Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 229
Even taking into consideration ambassador Michael Oren’s important
text Power, Faith and Fantasy, 16 for purposes of this analysis, one must
divide the U.S.-Israel story as follows: Pre-20th Century; Pre-World War II;
World War II; Post-World War II to the Present.
With regard to this first phase—Pre-20th Century—Kaplan here provides
a good accounting of the early modern forays of Americans into the
Middle East. One may characterize their efforts accompanied by the missionary
zeal of well-meaning and well-intentioned Protestant Christians
bringing both the enlightenment of their faith and that of American and
Western civilization to a part of the world they regarded as less so. While
one should not necessarily characterize this early generation as either
antisemitic or anti-Islamic, they were influenced by a certain sense of religious,
cultural, and technological superiority, even while some of them genuinely
embraced the native populations with which they came into contact
and the cultures to which they were exposed. 17
Returning home, however, J. J. Goldberg, in his 1996 book Jewish
Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, summarizes well the
America of both the 1920s and 1930s and the war period, when he writes:
The tide of anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant sentiment in American
seemed unstoppable in the 1920s and 1930s . . . Anti-Jewish sentiment
continued to grow in popularity and respectability, right up to the eve of
the Second World War . . . There was no legal recourse, because none of
this discrimination was illegal.
A half-century later, virtually every field of endeavor was open to
Jews in America. Discrimination against Jews in hiring, education, and
housing was illegal. Barriers had disappeared in all the top universities,
the major law firms, and most industries . . . By the last quarter of the
twentieth century, Jews were commonly estimated to make up as much as
20 percent of the faculty at America’s most prestigious universities and
20 percent of the lawyers at the top firms. And the idea that a president
might refuse to meet with the Jewish community’s leadership was no
longer conceivable. 18
of Mearsheimer and Walt’s text is entitled “Israel: Strategic Asset or Liability,” 49-
77.
16. Michael B. Oren. Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East
1776 to the Present (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007).
17. Ironically, today, evangelical Christians are both strong supporters of
Medinat Yisrael and vigorous opponents of its policies, especially those with longstanding
ties in the Middle East. See, for example, Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby,
chap. 12, “God Takes a Side: Christian Anti-Zionists Join the Lobby,” 240-262.
18. J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment
(Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 112-113.