Introduction
America’s involvement in the Middle East has always been of great relevance to American leaders and has resulted in a great deal of controversy. America’s close involvement with and support for Israel has always been a sore issue with America’s other Middle-eastern allies such as Saudi Arabia and this involvement is also believed to have contributed considerably to the Anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. George Bush nearly at the end of his tenure visited the Middle-East to make another attempt to resolve the issues there. Very recently when Barack Obama declared himself the Democratic nominee, he spoke about Israel, how the sanctity of Jerusalem is to be maintained and how Hamas needs to be alienated if we are to go forward in resolving the Middle East issue.
Analysis
The two articles I have chosen as relevant to this issue are ‘American Jews and the Middle East’ and ‘America and the Holocaust’. The former articles analyze the role of American Jews in policy-making. It analyzes the issue of why American leaders support Israel. A number of critics from all over the world have attributed American support of Israel to the powerful American Jewish lobby. However the author of this article explains ‘While various lunatics contend that this agreement between the major American political parties has occurred because the omni-competent Jews control both of them, a more plausible explanation is that both Democrats and Republicans have seen the long-term future as a two-state solution, which means there will eventually be an Israeli state and a Palestinians state living alongside one another’. (American Heritage 5th June 2008 ‘American Jews and the Middle East’ )The author claims that America is viewed as more supportive of Israel because Israel also supports the Two-nation theory while the Palestinians do not support a two-nation solution.
The other article analyzes the role of America during the Holocaust. The article discusses the question of whether America ignored the Jews during the Holocaust. This question is important because a number of critics specially from the Muslim world believe that there is Western sympathy for Israel, because it failed to do enough for the German and Central European Jews during the terrible years of the Holocaust. However this article questions this claim and says that America did to what it could to help the German Jews keeping in mind its own political and economic state at the time. The article explains ‘United States accepted twice as many Jewish refugees as did all other countries put together. As the historian Gerhard L. Weinberg has shown, Roosevelt acted in the face of strong and politically damaging criticism for what was generally considered a pro-Jewish attitude.’ (American Heritage 5th June 2008 ‘America and the Holocaust’).
The article explains the number of refugees was checked because Eastern Europe also started to claim to the right to expel its Jewish population. This meant a possibility of 3.5 million immigrants which the Western countries could not have managed, and also there was a fear that this would be a sign to other authoritarian regimes that they could expel unwanted populations when they wanted. Also America it self was struggling economically with 25% of its population unemployed.
Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that on the basis of analysis of these articles it is indicated that American leaders support for Israel is not motivated by the thought of political advantage or guilt but by the genuine belief that the solution to the problem is the two-nation theory. Any such idea is completely rejected by most Palestinians.
References
American Heritage 2008 ‘American Jews and the Middle East’. Web.
American Heritage 2008 ‘America and the Holocaust’. Web.