Center Field: Where Left and Right can meet

George W. Bush came to Israel bearing great gifts. With the Zionist narrative of Israel's founding being assailed worldwide, with magazines like The Atlantic Monthly asking "Is Israel Finished?," the President of the United States gave Israel an emphatic bear hug. The embrace was sincere; Bush has no more elections to run. He spoke for posterity not for Jewish votes.

Bush visited Masada, and viewed the Israel Museum's 2,000-year-old scroll of the Book of Isaiah. Both stressed the Jews' historic connection with the land of Israel, along with the biblical values Israelis and Americans share. Bush’s speeches celebrated Israel's past, present and future, recounting how an oppressed people found redemption and achieved greatness by rebuilding their old-new land.

Bush's repudiation of counter-arguments was as important as his symbolic and spoken encouragement. Without being defensive, Bush made it clear that:

• no, the Israel lobby does not dictate US-Israel relations, common values and common interests do;
• no, Israel is not the source of trouble in the world - terrorists, dictators and irresponsible nuclear proliferators are;
• no, Israel is not some colonialist interloper - the Jewish roots in this area are old, deep and legitimate;
• no, Israel is not "finished" and will "survive," as the President anticipated Israel's 120th birthday;
• and no, not every conversation about Israel - and not every presidential visit to Israel - must be about the Palestinians or the peace process: there is more to Israel than its enemies and conflicts.

NOTWITHSTANDING THE partisan brouhaha regarding Bush's jab at naïve senators who overestimate their abilities to sweet-talk dictators, support for Israel in America remains bipartisan. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have competed to show who is more pro-Israel - and whose strategy can best bring peace. Still, Bush's unity visit papered over some historical and political disjunctions.

For starters, while Harry Truman recognized Israel minutes after the country's birth, American-Israeli relations were not always rock-solid. In 1948, many State Department Arabists and Defense Department realists opposed Truman, urging America to befriend 100 million Arabs rather than 600,000 Jews.

Moreover, Israel's current economic, political, and cultural affinities with the United States obscure Israel's deep Eastern European roots. The Russian Revolution shaped Israel's founders more than the American Revolution. Considering that background, Israel's achievement in building a functional and individualistic democracy becomes even more remarkable. But the legacies of Poland, Lithuania, Russia still resonate - not just in Shimon Peres's Polish-inflected Hebrew. At the Israel Museum's lavish reception for President Bush, one American diplomat said the 60th anniversary candle lighting ceremony at Theodor Herzl's grave reminded him of Eastern European folk-fests more than July Fourth.

History is not destiny. Particularly since 1967, the American-Israeli political relationship has solidified, just as since the 1980s, the cultural and economic parallels have multiplied.

UNFORTUNATELY, BUSH'S powerful message about Israel's vitality, legitimacy, morality came from an unpopular, lame-duck messenger. Even more disturbing, Israel's best diplomatic friends today are conservatives. Bush, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper support Israel passionately, eloquently, convincingly. Their actions demonstrate how much impact one leader can have. In France and Canada, the emergence of pro-Israel leaders after years of ambivalent or hypercritical leaders has improved relations on many levels.

Alas, this Bush-Sarkozy-Harper embrace risks making support for Israel appear to be a rightwing cause, not the bipartisan cause it should be. Just as they discount Israel's Russian roots, many today ignore Zionism's liberal heritage. The kibbutz, the Histadrut labor union, the collectivist sensibility, all once made Israel the darling of the left. The Palestinians' propaganda assault against the Jewish state, libelous arguments such as the apartheid slur, politically correct anti-Americanism, along with - let us be frank - Israel's capitalist revolution and prolonged presence in the disputed territories - triggered this switch. To the world, today's Zionist poster child is more likely to be a religious settler, a neoconservative intellectual, or an AIPAC lobbyist rather than the pioneering kibbutznik wannabe, fulfilling Jewish-tinged universal dreams in Israel of Marxist revolution before the 1930s or student radicalism in the 1960s.

The left and the right should champion Israel for both sentimental and rational reasons. Liberals passionate about democracy, women's rights, gay rights, social justice, and religious freedom should rally around the only Middle Eastern country with any real civil liberties. Conservatives committed to fighting terrorism, defending individualism, and advancing democracy, should also support Western civilization's first line of defense against anarchy, Islamism, and despotism.

For Western liberals and conservatives, supporting Israel is the right move and the shrewd move. Profound historic, ideological, and strategic bonds link the two promised lands of America and Israel, as well as the liberal democratic Jewish state with liberal democratic Europe. Israel's existence as a democratic stronghold in the Middle East has proved crucial in managing two of the greatest modern challenges: defeating Communism and confronting terrorism. In the future, these emotional and realistic attachments should only grow.

In his insightful, compelling new book Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft, the diplomatic historian Michael Makovsky emphasizes that "sentiment" prompted Churchill's interest in Zionism. Ultimately, of course, Churchill's Zionist sympathies flourished amid "a myriad of complex considerations - racial, ideological, civilizational, humanitarian, paternal, personal, historical, romantic, mystical, and religious."

On his trip, Bush demonstrated an equally rich approach to the American-Israeli relationship, with sentiment and morality leading the realpolitik. This parallels the approach of Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and others, for whom the ideal and the reality mingled. Let us not just hope - but work hard to ensure - that future presidents - in 2009 and beyond continue with this Churchillian, now all-American, proZionist tack, which has benefitted the citizens of Israel, the United States, and, more broadly, the free world.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University and author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His next book, Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents will be published this June.