Focus on Israel

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Hello and thank you for tuning into Focus on Israel. I'm Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Christians about their biblical responsibility to the Jewish people. Many Christians do not realize that the word explicitly tells us to stand with our Jewish brethren and defend the land God calls His.

On our last program, we focused on how the nations of the world have treated Israel, from the establishment of the Jewish homeland to the recent debacle at the United Nations. Today we'll be focusing on the unique relationship that America has with Israel. I think you will be surprised by what you'll learn today.

Recently while in Israel, I had the opportunity to speak with Yoram Ettinger, a retired Israeli ambassador. In previous years he served as a minister in charge of congressional affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington. He was consul general of Israel in Houston, Texas, and a director of relations with overseas foreign media. He now consults Israeli and American legislators, writes for American and Israeli newspapers, and is also the CEO of a new organization called Second Thought, an American-Israeli initiative to raise second thought about Israel and US relations. He was a wealth of information concerning the historic relationship America has had with Israel and the Jewish people. From the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to the many biblical names of towns throughout the US.

Yoram Ettinger: The US-Israel relations are very unique in the world because not only are they based on shared, deep, multi-century values bolstered by mutual threats and shared interests, both security-wise as well as economic, but in fact, those relations do not depend on a single person. They do not depend on a president or on a Secretary of State. They emanate from the people in America. They emanate from the history and the substance of what makes America a special society, a special country. Therefore, the representatives of the people, Congress, has been a bastion of support for Israel, in fact, before there was a Jewish state.

In order to understand the special affinity by the American people toward Israel, one has to go back to history before 1948, before the Second World War, in fact before 1776, starting with the first pilgrims who arrived to the new continent. As far as they were concerned, they left modern-day Egypt, Britain. They rebelled against modern-day Pharaoh, King Charles. They went through the modern-day Red Sea, the Atlantic, and they arrived to modern-day Promised Land or New Canaan.

Therefore, the proliferation of biblical names on American maps, hundreds if not thousands of locations bearing biblical names. In fact, more than you'll find in Israel, because of the size, obviously. Those locations and the biblical names testify to the very special role upheld by the Jewish state, by Judaism, by the Jewish people in the context of modern-day America, the USA.

You go back to the founding fathers. Thomas Paine, when he wrote Common Sense, he relied on the prophet Samuel. He relied on the Judge Gideon when he rationalized why the people should not accept a rule of a king, why they should rebel against the king. When you look at the Liberty Bell, which is an icon in the American state of mind or American history, the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Old Testament, from the Torah. "Proclaim liberty upon the earth and unto all the inhabitants thereof," from the Book of Leviticus, chapter 25, verse 10.

You look at the House of Representatives in Washington. At the center of the chamber, facing the Speaker of the House, the statue of Moses. He is there at the center, surrounded by 22 other statues. But while Moses looks straight ahead towards the Speaker, all the other 22 are in profile. They're all staring at Moses because he is the source while all the rest are the derivative.

You cross one street from the Capitol building and you go up the stairs to the Supreme Court. Above the entrance, a series of statues. By far the largest among them at the center, once again, Moses holding the two tablets with the Ten Commandments. When you enter the Supreme Court, above the table or desk of the nine Supreme Court justices, at the ceiling on the right-hand side, once again, Moses holding the tablets, making sure that the Supreme Court justices adhere to what they believe is the source, the Ten Commandments.

You enter the Capitol building in Austin, Texas. On the ground of the state capitol, there is a monument, granite stone shaped like the two tablets with the Ten Commandments inscribed, and underneath a number of Stars of David. Certainly anywhere you go in the US, you hear, you see the signs of adherence to Judeo-Christian values. Whether you are conservative or liberal, Judeo-Christian values are an endemic element of the American culture, of the American state of mind.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: I thought it was rather funny that I had to go to Israel to get a history lesson on America. But Mr. Ettinger left me in awe of his knowledge and his love for America. Israel shares America's values such as liberty, an independent judiciary, a free press, freedom of religion, free speech, and women's equality. The Arab and Muslim worlds have none of these.

Those facts and America's Judeo-Christian roots make support of Israel a moral thread of American foreign policy. Our American values are closer to Israel's values than perhaps those of any other nation. As President Harry Truman said, "Israel is the embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization." Among other things, Israel votes with us in the United Nations more often than any other country and it provides us with uniquely important technological know-how and intelligence. Like it or not, Israel stands on the front lines for America in the ongoing war against terror. Mr. Ettinger expanded on the many contributions Israel has made to America on so many important levels.

Yoram Ettinger: It doesn't matter whether you're a leftist Israeli, right-of-center Israeli, or centrist Israeli. Israelis are knee-jerk pro-American. We realize that that which unites us with the US is unparallel to any other set of relationship in the world. That has made Israel the only reliable and stable and capable and non-conditional ally of America.

To put it in concrete terms, one can refer back to the late General Alexander Haig, who was Supreme Commander of NATO forces, the Chairman of the American Joint Chief of Staff, and Secretary of State of the US. He used to refer to Israel as the largest American aircraft carrier which does not require a single American person on board, which can never be sunk, which is the most battle-tested, the most cost-effective, and is deployed, is stationed permanently in a very critical area for dire American economic and national security interests. If there wouldn't have been Israel in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, the US would have had to deploy additional real aircraft carriers to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean which would have required 20, 30 billion dollars every year to maintain, all of which has been spared by the existence of a Jewish state in the Mediterranean.

When one talks about Israeli contribution to American interest, I can refer to a visit which I paid to the plant manufacturing the F-16 in Fort Worth, Texas. The plant manager hosted me and he shared with me what he considered the secret of General Dynamics and the F-16, and that's the daily flow of lessons from Israel, the number one user of F-16, into the new generation of the F-16. In excess of 600 modifications are introduced in the current F-16 complement of Israel. Fifty percent of the cockpit is basically complement of Israel. Seventy-five percent of the firing control is a derivative of Israeli lessons, which has made, according to the plant manager, F-16 the number one in the world. Therefore it has expanded the employment base in that area in Texas, has expanded the export and the research and development base.

The same thing applies to hundreds or thousands of US military counterterrorism systems which we use in Israel but continuously upgrade and improve together with the American manufacturers. The same thing applies to the robots manufactured by Northrop Grumman which neutralize explosives. We purchase them because we have to deal with terrorist explosives on a daily basis. But our modifications shared with the manufacturer has made Northrop Grumman robot the number one in the world which I heard from the Congressman from Tennessee, where it is manufactured, that this has made employment in his district that much healthier than other districts. When you multiply that by hundreds or thousands of such systems, we're talking to mega-billion dollars benefit to the American economy coming out of Israel.

You can move also to the commercial, non-defense market. Today more and more the giant American commercial companies, especially the high-tech companies, rely on Israeli innovations to compete in the global market. The other day the CEO of Intel mentioned in a management meeting in Santa Clara, California, that if not for the six Intel plants in Israel, or two plants and four research and development centers in Israel, Intel would have been devastated by the competition. Microsoft CEO said the other day that Microsoft is becoming an Israeli company increasingly so because of the impact of the research and development by Microsoft in Israel which brings to Microsoft in America the latest of innovations. That is applied to also medical equipment, it's applied to energy alternative, it's applied to water technologies, it's applied to telecommunication, it's applied to the daily laptops which we use. Most of the modern-day microprocessors have been developed by the American companies in Israel, leveraging Israeli manpower.

One of the gurus of America's high-tech, George Gilder, wrote in the Wall Street Journal back in July 2011 that as a result of the analysis of the Israeli contribution to the American commercial and defensive industries and to the employment and research and development and American exports, his conclusion has been that not only are we a two-way street, but in fact, America increasingly depends on Israel as much as Israel depends on America. We are much better off by working together rather than separate from one another.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Most people, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory. A recent poll shows that only nine percent of Jewish Israelis think President Barack Obama's administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian. Given how much Israelis love and admire America, this level of mistrust is all the more remarkable. This administration's desire to have America liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds is a major problem in this relationship. You cannot protect Israel and strive to be liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds at the same time. You cannot weaken that protection without weakening America's moral values, which form the basis of America's greatness.

Even aside from compromising America's moral essence, weakening American support of Israel will only strengthen the America-hating Islamists. The notion that the radical Islamists will become pro-American or stop attacking America if America weakens its support of Israel shows an ignorance of evil. So there's nothing to gain and America's soul to lose by weakening or by even seeming to weaken American support for Israel. Yoram once again offered great insight into this problem as seen from Israel.

Yoram Ettinger: You have an administration which is the most UN-oriented and Europe-oriented administration probably ever in American history. You have a problem on your hands because the UN is a hostile arena both for the US as well as for Israel, in fact, for the free world. The UN is a friendly arena towards rogue regimes and towards Muslim regimes at the expense of Western democracies.

When you have an American administration which does not want to admit that there is a problem of global Islamic terrorism because, according to the President of the US, Islam is a religion which professes peace and not terror, then you have a problem because moral ambiguity leads to ideological ambiguity, which produces operational ambiguity, which erodes your capability to face up successfully, effectively to the threat of terror.

When you have an American president who assumes that the Palestinian issue is a root cause of anti-American Islamic terrorism and therefore you have to be preoccupied with Palestinian issue, you have to pressure Israel, you know you've got a problem because the Palestinian issue has never been the cause for anti-American terrorism. You go back to 1983 when Muslim terrorists blew up the Marines' headquarters in Beirut and the US embassy in Beirut, murdering 300 American Marines. The reason the Marines were in Beirut was to stop the Israeli hot pursuit of the PLO, was to make sure that Israel does not decimate the PLO in Lebanon. But that was the time when Muslim terrorism hit the USA.

When Muslim terrorists blew up US embassies in Tanzania and in Kenya, murdering 300 civilians, that was the time when then-President Clinton was brutally pressuring Israel, was fully supportive of the Palestinians, pressuring Israel to yield more and more and more. That's when Muslim terrorists hit the US. The reason the US is hit by Muslim terrorists is because of the values that you represent, a lethal threat to every Muslim regime in the Middle East: freedom of religion or the liberties of religion and the liberties of economy and education and expression, and the liberties of economy and the internet. Those are the elements that threaten the existence of those Muslim regimes. Those are the liberties represented and rightly so by the USA and therefore the US is being hit by Muslim terrorists.

Last and not least, the only capable power to control the megalomaniac aspirations of Muslim regimes in Iran or in Syria, previously in Libya, has been the USA. Therefore any rogue Muslim regime wants to hit the US in order to advance its own megalomaniac aspirations.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: While it has always been important for us as American Christians to support Israel, it is all the more important now as she stands in grave danger. Historically, the United States government has been for the most part a friend to Israel and has used its influence and power as a force of restraint against terrorist organizations and anti-Zionists that have targeted Israel. But we must understand this is no longer the case, and in fact, the opposite is now true.

While the current administration has been anti-Israel in its policies from its inception, in May of 2011, President Obama opened wide the floodgates of terror when he publicly suggested Israel go back to a pre-1967 borders. The international terrorist organizations rejoiced and took that as a green light to move forward with their propaganda and assault on the Holy Land of the Bible and its covenant people. In addition, the United Nations, the Quartet, and our State Department continue to move forward with anti-Israel policies. These things together have created a firestorm of international unrest with Israel being the scapegoat target once again.

While in Israel, I spoke with Knesset member Dr. Aryeh Eldad about this grave issue.

Dr. Aryeh Eldad: Only when the Soviet Russia and the Soviet bloc got stronger and threatened to expand and had a lot of influence in the Arab world, United States gradually looked at Israel as an asset, as a strategic asset in the Middle East. Some people would blame or try to explain the fact that the diminishing assessment of Israel's importance in the Middle East after the Soviet bloc was falling apart because it was as if United States didn't need Israel as the only Western post in a whole pro-Soviet Arab world.

But that's not the real reason why President Obama is the worst president Israel ever had. It's really a hostile environment that we can feel in the White House. I'm afraid it has nothing to do with the real interest of the United States because when United States started to play on the Arab cards in his administration, United States didn't get stronger but weaker. The Arab world looked at this betrayal of the United States in Israel and they say don't be a friend of the Americans, they betray their friends. They look at what Obama did to President Mubarak of Egypt and he said they betrayed their friend, it's not a good business to be a friend of the Americans.

The fact that the American administration didn't intervene in Libya and allowed the French and the Brits to do the work there is not interpreted by the Arabs as calculated policy, but as hesitant policy. President Obama is assessed as a weak president. America is looked as weak, and these are bad news to the West, not only to Israel in this environment but also to the West at large.

We usually tend to think that politics is only an issue of interest. If President Obama will analyze American interest to be in favor of the Palestinians or the Arab state, then he will give up the interest of Israel, he can sell us out in this Middle East market. But if there's a large body of American voters who believe that politics is sometimes more than sheer interest, it's not only the immediate political or economical interest that you can analyze but something that must be based on moral issues, on shared values, then they can put their influence on any American administration not to work only according of what they analyze as the immediate political interest but something that will be more deeply rooted on the moral basis of decision of an empire like the United States. You cannot run your political decisions only on what you assess as tomorrow's interest, but you must do it according to the moral basis of a nation like the American nation. This is what I can expect from the Bible-loving Christian in the states: to look not only at the immediate interest but on the moral values and try to influence American foreign policy that will be more morally sound and morally based.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: But regardless of the decisions our government makes or does not make, we must understand that God holds us as believers responsible for standing up for Israel. The time to stand up is now. Be a leader in your community and in your church. One person can make a difference. Get involved with and support pro-Israel organizations such as PJTN. Call your senators, congressmen, the White House. Let your elected leaders hear from you. Visit our website to learn more, sign up to receive action alerts, and order our films to share with family and friends.

I want to thank you for watching our program today. Be sure to join us next week as we'll be focusing on the blessing and the curse contained in Genesis 12:3. God bless you, and thank you for all you do on behalf of our Jewish brethren and all Israel. We'll see you next time on Focus on Israel.