"And there are huge numbers of Jews in the US media and in Hollywood. Jews joke about this all the time, I don't see why anyone else should be timid about mentioning it. But the idea that Jewish "media influence" is the cause of the pro-Israel bias is ridiculous. Before Israel became a prized US asset, the New York Times had a policy of not allowing Jewish correspondents to cover Israel. There's also evidence the Times covered up information about the Holocaust out of fear of being seen as advancing some Jewish cause. Today the Times has several Jewish correspondents in Israel and, to my knowledge, no Arabs."
Quite right. One of the usually unacknowledged sources of the mass American support for Israel, and for the Zionist idea comes not from Jews at all, but from a very widespread part of a conventional Protestant outlook, which finds its most clear expression in the Christian right but which has broader appeal. It is a sort of unsystematic biblical literalism -- not the same as biblical inerrancy, which touches on other issues and has narrower real appeal -- that sees Jews as the normal occupiers of the eastern Mediterranean territory just because you can read about it in the good book.
This means that support for Zionism is a subcategory of American-exceptionalist culture, inasmuch as American exceptionalism has always meant, culturally, that Americans are more religious than people in other advanced countries tend to be.
I have very vivid memories of discussions in elementary school 45 or 50 years ago, in which we talked about "current events" as portrayed in MY WEEKLY READER. We also had Bible readings since this was long before the Supreme Court school prayer decision. In these discussions there was a constant confusion between "Israelite" and "Israeli" as key terms.
The usual American disposition to see matters in racist terms, of course, certainly played a large rôle too, with the "Israelites/Israelis" appearing as "white." Check out Sunday-school book illustrations from back then to see how Aryan the Jews looked.
Thus the inherent racism of Zionism resonates well with the most backward aspects of American folk culture.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema