In Israel America is Still That Gleaming Land of Greatness

 

The statements in this article are formed from the Israelis I have met and is hopefully something which continues to hold truthful as my experiences broaden. The vast majority of Israelis, particularly young Israelis, have an idealized view of the United States. They believe that in the United States opportunities exist like nowhere else on Earth. They see the United States as being capable of achieving just about anything they decide to put the efforts towards. This is not to say that they approve of everything the United States does or does not do that concerns the Israelis. Despite their love affair with the United States, that love affair sours rather rapidly when one takes stock in how Israeli feel about the United States governance. There many Israelis have more difficulty understanding as they see the United States as capable of doing unbelievable good if only the government would allow the people to take care of things themselves. You see, where one’s initial observation would be that the average Israeli has a view of the United States which is unrealistic, as you delve deeper you realize that they are not seeing the United States as perfect or they believe that things in the United States are perfect. What one sees is that the average Israeli loves Americans and their forms of governance and have just as jaundiced a view of the government as the most conservative Tea Party individual. Rumor says that this belief does not extend to much of one large city where their views match closer to Boston, New York, Los Angeles or most other large cities in the United States. Thus far I have avoided visiting this one city as I like the idealized view of the United States, well, more so the views of the average American citizen.

 

This view of America, as that is the real love, is that ideal America that went to the moon in less than a decade after deciding they were to meet that challenge. They love the concepts of full equality of opportunity and the spirit which made America great and is still there as a creative spark which is inside every human being but stifled more everywhere else outside America. The America most Israelis have experienced has been through the eyes of those who have visited the United States and seen the great potential which exists in the United States and these people have not stayed in the United States sufficiently long enough for the bad shortcomings to become just as easily witnessed thus bringing even the most devoted Israeli to see that there are places where the United States falls well short of the mark. Ask the average Israeli what they think of the United States and you get the feeling they believe that America can do no wrong. Dig a little deeper and you see a people whose idealized view is of the average American and their can do attitude becomes more of a could have been attitude which is more in line with reality.

 

One looks a little deeper and one begins to understand where the average Israeli gets their views on the United States and things begin to make sense. The average Israeli forms their views of the United States on the relatively small number of Americans they meet. Here in Israel most of the people get a small sample size and have only met Americans who have afforded not only trips to Israel but many have also an apartment that they own and plan on retiring and living in said apartment, so obviously the Americans they have met are the more wealthy and additionally their sampling consists solely of American Jews who are also Zionist and tend to be more conservative. Many of these Americans have completed college and are by and large physicians with many also being surgeons. So, their sample size is rather small and more indicative of the wealthier Americans and often include other than those in the medical fields, Americans who have some form of engineering or other scientific degrees and again often post graduate work with many having gotten their doctoral degree. So, again their sampling is skewed to successful Zionists which mean that they have again met mostly conservative people who have often also formed their own companies and many also hold a MBA degree to go along with their doctoral degree. To point out these are highly motivated people who would have succeeded in almost every nation in the Western world would be an understatement. If one speaks with the Americans who reside now in Israel after holding a successful career in the United States, many also fulfilled their required service in Israel as well. The sample size keeps being refined down to a very motivated and brilliant people who are driven and who meet very high criteria in education and accomplishments to their credit. These people tend to be conservative but still often voted as a good social liberal though they often had a very simple and basic filter which was dependent on one issue. Would their preferred candidate support Israel with almost a blind zeal bordering on fanaticism.

 

If one would make a list answering the question, ‘What is right about America?’ you would probably get a definition of the attitude of many of the Americans one meets in Israel. Giving even more validity to the assessment of the average American Jew who at some point after quite an impressive career decided to live in Israel and sufficient numbers of these people also gave half of their career time to working in Israel, there is an overwhelming number of the American Jews residing or regularly visiting Israel that have a less than admirable view of the current holder of the White House. As many of these people have what is called dual citizenship and are eligible to vote in the State they last resided in and do cast absentee ballots, their choices are easily researched and the story is quite telling; where in the United States President Obama won over seventy percent of the Jewish vote in both of his election victories, the Israeli Americans voted in the opposite direction with the 2008 votes exceeded three-quarters voting against President Obama and in 2012 an even higher percentage voted against his return to the White House. The consensus amongst the Americans here was obviously that President Obama was bad for Israel and the overt actions during the last Gaza war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They viewed President Obama directly for the closing off of Ben Gurion International Airport due to the terror threat which could have resulted in downed aircraft, something the United States had not done in Syria during the five year war continuing to rage nor have done in Lebanon, Libya or any of the nations struck by violence as a result of the Arab Spring turned into an Arab Winter despite some of the most vicious threats to flights in or out of their countries. In some of these cases the airlines themselves refused to provide service to these nations. Then there was the channeling the resupply of arms which the United States was obliged to automatically approve with the military itself charged with authorizing and supplying replacements keeping Israel provided with the means for her defense through the State Department with their withholding approval until Israel had presumably buckled to the demand to cease their hostilities in Gaza and returned control of Gaza to its ‘duly elected government’ which is the same as saying Hamas as it is their people who rule in Gaza. The White House was fully aware of this situation and the obligation of the United States which they modified so as to make their obligation into a wanted dead or dead poster on Israel, and that is not a Freudian slip, dead or dead was exactly what the White House was aiming to produce by withholding the resupply which was an agreement included in a defense treaty making it the law to make such resupply in a timely manner.

 

 

Israel and America Stronger Together Enforcing Similar Ethos

 

 

This treaty was entered into for the Nixon Administration doing exactly the same withholding of the resupply to force Israel to comply with their demands that they simply cease fighting in defense against the invading forces of Syria and Egypt during the Yom Kippur War which caught Israel at her most vulnerable time with three-quarters of her military personnel in synagogues across Israel and not carrying any electronics and thus forcing the IDF to send personnel to as many Synagogues as possible and to send vehicles announcing the emergency call-up using loudspeakers and driving through one city after another. This withholding of resupply was advised by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a Jew but apparently only by birth. The reasoning Secretary Kissinger gave for refusing to meet the Israeli request for resupply was that by refusing to send the arms Israel would be more vulnerable and thus far more easily forced to meet the demands which the State Department was pushing for President Nixon to demand of the Israelis. Fortunately the resupply was held a dangerous two to three days and Israel had begun to run low on some vital armaments which would have threatened their ability to defend their country had resupply not reached them in time. This was the reason a treaty was signed by the Nixon Administration after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the agreement. If one has seen a potential viewpoint against all things Israel coming from the State Department, please allow us to also point out that the State Department very strenuously objected to the decision by President Truman to recognize Israel as a new nation in May of 1948, May 15th to be exact. The State Department has been more stridently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist from their objection to the aims of forming the British Mandate in order to form a homeland for the Jews after World War I as part of the San Remo Conference which set up the French and British Mandates.

 

Fortunately most young Israelis know very little about the dastardly designs of the State Department which by their actions have proven to desire the death of the Jewish State by any and all means available. Fortunate for Israel that this is beyond the ability for the State Department to pull-off but they will apparently continue to try. The love affair which Israelis appear to have with the United States is actually more with America and the American People and independent of the government of the United States. What makes this all the more rewarding a relationship is the fact that large majorities of Americans love the Israelis as well, as has been proven in poll after poll. This is likely due to a love of freedom and a shared morality in many ways. The Israeli government often appears to take their cues from the Constitution of the United States or at least the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments required by a number of the signatory states as a condition for their signing onto the Constitution. That is most likely the glue holding these two peoples in mutual support and admiration and it would be wonderful if their relationship continues and those values prove to be the perfect glue which both societies use as their moral guide throughout their histories. It would be quite sad should they not remain as the constant rock mooring both ships of state.

 

Beyond the Cusp