Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jews only make up 2% of the population in the United States. I would argue that US policy toward Israel is motivated more by Christian end-times theology of the religious right than by the Jews themselves.
The right context is the cold war. For a long time, Israel was the ONLY dependably-US friendly country in the middle east. Almost all the others (Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, ...) were, in the context of the cold war, soviet outposts. Their army was trained by the soviet union, all their arms supplied by soviet union, and high ranking soviets were roaming all around. The other US-friendly middle east countries li…
1. The Soviet Union from WW2 to the fall in 1990 never had diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were allied with the US certainly in the 1980s (possibly earlier?) and supported the resistance of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan; and
2. The cooling of relations between the US and the Arab world did have--and still has--a lot to do with the US support of totalitarian regimes, including the Saudis. The US enjoyed strong relations with the Shah of Iran and then with Saddam Hussein in a proxy war with the USSR.
Only 2% of the US population might be Jewish but Jewish political support is significant for a number of reasons:
1. It affects what are now key swing states, most notably Florida;
2. The general political activism and even affluence of that population segment; and
3. The cause of Israel aligns with that of religious (Christian) conservatives, largely because of the Holy Land.
Bear in mind that the dynamic has changed. Modern US administrations virtually can't criticize Israel. Compare this to Eisenhower telling Israel to get out of Sinai.
Attributing this to the Cold War, instability of regimes in the Middle East and Soviet tendencies (IMHO) varies from disingenuous to factually inaccurate.