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In 1921, Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the British colonies, visited Rishon LeZion, one of the oldest Jewish villages in pre-state Israel. This posed a dilemma for the community: How should Churchill be received?

There were two options. The older members of the village wanted to impress upon Churchill how difficult the conditions and the hostility of their Arab neighbors made life there. The younger people wanted to emphasize what they had achieved.

The latter won the argument, and Churchill was greeted by a spirited group of triumphant Jews on horseback. It worked.

From "the most inhospitable soil, surrounded on every side by barrenness and the most miserable form of cultivation," the Jewish village stood out as "a fertile and thriving country estate, where the scanty soil gave place to good crops and good cultivation, and then to vineyards and finally to the most beautiful, luxurious orange groves, all created in 20 or 30 years by the exertions of the Jewish community who live there," Churchill gushed.

Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert notes that, upon returning to the House of Commons, Churchill said: "I defy anybody, after seeing work of this kind, achieved by so much labor, effort, and skill, to say that the British government, having taken up the position it has, could cast it all aside and leave it to be rudely and brutally overturned by the incursion of a fanatical attack by the Arab population from outside."

The argument over how the Jews of Rishon LeZion should welcome Churchill came to mind when I read the latest Gallup survey of American public opinion toward Israel. Gallup regularly polls on whether respondents sympathize more with the Israelis or the Palestinians in the Mideast conflict. The latest results show the highest sympathy for Israel -- 63 percent -- since 1991.

But the poll also breaks down support for Israel by political orientation; 60 percent of independents favor Israel, 48 percent of Democrats favor Israel, and 85 percent of Republicans favor Israel. The more conservative you are politically, it seems, the more likely you are to favor Israel.

Just how far the Republican Party has come in this regard is on display with the recent controversy surrounding California Republican Tom Campbell, a former congressman and current candidate for the U.S. Senate. Campbell repeatedly voted to cut aid to Israel during his time in the House, and took campaign donations from Sami Al-Arian, a former professor who pled guilty to helping Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group.

Campbell is considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for that Senate seat, and his rivals have jumped on his rocky history with Israel. What this episode shows, along with the Gallup poll, is that support for Israel has become a significant expectation for the resume of a Republican would-be officeholder to the extent that it's now an issue in a GOP Senate primary.

So how did a political party that has seen almost no improvement in its ability to draw Jewish voters on a national scale become the party of knee-jerk support for Israel? The best way to understand the transformation is through Churchill's visit to Rishon LeZion.

The Jews there were confronted with a choice. They could stress their grievances and project a sense of unfairness as the justification for British patronage and handouts. Or, they could make a case for independence by highlighting how hard work, perseverance, and their own ingenuity had enabled them to thrive in an otherwise hostile environment.

The grievance culture fed by current left-liberal orthodoxy has birthed a college admissions process by which an American citizen's value is measured by the color of his skin and which now discourages immigrants from sharing a common language with the inhabitants of their new country. ("Press 1 for Yiddish" is not a phrase American Jewish immigrants can recall hearing.)

In constant battle with that ethos is what President Obama, in his March 18, 2008 speech on race, called the "quintessentially American -- and yes, conservative -- notion of self-help."

It was the expression of that "quintessentially conservative" value that impressed Churchill at Rishon LeZion in 1921.

Israel does not apologize for its successes or make excuses for its failures. It does not celebrate moral victories or tell sob stories. It is an island of virtue in a sea of vicious repression. In battle, Israel fights alone, despite the fact that her opponents never do. And Israel's staggering entrepreneurial achievements and scientific advances are not only among the world leaders in those fields but are built on the same sun-baked sand the rest of the Mideast inhabits, sans oil.

Carl Sagan once said, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Israel stopped just shy of creating the universe, but otherwise made a successful modern country from scratch.

The residents of Rishon LeZion gave Churchill a glimpse into the future. That future is our present, and the fact that conservatives are predisposed to sympathize with Israel shouldn't surprise anyone.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.