Liberal American Protestants and the United States-Israeli Alliance in the Cold War

The Cold War followed closely on the heels of the Second World War. Israel’s establishment in 1948, therefore, presented a foreign policy dilemma for the United States. Truman’s quick recognition of the new State belied the complex issues surrounding American support for Israel. The struggle for global resources, particularly oil, in the Cold War problematized a U.S.-Israeli alliance, according to State Department Near East experts. How then, did the United States go on to develop what Kennedy would later term a “special alliance” with Israel? Part of the answer lies in the close alliance of American Protestants with the new Israeli state. In the 1950s, liberal American Protestants particularly exercised an effective political lobby on behalf of Israel. They used lobby groups formed during the Second World War (especially the American Christian Palestine Committee) and an active public relations campaign to advocate for a strong U.S.-Israeli partnership. They did so for two reasons: Christian guilt over the Holocaust and political pragmatism. Christian responsibility for centuries of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust coupled with the idea that Israel would be a strong Democratic ally in an unstable region of the world produced a theo-political alliance between liberal Protestants, American Jews and Israelis that would go on to significantly impact U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. My paper, based on the forthcoming book, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals and Israel, explains why and how the alliance formed and addresses the foreign policy objectives of the alliance, thereby highlighting the close connection between religion and foreign policy in the Cold War.