Identity matters. Reflections on the 'Israelite matrices' of American identity

The pro-Palestine riots on US campuses and the support for the Jewish state, as well as the offensive launched after 7 October, have generated numerous reflections. This article moves away from the analysis of international relations, and it is focused on the citizenship support for Israel. It offers some reflections on the origins of the concepts of 'Americanism' and 'People' that inform American culture and political identity. In particular, the use of Old Testament themes and the resulting "symbolic" link between American and Israelite identity is discussed, with particular attention paid to the role of evangelists and the various recent sources recounting their growing influence. In this paper, the origin of this support is considered by reflecting on the link between the current Revival and the 18th century Great Awakening. The methodology of critical discourse analysis, as employed by various authors, is adopted to reconstruct the establishment of these elements as the result of a discursive and doctrinaire clash before Independence, and to demonstrate how these elements influenced subsequent political developments.