The United States recognized the state of Israel 11 minutes after formation of the state was announced in 1948. We have maintained a very close relationship since the founding.

Israel is now receiving widespread criticism for its mass destruction of Palestinian civilians, and the process is causing political repercussions in the United States.

Israel has internal political divisions just as we do in the United States. Some Israelis want Israel to be a democracy while others want it to be a religious state replacing, for example, the Israeli supreme court with a religious court. Some Israeli citizens are willing to live alongside Palestinians while other Israelis want to expel the Palestinians and take their land just as previous generations of Americans did to the native American Indians. Here is David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, speaking to Nahum Goldman, president of the World Jewish Congress, in 1956. “If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

The United States air-dropped a token supply of food for the Palestinians on March 2 that was probably more nearly intended to buffer domestic criticism in the U.S. than to provide relief to the hungry in Palestine. The U.S. has massive logistic capabilities, far greater than it had in 1948 during the Berlin Airlift when the USSR blocked ground access to Berlin. The U.S. planes delivered 1.7 million tons of supplies to the people in Berlin. Allied forces supplied additional tonnage. At the height of the airlift, 5000 planes were arriving per day.

We have the capability to relieve the suffering in Palestine. We have a large stable of military helicopters that can carry an underslung load and deposit it gently on the ground without landing the aircraft. We have had that capability for more than 50 years.

When Israel has resolved its issues with the Palestinians, Israelis will face an even more difficult problem, what more than one Israeli writer calls the struggle for its “soul.” When the state was formed there was a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the new Israel. They asked to be allowed to establish religious schools for their children and that males be allowed to study religion on the state payroll until age 40. They also asked to be exempt from military service. (Israelis, both male and female, are required to serve in the military.) Because of the small number of ultra-Orthodox and the open-minded attitude of the founders, it seemed to be a reasonable request. But the fertility rate for Israeli women is three children, while the fertility rate for ultra-Orthodox Israeli women is seven children. With the passage of time, the ultra-Orthodox community has become a formidable population, and they wield influence.

America has a very close relationship with Israel, and that will endure. But the Netanyahu administration’s killing of thousands of innocent children with American-supplied munitions and the starving of evicted Palestinians weakened our bond.