America's Israel: from Exodus to Apocalypse

Abstract

Amy Kaplan tells of both the distant roots and contemporary processes that led Americans to view Israel as “ours,” but her treatment of the alliance to which the subtitle refers is limited to the cultural and spiritual planes. International historians will find in this volume little on the strategic ties between the two countries. Moreover, absent is any attempt to place the term “strategic relationship” in a comparative setting. Kaplan states that the partnership is an exception to the norms of international alliances but offers observations on no other diplomatic dyad. Instead, as the author notes, this is the story of the United States’ popular perception of Israel. Kaplan describes cogently the origins of the bond. She writes well, conveying how kinship between the two nations is based on a “common biblical heritage, suffering and salvation, the Holocaust’s legacy of unique moral obligations and beliefs [of] a mythic status,” forged through “metaphors, analogies and symbols” that impart emotional meaning to political reality. Thus, “cultural artifacts invite different meanings … while effectively ruling out others.” In the introduction and following chapter titled “Lands of Refuge,” Kaplan tells how a “providential narrative” primed Christian America to embrace Israel before either was a sovereign state, with both “settler colonialism and anti-colonialism” (the British Empire) their shared experiences (2–4).