July 2, 2009

Dear Friend of Israel,

This weekend, Americans across the country will mark the United States' 233rd birthday. For some, the holiday is just a day off with fireworks, but for many, it is a day on which they celebrate the blessings of freedom, remember the vision and courage of our nation's founding fathers, and pay well-deserved tribute to the men and women of our armed forces, who every day risk their lives to continually secure our safety and liberty.

For me—a lover of and citizen of the U.S. who is a proud Israeli citizen as well — July 4 is also a day to reflect upon the long-standing relationship between these two great allies. It is hard to imagine a more unique and enduring friendship than the one shared by the two countries I call home.

Sadly, in recent years, voices seeking to undermine that friendship have gained ground in American public life: They claim that a shadowy and malevolent "Jewish lobby" exercises undue influence over the U.S. government, forcing American foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is absurd: The American people and government support Israel not because of Zionist coercion, but because of our shared values and love of freedom and democracy. More than that, such allegations ignore U.S. history: American support for a Jewish state in the Holy Land existed long before the establishment of “pro-Israel” lobbying groups. In fact, American Zionism-and, especially, Christian Zionism—was a force in American life prior to the Revolutionary War!

The true story of American support for Israel, and indeed the entire story of American involvement in the Middle East from its founding to the present day, is told in “Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present,” by Michael Oren. A gifted historian and scholar, Oren is Israel’s new Ambassador to the U.S. (he submitted his credentials to the secretary of state this week). In Power, Faith and Fantasy—a New York Times best-seller—he brings a storyteller’s flair to historical events that shed light on the world we live in today. Oren shows how deeply tied American colonialists felt to Biblical Israel, and how their religious commitments informed the development of the colonial states and, eventually, the United States. Early Americans were fascinated by the Middle East and Oren traces their exploration through literature, travel, and their (often ill-fated) attempts to build settlements (Jewish and Christian) in the Holy Land.

American Zionism, Oren demonstrates, is as old as America itself.

"It goes back to the time of the Puritans, who conceived themselves as the new Jews and the New World as the New Canaan," Oren told an interviewer. "That immediately established a sense of kinship between them and the old Jews and the old Promised Land. Since then, many Protestants in the United States have seen it as their religious and national duty to help fulfill God's promises to rescue the Jews from exile and repatriate them to their ancestral homeland." American military involvement in the Middle East-unconnected to Zionist aspirations—spurred the creation of the U.S. Navy. In an eerie echo of today’s world, President Thomas Jefferson’s number one foreign policy priority was, believe it or not, the Middle East: Muslim pirates operating out of north Africa (the “Barbary States”) had been targeting commercial vessels in the Mediterranean and northern Atlantic for centuries. European countries had been capitulating: They paid huge amounts of money in “tribute” (a nice word for “bribe”) and otherwise attempted to mollify the bandits and their sponsoring countries.

In 1803, the U.S. refused to take this route, choosing instead to fight back. The years-long battle to ensure the safety of American ships became known as the “Barbary Wars.” This campaign not only succeeded in doing away with piracy, but also spurred the development of the American Navy, sketched the role that the U.S. would play in the world, and marked the beginning of the new American nation’s military engagement in the Middle East.

At a time when misinformation about Israel is so pervasive, Oren's exhaustive account of American involvement in the Middle East is critically important. Lovers of Zion often instinctively know when we encounter falsehood and myth, but a solid knowledge of history can actively debunk them.

In his speech last month in Cairo, President Obama referred to the Holocaust as the primary justification for Israel’s existence. We disagree - this claim is refuted not just by the Biblical record of the Jews’ millennia-old connection to the Holy Land, but by facts detailed in Oren’s book.

For those of us lucky enough to be born Americans, July 4 is a day to give thanks for our civic bounty; but it’s also a day when lovers of liberty around the world can give thanks to God for the creation of a country that truly has been a beacon of hope and freedom to the entire world. We Israelis can also thank the committed American Christians who have publicly advocated the idea of a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, from before the founding of the country down to the present day--when so many not only direct their prayers and political support toward Israel, but sacrificially give so much to improve the quality of life for the Jews who live here.

"Power, Faith and Fantasy" is not a short book - the paperback is more than 600 pages - but it is one well worth reading: It will both educate and inspire you. I urge you to purchase a copy at your local bookstore, or online from amazon.com. Compelling, readable, and full of faith and humor, it will shed light on the past and deepen your understanding of the present—keys we need to be able to envision the future, especially one in which no man and no nation fear anything but the Lord: "The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1)