Does Our Doctrine Require us to Support Foreign Aid to Israel?

Over the last year, a deep split has emerged in the Republican Party over America’s ties with Israel. On one side are those that want America to focus on its domestic problems, reduce or eliminate foreign aid, and stop spending money on wars of choice. On the other side are those who believe America should project its leadership and strength in the world. If we don’t, the argument goes, a power vacuum will be filled with bad actors that will make the world more dangerous.

At the focal point of this debate is the nation of Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East and perhaps the world. Regardless of your view, it is not seriously debatable that Israel has had a disproportionate influence on America’s foreign policy. What makes Irael’s relationship with America unique is religion. For Jews, that goes without saying. But for Christians, its more complicated. The Christian foreign policy hawks explain their strong support of Israel on the ground that the Bible designates the Israelites as God’s chosen people.

In Genesis 12: 2-3, the Lord said to Abram (Abraham), “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Other scriptures attest:

“For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.”

Does this mean the United States government is obligated to send tax-payer money to the modern nation-state of Israel, and to fight wars on behalf of Israel? Is that policy compelled by the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ?

Lets begin with some premises that should be easily discernable from the scriptures.

1. God was never referring to a nation-state, let alone the modern nation-state created in 1947. The people of Israel are scattered all over the earth. If the Lord’s promises to them are to be taken seriously, are we to believe they don’t apply to anyone who does not live in the country called Israel?

2. Modern revelation makes it clear that “Israel” is God’s covenant people, not a nation-state. When we speak of Israel in the scriptural sense, the most common meaning is God’s covenant people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality. While we know that “Israel” can also sometimes refer to ethnic Jews, when ethnicity is intended, the term Jew, rather than Israel is used. For example, when describing his return, the Savior said, “And then shall the Jews look upon me and say: What are these wounds in thine hands and in thy feet?” D &C, 45:51. There is no scripture that I am aware of that uses the term “Israel” to refer strictly to a country.  

3. All of the Church’s cannon were written and compiled long before the modern nation-state of Israel was founded in 1948. Of course, there are many prophesies in the scriptures, but it is highly doubtful that any prophesies concerning “Israel” actually meant the nation-state created in 1948. It meant either the covenant people of the Lord, or the Jews.  In 2 Nephi, 30: 2, we read: “For behold, I say unto you that as many of the Gentiles as will repent are the covenant people of the Lord; and as many of the Jews as will not repent shall be cast off; for the Lord covenanteth with none save it be with them that repent and believe in his Son, who is the Holy One of Israel.”

4. The creation of the nation-state of Israel was a catalyst for the promised return of the Jewish people to the Land of Jerusalem. 3 Nephi, 20:29 says “And I will remember the covenant which I have made with my people; and I have covenanted with them that I would gather them together in mine own due time, that I would give unto them again the land of their fathers for their inheritance, which is the land of Jerusalem, which is the promised land unto them forever, saith the Father.” This necessarily means that we should not confuse the nation-state with the ethnic Jews themselves. Why? Because the promises are to the people, not to the country.

The strongest argument for tax-payer support for Israel is that it is necessary to ensure that the promised gathering can continue uninterrupted. But do Christian politicians really have a moral obligation to take money from American taxpayers – many of whom are neither Jewish nor Christian – and give it to Israel in order to fulfill scriptural prophecies? Imagine if we aligned public policy more closely with what the scriptures actually mean and gave the money directly only to people of Israelite blood, or even those who are the current covenant people of the Lord – members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The idea of giving tax-payer money to one ethnicity or religion at least raises the specter of serious Constitutional and moral roadblocks. And, there is a well-established principle in Constitutional jurisprudence that what cannot be done directly, cannot be done indirectly. Yet, it cannot seriously be denied that giving money to the nation-state of Israel is an attempt to indirectly use tax-payer money for the benefit of one ethnicity and religion.

Perhaps the counterargument is much less controversial. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East with Western values. It behooves the United States to support this lone beacon of light in the area to bring stability to the region and hold in check extremist Islamist theocracies. But the Middle East has hardly been a model of stability. The foreign policy establishment has been meddling there at least since the CIA participated in a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mosaddegh, in 1953.[1] And, ironically enough, that event was the beginning of a long chain of destabilizing events that arguably led to the current war in Iran. Is “stability” just another forty or fifty years (and untold trillions of dollars) around the corner?

As is typical of most interventionists’ aims, the ever-pliable goal of “stability” can conveniently never be defined. If there is no stability, the retort can always be, “it would be worse.” And even if “stability” were ever achieved, we wouldn’t be able to stop then because instability would surely follow. And if things become unstable, then inevitably, violence will come to America because . . . . even if we weren't intervening . . . "they hate us because of our freedom." The result is an open-ended commitment to provide security to the Middle East, which effectively means, provide for the defense of Israel. We don’t do that for any other single country. And the reason we do it specially for Israel is rooted in religious ideology.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with aligning policy with religious ideology. That’s what my program is all about. We should hope that our laws align with religious truth, and all truth. But there is a stark difference between a religious belief such as the equality of all humans (“all are alike unto God”) and a dubious interpretation of prophecies regarding the gathering of Israel to justify a geopolitical strategy. The irony is that we accuse the Islamists of fighting against Israel based on their religious fanaticism. Is the United States doing the same thing? If the response is “we’re the good guys,” then fair enough, but we at least ought to have the intellectual honesty to call this what it really is, a religious war, no less than the crusades of the middle ages.  

It must surely be conceded that there is no moral parity between Israel and its neighbors. In spite of what Israel has done in Gaza, I maintain that it still holds the moral high ground over the likes of Hamas and Iran. But that does not mean Israel is morally impervious. If enough excuses are given over time for brutal tactics, how much longer will it be before any moral high ground has eroded to the same ground level as Islamic extremism?

My opposition to aid to Israel is rooted primarily in opposition to foreign aid generally. There is no justification for taking money by force from taxpayers simply to give to other citizens. There’s much less justification for taking that money and giving it to foreign governments. It seems lost on the interventionists that our presence in the region is exactly what invites the resentment that stokes the flames of religious fanaticism. Or, if one were in a less generous mood, it may not be lost on them at all and this was the goal all along: stoke terrorism, and then keep justifying a vast military-industrial complex to counter the terrorism.

There is plenty to cover on combinations and modern Gadianton Robbers. But for my purposes here, regardless of the motives of interventionists, suffice it to say that the track record is abysmal, the bill is astronomical, and the moral or religious justifications are both weak and doctrinally unsound. We’ve been told that gathering Israel is the most important work we can be doing. But that has nothing to do with the nation state. It has to do with preaching the gospel, winning converts, and proclaiming peace – just the opposite of what our foreign policy has wrought.

[1]Fascinatingly, America’s participation in the coup was led by CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, arguably the founder of modern foreign policy interventionism.