The relationship between the United States and Israel is frequently explained through the language of military cooperation, intelligence sharing and common strategic interests. Yet its historical foundations run much deeper. For centuries, America’s political culture has drawn upon biblical ideas of covenant, liberty and national purpose, creating a moral and intellectual tradition that has consistently shaped public support for Jewish self-determination and the modern State of Israel. Understanding this history helps explain why the partnership has endured across changing administrations, geopolitical upheavals and shifting international priorities.
The strategic partnership between the United States and Israel is often viewed through the lens of military cooperation, intelligence exchanges and regional security. Those dimensions remain indispensable, but they do not fully explain the resilience of the relationship. Long before Israel emerged as a modern state, American political thought had already absorbed ideas rooted in the Hebrew Bible, creating a distinctive tradition that continues to influence the alliance today.
The intellectual connection predates the founding of the United States itself. Seventeenth-century Puritan settlers viewed the biblical story of ancient Israel not simply as sacred history but as a model for their own experiment in self-government. When John Winthrop delivered his famous 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, he concluded by invoking Moses’ exhortation to the Israelites before entering the Promised Land, framing the fledgling colonial enterprise as a covenant founded upon shared moral obligations rather than mere political convenience.
This distinction between covenant and contract would become a defining feature of early American political culture. Whereas contracts are transactional and limited, covenants imply enduring commitments grounded in mutual responsibility, voluntary consent and shared values. That concept helped shape America’s understanding of liberty as inseparable from moral obligation rather than simply individual freedom.
Scholars have long argued that these biblical influences left a profound imprint on the American Revolution. The historian and author Os Guinness contends in America Agonistes that the nation’s political inheritance owes as much to the Hebrew conception of covenant as it does to classical philosophy or English common law. In his assessment, America’s understanding of freedom emerged from a tradition in which a people freely accepted obligations to one another under a higher moral authority.
The nation’s founders frequently acknowledged the influence of Jewish civilization on Western political development. Among them was John Adams, who wrote that the Hebrews had contributed more to the advancement of civilization than any other ancient people. Adams also expressed support for the restoration of Jewish sovereignty, remarking in private correspondence that he hoped to see the Jewish people once again established as an independent nation in Judea—a striking sentiment more than a century before modern Zionism became an international political movement.
Support for Jewish restoration was not confined to isolated intellectuals. As the historian Walter Russell Mead argues in The Arc of a Covenant, American sympathy for Zionism emerged largely from Protestant religious culture rather than from organized political lobbying. Biblical narratives had become deeply embedded within the American national imagination, shaping attitudes toward the Jewish people long before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
That tradition found practical expression in 1891, when the evangelical leader William E. Blackstone organized a petition urging President Benjamin Harrison to support the restoration of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Signed by influential financiers, political leaders, judges, educators and clergy, the petition demonstrated that support for Jewish national aspirations had entered mainstream American public life decades before the First World War.
This historical inheritance helps explain why American support for Israel has consistently transcended partisan politics. Although contemporary debates often focus on security assistance, intelligence cooperation or regional deterrence, these practical considerations rest upon a deeper cultural foundation. Shared democratic institutions, constitutional government and a belief in rights that exist independently of the state have reinforced the perception that the two countries are connected by more than geopolitical expediency.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence echoes principles familiar to the American political tradition, affirming liberties grounded not in the authority of governments but in universal moral claims. That philosophical convergence has strengthened an alliance built not solely on common interests but also on common assumptions about political legitimacy and human dignity.
The relationship has undoubtedly produced tangible strategic benefits. Intelligence cooperation, joint military planning and technological innovation in fields ranging from cybersecurity and medicine to water management have served the interests of both nations. Yet these achievements alone do not account for the alliance’s remarkable durability through successive wars, diplomatic crises and changing administrations.
For many Americans, Israel has represented more than a strategic partner. It has embodied themes that resonate deeply within the nation’s own historical narrative: resilience against adversity, democratic governance under persistent external pressure and the conviction that liberty requires continual defense. These parallels have fostered a sense of affinity that extends beyond conventional calculations of national interest.
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, debates over its role in the world increasingly revolve around questions of national purpose and historical identity. The enduring partnership with Israel illustrates how alliances rooted in shared political culture and historical memory can prove more resilient than those based solely upon shifting strategic calculations. Military cooperation and diplomatic coordination remain essential, but the alliance continues to derive much of its strength from ideas that have shaped American political thought since before the republic itself was founded.
In that sense, the US-Israel relationship is best understood not as a temporary arrangement of convenience but as the modern expression of a much older intellectual and moral tradition—one that continues to influence how many Americans understand both their own national story and Israel’s place within it.
Saurav Dutt is a TIME magazine featured published Author and Global Affairs Commentator. He is the Author of Modi and Me: A Political, Cultural, and Religious Reawakening, and Balance of Power: US-India Ties in the Epoch of Trump and Modi.