The United States and Israel

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, grade: 3,0, University of Bonn (Institut für Politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie), course: American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World, language: English, abstract: Following World War Two the world stood at a new beginning. The United States had finally taken its spot as Superpower acting globally and the Jewish people, after the horrors they had experienced under Nazi persecution were finally given the opportunity to return to what they considered their ¿promised land¿ to live in their own state. In 1948 the state of Israel was officially founded and with it the entire Middle-East would change. While Imperialism and Colonialism had been dominating the centuries before a new world was about to begin, at the very least for the people in the Middle-East. Since then U.S. foreign policy in the Middle-East has been dominated by the United States¿ foreign policy towards Israel. The relations between these two nations has often been described as a special friendship, a friendship in which the two nations stick together regardless of right or wrong. This text undertakes the difficult task of examining the origins of this truly special friendship and the implications of this on U.S. foreign policy. One of the central questions to examine is without a doubt whether the United States¿ support for the state of Israel is based upon a small but powerful Jewish lobby within the United States or whether it is much more so because of fundamental ideals and values shared by both nations and its people. The text points out many fundamental ideologies and ideas about the world and the two nation¿s role in this world in an attempt to get to the root of this truly unique friendship between the United States and Israel.