Guilt complex and qualitative superiority... How understand the massive Western support for Israel?

By Muhammad Al-Awdat

Eisenhower Proclamation in 1957; Which marked the beginning of the American rise and the decline of the British and French Empires. Since that date, the countries of the Old Continent have become, in most of their foreign policies, subordinate to the American position on the current events in the Middle East. When we talk about the Western position; We are talking about the American position, and the often similar European positions that follow it.

Some forms of support

Western American support for Israel is diverse and has many forms, including political support. The United States recognized it de facto immediately after announcing the establishment of the State of Israel, and then recognized it legally after the first Israeli elections were held in January 1949.

America also supported Israel in the Security Council; It has used the veto power granted to the five permanent members of the Security Council since its establishment 88 times, 43 times in the face of resolutions presented against Israel and its practices in occupied Palestine.

The United States also provides significant financial and military support to the State of Israel. Financial support - since the founding of the State of Israel until 2023 - amounted to about 158.6 billion dollars, the largest part of which is spent on military support that ensures Israel’s superiority in the region. Military aid amounted to about 124.4 billion, or 78% of the value of American aid to Israel. Israel is also provided with advanced weapons that are not given to other countries in the region, in addition to the amount of economic support amounting to 34.2 billion dollars - throughout American history - for Israel. .

Since the announcement of Hamas carrying out its operations on October 7, American support for Israel and the green light for its operations began unlimitedly, as 14.3 billion were allocated for military support to Israel, and two groups of aircraft carriers were moved equipped with 150 warplanes, in addition to moving a nuclear submarine, and providing significant political support; It reached the point where the US Secretary of State announced himself that he was speaking to the Israelis as a Jew and not as a foreign minister, just as US President Joe Biden arrived there and declared himself as a Zionist as well.

The visits of politicians of major Western countries to Israel continued. French President Macron arrived and announced his readiness to form an international coalition against Hamas, like the coalition that fought ISIS. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also arrived and announced his support for the Israelis in their darkest hour, as he described it.

Drivers of bias

This Western support for Israel; How can it be explained? In what context does it come?

The reasons that push the West to support Israel - and side with it - may seem multiple, intertwined, and mutually reinforcing. Endless support makes Israel ignore all international laws and American and Western controls, which countries put into their relations with other countries and arm them, and the most important of these reasons can be summarized as follows:

Israel is a functional state

America and the West have great material interests in the Middle East region, and the backbone of these interests are the waterways that connect the Arabian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean Sea, and then the Atlantic Ocean.

The struggle over these waterways and ports began since the BC period between the great powers of that time, and with the modern industrial revolution, the competition over these passages became greater. To ensure the flow of energy represented by oil from the Arab Gulf countries, and the flow of goods to and from the Middle East and the Indian continent.

The West found in establishing an Israeli state in the region something that would achieve this purpose, and it considered the State of Israel a Western base in the region that would provide it with protection at the lowest financial and human cost. It is also a foreign entity that separates Africa from West Asia. This prevents any federal or confederal alliance, or a strong, connected Arab state that constitutes an Arab project competing with the Western project in the region.

Religious motive

An important part and driver of Western support for Israel is the religious motive, even though Western countries are secular countries. But politicians use religion as a card that can be used to serve the interests of their countries and their political interests. Since the German priest, monk, and theology professor Martin Luther established the Protestant movement, it has become a revolution against the Catholic Church, and a major step in the Judaization of Christianity.

This movement in which Martin Luther King called for a return to the Bible as the primary and main source of Christian education, and therefore, Protestants rely heavily on the texts of the Old Testament: (the Torah and the Jewish holy books), along with the New Testament. This means that some Protestant practices and interpretations may reflect respect and appreciation for the Jewish origins of Christianity. As a result, many branches of Protestantism began to support Christian Zionism, which works for the return of the Jewish people to Palestine, and Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land in Palestine.

The influential Jewish lobby in America: Jews make up an estimated 8 million people; In the United States, they constitute the largest concentration of Jews in the world after Israel, and they represent 1.7 percent of the total population of the United States. The Jewish lobby - which attempts to direct American foreign policy in a way that supports and works in favor of the State of Israel - consists of 34 organizations active within the United States. United.

Western feeling of guilt complex

The idea of establishing a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine preceded the Balfour Declaration by hundreds of years, and Napoleon was the first European politician to publicly call for the establishment of a national homeland for the Jews on the land of Palestine, even if it was not essentially a call for the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state, but rather it was seen as an attempt to gain the support of the Jews in his campaign against the Ottomans. Then the modern Zionist movement - which called for the establishment of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine - began in its known form in the late nineteenth century, led by figures such as Theodor Herzl. Then the Balfour Declaration was the practical and executive step for all the calls that preceded it.

But this sympathy for Israel took a different turn after World War II, the rise of Nazism and what is known as the Holocaust or the genocide of six million Jews. This narrative was exploited to turn the matter into a guilt complex for Western people. A complex that allows Zionism to play the role of victim. Which allows it to do whatever it wants under the pressure of sympathy, oppression, and the rise of the term anti-Semitism to become a sacred and sinful doctrine that is forbidden in the Western mentality.

Israel is a cultural and moral extension of the West

Israel presents itself as a secular state that sponsors Western freedoms and culture in the region, even though its founders exploited the Protestant and Jewish religious narrative to contribute to the establishment of a national homeland for the Jews. But Israel still boasts that it is the only secular, democratic state in the region, and it represents the head and vanguard of the successful Western project in the Middle East region, which makes it imperative for the West to make and support this project a success. Especially in light of the failure of any democratic model to be established, and the failure to replicate the Japanese model in the region. The model by which the West succeeded in transforming Japan from an enemy country into the West's most important ally in Asia.

Qualitative superiority

The Zionist movement realized that the numerical scarcity of Jews in the world must be compensated for by qualitative superiority in all fields - especially in the humanities - so many of them went to study the most influential humanities disciplines in the field of politics. Law and the media, as a published study indicates that one of the most common reasons for the American people’s sympathy for Israel is “what they saw or read in the media, at a rate of 30 to 35 percent.” The Zionist narrative and the media force were able to be the closest to the ear of the Western listener and the closest to shaping their personal convictions. Narratively, Israel is presented as a civilized, peace-loving country located in a region that harbors a lot of hatred and hostility. Which represents hatred and hostility to the Western model and style in the Middle East.

End of Western support for Israel

Although there is a complex and intertwined environment that achieves Western support for Israel; But when might this support end, or become less severe and biased? This depends on several factors, the most important of which are:

Democratic transformation in the region

The democratic transformation in the region and the rule of the Arab people for themselves will end the Israeli narrative as the only civilized state in the region, and the leadership coming from the womb of the Fund will make the leaders in the region manage their interests with America away from the logic of dependency and the necessity of adopting Western legitimacy in assuming power. Which makes the relationship with the West and America parallel. In a way that preserves the interests of the Arab countries at the expense of Israel, and this explains Israel’s endless support for the counter-revolutions against the Arab Spring.

Interest motivated

Also, the motive of interest is; It is the most important driver of that support, as America wants the Arab countries - and the Middle East region - as its partner in the influence struggle with China, and when America feels that Israel has become a burden on it in its relationship with the Middle East region, it will abandon Israel, and so that America will not find itself faced with this option, in the last decade I have worked on the idea of integrating Arab countries. To be a friend of the Israeli-American project, and to establish a single alliance that serves and helps America in the influence struggle with China, and limits Iranian influence in the region; Therefore, American support for the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations accelerated in the last stage, at the same time that America was raising the problem of the Muslim Uighur minority in China.

Establishing an Arab and Islamic lobby

Nearly 5 million Muslims live in the United States of America, constituting 1.1 percent of its total population. Although there is an Islamic lobby, “Kirbak,” it is still in the beginning of its formation and building its infrastructure. A weak lobby compared to the Jewish lobby. It also suffers from scarcity and lack of financial resources, and its expansion and spread of influence are prevented by the differences between Islamic groups. However, making more efforts and investing in these similar lobbies could achieve something influential in American foreign policy and Western policies.

Investing in social networking sites

By the Arab and Islamic communities in the West as media platforms to reveal the truth about middle east; the birth of social networking sites played a major role in managing the shift in sympathy of modern Western generations with the Palestinian cause. All opinion polls indicated that American youth have become more sympathetic to the Palestinian issue than before, and the Western left is clearly active in supporting the Palestinian issue, but this has not reached the point that could change Western policies towards the Palestinian issue. Especially in the absence of a unified Arab narrative and demands towards the Palestinian issue.