U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Israel
MVZ244
Dr. Aaron T. Walter

Course Overview
●Examine the continuity and change of U.S. foreign relations with Israel
●tight bonds with inherent tension
●Examine key milestones in the relationship of the two nations
●Impact of U.S. presidential decision making on foreign policy
●Impact of foreign policy crisis on relationship with Israel

Course Objectives
●Explore major themes, historical events, and personalities in U.S.-Israeli relations
●before 1948
●after 1948
●Discuss the nature of America’s ‘special’ and ‘strategic’ relationship with Israel
●Role, if any, of lobbies
●Familiarity of key players and issues and complexities of U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle
East
●Provide critical thinking tools necessary to examine with a critical eye the day-to-day happenings
in Israel, the broader Middle East, and America’s relationship within.

Structure of Class
●Overview of topic
●Case study on key episode(s) of U.S.-Israeli relations
●Review and commentary
●Discussion on contemporary aspects, as necessary
●This is NOT a class on the Arab-Israeli conflict
●This is NOT a class on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process

Expectations
●Arrive prepared and ready to participate
●weekly readings
●awake
●not preoccupied
●this is a 90 minute class
●split into two 45min. sections (think football)
●Ask questions
●Respect for classmates and instructor

Exam Schedule
●Midterm Exam
●first 5 weeks (Week 6)
●Final paper upload to IS (Week 12)
●Analysis of case study
●choice of topic by email (Week 2)
●list of topics provided (Week 1)

Grading
●15 % classroom participation
●20 % midterm exam
●65 % final paper

Readings
Stay current with relevant online news
Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com
Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com
Wall Street Journal: http://www.wsj.com
Fathom: http://fathomjournal.org
Tablet: http://tabletmag.com

What is Foreign Policy
●Self-interest strategies
●trade
●national security
●common or shared “values”
●Strategically employed to interact with other countries

Theories
●Realist
●Hans Morganthau
●Realism in International Politics
●Political realism. Realism that is objective. Rational.
●Politics Amongst Nations: Struggle for Power and Peace (1985)
●Neorealist
●Waltz, Theory of International Politics (1978)
●Power is most important in International politics

Theories Cont.
●Neoclassical
●Classical realist and neorealist plus defensive realist theories.
●mistrust and perception leads to underexpansion or underbalancing behavior = imbalances within the
international system
●Rose  World Politics (1998)
●Constructivist
●significant aspects of IR are historically and socially constructed, rather than inevitable
consequences of human nature or other essential characteristics of world politics
●Wendt (2004), Ruggie

President Wilson Legacy
●Wilsonian Idealism
●Roosevltian (TR) realism
●Marriage of domestic policy to foreign policy that enables liberal internationalism
●element in the never-ending debate between International Relations theory and practice: the
ideological tug-of-war between the Wilsonian and Rooseveltian worldview. liberal internationalism’s
“multilaterist” element of Wilsonianism and the “democratization” element, a euphemism for American
primacy.
●A difficult question is raised: what happens if the liberal internationalism and the concept of
assertive multilateralism slide into liberal imperialism?

Who Creates Foriegn Policy?
●The President
●The Cabinet
●Congress
●Bureaucracy
●Interest Groups
●The Media

Case Study:
The creation of Foreign Policy towards Israel


U.S. as Superpower
●From 1946-1948 rapidly changing geopolitical circumstances
●US policy in the Middle East was focused on supporting Arab states' independence; aiding the
development of oil-producing countries; preventing Soviet influence from Greece, Turkey and Iran;
●Also, attempts were made to prevent an arms race and maintaining a neutral stance in the infant
Arab-Israeli conflict.

Genesis + Crucible
●U.S. relationship with Israel was genesis of national interests in the Middle East both of
military and cultural value
●It was also a crucible for U.S. President Harry Truman and early post-WWII foreign policy.

Genesis
●President Truman had conflicted attitudes toward establishment of the State of Israel.
●ethical paradoxes
●moral ambiguities
●deeply flawed region

Genesis
●The Mandate was a recognition that the number of stateless and endangered Jews in the world at
that time far exceeded the number of Arabs living in the backwater of a defeated Ottoman Empire.
●Also, The Mandate indicated belief that self-determination for the Jewish people was not possible
without a Jewish state.
●Truman when he became president had extensive experience in Midwestern machine politics, but was a
relative neophyte in the realm of foreign policy.
●He had been largely excluded the circles of power as Roosevelt’s vice president; had to work
against a tremendous information deficit

Crucible
●Before 1948, sentiment as well as policy was aligned with Arabist mentality
●anti-Zionist U.S. State Department
●The ‘Arabists’ exerted considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats within
the State Department. But over time, group became insular and headstrong and showing a marked
tendency to assert the Arab point of view. Nevertheless this Arabist elite, demonstrated their
profound influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East.

Crucible
●Pre-1948 existed the “prevailing standards of self-determination” that led to the 1922 League of
Nations Mandate, which formally recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Palestine” and endorsed their “reconstituting their national home” in that land.
●offered legitimacy to the Balfour Declaration
●infuriated the Arabs and Arabists (Orientalist's)
●CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by the agency’s three most influential—and
colorful—officers in the Middle East. Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt
and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle
East scholar and chief of the Beirut station and Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations
specialist.

Crucible
●The U.S. has been the principle power outside the region since the end of WWII
●Therefore any efforts in the Middle East imposed by outside powers and then enforced until both
Jews and Arabs agreed to abide by it.
●British Mandate principle and policy
●The two peoples’ national aims were irreconcilable.
●British gave UN the “problem” of Jews and Arabs
●Anglo-American Morrison-Grady plan,
●a federated Palestine with autonomous Jewish and Arab provinces

Origins to U.S. policy
●By 1946 (first full year of Truman’s presidency), thousands of Jewish refugees were stranded,
caught between an unwillingness to remain in Europe, and displaced otherwise.
●Wish to join fellow Jews in British-Mandate Palestine.
●To Palestine’s Arab population these Jews represented an enormous threat to their own desire for
self-determination.
●A huge new influx of Jewish refugees from Europe endangered both their majority and their land.
●“There was probably never a time after December 1917” — in the wake of the Balfour Declaration
supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine — “that the Jews and Arabs in Palestine could have agreed
on their own to share or divide the country,”
●-‘Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict,’ by John B. Judis
(2014)

Christian Zionism
●Allis and Ronald Radosh in their 2009 book, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of
Israel offers a most complete blow-by-blow account of what happened in Truman’s recognition of
Israel
●Key to Radosh is Truman’s Christian Zionism
●coincidentally this is offered as evidence as to earlier support from British Foreign Minister
Balfour to U.S. President Wilson.
●Verbal and archival evidence indicates that Truman often quoted Deuteronomy (“Go in and take
possession of the land to which the Lord has sworn unto your fathers”)
●Alfred Lilienthal, a State Department Arabist, said Truman “was a Biblical fundamentalist who
constantly pointed” to those words;
●Truman and his chief White House aide, Clark Clifford, exchanged biblical passages on the
boundaries of Israel; and
●Six months after recognizing Israel, Truman wrote Chaim Weizmann that “[w]hat you have received at
the hands of the world has been far less than was your due.”

Truman’s Crucible
●Relationship with the burgeoning Zionist lobby was strained.
●Truman exhibited a casual anti-Semitism that was certainly not out of place in his day, but also
counted Jews among his close friends and advisers.
●He felt put-upon by Zionist groups clamoring for his administration’s support and comes across as
whiny — the “one constant in his reproaches were the ‘emotional Jews’ of the United States,’
●Truman was also aware of the political risks of taking sides.
●On the one hand, to support Israel might be to involve the United States in a new world conflict
after having just emerged from World War II.
●On the other, domestic political pressure mitigated strongly against remaining neutral.
●“I’m sorry, gentlemen,’’ the president said, “but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who
are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my
constituents.”
●-‘Genesis,’ by John B. Judis (2014)

Pre-1948 Statehood
●Zionist and Palestinian were often unreconcilable during the pre-1948 statehood.
●Important to acknowledge the political realities behind American decision-making that often
disregarded Palestinian needs.
●Due to the Balfour Declaration, “The British and the Zionists had conspired to screw the Arabs out
of a country that by the prevailing standards of self-determination should have been theirs.”
(Genesis, p.251)
●view of Arabists in U.S. State Department
●view of T.E. Lawrence (British military commander, author)
●arguably the revisionist view of some contemporary historians and authors
●However, contemporary policy decisions override past events.

Bi-nationalism
●Binationalism, the Zionist movement associated with Judah Magnes, Martin Buber, and Henrietta
Szold: support a Jewish presence but recognized Arab rights in British Mandate Palestine.
●Important to note that Zionist binationalism, never a potent force.
●When discussing the period 1947–48,  a revised partition plan would have given Palestinians more
territory than allotted by the 1947 United Nations (UN) plan.
●Although various Arab League countries and some Palestinian leaders were willing to entertain such
ideas, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husayni’s influence still prevailed among Palestinians, and Arab
leaders mistrusted each other’s intentions; thus they rejected any compromise.

Bi-nationalism cont.
●Also of importance is to recognize the differences between liberal Zionism, as embodied by Justice
Brandeis and Rabbi Stephen Wise, and militant American Zionism, with each varying approaches to the
American public and politicians.
●Important to note: neither camp considered the Palestinians as having any rights; Palestinians
were equivalent to American Indians, inferior peoples whose concerns were minimal when compared to
those of whites.
●This is an indictment of American liberal Zionists, a double standard, where concern for the less
fortunate could apply in Western countries but not to non-Westerners.

Partition + Independence
●Britain and the United States, in a joint effort to examine the dilemma, established the
"Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry."
●In April 1946, the committee submitted ten recommendations covering topics such as "The European
Problem," "Refugee Immigration Into Palestine," "Principals of Government," "United Nations
Trusteeship," "Equality of Standards," "Land Policy," "Economic Development," "Education," and "The
Need for Peace in Palestine.”

Partition + Independence
●British, Arab, and Jewish reactions to the recommendations were not favorable. Jewish terrorism in
Palestine antagonized the British, and by February 1947 Arab-Jewish communications had collapsed.
●Britain, anxious to rid itself of the problem, set the United Nations in motion, formally
requesting on April 2, 1947, that the U.N. General Assembly set up the Special Committee on
Palestine (UNSCOP).
●This committee recommended that the British mandate over Palestine be ended and that the territory
be partitioned into two

Independence
●Jewish reaction was mixed--some wanted control of all of Palestine; others realized that partition
spelled hope for their dream of a homeland. The Arabs were not at all agreeable to the UNSCOP plan.
●In October the Arab League Council directed the governments of its member states to move troops to
the Palestine border.
●President Truman instructed the State Department to support the U.N. plan, and, with protest it
did so.
●On November 29, 1947, the partition plan was passed by the U.N. General Assembly.

Independence
●At midnight on May 14, 1948, the Provisional Government of Israel proclaimed a new State of
Israel.
●On that same date, the United States, in the person of President Truman, recognized the
provisional Jewish government as de facto authority of the Jewish state (de jure recognition was
extended on January 31, 1949).
●The U.S. delegates to the U.N. and top-ranking State Department officials were angered that Truman
released his recognition statement to the press without notifying them first.
●On May 15, 1948, the first day of Israeli Independence and exactly one year after UNSCOP was
established, Arab armies invaded Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war began.

Food For Thought
●Gudrun Kramer, A History of Palestine (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002);
●Ilan Pappe, The Forgotten Palestians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011);
●Paul C. Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism, 1891–1948, (Portland: Frank Cass Publishers,
1992);
●Lawrence Davidson. “Truman the Politician and the Establishment of Israel,” Journal of Palestine
Studies XXXIX, no. 4 (Summer 2010) 29–42;
●Earl D. Huff, “A Study of a Successful Interest Group: The American Zionist Movement,” The Western
Political Quarterly 25, no. 1 (March 1972): 109–24;
●Walter Russel Mead, “The New Israel and the Old,” Foreign Affairs 87, no.4 (July 2008): 1–15
●Hugh Wilford, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle
East (Basic Books, 2013)
●Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (First Press, 1995)

Sources
●The telegram reproduced here is from decimal file 867n.01/5-1448, Records of the Department of
State, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
●The press release is from the records of Charles G. Ross, Alphabetical File, Handwriting of the
President at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO.
●The Library is part of the Presidential Libraries system of the National Archives and Records
Administration.
●Recognition of Israel. http://jcpa.org/article/president-truman’s-decision-to-recognize-israel/