Israelis have many reasons to say “God bless America” – especially this month. US President Joe Biden has supported Israel generously since October 7. Defying the headlines, polls confirm it’s a popular move: most Americans still support the Jewish state. And, this week, let’s thank Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for mobilizing the USS Georgia guided missile submarine, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group – and Marines.
True, there are conflicting rumors regarding why Austin is taking the lead now – with Iran threatening “retaliation” for the still-mysterious assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in the belly of the Iranian Revolutionary beast.
But first, a sidebar challenging the trendy blame-Israel-first, -last, and -always narrative: “Retaliation,” from the Latin “retaliare,” means “paying back in kind.” Emphasizing Iran’s potential “retaliation” casts Israel as the aggressor.
Actually, Israel is way overdue to retaliate against Iran – for planning Hamas’s bloodbath, arming Hezbollah and unleashing its rocket fire since October 7, choreographing Houthi aggression, underwriting Palestinian terrorism, especially in the territories, and bombarding Israel in mid-April. Each offense is a casus belli, a legitimate reason for Israel – and its American ally – to punish Tehran severely.
In this topsy-turvy environment, Austin’s vow “to take every possible step to defend Israel” resonated boldly. So, too, does Biden’s firm message to Iran, repeating: “Don’t!” Still, one disturbing rumor suggests that Austin is running this round because Biden today is not the Biden of October. Now that Democrats have stopped covering up the president’s deterioration, the rumor mill keeps spinning.
More disturbing – because of its long-term implications – is speculation that the Pentagon is running point because Democratic candidate Kamala Harris wants to distance the White House from supporting Israel – even as Tehran and Hezbollah threaten mass destruction. This rumor reflects the ever-more obvious truth about too many Harris-Democrats abandoning Israel – and serious doubts that Harris understands what America needs to do to support Israel, stabilize the Middle East, and protect America.
Worrying signs regarding Harris’s approach to Israel, to Iran, and to most national security issues – keep accumulating faster than Donald Trump’s campaign flubs. This week Iran gave Trump a gift. He should boast that the Iranians hacked his computer, trying to embarrass him. That positions him as winning what both candidates should be actively fighting for: the hatred of Iran’s mullahs and Revolutionary Guard Corps, who fear a Trump presidency far more than they fear a Harris presidency.
Similarly, we should worry as too many Harris aides try mollifying the flag-burning, anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-West mob, as Harris tells anti-Zionist “Genocide Joe” hecklers “I respect your voices.” Clearly, Trump is also blessed to be most hated by those hooligans who hate Israel, America, and the West.
Historically, Lloyd Austin’s prominence is instructive. Initially, the Pentagon was filled with skeptics about Israel’s viability – frankly, doing the math. “There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other,” Harry Truman’s defense secretary James V. Forrestal scoffed in 1948, Truman’s aide Clark Clifford recalled. Truman, of course, overruled Forrestal and George C. Marshall, the legendary general serving as secretary of state.
It was 19 years later, shortly before the Six Day War, that defense secretary Robert McNamara hosted Israel’s foreign minister Abba Eban, at the White House, planning, McNamara recalled, “to work him over – to persuade him is perhaps a more polite term – to avoid a preemptive attack.” Warning that an Israeli first-strike “would have most serious consequences,” McNamara urged Eban to “exhaust the UN route” – sound familiar?In 1967, France was still Israel’s biggest weapons supplier; the Americans had only sold some defensive weapons to Israel.
Surprisingly, Israel’s near-death experience during The Yom Kippur War of 1973 transformed most of America’s defense establishment. “Send everything that will fly,” president Richard Nixon ordered, launching Operation Nickel Grass, which shipped 22,325 tons of supplies by air in four weeks. The military shipped another 33,000 tons by sea, along with 40 F-4 Phantoms, 36 A-4 Skyhawks and twelve C-130 Hercules transport planes.
While becoming a great customer, Israel became the Pentagon’s weapons lab. American generals watched Israeli soldiers – especially pilots – use American weapons creatively. The adaptations humiliated the Soviet-trained Arabs while helping Americans perfect their weaponry and tactics. Israel also captured vast warehouses filled with Soviet armaments – shipping back to the Pentagon whatever it needed to learn about enemy hardware.
That’s why, on February 13, 1979, Harold Brown became the first American defense secretary to visit Israel. Expressing the new Pentagon consensus, Brown honored the “unique relationship” uniting Israel and America, “resting… on moral and political grounds as well as… vital common security interests.” By 1982, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. David C. Jones, praised Israel’s success in the Lebanon War, as “generating some second thoughts in the Kremlin” about Soviet abilities against American weapons.
Before the 1970s, presidents had rhapsodized about Israel. After 1973, America’s most practical politicians – its generals – cemented those shared values with shared interests too.
That formula continues. A career soldier of 41 years like Lloyd Austin knows it in his bones. Traditionally, both major political parties supported Israel enthusiastically – with presidential nominees always insisting they were more pro-Israel than their rivals.
So far, Harris is dodging reporters – and hasn’t articulated a foreign policy vision. She still could embrace Israel ideologically and pragmatically, as the post-‘70s Pentagon did.
Alas, don’t hold your breath.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His next book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, will be published this fall.