, president Gerald Ford, famously threatened a reassessment of the US-Israel relationship after he felt that prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was impeding a peace deal with Egypt.
President Jimmy Carter brokered the Israel-Egyptian peace deal. This was arguably the most important peace deal Israel has ever signed. At the same time, the US-Israel relationship under Carter was anything but strong and healthy. Although Carter later claimed it was a mistake, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Donald F. McHenry voted against Israel at the UN Security Council. The resolution called for Israel to dismantle its settlements in occupied Arab territories [sic]. The American vote angered Israeli officials and had fellow Democrats condemning Carter.
President Ronald Reagan corrected many of the policies instituted by the Carter administration that made the US-Israel relationship contentious. Despite Reagan’s corrections, his disdain for Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was well known. Many officials in his administration and that of his vice president and successor president George H.W. Bush, including chief of staff and later secretary of state James Baker made openly antisemitic comments.
Reagan criticized and voted against Israel in the UN after it had bombed the Iraqi nuclear weapons facility, Tammuz I. Bush held up loan guarantees for Israel and pressured it not to defend itself when it was targeted by Iraqi rockets during the first Persian Gulf War.
President Bill Clinton probably had the closest relationship of any American president with an Israeli leader in his friendship Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. And yet, Clinton pressured Israel into many concessions that it was not comfortable with, during the Oslo Accord negotiations.
Additionally, the foreign leader to most frequently visit the Clinton White House was Palestinian chairman Yasser Arafat. Clinton has also admitted to interfering in Israeli elections by openly endorsing Shimon Peres in his reelection campaign against opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
President George W. Bush was very vocal in his support of Israel. He was great friends with the two Israeli prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, who served during his two terms as president. Bush also forced Israel to cut short its war against Hezbollah after only 34 days, voting against Israel at the UN.
Bush’s successor, president Barack Obama, funded the lifesaving Iron Dome project and, until his last month in office, had a perfect voting record at the United Nations in support of Israel. At the same time, the record of contentiousness between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu is well-known and doesn’t need delineation.
I’ll refrain from writing about presidents Trump and Biden and their relationship with Israel to avoid participating in this combative election. Both boast of their love of Israel and arguments can be made for the health of the US-Israel relationship under both their tenures.
Biden administration's recent approach
Now, President Joe Biden’s abstention on the UN resolution calling for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages has some voices claiming that the end of the US-Israel relationship is imminent.
DURING A week in which America has recommitted to providing over $4 billion in military aid to Israel when further restrictions have been placed on US funding for Palestinians, UNRWA funding has been cut off until past 2025, and the American defense secretary is hosting the Israeli defense minister in Washington – and in light of the historical see-saw US-Israel relationship – concern that the two nations are breaking apart is premature.
The strength of the US-Israel relationship extends past the two nations’ joint enemies, strategic objectives, military, intelligence, and technology partnerships.
The primary reason that the US-Israel relationship always recovers past its challenging and contentious disputes is because as democracies built on the ideals outlined in the Bible, the two nations share values. No matter the leaders and events at any given time, the shared values of the US and Israel ensure their continued partnership.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world and recently published a new book, Zionism Today.