A major theme in Victoria Coates’s new book, The Battle for the Jewish State, is the symbiotic relationship that she perceives between the United States and Israel. That is why she subtitled her work: How Israel – and America – Can Win.
As she makes clear in her introduction: “This book… is an American perspective on why recent events in the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular, are critical to US national security.”
She traces the deep symbiosis to “roots in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition that informed the founding of both countries.” In setting out the history of the close relationship between Israel and the US, she notes that just as much as Israel has needed the support of the US in its constant struggle against the forces that seek its destruction, so the US needs the presence of a strong Israel both regionally and globally.
She recognizes that, in the current circumstances, the ties that bind the two nations include close and interdependent security and intelligence, as well as Israel’s formidable track record in hi-tech innovation.
What binds Israel and the US together and how antisemitism, anti-Israel sentiments surge
Coates examines the extraordinary upsurge, in the US and more widely, of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment, protest, and action following the horrific Hamas onslaught of Oct. 7, 2023. How was it, she asks, that even while the brutal and bloodthirsty Hamas pogrom was in progress, voices were lauding the perpetrators, and that in the following days Israel became the target of abuse and attack?
She records that a host of respected figures in academia, the media, and public life, in the United States and more widely, were soon voicing outright support for Hamas as champions of the Palestinians.
Coates believes that many American institutions have become Hamas’s “useful idiots,” disseminating its propaganda message that Israel is an aggressor colonialist nation practicing apartheid and genocide against the oppressed Palestinians. Critical race theory has become the “flavor of the month,” and it labels Israel and the US as examples of “settler colonialism.”
NO ONE can write with greater authority about the principles underlying President Donald Trump’s approach to Israel and the Middle East generally than Coates. She joined the White House in 2017 as Trump took office as president, and she remained one of his staffers for his entire term. She was senior director at the National Security Council for the Middle East and North Africa, and in 2019 she was promoted to deputy national security advisor.
She describes how Trump laid out his approach in a March 2016 speech. Notably absent from it, she points out, was lip service to the two-state solution based on a return to the pre-1967 Six Day War boundaries, while he rejected the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Coates sets out how Trump subsequently put into effect the law passed by Congress in 1995 – ducked by every president since – recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and transferred the American embassy to there from Tel Aviv. She describes how, throughout his term, Trump masterminded a major effort to devise an equitable and achievable plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, an effort that did not end in success.
His major achievement was the signing by two Gulf states – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel. They were later followed by a further two Muslim states – Morocco and Sudan.
Her prescription for success against jihadist extremists is based on an essay titled “The Iron Wall,” written in 1921 by Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. It contains, says Coates, two fundamental truths entirely relevant to Israel’s current situation. First, until the Palestinians accept that the Jewish state is not going away, their Plan A will always be the eradication of the Jews.
The second is that Israel’s effective defense against these attacks must be “an impenetrable iron wall” involving an unshakable alliance with the US.
Writing before Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election, Coates approves of Trump’s pragmatic approach to US-Israel relations, with its built-in assumption of unconditional support for the Jewish state in the face of the active Islamist extremists, allied to fashionable pro-Palestinian opinion widespread in America and the West.
Her readers can assume that she believes that her prescription for success in that struggle – an iron-clad US-Israel alliance – has a far greater chance with Trump as president.
In The Battle for the Jewish State, Coates explains why and how Israel and the US are interconnected at fundamental, as well as entirely practical, levels. The current conflict in Israel, she demonstrates, must be won not only for the sake of the two nations but also for the rest of the civilized world.
