Why Americans support Israel

In this week's Weekly Standard, David Gelernter asks why Americans support Israel while the rest of the world seems to content to bash it regularly. The answer, he says, is in our common background:

Both are pick-up nations created out of ideas, with populations drawn from all over the globe; they are self-made nations in a world where most nations had nationhood handed to them on a silver platter. A Frenchman or Japanese is so far removed from nation-building that he no longer has any moral stake in it; the energy and struggle that created France or Japan are none of his business. He washes his hands of them. Americans and Israelis still remember that nations do not create themselves.

I think Chris Patten and Jacques Chirac should take a peek at this one.