Then-Vice President Joe Biden gestures during a speech at Israel's Tel Aviv university, 3/11/10. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Three weeks into the new administration, President Joe Biden has made calls to the leaders of Canada, Britain, France and Japan. But one important ally has been left off the list: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a new essay for Mosaic Magazine, Mike Doran argues that America's domestic politics, rather than on-the-ground reality, shape the nation's relationship with Israel.  From the Obama administration's Iran-courting policies to the Trump administration's embassy-moving maneuvers, America's foreign policy establishment has always viewed Israel through two lenses: as a strategic asset or a liability. See below for key takeaways from Mike's essay, "Saving Israel in Spite of Herself."

Also be sure to listen to Hudson's new podcast series, Making a Killing, which explores how corruption is reshaping global politics and fueling some of the most deadly security threats facing the world today, from terrorist networks and organized crime to nuclear proliferation.

Key Takeaways

Key quotes from Mike Doran's essay for Mosaic Magazine, "Saving Israel in Spite of Herself."

1. American positions on Israel are often about anything but Israel:

Among the American elite today, furrowing one’s brow regarding Israeli policies is akin to worrying about climate change. It certainly can be a way of announcing to yourself and the world that you are a progressive, but such a gesture also serves as a signal of a cultural rather than a political affiliation. It is akin to choosing an organic pinot noir over a can of Bud Light…

When Americans take a position on Israel, they are not simply talking about Israel—or even about America’s national security. They are also talking about America’s moral character. In short, they are engaging in an internecine fight among Americans about themselves. As a result, the realities on the ground in the Middle East are often an afterthought. And Israeli analysts who try to map elite American attitudes regarding Israel onto a theory of conflict resolution become like soccer commentators calling an American football game.

2. U.S.-Israeli policy is often shaped for domestic American audiences:

Instead of evaluating the peace processors’ ideas as strategies to deliver peace, we should look at them as performances before domestic American political audiences. Republican presidents expect their foreign-policy advisors to devise diplomatic strategies that can be defended before conservative constituents who are steeped in a philo-Semitic and even Christian Zionist environment; likewise, Democratic presidents expect their foreign policy advisors to devise diplomatic strategies that can be defended before progressive constituents steeped in a “No Justice, No Peace” environment.

3. Two perspectives dominate American thinking on U.S.-Israel policy:

Since the days of President Truman, presidents and their advisors have fallen into two schools: those who regard Israel either as a strategic asset or as a liability. For the former, the Arab-Israeli conflict is but one problem among many in the Middle East, and not necessarily the most important one. Solving it would be a good thing to do, but it’s not crucial to America’s strategic interests in the region. For the latter group, the conflict is an urgent priority, perhaps the top priority in the Middle East. Solving it will improve the position of the United States, not just in the region but throughout the Muslim world.

4. The gap in public opinion on Israel rivals the parting of the Red Sea:

Israel sits on a fault line in American politics. Among Republicans support for Israel has soared in the past three decades. According to Pew polling, 79% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats. That’s a very large gap, fifty-two points. Moreover, the further left you go in the Democratic Party the less sympathetic to Israel you are. Among Democrats who self-identify as moderate or conservative, 35% are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians; among liberal Democrats, however, only 19% are more sympathetic to Israel.

5. Different schools of Christian thought remain a major influence on American attitudes towards Israel:

Protestant modernism has deeply influenced America’s elite culture—its elite secular culture. The fact that Fox News is a bastion of pro-Israel sentiment and America’s universities are temples devoted to Israel criticism is not a coincidence of the current political moment. Zionism sits today not just on the left-right divide in American politics, but on a deeper, theological fault line in American culture. It straddles the divide between the educated elite and those whom the elite regard as the unwashed masses...

The American missionaries serving in the Middle East transmitted to the Protestant modernists back home a highly detailed understanding of America’s place in the world—a prepackaged foreign policy….In the eyes of the missionaries, Zionism was responsible both for generating hostility to the missionary project and for damaging the national interest—two indistinguishable values in their minds.

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

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