Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance by Amy Kaplan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance by Amy Kaplan Miriam Eve Mora Amy Kaplan. Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. 368, 19 photos. Hardcover $29.95, ebook. ISBN 9780674737624, ASIN B07DGK4FX5. Amy Kaplan's book begins by quoting a 2009 speech by Barack Obama, in which he referred to America's "unbreakable bond" with Israel, a bond that Kaplan characterizes as both unique and dangerously under examined. Our American Israel explores this bond that has long defined the relationship between the two nations, and identifies its roots in shared mythology, international threats, political ideology, military power, and righteous purpose. Kaplan focuses on popular perceptions rather than political or military history. She has managed a difficult balancing act in this endeavor, writing a history of this relationship that shows how popular media (films, novels, bestselling nonfiction, and public history) influenced historical change in American perceptions of Israel, while avoiding the pitfall of presenting media as flimsy evidence of historical change. The book's seven chapters frame a pivotal change in the American–Israeli dynamic. The first three chapters focus on efforts in the American cultural landscape to Americanize Israel, to see the fledgling state through a lens of American exceptionalism and similarity. These chapters cover the first two decades of Israeli statehood, in which a favorable American liberal consensus formed, focusing on internationalism, antifascism, and modernization. Kaplan introduces the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, an oft-neglected initiator of the relationship between the two nations, and shows how this committee and American journalists abroad played pivotal [End Page 117] roles in conceiving American support for Israel. She then devotes a chapter to Leon Uris as the creative force behind the new American perception of Israel as made in the American image (through his novel Exodus and its film adaptation). The swift Israeli victory in the Six-Day War reaffirmed the liberal consensus and helped form a paradoxical image of Israelis that Kaplan has dubbed the "invincible victim," the subject and title of her third chapter. The victory in the war also brought more of the American right into the American love affair with Israel, as it drew a stark contrast to the failures of America's simultaneous quagmire in Vietnam. The consensus was shaken, however, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which drew tremendous criticism from the American left. Kaplan shows the tremendous impact of American journalism on the ground in Beirut during this conflict (unlike in the Six-Day War), which introduced the notion of a Palestinian homeland into American discussions of the Middle East. This event—the subject of Kaplan's fourth chapter—provides the turning point, at which the liberal consensus that Kaplan has defined is replaced by a conservative one, a backlash to liberal criticism of Israeli military power. The last three chapters flip the narrative, and focus on the Israelization of America, in which America stops projecting its values onto Israel and begins to emulate Israeli policy and strategy. In these chapters, Kaplan examines the shift in use of the Holocaust from historical justification to potential prophecy, the rise of evangelical power in the United States and its support for Israel, and the successful Israelization of American policy during the War on Terror. Though the first half of the book is more historically rigorous, the second half is innovative and exciting in its claims and connections. Kaplan introduces her readers to a number of cultural sources not traditionally associated with the relationship between America and Israel, and makes compelling arguments about their influence on current events. As the subject of the book is the perception of Israel maintained in the United States, Kaplan devotes very little time to Palestinian experiences, motives, or agency in their struggle against Israel and their own statelessness. This is understandable, given her stated subject, but still feels like an omission. Kaplan does not read as unsympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, however, making clear her dismay and horror at the Sabra and Shatila massacres, her anger at the conservative consensus that has (since 9/11) painted Palestinians as terrorist enemies aligned with Al Qaeda, and...