These last few weeks have been volatile emotionally – again. We keep reliving October 7’s horrors and heroism, as new horrors threaten us and new heroes emerge – some, alas, posthumously.
Amid the cascade of well-deserved articles about how Israelis saved Israel, I am donning my American historian’s PhD robes to utter that magical phrase gracing the English language and the Zionist lexicon: “God bless America.”
God bless America because America’s two major party nominees are competing – again – over “who’s best for Israel.” God bless America because US President Joe Biden recoiled on October 7, visited Israel, and has since authorized over 500 much-needed munitions deliveries to boost Israel’s war effort. And God bless America because, in a divided republic, Americans united against Hamas, repudiated the academic lunatics “exhilarated” by Jew-killing, and supported Israel, Israelis, and the Jewish people.
True, academic decadence confronted Hamas’s depravity on October 7, and the devil won. The feminists’ silence, the Social Justice Warriors’ sick glee, the rampaging snowflakes’ aggression, represented the triple double-cross. They stabbed Jews in the back – as such Jew-haters have done for millennia. They threw Western civilization under the bus – as these illiberal liberals have done for decades. But they also violated their defining principles as educators, as feminists, as progressives.
Fortunately, when all-American decency confronted Hamas’s depravity, the red-white-and-blue angels wept, sang, prayed, and shipped weapons, helping us wallop our enemies.
Many forget today, but as Israel reeled, most Americans rallied around their Jewish friends, the embattled Jewish state, and President Biden. The December Harvard CAPS Harris Poll found 69% of Americans following the war closely, 73% characterizing Hamas’s massacre as “genocidal,” with 84% calling October 7 a “terrorist attack,” and 81% supporting Israel, not Hamas.
Defying media and social media exaggerations demonizing Israel’s self-defense campaign, even in May, 69% still recognized that “Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties” in Gaza. Those numbers resisted the media’s ever-escalating sanctimony storm.
These poll numbers echoed Gallup polls over years 20 showing that 70% and 80% of Americans support Israel – despite the hysterical headlines.
From coast to coast, Americans empathized with Israel. On October 9, the White House National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, choked up, live on CNN, after seeing the disturbing rape and murder images on video, which, unlike too many feminists, he wouldn’t deny or excuse. A record 425 members of Congress co-sponsored a resolution proclaiming that Congress “stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.”
Six weeks later, dozens of senators went silent while watching Israel’s film depicting Palestinians’ sadism that day. Some fled the room, weeping.
A nationwide alliance of Hispanic Christian leaders joined Israel’s more prominent Evangelical church supporters in defending the Jewish state and demanding Hamas free the hostages, whose plight moved millions. On Broadway, dozens of stars, including Billy Porter, Debra Messing, and Jeremy Jordan, adapted “Bring Him Home,” from Les Misérables, to honor the hostages.
Madonna was devastated, declaring during a London concert: “I turn on social media and I want to vomit. I see children being kidnapped, pulled off motorcycles; babies being decapitated, children at peace raves being shot and killed.” She posted a heartbreaking video of the invasion on Instagram, while proclaiming: “My heart goes out to Israel” and “I am aware that this is the work of Hamas.”
True, Madonna needed to hire extra security after that. But she had the security as an American that in key moments you stand for goodness, knowing that the overwhelming majority of Americans will have your back.
Over 2,000 Hollywood actors, producers, and screenwriters, including Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Amy Schumer, embraced Israel while denouncing Hamas’s “evil.” And in New York, when two non-Jewish construction workers, identifying themselves as proud Americans, confronted a neighbor tearing down hostage posters, the video of the confrontation went viral.
That’s the America I know!
True, a small, rabid, well-organized group of anti-Jewish anti-Zionists dominated the headlines, giving cover to the twisted minority of Jew-hating anti-Zionists. It’s a structural problem – extremists command attention. But it’s an existential problem, too. Too many decent, hard-working, fair-minded pro-Israel Americans are so demoralized by media shrillness, they withdraw – on this issue and many others. This Silenced Majority’s passivity obscured the rare bipartisan consensus recognizing that America and Israel share common values, interests, challenges, enemies, and a common fate, especially now.
Why hasn't America bombed Iranian nuclear facilities?
I HAVE my criticisms. I am appalled that America didn’t start bombing Iranian nuclear facilities back in April, to show Taiwan, China, and everyone else that America protects its allies. I don’t understand the aversion even many American Jews have to giving Israel a clear victory over evil jihadists who are anti-American, antisemitic and anti-Zionist.
In short, politicians, left and right, infuriate me. And, yes, I’m especially annoyed by the Biden-Harris “experts” so fearful of “escalation” that their hesitations fueled and prolonged this conflict. And, yes, we Israelis better understand that democracies need backbones because the lesson of World War II still holds: you don’t negotiate with dictators, you crush them. But that other World War II takeaway still holds, too – never underestimate the American people’s decency, and its capacity to distinguish between good and evil.
So, while processing this roller-coaster year, noting a feckless Canadian prime minister, a surly British prime minister, and a hostile French president, we Israelis should thank America and thank American Jewry, appreciating these deep, enduring, strategically essential, enduring, friendships.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. He is the author of The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath: Facts, Figures, History. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, was just published.