Relationship troubles: Gaza war latest test of US-Israel bond

WILLIAM NOAH GLUCROFT

In hyperpartisan Washington, DC, there has long been one policy point that Democrats and Republicans could agree on: the sacrosanctity of the US-Israeli relationship. Power has oscillated between the two parties over the decades, but commitment to Israel has not. Leaders from both parties have stuck to the refrain that Israel has no closer ally than the United States and that the country’s security is non-negotiable. Since 1948, Israel has received nearly $300 billion in assistance from the United States, most of that for military means, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s about double the aid to the second-highest recipient, Egypt, which has a population of 111 million people compared with Israel’s 9.5 million. “This is an incredible relationship,” Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser who now teaches at Columbia, New York and Tel Aviv universities, told DW. “It doesn’t have many precedents.”

“Shared values,” strategic interests and a strong lobby that keeps Israel in Washington’s good graces are the “pillars” of the relationship, Freilich said. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), for example, is one of the most effective lobby groups in the US capital, advocating strong ties no matter the political season. After the US faced criticism for not doing enough to save Jews in Europe from the Holocaust, it was swift to recognise the state of Israel when leaders of the Zionist movement declared independence in May 1948. Since then, Israel has promoted itself as a like-minded liberal democracy that projects US interests in a region not always friendly to them.

“In the old days, Israel was considered to be a pure liability,” Freilich said, because regional conflict with Israel’s Soviet-leaning Arab neighbors during the Cold War risked escalation between the nuclear superpowers. “Since the ‘90s, it came to be viewed as a strategic asset by the Pentagon.” With the USSR gone, Israel became a way for the US to keep lesser adversaries, such as Iran and its non-state proxies, in check. That commitment triggered the “closest strategic cooperation in US-Israeli history,” Freilich said.

In response to the Hamas terror attack on October 7, the United States rushed weapons to Israel, sent carrier battle groups to the region and vetoed ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council.

“Biden responded I think absolutely magnificently from Israel’s perspective,” Freilich said. The US president set aside disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the interest of Israeli defense. Over nearly six months Israel’s campaign has killed more than 33,000 people in Gaza, prompting global condemnation. Now, the Biden administration speaks of not conflating “the Israeli government with the Israeli people,” as Vice President Kamala Harris recently told the US broadcaster CBS.

“That’s what you say about banana republics,” Freilich said, concerned by the change in tone. “If Netanyahu doesn’t change his approach very soon, if there isn’t a new government very soon, it will have a lasting impact.” For some observers of the US-Israeli relationship, soon is not soon enough. “This has been an agonisingly slow process by which the United States has been moving from green light to yellow lights and now orange lights,” Ian Lustick, an Israel specialist and political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told DW.