Factors in Netanyahu's Warm Reception in America

This is a guest post by Wales-based historian Professor William Rubinstein:

Netanyahu's amazingly enthusiastic reception before the American Congress was one of the most remarkable demonstrations of support for anyone I have ever seen.  I doubt if George Washington, if he came back to life, would have received stormier applause or more standing ovations.

The question is why.

Surely no other foreign head of state would have received the same treatment.

Of course, one  might be cynical.  Congressmen court the Jewish vote.  But it seems unlikely that the Irish, Italian or Polish prime ministers would have received 25 or more standing ovations, although their communities' votes also count.

Netanyahu is obviously a charismatic speaker, and one who speaks English with an American accent.  Nevertheless, there appears to be something unique about contemporary Israel and today's United States.

Let me briefly suggest some factors.

First, the Holocaust sweeps everything before it, like some giant, irresistible tsunami.  For many Jews, this seems counter-intuitive, since they fear that the Holocaust will be forgotten.  During the past thirty years the exact opposite has happened.  The Holocaust has become universally internalised as the supreme example of evil in modern history, with the State of Israel widely seen as the pheonix which has risen on its ashes.  The loudest applause Netanyahu received, I believe, was when he emphasised that there would be no second Holocaust.  It is also important to realise that the Palestinians and Arabs have nothing to set against it, which is why they are so keen to depict the Palestinian nakba of 1948 as its equivalent, although this was simply a population transfer, similar to many others at the time, not an act of genocide.

Secondly, Americans, like Jews, often and regularly regard themselves as somehow chosen by God, with America seen by many of its citizens as "God's own country".  A kind of theology has arisen in recent decades among many conservative Protestants that God chose two peoples, the Jews in ancient times and the Americans in modern times, and (unlike conversionist Christianity) one built upon the other rather than displacing it.  The strength of Christian Zionism, explicit or implicit, in the United States should not be underestimated, and it is an important factor in the warmth of Netanyahu's Congressional reception.  It is probably particularly important, rightly or wrongly, in backing the Israeli claim to all of Jerusalem.

Thirdly, of course, there is militant Islam and the threat of terrorism.  There seems to be no doubt that many, perhaps most, Americans perceive Middle Eastern Muslims as primitive, violent, and above all very dangerous barbarians, and see Israel as America's proxy in the region, engaged in a common struggle.  The spontaneous demonstrations of American patriotism, in large part by young people and college students in many American cities when the announcement came through that Bin Laden had been killed, is evidence of this.

As things stand, then, Israel appears to have nothing to fear from the American government.  Whether this can last indefinitely is, of course, another matter.