The United States and Israel have enjoyed a lasting relationship. However, this relationship is also one of the most controversial: a pairing that is often seen by several countries (mostly non -Western) as the source of destabilization, especially in the Middle East.
The United States provides Israel with billions of dollars in sophisticated military teams and plays a main role in the United Nations to deny any effort to call Israel as an aggressor. Unquestionively dedicates the Israel line that is a victim in most cases and not in the perpetrator.
However, for some analysts, US relations seem to have gone beyond pragmatism that generally shapes relations between states-nation. These analysts insist that “blind support” that Israel obtains from the United States is due to certain economic and strategic compulsions that do not come only in the field of pragmatism.
In January 1982, The Washington Post He informed that “Israeli intelligence agencies have blackmailed, annoying, heard and offered bribes to US government employees in an effort to obtain sensitive intelligence and technical information.”
Then there are those who often take a more ‘Maniquea’ route to understand relations between the United States and Israel. Come to the West and Israel as a dark ‘Judeo -Christian’ link that works to extinguish the light of Islam. Of course, such a Manichaean way of thought arises from a conspiracy mentality that sees complex problems through the lens of myth and fantasy.
Although it is often presented as a long -standing alliance forged by shared values, relations between the United States and Israel are, in fact, a pragmatic marriage and policy -based, a marriage that is now striving for the growing international criticisms and national doubts in the United States in the United States
The United States was not always a great defender of Israel as it is today. US President Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) sympathized with Zionism but, according to American law professor John N. Moore, Wilson was not willing to go beyond providing anything more than just lip service. The president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) was not even willing to provide any lip service. In fact, according to the American political scientist Dr. Robert Freedman, Roosevelt opposed the creation of a Zionist State in Palestine.
This was due to the fact that, in the 1930s, Roosevelt had reached a relationship with the newly created (and oil) kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ensuring oil sources was much more important for the United States than defending the cause of Zionism. Freedman cited a nearby assistant from President Roosevelt saying that Israel would not have been created if Roosevelt had not died in 1945.
However, the United States under President Harry S. Truman (1945-53) became one of the first countries to recognize Israel when it emerged in 1948. This, despite the fact that Truman was advised not to do so by his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. However, Truman imposed an embargo on weapons to Israel during the Arab-Israel War of 1948.
The American attitude towards Israel during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) was largely warm. According to Freedman, in the 1950s, Israel received most of its military supplies in France, not from the United States. President Eisenhower wanted to dissuade the Arab countries to join the ‘Soviet/communist block’ and to achieve this he kept Israel along one arm.
In 1956, the Arab nationalist regime in Egypt, headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez channel and British economic interests in the country. In response, Israel, the British and French forces invaded Egypt. Eisenhower was livid. He immediately asked Great Britain, France and Israel to withdraw their troops or face sanctions. They retired.
It was not until 1962, during the presidency of John F. Kennedy (1961-63), that the United States began selling some weapons to Israel, despite the fact that Kennedy also remained somewhat cautious with the Zionist state, because the Arab-rich allies rich in the United States were anti-communists but also Anti-Israel. However, according to political scientist Vaughn P. Shannon, it was during Kennedy’s presidency that the United States began to imagine Israel as a possible ally of the United States that could be used against the propagation of Soviet influence in the Middle East.
In 1967, the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to restrict Israel to attack Egypt. But Israel continued and defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in six days. Egypt and Syria were being supported by the Soviet Union. This is when the United States began to see Israel as a strong actor in the Middle East and a “special ally.”
In the 1973 War of Egypt-Israel, when the Egyptian forces managed to win some important battles, Israel asked the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, to provide additional weapons. Fearing that an Egyptian victory would increase Soviet influence in the region, agreed. The war ended at a dead point. The United States was able to convince Egypt to accept the existence of Israel and sign a peace agreement. Egypt slipped into the American orbit.
The political, financial and military support of the United States for Israel became a collector of the 1980s and both worked to eliminate antiisraeli/anti -us regimes in Libya, Iran, Syria and Iraq, and also the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Sometimes, extreme right -wing Islamist groups facilitated this.
However, on certain occasions, the United States also stopped the sale of weapons to Israel: in 1981, when Israel attacked Iraq, and in 1982, when militias backed by Israel, using US weapons, massacred hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.
In the 1990s, for the disgust of the extreme right Zionists, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, managed to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. However, after the attacks of September 11, American aid to Israel increased. During the presidency of Barack Obama (2008-2015), the relations between the United States and Israel began to slide when Obama tried to prevent the Israeli of the extreme right from being established in the lands taken from the Palestinians.
The relations between the United States and Israel were revitalized by the first presidency of Donald Trump, and then during the mandate of Joe Biden as president. The United States sees Israel as a key player in the maintenance of ‘stability’ in the Middle East, particularly in counteracting the threats of countries such as Iran and groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Two of the most powerful Pro-Israel lobbies in the United States, the Public Affairs Committee of American Israel (AIPAC) and the United Christians for Israel, have a significant influence on the policy of the United States.
But recently, the “unilateral” and indiscriminate actions of Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah and will go through the brute force have put the United States in a waiting position and see. Israel is in total to eliminate these “enemies”, but public opinion is becoming more critical with Israel. In a Gallup survey conducted in March 2025, only 46 percent of Americans expressed their support for Israel.
Israeli actions have been deranged and they are likely to leave the Middle East more unstable than ever. The United States in the second term of Trump seems insecure of how to deal with a deranged couple who claims to have a large part of the US economy in their pocket. Relations between the United States and Israel could be in a restart, depending on the consequences of the recent actions of Israel.
Posted in Dawn, EOS, June 22, 2025
