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autoreply@economist.com</a>><br>Date: Aug 8, 2006 12:53 PM<br>Subject: An article for you from Michel Rbeiz.<br>To: <a href="mailto:mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu">mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu</a><br><br></span><br>- AN ARTICLE FOR YOU, FROM
<a href="http://ECONOMIST.COM">ECONOMIST.COM</a> -<br><br>Dear Michel Rbeiz,<br><br>Michel Rbeiz (<a href="mailto:mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu">mrbeiz@alum.mit.edu</a>) wants you to see this article on <a href="http://Economist.com">
Economist.com</a>.<br><br><br><br>(Note: the sender's e-mail address above has not been verified.)<br><br>Subscribe to The Economist print edition, get great savings and FREE full access to <a href="http://Economist.com">
Economist.com</a>. Click here to subscribe: <a href="http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/email.cfm">http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/email.cfm</a><br><br>Alternatively subscribe to online only version by clicking on the link below and save 25%:
<br><br><a href="http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT">http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT</a><br><br><br><br>TO ISRAEL WITH LOVE<br>Aug 3rd 2006<br><br>Why America gives Israel its unconditional support
<br><br>ANYBODY who doubts the size of the transatlantic divide over Israel<br>should try discussing the Middle East conflagration in Britain and then<br>doing the same in America. Everybody watches much the same grisly<br>
footage. But, by and large, people draw very different conclusions. The<br>emphasis in Britain is overwhelmingly on the disproportionate scale of<br>the response. Americans are much more inclined to give Israel the<br>benefit of the doubt--and to blame Hizbullah. Some Jewish organisations
<br>are so confident of support for Israel that they even take out slots<br>during news programmes, pleading for donations.<br><br>Opinion polls confirm that Americans are solidly on Israel's side. A<br>USA TODAY/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th showed that eight in
<br>ten Americans believed that Israel's action was justified--though a<br>majority were worried about the scale of the action. A plurality (44%)<br>thought that America was doing "about the right amount" to deal with
<br>the conflict. An earlier USA TODAY poll found that 53% put "a great<br>deal" of the blame for the current crisis on Hizbullah, 39% put the<br>blame on Iran and only 15% blamed Israel.<br><br>Similarly, Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with
<br>Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes<br>survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said<br>that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic<br>towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9%
<br>sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians.<br><br>The political establishment is even more firmly behind Israel than the<br>public is. Support for Israel stretches from San Francisco liberals<br>like Nancy Pelosi to southern-fried conservatives like Bill Frist. The
<br>House and Senate have both passed bipartisan resolutions condemning<br>Hizbullah and affirming Congress's support for Israel. The House<br>version passed by 410 to 8 (of which three were from districts in<br>Michigan with concentrations of Arab-Americans). The Senate resolution,
<br>sponsored by 62 senators--including the leaders of both parties--passed<br>unopposed.<br><br>Indeed, the parties are engaged in a competition to see who can be the<br>most pro-Israeli. Twenty or so Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, the
<br>House leader, and Harry Reid, the Senate leader, demanded that Iraq's<br>prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, retract his criticisms of Israel or<br>have his invitation to address Congress cancelled. (Mr Maliki, strongly<br>
backed by the administration, was eventually allowed to go ahead.)<br>Several leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have addressed<br>pro-Israeli rallies. The contrast with the simmering rage within the<br>Labour Party over Tony Blair's support for George Bush could hardly be
<br>more marked.<br><br>Pro-Israeli forces command the intellectual high ground as well as the<br>corridors of power. Commentators such as Charles Krauthammer issue<br>column after column ridiculing the notion of proportionality and
<br>stressing Hizbullah's responsibility for civilian casualties. Most<br>middle-of-the-road commentators question the effectiveness, rather than<br>the morality, of Israel's actions. Out-and-out critics of Israel are<br>
relegated to the sidelines.<br><br> Why is America so much more pro-Israeli than Europe? The most obvious<br>answer lies in the power of two very visible political forces: the<br>Israeli lobby (AIPAC) and the religious right. AIPAC, which has an
<br>annual budget of almost $50m, a staff of 200, 100,000 grassroots<br>members and a decades-long history of wielding influence, is arguably<br>the most powerful lobby in Washington, mightier even than the National<br>Rifle Association.
<br><br>"Thank God we have AIPAC, the greatest supporter and friend we have in<br>the whole world," says Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister. The lobby,<br>which is the centrepiece of a co-ordinated body that includes pressure
<br>groups, think-tanks and fund-raising operations, produces voting<br>statistics on congressmen that are carefully scrutinised by political<br>donors. It also organises regular trips to Israel for congressmen and<br>their staffs. (The WASHINGTON POST reports that Roy Blunt, the House
<br>majority whip, has been on four.)<br><br>The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals<br>are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than<br>half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the
<br>Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their<br>religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given<br>to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of
<br>the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming.<br><br>Religious-right activists are trying to convert this latent sympathy<br>into political support. John Hagee, a Texas televangelist who believes<br>that supporting Israel is a "biblical imperative", recently founded
<br>Christians United for Israel. Last month he brought 3,500 people from<br>across the country to Washington to cheer Israel's war against<br>Hizbullah. Mr Hagee's brigades held numerous meetings on Capitol Hill;<br>both Mr Bush and Mr Olmert sent messages to his rally.
<br><br>These pressure groups are clearly influential. Evangelical Christians<br>make up about a quarter of the American electorate and are the bedrock<br>of Mr Bush's support. Congressmen take on AIPAC at their peril. But
<br>they deal with well-heeled lobbies every day. And the power of the<br>religious right can hardly explain why Democrats are so keen on Israel.<br>Two other factors need to be considered: the war on Islamic radicalism,<br>
and deep cultural affinities between America and Israel.<br><br>SEEING THEMSELVES IN ISRAEL<br>Americans instinctively see events in the Middle East through the prism<br>of September 11th 2001. They look at Hizbullah and Hamas with their
<br>Islamist slogans and masked faces and see the people who attacked<br>America--and they look at Israeli citizens and see themselves. In<br>America the "war on terror" is a fact of life, constantly reiterated.
<br>The sense that America is linked with Israel in a war against Islamist<br>extremism is reinforced by Iranian statements about wiping Israel off<br>the surface of the earth, and by the political advance of the Islamists
<br>of Hamas in Palestine.<br><br>But the biggest reason why Americans are so pro-Israel may be cultural.<br>Americans see Israel as a plucky democracy in a sea of autocracies--a<br>democracy that has every right to use force to defend itself.
<br>Europeans, on the other hand, see Israel as a reminder of the atavistic<br>forces--from nationalism to militarism--that it has spent the post-war<br>years trying to grow beyond.<br><br>Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use
<br>of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found<br>42% of Americans strongly agreeing that "under some conditions, war is<br>necessary to obtain justice" compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew
<br>survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe<br>in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were<br>far lower.<br><br>Yet all this unquestioning support does not mean that America will give
<br>Israel absolute CARTE BLANCHE to do whatever it wills. Condoleezza<br>Rice, the secretary of state, was visibly shaken after the tragedy in<br>Qana where at least 28 civilians, half of them children, were killed by<br>
Israeli bombs. There are growing worries both about Israel's conduct of<br>the war and its wider impact on the Middle East. Many of these<br>anxieties are expressed by the "realist faction". Chuck Hagel, a<br>Republican maverick, has given warning that America's relationship with
<br>Israel "cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships".<br>Richard Haass, a State Department official under George Bush senior who<br>now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, has laughed publicly at the
<br>president's "birth of a new Middle East" optimism about the crisis.<br>Some of the worries extend to conservatives. Tony Blankley, a former<br>press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a fire-breathing columnist for
<br>the WASHINGTON TIMES, says that "We ignore world opinion at our peril."<br><br>A few cracks are starting to appear. But they are still insignificant<br>in the mighty edifice of support.<br><br><br>See this article with graphics and related items at
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