ABSTRACT

American Jews have experienced dramatic changes in their relationship to US foreign policy in the post-1945 period. Issues of concern to the Jewish community, especially relating to Israel, were initially considered peripheral to Washington’s central global objective of containing the USSR. Few Jews were engaged in American diplomacy and Jews were widely regarded as biased in favour of the Zionist quest. By the 1980s, however, the treatment of Soviet Jews had become a bench-mark in judging Moscow’s human rights record and the degree to which America could trust the Kremlin. Israel had come to be seen as a ‘strategic asset’ and Jewish views towards Israel were generally regarded as one important perspective of American policy in the Middle East. Individual Jews increasingly played a prominent role in American diplomacy towards both the USSR and the Middle East as bureaucrats and negotiators, and did so in a balanced and unbiased manner.