About this episode

Walter Russell Mead discusses the historical roots of American support for Israel and the complexities of antisemitism.

Why do Americans support Israel? The standard answers—D.C. lobbying, shared democratic values, strategic benefits—all miss something. Walter Russell Mead, one of America's foremost foreign policy scholars, traces the real answer back to 17th-century Calvinist theology, and argues that Christian Zionists were advocating for a Jewish homeland long before most Jews were. Mead joins the show to make the case that the famous Israel Lobby thesis is actually historically incoherent. To explain where antisemitism comes from and why it keeps coming back, he offers a nuanced defense of American global engagement against the America First movement’s more isolationist impulses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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