On December 27, 1962, US President John F. Kennedy met with Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir at his home in Palm Beach, Florida.
During the meeting, he said the two countries have a "special relationship" similar to what America had with its ally the United Kingdom.
Never before had the White House described its partnership with Israel in such clear terms, as a country that shared the same set of values, a common heritage, and a similar seminal ethos.
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But when Kennedy talked about the special relationship, he meant more than just values and ideology.
By 1962, the relationship had grown closer because Kennedy saw Israel as a security asset that could help advance vital US interests in the Middle East.
Just four months prior to his meeting with Meir, he decided to cross the Rubicon by allowing Israel to procure Hawk surface-to-air missiles.
This was the first time the US let Israel buy such advanced weapon systems, underscoring Kennedy's assessment that the special relationship was of strategic value, and not just a reflection of common values.
August 1962 was a watershed moment that finally put an end to two separate tracks in the US-Israel relationship: the value-based track and the security-based track.
The discord that often accompanied this bifurcated relationship began to wane by the late 1950s and ultimately disappeared when the two sides signed the Hawk deal.
A mini America in the desert
The competing tracks were also very much present in the months prior to the state's founding as the Truman administration grappled with the question of whether to support the UN Partition Plan and whether it should recognize a Jewish state after the plan was approved.
In this major intra-administration clash, there was President Harry Truman on one side and almost everyone else in his administration on the other side.
The opposition among US government agencies stemmed from a strategic assessment that expressed support for a new Jewish state would threaten core US interests in the region.
Pentagon and State Department officials said any gesture that would be interpreted as supportive of Jewish independence or recognition of the new state would deal a major blow to America's standing in the Arab world.
With the Cold War clouding the skies of the Middle East, American bureaucrats saw Arab states as natural partners in the effort to check Soviet influence in this crucial part of the world.
The idea was that a pro-Arab policy would help marshal support and ease the task of containing Moscow, as well as ensure an uninterrupted flow of cheap oil from the Middle East to Western Europe.
As a result, the bureaucrats adopted a more confrontational view toward the tiny Jewish population in Palestine and its statehood efforts.
But they were countered by others in the administration who offered a different approach, who adopted the "special relationship" mantra, and who tirelessly courted the president, arguing that supporting the Jewish entity was in line with US values and with America's mission.
This sentiment was shared by a cross-section of American society.
Thus, even as officials in Washington tried to have the US adopt a policy based on narrow US interests and strategic paradigms, over at Main Street, a special relationship was in the making.
Ordinary Americans believed there should be a special relationship with Israel because they saw the Jewish community in pre-state Israel as a small version of the American experiment, with a similar history and ideology.
They were captivated by the state-in-the-making's pioneering spirit and its determination to fight for survival and meet any challenge, very much like America's determination to conquer new frontiers, move westwards and fulfill its manifest destiny despite the many challenges that lay ahead.
A central theme of this yearning for a special relationship was the perception of the Zionist enterprise as an island of entrepreneurialism, progress, modernization and democracy in an authoritarian region that was stuck in the past.
The ethos of the frontier, as well as the burning desire to tap the human potential and spread to the vast expanses in the West had a striking resemblance to the Zionist ethos of making the desert bloom.
Moreover, the campaign to build a national home for a persecuted minority and resurrect Jewish statehood resonated with many Americans because it was a distilled version of their own national ethos and experience.
Americans saw the formation of the Israeli nation as a path that their own nation took; likewise, Israel's tale of a nation formed from the ingathering of the exiles could have just as well been America's own story, as far as many were concerned.
Of course, the deep religiosity of many Americans, and their love of the Old Testament and the Holy Land, was also a major factor in shaping this view. This affinity captured the imagination of many Christians in America, and especially evangelicals, who as early as the 19th century called for the US to help revive Jewish statehood in the Holy Land.
The pastor of George Bush, a relative of the two presidents, the preachers Thomas De Witt Talmage and many others, including Anna and Horatio Spafford who established the American Colony in Jerusalem, campaigned tirelessly to revive Jewish independence in the land of Israel.
Bumps in the road
The two approaches to Jewish statehood in the Truman administration came to a head on the eve of independence.
Truman's close adviser Clark Clifford was the unofficial leader of the camp that advocated a special relationship. Although he was not Jewish, he sympathized with the struggle of the Jewish community in Palestine.
He considered the establishment of a Jewish home to be a payment of an old historical debt to the Jews after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the ineffective efforts of the Truman-Roosevelt administration to help save the Jews.
Clifford was also concerned that Truman's rival in the 1948 presidential election, New York Governor Thomas Dewey, would win because of his popularity with Jewish voters.
Thus, the adviser concluded that a presidential decision to recognize Israel would help his boss in the race and get him the lion's share of the Jewish vote. Hence, the ideological and political considerations fused into one dimension and convinced Truman that he should side with those in his administration calling for immediate recognition.
Despite being under heavy pressure to remain neutral, Truman made a quick decision and only 11 minutes passed between Israel declaring independence and America recognizing the Jewish state. That was a victory for those who advocated a special relationship, but it was a short-lived victory, because over the ensuing decade, what governed US policy toward Jerusalem was its national and strategic interests, not the values and ideology it shared with the Jewish state.
Those in the administration who were sidelined during the debate over recognition of Israel, ultimately carried the day during the rest of the Truman presidency and into the 1950s and early 1960s.
Their view, that the US should focus on creating an Arab coalition against the Soviets, ultimately prevailed.
Thus, Israel found itself in the backseat and estranged from its ally, which was too focused on regional defense (culminating with the US forging of the Baghdad Pact with Arab nations).
A stick with no carrot
During the first decade of the relationship, Israel was not viewed as a strategic partner. Moreover, President Dwight D. Eisenhower twice froze aid packages: in 1953, to pressure Israel to stop its construction of the national water carrier because it was in demilitarized land on the border with Syria; and in 1956, to force Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to withdraw Israeli troops from Sinai after the Suez Crisis.
In both cases, Israeli allies in Congress, among the American people and in the Jewish community, could not stop these punitive steps and failed to win over with their arguments that Israel and the US should have a special relationship.
As far as the White House was concerned, Israel had become a strategic liability.
On top of that, these were the years when America was obsessed with countering communism, with Senator Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt and the House Un-American Activities Committee's endless efforts to expose communists.
In light of this climate, the Jewish community chose to scale back its efforts to create a special relationship, lest it trigger a backlash within the administration.
Israel was left in the lurch, despite proving itself to be a de facto strategic asset when it provided the CIA with the transcript of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956.
The dramatic turning point that finally convinced the Eisenhower administration that it should embrace Israel was the eruption of the turbulence in the region in 1958.
The crisis, which saw Jordan almost fall into Moscow's orbit, was a seminal moment for US foreign policy because for the first time it cast Israel as a strategic asset that was willing to take risks to protect Western interests in the Middle East.
At the height of the crisis, the US used Israeli airspace for three days after a revolution in Iraq. Eisenhower used the Israeli air corridor to help stabilize Iraq's neighbor Jordan, making sure the pro-American Hashemite family that ruled the kingdom would survive rather than be toppled like the Hashemite family in Iraq.
Thus, thanks to Israel, the US supplied Jordan with strategic supplies and saved it from becoming a Soviet bastion.
During that operation, Israel was the only country in the region that let Western planes pass through its airspace, and this was not lost on Eisenhower.
It was also not lost on Moscow, which issued a strong rebuke against Israel.
The crisis did not change actual policies and Israel did not get immediate rewards for helping the US, but the perceptual change was clearly felt in Washington. This transformation paved the way for the Kennedy administration's decision to sell Israel Hawk missiles, ending a longstanding taboo on selling arms to the Jewish state.
The beginning of a beautiful friendship
Eisenhower continued to heed the advice of his pro-Arab advisers even after the 1958 crisis and refused to sell Israel Hawk missiles, but his attitude toward Ben-Gurion was much more positive due to the fact that Israel's stature in Washington had changed dramatically.
A UN National Security Council memo from August 1958, two months after the operation, made it clear: "If we choose to combat radical Arab nationalism and to hold Persian Gulf oil by force if necessary, then a logical corollary would be to support Israel as the only pro-West power left in the Near East ."
Eisenhower also joined this assessment and in a discussion he held on this matter, he proposed making Israel the head of the spear in this new regional strategy, whose goal was to "decapitate the head of the [Egyptian] snake."
This perceptual shift in the relationship is what led four years later to the Hawk deal and to the sale of much more sophisticated weapon systems later on.
The Hawk deal closed the gap between the two competing attitudes toward Israel and created a symbiosis between those who harbored a more value-based approach and those who saw Israel through the strategic lens only.
From then on, it was impossible to go back to the dark days of the 1950s.
With the help of public opinion
Despite the strategic shift in relations and the considerable sway Israel's supporters had in Washington (including through lobbying groups), the two countries have had their share of crises.
In 1963, the "nuclear crisis" erupted after President Kennedy insisted that Israel allow inspectors access to the Dimona reactor.
Another crisis took place during Richard Nixon's presidency, when the administration tried to promote its regional peace plan based on an almost complete Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and the West Bank.
Nixon's successor Gerald Ford also locked horns with the Israeli government and declared a potential "reassessment" in his policies toward Jerusalem because Israel refused to make more territorial concessions as part of its interim deal with Egypt.
President George H.W. Bush also clashed with Israel, twice. In 1992, he refused to grant Israel loan guarantees because he wanted an Israeli settlement freeze in return.
A year earlier, Bush and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had a feud over the peace process.
President Barack Obama's presidency was also full of bilateral crises owing to his determination to move forward in the peace process and his accommodating approach to Iran and pro-Islamist movements in the region.
But for all the crises and disagreements, the foundation of the relationship has remained rock solid because it has always been based on security interests and shared values.
And all through the crises, never did America revert back to its hostile approach from the 1950s.
Moreover, in many cases, it was Congress that has stood by Israel's side and made sure the president would not take punitive steps against Israel.
This was the case after Ford threatened a reassessment and after President Jimmy Carter tried to impose a peace plan on Israel.
The Golden Age
Even though in recent years support for Israel has eroded among liberals in the Democratic Party, support for Israel among the general public has remained steady.
Moreover, the bold moves on the part of the Trump administration show that the two nations are now in a golden age in their relationship.
The extraordinary personal bond between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is very much like the chemistry between Lyndon B. Johnson and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in the 1960s.
Thus, in light of this deep appreciation and empathy, it is safe to assume that the administration's much-anticipated peace plan will not create a major rift between the two sides.
The Israel-US alliance has a promising and stable future.
