The war between Hamas and Israel is forcing everyone to face an uncomfortable truth: immigration is a foreign policy issue.
Americans have also been shocked to see anti-Israel demonstrations in Britain – and to find college campuses in our country deeply polarised by the bloodshed in the Middle East.
At the end of the Cold War, liberals thought they could have it both ways: They would make America more like the rest of the world while conducting foreign policy as if it were still the same country that entered World War II in 1941.
The Ellis Island era of immigration brought millions of newcomers from Ireland, Italy and Central Europe to our shores in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Germans had been the largest part of an earlier wave in the 19th century.
The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is well known – but German-Americans and Italian-Americans were also treated as suspects, and in some cases interned.
Religion contributed to America’s sense of mission: Jews felt the oppression of fellow Jews in the Soviet Union, and Catholics, whose numbers had been boosted by immigration from southern and central Europe a generation earlier, were members of an international church struggling with communism on every continent.
America had always been a majority Christian country, but the Cold War with the militantly atheist Soviet Union renewed Americans’ religious faith – Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.
The rise of evangelical Christianity cemented America’s commitment to Israel, and while Hebrew was the official language of the state founded in 1948, the European roots of many of Israel’s Jews were similar to those of millions of Americans.
But what happens if fewer Americans have European roots?
What happens when America’s mainline Christian churches are in decline, while immigration makes the US more religiously fragmented than ever?
As a nation of immigrants of recent European descent, America’s deep involvement in European affairs, from the Cold War to the war in Ukraine, is not surprising.
Nor is it surprising that a majority Protestant country should feel a special affinity with Israel.
Liberals like to think of themselves as internationalists, both in their concern about conflicts around the world and in their support for mass immigration – but in fact American internationalism has been shaped by the national origins of Americans themselves.
Change those national origins, as liberal immigration policies have done, and American internationalism will change – or collapse.
In the conflict with Hamas, most Americans support Israel.
But support for Israel is lowest among the youngest American adults, who are the most diverse in national origin and the least Christian in religion.
Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in America, although at present Jews still outnumber Muslims.
Yet our future is unlikely to look like Germany’s present: What’s most significant here is simply the weakening of the demographics – religious affiliations and national origins – that have driven America’s engagement with the world for the past hundred years.
Perhaps new immigration from India and East Asia will push American internationalism in new directions.
Or perhaps the diversification of our national roots and religious identities will simply mean that it’s much harder for Americans to agree on a foreign policy direction.
Either way, if the strongest supporters of Israel and America’s commitment to European security are to prevail in the future, they will have to curb immigration today.
