From the era of Woodrow Wilson, when the United States committed itself to support the Zionist program in Palestine, American public opinion on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been formed and policy has been made from a restricted, generally Israel-centered vantage point. This frame of reference has excluded the Palestinian perspective and, in the struggle for Palestine that culminated in the Palestinians' dispossession in 1948, has made it impossible for U.S. policymakers to take this seminal episode into account in shaping Middle East policy.