We have a bond to Israel that's much stronger.

It's a moral commitment because it is a democracy, the only democracy in that area.

And under the circumstances, that is why American presidents and the American people in the future will support all out the survival of Israel.

For nearly eight decades, the American public, politicians, and president have all remained largely unified in backing Israel.

But even as public support has split sharply in recent months over concerns about its ceaseless assaults on Gaza, the U.S. government's position hasn't budged.

To the contrary, Congress has been quick to condemn and even censure members who've dared to stray from the standard script.

Israel has a right to defend itself.

Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East.

Criticizing the Jewish state is anti-Semitic.

So I wanted to find out, how did these talking points get so firmly cemented in the first place?

What do our politicians stand to lose for going off message?

And what does the U.S. stand to gain by maintaining its bipartisan, lockstep support for the tiny country with enormous baggage?

This is why Congress is obsessed with Israel.

Roll the intro.

From Jerusalem, the city of prophecy and universal inspiration,

I bring you the traditional Hebrew greeting, Shalom.

We set up the Israeli government in Palestine, moved some of the Arabs out, and done things over there that never have been done in that part of the world before.

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For generations, the U.S. has been Israel's most powerful and steadfast ally.

And though this latest war with Hamas isn't the first time our government has faced public pushback regarding Israel's tactics, the recent outcry has successfully forced the administration to work a little harder at appearing to give a shit about humanitarian concerns.

In 2023, the U.S. transferred $80.9 billion of military aid to its allies and partners, the highest annual total ever, marking a nearly 56% increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, neither the State Department nor the Department of Defense has ever trained or assigned personnel to monitor how its arms transfers are used.

This lack of oversight, combined with mounting concerns about the death toll in Gaza, led Democrats in Congress to push for more accountability.

So back in February, President Biden issued National Security Memorandum 20, barring any recipient of U.S. military aid from restricting the delivery of humanitarian aid.

It also gave the State Department a May 8 deadline to report to Congress on credible and reliable written assurances that each country receiving U.S. military aid for an active conflict is using those supplies in compliance with international humanitarian law. On May 3, five days before that report was due, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow led a cohort of 86 Democratic lawmakers who signed a letter to Biden claiming that despite Israel's claims, it has indeed violated international law and obstructed U.S. aid deliveries to Gaza.

On May 7, it was announced that the administration would not make its deadline — partly over concerns that Israel's assurances of compliance couldn't be trusted.

The same week, the White House paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel, fearing they'd be used against the more than 1 million civilians sheltering in Rafah, the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza.

If they go into Rafah, Biden said, "...I'm not supplying the arms."

Though holding back that shipment caused Republicans in Congress to accuse Biden of abandoning Israel in its time of need, little has tangibly changed. The pause had no impact on a foreign aid bill signed in April that included $15 billion in Israeli military aid, as well as $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza. So to be clear, we gave the Israeli military $15 billion to continue its offensive against Gaza, and then $9 billion in humanitarian aid so Gaza can attempt to recover from the bombardments and attacks that we're also funding. Perfect. Conscience cleansed.

On May 10, Secretary of State Antony Blinken submitted the overdue NSM-20 report, which despite acknowledging numerous credible claims to the contrary, concluded that Israel had not obstructed humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Career State Department official Stacey Gilbert resigned in protest just a few weeks later.

Gilbert joined a handful of other staffers who've resigned since the war began last October, including Hala Raret, an Arabic-language spokesperson who told The Washington Post that she resigned after it became clear that internal discussion about U.S.-Israel policy was unwelcome, unlike almost every other subject during her 18-year career at the State Department.

I lay all this out to demonstrate that people are speaking up against Israel's brutality at various levels of our government. Yet, no matter what happens, it seems like the U.S.'s allegiance to Israel can't be shaken. To find out why, I think it's worth going way back to the very beginning to see what motivated our alliance in the first place and find out how the relationship has evolved. Turns out, the U.S. has sided with Israel since day one.

Palestine was a British colony from 1917 to 1948, and during that time the U.S. wasn't really involved. In 1947, we were part of the U.N. General Assembly vote approving the 1947

Partition Plan, in which 56 percent of Palestine would be awarded to the Jewish residents of

Palestine who made up 30 percent of the population, and the 70 percent of the population that was

Arab would get squished into 44 percent of their own homeland. The proposal was rejected by surrounding Arab states and the Palestinians, and fighting broke out. On May 14, 1948, the day

British rule in Palestine was scheduled to end, Israel declared itself an independent state, kicking off the Arab-Israeli war. Eleven minutes after Israel announced its statehood, President

Harry Truman issued a statement making the U.S. the first nation to recognize Israel's independence.

Now, why was the U.S. so eager to jump into bed with a tiny new nation already embroiled in conflict? According to former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, there were six main reasons for Truman's declaration in 1948. One, re-election. Truman was up for re-election and knew he couldn't afford to lose the Jewish vote. Many American Jews were lobbying for a Jewish state at the time, and after making his decisive move of support for Israel, Truman secured 75 percent of the Jewish vote and ultimately won re-election. Though it's worth noting that Jewish people account for about two percent of the U.S. population, so let's not get any conspiratorial ideas about Jews controlling election outcomes, okay? Number two, guilt. In 1924, the U.S. passed a new immigration policy called the Johnson-Reed Act, which established new literacy tests and quotas to curtail European immigration and preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity. The result was that U.S. borders were almost entirely sealed off to the European Jews who were later murdered in the Holocaust. In 1948, that guilt was powerful. Three, humanitarianism. Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust clearly needed somewhere to go, and it's not like we wanted them to live here. Four, Judeo-Christian enthusiasm. Anytime there's a biblical excuse to do something, a lot of folks will get excited. The

Bible says that the Israelites are supposed to inherit that land. This angle shouldn't be underestimated. Today, evangelical Christians are more uncritically supportive of Israel than Jewish people are. Five, ignorance. American politicians simply didn't understand the complex history of the region and how devastating the creation of Israel would be. Oops. Six, idealism. Americans love an underdog story, and something about the Jewish people fighting for their independence really appealed to Truman's personal sense of justice. And as a culture, we've held tightly to this narrative ever since. And if you're like, wait, Lija, what about the most obvious reason we stick by Israel, the strategic advantage that comes with having a close ally in the Middle East?

Amazingly, strategy didn't become an official cornerstone of our relationship with Israel until the 80s. Still, our bond definitely strengthened throughout the intervening years.

As the Cold War heated up and the USSR solidified its hold over more of the Middle East, President

Kennedy sent Israel US Hawk anti-aircraft missiles in 1963, along with assurances of military support in the event of an Arab invasion. In exchange, Kennedy was able to negotiate some concessions regarding Israel's burgeoning nuclear research center, which we were obviously really keen to keep a close eye on. Where Kennedy had unlocked the door, Lyndon B. Johnson kicked it down. LBJ was already a major fan of Israel, having supported every aid package and voting against any sanctions during his time as a senator and majority leader. As the USSR steadily increased military aid to

Egypt and Syria, Israel became an essential bulwark against Soviet encroachment, as well as a vital tool for securing oil. So to help maintain the regional balance of power, Johnson ignored CIA recommendations and sold Israel more than 200 M48 tanks, plus A-4 Skyhawk and F-4 Phantom planes.

He also never pressured Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This was the birth of the US's commitment to what's known as Israel's Qualitative Military Edge, or QME, meaning the technological, tactical, and other advantages that allow Israel to deter numerically superior adversaries. But that doesn't mean Johnson approved every request Israel made. In 1967, when Egypt blockaded the port of Eilat, Israel called up the US like, hey guys, we're in big trouble. If you don't send us some more weapons, we're definitely getting our asses kicked. But the

American intelligence community quickly did the math and concluded that actually, Israel was positioned to defeat any combination of its neighbors within 10 days. Since the Vietnam

War was already underway and causing quite enough of an international relations headache for the administration, LBJ rebuffed Israel's request. And as it turned out, they did not need our help. On June 5th, 1967, Israeli warplanes set out to launch a preemptive strike on Egypt's air fleet. In less than 35 minutes, Israel reached its destination. Within minutes, more than 400

Egyptian combat planes were destroyed. 75% of the largest air armada in the Middle East was gone.

In the week that followed, Israel launched a three-front campaign against enemy forces triple its size. By the end of the Six-Day War, Israel captured territory including the Sinai Peninsula,

Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights, and Old City of Jerusalem. Broadly speaking,

Americans were impressed. David had defeated Goliath in a moral fight for independence.

At least that's how our press reported it. Evangelical Christian Americans were particularly excited about this win. They'd always been down with Israel because, like I said, since in the Bible, God promised land to Abraham, that's basically a real estate contract.

Evangelicals were also stoked to regain access to Old Jerusalem, where worship had previously been heavily restricted. A Washington Post journalist challenged the religious awe that many felt about the Six-Day War. Working as quickly as the Lord of Genesis, Israel recreated the Middle East in six days. To this day, evangelical support for Israel remains strong.

But let's not pretend this is all about religion. According to political scientist Stephen Spiegel,

Richard Nixon was the first president to see Israel as a strategic asset. In 1971, he increased military aid from less than $100 million annually to more than $300 million per year. The next major flashpoint in our relationship with Israel came two years later in 1973. Egypt and Syria, both backed by the USSR, teamed up against Israel in an attempt to recapture land they'd lost in the Six-Day War. This time, Israel was genuinely in deep shit. So President Nixon jumped into action, telling Henry Kissinger to send everything that will fly. What followed was the largest airlift in American history, followed by Israeli victory three weeks later. By the end of the war, nearly 53,500 people had died, the most casualties from any military confrontation between Israel and its neighbors up to that point. In the aftermath of the fighting, the U.S. played a central role in negotiating peace agreements, hoping to stabilize the region and prevent the need for U.S. intervention in the event of another serious military conflict. In 1978, President

Jimmy Carter brought the Israeli prime minister and the Egyptian president to Camp David to broker a peace agreement. The Camp David Accords laid the groundwork for the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, the first of its kind between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. That same year, Carter's

United Nations ambassador, Andrew Young, was forced to resign after it became known that he had concealed a meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO. Young was too hip for the room, frankly, and according to the Washington Post, in just five months on the job, Young had become a controversial figure for his off-the-cuff comments about how Cuban troops were a stabilizing force in Angola, and how the British, the Russians, the Swedes, and the people of the New York City borough of Queens were racists. He was summoned by the president after telling Playboy magazine that Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were, in fact, racists. Young wasn't the only American to voice doubts about Israel, but he was one of relatively few. In 1978, South

Dakota Senator James Aberesk, the first Arab-American to serve in the Senate, authored a penthouse article called the Relentless Israeli Propaganda Machine. It's worth noting that Aberesk wasn't bound by fears of political retaliation at that point. When writing the article, he'd already decided not to run for re-election, saying, nothing ever really changes, it's the system itself.

Anyway, then Senator Aberesk wrote scathingly of the culture of complicity already surrounding

Israel in U.S. Congress. The worst kind of intellectual terrorism is reserved for the politicians who dare to question Israel on its policies. Israel has so wrapped itself in its state religion, Judaism, that any criticism of its politics is immediately branded as criticism of its religion. Thus, the critic is accused of anti-Semitism, a charge that has served to silence even the mildest questioning of Israel's policies. A senator was complaining about this in 1978. However, during the Reagan administration, official rhetoric shifted away from moral reasons to support Israel and towards more strategic ones, because morally, things were getting pretty questionable. During the Reagan years, a series of policy moves tied U.S. defense structures much more closely with Israel than ever before, at least in part motivated by a desire to exert more influence over Israel to help keep it in line. Twice in 1981, Reagan voted to sanction

Israel and postpone arms shipments due to Israel-led hostilities in the region. To rein Israel in from further actions that could disrupt regional stability, in November 1981, Israel and the U.S.

formalized our strategic relationship with the Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU. It established joint military exercises, cooperation on joint readiness campaigns, and the establishment of a

Joint Supervisory Council. Just days later, Israel extended its jurisdiction into the occupied

Golan Heights, causing the U.S. to pause the MOU until 1983. Reagan's biggest flip-flop on Israel came in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, leading Reagan to halt a third arms shipment, citing concern that the ammunition would be used against civilians. Sounds familiar. According to Richard

Murphy, Reagan's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the president was deeply disturbed by the images he saw from the ground in Beirut. He made it very plain that he wanted this to come to a stop when the human side was pushed in his face. But the face of the human side would soon change when in 1983, 241 U.S. Marines were killed in Beirut by local protesters. Six days after the Marines were attacked, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 111, reinstating strategic collaboration with Israel. Soon, Israel and the U.S. had established a new formal joint political-military group that has convened every six months since to collaborate on planning and training efforts. In 1985, Israel was facing high inflation, large government budget deficits, and slow growth. To help stabilize and reinvigorate Israel's economy, the U.S. and its BFF created the

Joint Economic Development Group, which meets annually to this day to discuss economic policy.

By the mid-1980s, lobbyists no longer needed to push Congress hard to side with Israel.

According to international relations expert Helena Cobben, many members of Congress had long been used to applying different standards to actions undertaken by Israel than those undertaken by any other government, including their own, across a wide range of issues. In 1987, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians boiled over into what's now known as the First Antifata, which lasted until 1993. All told, several hundred Israelis and nearly 2,000 Palestinians were killed before the Oslo Accords were signed and the fighting paused. The Palestinian Liberation

Organization, or PLO, recognized Israel's right to exist. Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, and Israeli troops agreed to withdraw in stages from the West Bank and Gaza. In 1994, the U.S. successfully brokered a peace treaty between

Israel and Jordan, and the following year, the Oslo II Accords established Palestinian self-government in Gaza and 40% of the West Bank. And for a brief, shining moment leading up to the new millennium, it looked like the U.S. might actually be able to pull off playing peacemaker in one of the most contested regions on Earth. But Y2K had other plans. Thank you to my Patreon community and my YouTube members for supporting the research and work that goes into these videos.