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Elections or no elections, this government or another, the recent IDF bombing of the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwest Syria was strategically crucial. The strike followed intelligence reports of visits to the site by senior officers of the Turkish Air Force, apparently in preparation for the stationing there of Turkish warplanes. Post-October 7, Israel is determined never again to allow deadly forces to amass close to our borders. With the Iranians finally driven out of Syria, we must not now allow that country to become a military stronghold for yet another Islamic extremist, antisemitic, and violent regime.

With the regrettable backing of the United States, Turkey spearheads the Sunni Axis with Qatar and Pakistan. Together, they are rapidly replacing Iran’s Shi’ite Axis comprised of Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi and Syrian militias, and Palestinian terror groups allied with Tehran. Like the Shi’ites before it, the Sunni Axis also seeks to establish itself along Israel’s borders—in Gaza, Sinai, and Syria—and pose serious threats to Israel. Israel may be hampered by the Trump administration from preventing Turkish and Qatari involvement in Gaza, and by Cairo’s Sunni rulers from intervening in Sinai, but in Syria we can still take preemptive action. By doing so, Israel can deny Turkey the ability to confront us on most of our borders.

Even now, at the height of its regional power, Turkey is not Iran. Hundreds of millions of Sunnis in the world do not regard Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the way Shi’ites have revered Iran’s Supreme Leader as their sacred spiritual head. A Neo-Ottomanist as well as a Pan-Islamist, Erdoğan may fantasize about recreating the Sultanate but few people in the Middle East long for the return of the Turkish empire.

Turkey’s geographical location, which is partially in Europe, as well as its membership in NATO also act as checks on the country’s aggression. Israel has publicly reconciled with Erdoğan several times in the past. Such rapprochement, even if fleeting, would have been unthinkable with Iran.

Still, this does not mean that Israel can afford to let down our guard and ignore Erdoğan’s hostile words and actions. Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan recently declared that Israel is a “burden that humanity can no longer bear.” We must make unequivocally clear our determination to prevent Turkey from transforming Syria into a forward base for threatening us and expanding Ankara’s influence throughout the Middle East.

The UN and much of the world will condemn us and Turkey will swear to take revenge. Though some may claim that Israeli leaders are merely flexing their muscles before the elections, this is a matter of national security. Israel must stand firm and continue to make clear that Syria is out of bounds for Turkish warplanes.

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A version of this article originally appeared in Hebrew in Israel Hayom on August 25, 2026.

Haredi military service, US-Israel relations, war and peace, and sovereignty—we covered it all.

The event was cohosted by the Tel Aviv International Salon and the Isra…

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Speaking with Israelis and Americans about the upcoming Israeli elections, one might think they were occurring in totally different countries.

I encountered this fact repeatedly during a recent speaking tour in the United States. While my American audiences were convinced that our major issues would be the conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, the future of U.S.-Israel relations, and the possible renewal of the peace process, I conveyed the shocking—for them—reality that the matters most concerning to Israeli voters were entirely domestic.

Heading the list was the conscription of Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) men into the IDF. A strictly left-wing cause before the atrocities of October 7, Haredi military service has become a nationwide demand today led by the religious right. That community has paid disproportionately for this war in which roughly half of all the soldiers killed were religious Zionists. Deeply insulted by the Haredi claim that men cannot wear a uniform and remain observant, they accuse Ultra-Orthodox rabbis of perverting the Torah’s unequivocal commandments to fight. Outside of the Haredi parties, every contesting faction—even now the Likud, which previously backed Haredi exemptions—insists on Ultra-Orthodox service. For several candidates, among them Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, and Avigdor Liberman, it is their central platform.

The next-most pressing domestic issue is the establishment of a commission of inquiry to investigate Israel’s October 7 failures. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition favored forming a government-appointed commission, the majority of Israelis demand an independent national board. “The government cannot investigate itself,” they explain, and recall that Hamas murdered Israelis irrespective of their political affiliations. Like the Haredi conscription issue, this one, too, cuts across classic left-right lines.

My American audiences were further stunned when I assured them that, irrespective of the elections’ winner, Israel’s next prime minister will not withdraw a single soldier from Gaza or Lebanon. He will certainly not agree to the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria or redivide Jerusalem. But the final shock came when I suggested that there might not be a clear winner at all.

In that scenario, neither the pro nor the anti-Netanyahu bloc can put together a coalition without giving the premiership to a “kingmaker.” That is the politician who, though his party falls short of receiving a large number of Knesset seats, nevertheless proves most adept at cobbling together a coalition. Indeed, no functioning government can possibly emerge without him. Famously, in 2021, Naftali Bennett became prime minister after winning a mere six seats. This time, with an anticipated ten seats, the “kingmaker,” I predicted, could well be Avigdor Liberman.

Though Americans scarcely know him, Liberman has held every senior ministerial post—foreign affairs, treasury, and defense—and succeeded at all of them. Renowned for his hardline positions on Haredi conscription and security issues, he also gained respect as the only minister who, prior to October 7, repeatedly warned about the dangers of Hamas. His Yisrael Beitenu party, once largely supported by immigrants from the former Soviet Union, now enjoys a far broader base among Israelis who like Liberman’s tough defense stance and opposition to religious coercion. Not only a kingmaker, Liberman could well be a widely acceptable king.

As usual in Israeli elections, the field is both wide and deep. The spectrum runs from the extreme leftist Democratic Party led by Yair Golan to the radical Religious Zionist and Jewish Power parties of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, respectively. There is the center-left Yesh Atid party of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White as well as new center-right parties similarly focused on the Haredi and investigative commission issues. There is a moderate Arab party headed by Mansour Abbas and a contending list of Arab nationalists and Communists. And, as always, there are the Haredi parties, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi.

Though polls currently show a respectable lead for the Yashar Party of former IDF chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot, he lacks extensive political and diplomatic experience. Netanyahu, meanwhile, still scores high as the politician most suitable for the role of prime minister. But neither he nor his challengers can yet be seen as capable of creating a stable coalition. Barring the establishment of a Zionist government comprised of Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett, and others—a possible but unlikely scenario—Israel seems headed for a political stalemate similar to that which, between 2019 and 2022, led to three inconclusive elections. That is where Liberman, the kingmaker, may well come in.

Whether he or any one of the many candidates heads the next government, the position of Israeli prime minister will remain the planet’s most difficult. I stressed this point repeatedly to my American listeners who, if surprised by my earlier remarks, were perhaps reassured by their conclusion. “The next Israeli prime minister must stand up to Iran and its proxies, international pressure to create a Palestinian state, and Ultra-Orthodox opposition to conscription. And with no less urgency, he or she must do the utmost to restore our alliance with the United States and strive to rebuild bipartisan support.” Israel’s leader, I ended, “must combine resilience, experience, and a vision of the future—all the while commanding the bulk of the people’s trust.”

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As we learned from the recent U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding (MOU), such documents can rapidly become memoranda of misunderstanding in the Middle East. That is likely to be the case with the U.S.-brokered agreement on Hamas’s disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

“Today, the Board of ‌Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza,” President Donald Trump triumphantly declared on Truth Social on Thursday. The Board of Peace, presided over by Trump and including Turkey and Qatar among its members, was charged with funding and implementing the administration’s September 2025 20-point peace plan for Gaza. This provided for a permanent ceasefire and the return of all of Hamas’s Israeli hostages, living and dead. But the fulfillment of the subsequent points—Gaza reconstruction, deradicalization, and long-term efforts for peace—was contingent on Hamas disarmament.

Once it commenced, the disarmament process, including the mapping of Hamas tunnels, would set in motion a gradual Israeli military withdrawal to the so-called Yellow Line and eventually from all of Gaza. Verifiably demilitarized, Gaza would then be secured by an International Stabilization Force, composed of troops from multiple countries, and administered by Palestinian technocrats of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). “This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” Trump exulted this week, referring to Hamas’s pivotal willingness to disarm.

The question is: Will Hamas really give up its guns? A closer reading of the agreement reveals that Hamas will not initially turn over its weapons but only put them in NCAG storage. Further ambiguity surrounds the definition of the word “weapons”—whether it refers only to rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, as Hamas prefers, or to all small arms as well. Added to those uncertainties is the matter of reciprocity. As Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad insisted, “We will not take a single step [toward disarmament] unless we are certain that Israel will also carry out its commitments.”

The extent of that commitment, though, is also far from clear. Official Israeli sources have expressed reluctance to withdraw from any part of Gaza, even the 17 percent that the Israel Defense Forces occupied beyond the 53 percent demarcated by the Yellow Line, before Hamas disarms. Withdrawal before total disarmament, the Israelis reason, will result in armed Hamas elements infiltrating along and across the Yellow Line. The Israelis also demand that Hamas surrender all its arms, irrespective of their caliber. “There’s practically no heavy weapons in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in February. “There’s no artillery. There’s no tanks. There’s nothing.” The only weapons that mattered, he continued, were the 60,000 AK-47s in Hamas’s hands. “That’s how they execute people. That’s how they shoot our people. . . . They did the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust with AK-47s.”

Hamas, paradoxically, wouldn’t disagree. While willing to turn over the Herculean task of governing Gaza to the NCAG, Hamas without its guns forfeits its basic jihadist identity. It will also render its terrorists vulnerable to the many thousands of Palestinians seeking vengeance for the loved ones they have lost since October 7.

Not surprisingly, Hamas has not agreed to turning over its entire arsenal at once but only to an amorphous “road map” to disarmament involving several stages and conditions. The Israelis, meanwhile, continue to occupy most of Gaza and to target Hamas terrorists they claim were either complicit in the October 7 attacks or actively plotting new ones. Roughly 2 million Palestinians are crammed into 30 percent of the Strip, living in either ruins or tents and dependent on humanitarian aid.

The situation is stagnant but almost certainly unsustainable. By merely signaling its willingness to disarm, Hamas has, as an unnamed Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel, “put the ball in Israel’s court.” Similarly, Board of Peace Director-General Nickolay Mladenov asserted that Israeli “withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning” Hamas weapons. But the greatest pressure on Israel will likely come from Washington.

Desperate for a diplomatic win before November’s midterm elections and piqued by Israel’s objections to Turkish and Qatari involvement in Gaza, President Trump is ramping up his demands for Israeli pullbacks even before Hamas fully disarms. Indifferent to Netanyahu’s own need to demonstrate strength ahead of Israel’s fateful October 27 elections, the president said he will be “very disappointed” if Israel blocks progress on his 20-point plan. A senior administration official underlined the point, indicating that Trump will be “very, very disappointed” by Israeli intransigence.

As in the case of Iran, an MOU can be open to widely divergent interpretations and radically altered circumstances. In the Gaza Strip, no less than in the Strait of Hormuz, an MOU may lead not to peace but to further upheaval.

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This article originally appeared in the Free Press on July 31, 2026.

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During an appearance on Israeli television in February 2022, I made a lot of enemies. The topic was whether Israel should support Ukraine in resisting the Russian attack, which had just started. Everyone on the panel argued that Israel must not support Ukraine, a country infamous for antisemitism which had always voted against Israel in the United Nations. Moreover, backing Ukraine, they insisted, would provoke the Russian forces stationed in Syria to shoot at Israeli Air Force planes operating against Iranian bases in the country. “Israel must remain strictly neutral,” everyone concluded—everyone except me.

I, by contrast, argued that Israel had to stand by Ukraine, a fellow democracy invaded by a totalitarian ally of Iran. While no one could deny Ukraine’s antisemitic past, I admitted, the country had elected a Jewish president and, among all the former Soviet bloc countries, had the best pro-Israel voting record in the UN. Finally, I predicted that the Russians would not dare shoot at our planes, knowing that we would shoot back and destroy their anti-aircraft systems. “If we don’t support Ukraine, how could we expect the West to support us in our struggle with totalitarian Iran?” I asked, “How would we ever again be able to look at ourselves in the mirror?”

No sooner were these words spoken than the rest of the panel’s participants accused me of endangering our pilots’ lives by backing Ukraine—the country that was absolutely certain to lose the war.

Today, four and a half years later, the war in Ukraine drags on, yet it is far from certain that the Ukrainians will lose. On the contrary, their technological innovations, especially in the field of drone warfare, have brought the war deep into Russia’s territory and population centers. For Israel, meanwhile, there is no longer an Iranian threat from Syria and no danger that the few Russian troops still stationed there will shoot at our planes. The same Russian anti-aircraft batteries the Israelis once feared were handily destroyed by our Air Force in Iran. Most significantly, Ukraine has now taken military action against Iran by attacking Russia-bound Iranian arms shipments in the Caspian Sea. All these changes have taken place yet Israel’s policy toward Ukraine remains largely unchanged.

Israel, today, has virtually nothing to gain from maintaining its neutral policy on Ukraine and everything to gain by supporting them. Ukraine is our natural ally against Iran and can assist us in defending our troops from the threat of Hezbollah drones. Supporting Ukraine will bring our policy closer in line not only with Europe but also, increasingly, with the Trump administration. Supporting Ukraine will enable us, citizens of the democratic and Jewish state of Israel, to look ourselves in the mirror.

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I’ll never forget the day, November 22, 2012 when I received an urgent phone call from the Prime Minister’s Office informing me the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was about to ask the International Court of Justice to sanction Israel for illegally occupying Judea and Samaria. “Israel’s very existence is endangered,” I was told. As Israel’s ambassador in Washington, I immediately received instructions to seek help from our best friend in the Senate—to call Lindsey Graham.

Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, Graham was the third of the famous “Three Amigos” who basically ran their own foreign ministry, traveling the globe together and meeting world leaders. Though considered Conservatives, they would today be labeled Centrists, supporting an activist American foreign policy and standing firmly behind Israel. Lieberman, of course, was Jewish and McCain had a longstanding relationship with the American Jewish community, but Lindsey came from South Carolina, a state with relatively few Jews. Nor was he an Evangelical. Rather, his love of Israel originated in his deep sense of justice, his realistic assessment of America’s security needs, and his profound respect for the creativity and resilience of Israel’s people.

This does not mean that Lindsey was uncritical. A relentless promoter of peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, he chastised the current Israeli government’s refusal to meet Riyadh’s largely rhetorical request to discuss a “pathway” to Palestinian statehood. A pathway, he stressed, was a thing with gravel and needn’t lead to a Palestinian state. It would, however, pave the way to peace with Riyadh.

Yet whatever differences he had with our government, Lindsey was always there when Israel needed him. He was there in 2012 when, after I called him with news of Mahmoud Abbas’s plan, he quickly rallied Congressional support against the measure and successfully pressured the Palestinian president to back down. The senator was there again in recent years when I brought two delegations of displaced Israelis from the north to Washington. He met them both and gave them his full understanding and support.

John McCain died in 2018 and Joe Lieberman in 2024 and now Lindsey Graham, too, is gone. Their passing dealt a severe blow to Israel’s status in Congress which has historically been the principal source of our support in Washington. Presidents come and go but Senators and Congress Members can remain in office for many years. In contrast to the past when, if confronted by a problematic President, Israel could always count on Congress. Today, we have no one to complain to—we have no recourse. Should the need arise, the Republicans won’t defend us from Trump and the Democrats won’t defend us at all.

The dire situation may not be permanent and may in time change but for the foreseeable future Israel will have to work hard to regain some measure of Congressional backing. A couple of weeks ago I met with Rahm Emanuel—I’ve known him for many years—not to debate him about his immensely harsh criticism of Israel but to ask him, simply, “Is there a way back?” His answer was worth heeding: whether on the Syrian, Lebanese, or Palestinian front, Israel must show some kind of movement. “The image of Israel unwilling to take even symbolic steps is deeply hurting Israel’s standing on Capitol Hill,” he said. Lindsey Graham fondly would have agreed and advised us, as a true friend, to discuss that pathway.

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You can watch the segment or read its transcript below.

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Fox News: America Reports (July 16, 2026)

John Roberts: I want to ask you, Mr. Ambassador, about something that happened yesterday across the street from me in the House of Representatives. Nearly half of Democrats in Congress voted to cut off aid to Israel — and they were very happy about doing that. Listen to what some of them said:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): What it says is that the majority of Democrats voted in favor of this Massie amendment, and to me, what it says is that the majority of the Democratic Party is most in touch with the American electorate writ large.

Greg Casar (D-TX): A majority of Democrats in this building refused to vote to send billions of dollars in weapons to the Israeli military. That sends a strong message.

Ilhan Omar (D-MN): There are many members who took votes that I was surprised to take that yes vote today. And I am proud of them.

Delia Ramirez (D-IL): We have 80 members. I believe, looking at this list, that we’re going to pick up more members.

John Roberts: What do you think of that, Mr. Ambassador? Jewish voters in the United States have been a reliable Democratic constituency, but now it would appear that the Democratic Party is leaving them and Israel behind.

Michael Oren: I find it curious to say the least, John, that these members of Congress are smiling, having voted for a piece of legislation that will literally endanger their children and grandchildren.

The United States has one, and I stress one, military ally in the world that’s willing to fight with the United States shoulder to shoulder and fight on a level not just of military prowess, but technological prowess, which is equal to, if not surpassing that of the United States.

Why would anybody, anybody, who cares about the security of the United States, want in any way to weaken that alliance and weaken the Israeli partner to that alliance? Yeah, they have their ideology, but let them talk about their ideology when the United States is less defensible, more vulnerable to attacks.

Also, let them go back to their constituents because all the American aid to Israel is spent in the United States. It’s basically a subsidy to the American arms industry. It employs tens and tens of thousands of people in the United States. They’ll be out of a job if the Democrats have their way.

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Last night marked the closing ceremony for the 2026 Maccabiah Games. On July 1, 10,000 athletes arrived in Israel from around the world to take part in the 22nd Games, a historic Jewish sporting tradition dating back to 1932. For the opening Shabbat dinner, I was invited to speak to a VIP group from Maccabi USA. Wearing my old Maccabiah uniform from 50 years before (it still fits!), I proudly told them the following:

July 3, 2026 —Tel Aviv

I am honored to be talking to you, the supporters and senior staff of the 22nd Maccabiah Games. I’m delighted to speak about my experiences as a participant in the 10th Maccabiah Games – it seems incredible to think that it was nearly a half-century ago.

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I grew up in a small New Jersey town where I was the only Jewish kid in the neighborhood and would get beaten up for being Jewish. I’d come home with a black eye and bloody nose, and my father, a veteran of World War II, had pictures of a concentration camp that the GIs had liberated. He would show me those photos and say, “You see that kid? That’s why we need a strong state of Israel.” From a very early age, I knew that somehow I would go to Israel. I would save up all year long mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and raking leaves to spend my summers on the kibbutz working for free.

When I was eighteen, I faced a dilemma – should I stay in Israel and immediately join the army or should I return to the United States and first go college? I’d just gotten into the university of my dreams and reached the conclusion that the army could wait. I would complete the four years of my bachelor’s degree.

The question then arose – how could I stay in shape during those four years and be ready to try out for the paratroopers? Up until that point I had never been much good at sports (I have the hand-eye coordination of a bat). Back then, there were really only three American sports you could play – basketball, baseball, or football. I certainly didn’t have the coordination for basketball or baseball. As for football, all I could play was offensive tackle, which meant I’d be little more than a punching bag.

In the process I discovered I had three qualities of which I was not previously aware. Firstly, I had great endurance – I simply didn’t get tired. Secondly, I had very strong legs. Thirdly, I had a natural rhythm. Tell me to row at twenty-four strokes, and I’ll row at twenty-four strokes. Tell me thirty-two, I’ll row thirty-two. I had an internal clock, which made me perfect for the sport of rowing.

I tried out for the crew, made the varsity, and trained. Now, crew is the most insane sport of all. You train for six, seven, even eight hours a day. You run marathons in order to row crew. The races usually last about seven minutes. Each one, however, begins with a sprint, so after the first ten seconds you basically have no oxygen and run the rest of that race purely on muscle and determination. More than anything, it’s psychological. That was crew. I figured if I could row, I’d be good enough to get into the Israeli paratroopers.

Approaching graduation during my senior year, I got a note announcing the upcoming 10th Maccabiah Games in 1977. There would be no better way to inaugurate my life in Israel than participating in the competition.

By then, I was no longer rowing varsity so I started doing my own training. I took a loft, strangely enough, in a chapel in New York. It was a bedroom upstairs with one bed.
Every day, I’d get up at four o’clock in the morning and do a rowing workout. I had hired an Israeli coach to teach me how to scull, because I had only rowed with one oar before, not two. After that, I’d come home and have a breakfast of bonemeal, raw egg, and chocolate. By noon, I’d do another major weight workout, and in the evening, I’d run at least ten miles. This went on for weeks and weeks on end.

The tryouts were held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. There were the same trials as those for the Olympics so we tried out for the Maccabiah and the Olympics at the same time. I almost made the Olympics, but the coach said that even though I had done very well, I was too short (at six feet two and a half – too short!). But I did make the Maccabiah team and became the stroke. It was a great team – some of the finest oarsmen I ever encountered. They were truly, truly excellent oarsmen.

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In the summer of 1977, we went to Israel to compete. We were kind of in a league of our own – we won two gold medals. We were on the verge of getting our third gold, just 100 meters short of the finish line, when the boat that the Israelis had given us – and these were wooden boats back then, not carbon fiber – simply fell apart in the middle of the Yarkon River. We sat there while the Argentinians passed us and won, leaving us without the third gold medal.

But the medals were not what was important about that Maccabiah.

We forget that 1977 was a very painful year for the State of Israel. It was four years after the traumatic Yom Kippur War, in which, in three weeks, the state of Israel suffered more fatalities than we have in the past three years, in a population that was less than a third of what it is today.

After the 1974 Arab oil embargo, almost every African country cut off relations with Israel. We had very few ties with South America, none with China, India, and the twelve Soviet Bloc countries. Three million Jews were trapped behind the Iron Curtain. If they even studied Hebrew, they would be sent to the Gulag in Siberia. We had no peace with Egypt, no peace with Jordan, certainly no Abraham Accords.

We had a friendly relationship in the United States, but not a strategic alliance. Israel was totally isolated, fifty percent of our GDP went to defense, and the country was impoverished.

We rowed at a time that was very depressing for Israel. Even the Yarkon back then was lined with brambles, weeds, and garbage. The water was toxic.

Then, almost suddenly, things began to change. Israel won the European basketball championship, defeating the theoretically unbeatable Soviet team. We even won Eurovision that year. In November 1977, Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, arrived in Tel Aviv, beginning what became known as the Camp David peace process. Everything turned around in 1977.

It is an important lesson for us today. Right now Israel and the Jewish people are experiencing extreme difficulties. Relations with many countries are strained if not severed and even our ties with the United States are facing unprecedented challenges. Antisemitism has skyrocketed worldwide.

What I learned from the Maccabiah in 1977, was that if Jews come together, and if we are united, we can overcome any difficulties and turn situations around. The Maccabiah was about sports, yes, medals, certainly, but above all it was about Jewish athletes coming from around the world and celebrating Jewish peoplehood. It was that lesson that I carried with me throughout my life in Israel, in my career as a public servant and as a soldier. The Maccabiah has always remained for me a source of great inspiration and a model of what we can once again aspire to achieve.

1977 was a low point. Today we are again at a similar nadir. But if we can achieve the kind of unity that young people and athletes experience at the Maccabiah, we could once again make 2026 into 1977, to replicate that great achievement. And for that, I want to thank you all. Each and every one of you deserves a gold medal

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I was recently asked in an interview with i24 News whether I thought Vice President JD Vance was right in saying that, apart from the United States, Israel has no friends in the world. I emphatically answered “no,” and listed the many friends Israel has in South America, Africa, the Arab Gulf, and, most importantly, India. “It’s a country with a population four times that of the U.S.,” I explained, “whose leader, Modi, visited Israel a day before the war with Iran to declare his love for Israel on the Knesset stage.”

Several days after the interview, Prime Minister Netanyahu was asked the same question about Vance’s statement and gave precisely the same answer, similarly stressing our excellent ties with India. But in both cases, the interviewers posed the wrong question. What they should have asked, “is JD Vance right when he said that Israel “can’t just kill [its] way out of solving every single national security problem that [it has]’?” The answer is even more adamantly “no!”

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The charge that Israel uses brute force to resolve all its security problems is firstly, and historically, false. This is the country which, in 1949, signed armistice agreements with four Arab countries that only a year before had tried to destroy us. In 1967, that same country offered to return almost all of the sizable territories we captured in the Six-Day War in return for peace with the Arab leaders who once again sought to annihilate it. Their response was the three “no”s—no recognition, no negotiation, no peace. This is the country, Israel, which returned the Sinai Peninsula, an area more than three times its size, in return for peace with Egypt. We are the nation that signed a peace agreement with the arch-terrorist Arafat who for decades specialized in murdering Israelis. He soon went back to murdering Israelis and still we sought peace with him.

Israel is the country which, with the enthusiastic support of Presidents Obama, Biden, and, yes, Trump, tried to avoid war with Hamas by paying it Qatari money.

Israel is the country which, arguably more than any other in the world, has done more to avoid having to kill our way out of our security problems. Still, there are some problems that Israel has no choice but to address with force. As Vice President Vance knows full well, there is no diplomatic solution for Israel’s problems with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. With enemies sworn to wipe us off the map, there is no diplomatic option, only defense.

But the charge that Israel kills its way out of its problems, beyond being inaccurate and unfair, is a favorite among antisemites. It reflects the same Jew hatred behind the claim that Israel killed 70,000 Palestinians without noting that half that number were terrorists and many civilian deaths were caused by terrorist rockets or natural causes. Those same racists view Israelis as a uniquely evil people who want nothing more than to murder women, children, and journalists.

Alarmingly, the blood libel that Jews kill their way out of security problems has moved from the radical Republican and Democratic fringe to the mainstreams of both parties. This is not to say that Vance and others have a problem with the Jewish state, but the Jewish state has a problem with the propagation, however inadvertent, of classic antisemitic tropes. Addressing that problem is the responsibility of all Israelis, especially our leaders. Though we must never cease striving to preserve our crucial alliance with the United States, we must respectfully but forcefully correct American leaders when they spread falsehoods about Israel, defame our national character, and distort our history. Israel has many friends in the world, we must proclaim. Israel defends itself when it must but makes peace whenever it can.

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An earlier version of this article was published in Israel Hayom on July 8, 2026.

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The American media last week was filled with reports of discussions within the Pentagon about whether to move U.S. bases out of the rocket range of Iran. At stake was the future of major navy and air force installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar—countries lacking effective anti-missile defense systems. In addition, during the recent war with Iran, Saudi Arabia refused to allow American warplanes to use its airspace. The absence of such a protection proved immensely costly during Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion when the Iranians fired hundreds of missiles at these bases, causing extensive damage. Pentagon officials are now debating whether to transfer the bases to another country, perhaps Israel.

Clearly, the United States has a fundamental interest in relocating its Middle East bases to the Jewish State. In addition to its proximity to Iran and other regional adversaries, an exceptionally high level of technological support, a familiar culture, and an inherently pro-American population, Israel has the world’s most advanced, multi-layered anti-missile defense. During the “English language war,” as our pilots liked to call it, American forces served side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts. Not since its alliance with Britain in World War II has the United States cooperated so intimately with any foreign power. Israel today, Pentagon policymakers know, is the only country in the world willing to fight alongside the United States as a full and, in many ways, equal partner.

The American interest is obvious, but is Israel’s? The construction of U.S. bases in the country will certainly create hundreds of jobs for Israeli workers and infuse our economy with many millions of dollars. Strategically, it will further strengthen ties between our two armies and preserve Washington’s commitment to our qualitative military edge and national security. Israel’s enemies might think twice before striking a country that hosts hundreds of advanced U.S. warplanes, naval vessels, and intelligence centers. But along with the advantages of building American bases in Israel come significant costs and risks.

As our neighbors in the Gulf painfully learned, the presence of such installations in their countries did not enhance their security but compromised it by drawing Iranian missile fire. The rows of U.S. fueling planes lined up wing-to-wing at Ben Gurion Airport present an attractive and convenient target for Iran—even more than Israel currently represents. Most problematic for Israel, though, would be a situation in which American leaders limit our ability to defend ourselves with the claim that doing so would endanger U.S. forces stationed in the country.

Beyond the strategic arguments against hosting American bases are the political trends unfolding inside the United States. Should the Democrats regain control of Congress and the White House, or the isolationist, anti-Israel wing of the Republicans come to dominate their party, not only is military aid to Israel likely to be cut but also other security ties. With a Progressive president sitting in the Oval Office, we can justifiably ask, what would be the future of any American base in Israel?

In many ways, the question of whether to invite the U.S. military to reside permanently in Israel is not new. In the first years after independence, Israel actively sought membership in the Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO), a pro-Western, NATO-like alliance, only to be turned away by the Eisenhower administration. A similar negative response was received for Israel’s attempts to join the Baghdad Pact, formed in the mid-1950s around the Northern Tier countries of Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan. More recently, shortly after its election in 2022, the Netanyahu government purportedly gave serious consideration to signing a mutual defense agreement with the United States. That discussion was cut short, brutally, on October 7, 2023.

I always opposed such a treaty and, even after October 7, still do. It would compel Israel to send troops to defend America should it again engage in a foreign war while potentially restricting our latitude in defending ourselves. U.S. troops have served in Israel in the past—manning Patriot missile batteries during the First Gulf War and X-Band radar installations thereafter—without a formal legal framework. Forging one now will entail more drawbacks than advantages.

So, too, today, I would urge Israeli leaders to think long and intensely before agreeing to a U.S. request for permanent bases. At this point in time, when we do not know what, if any, agreement will emerge from the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran or the future relations between CENTCOM and the IRGC, the shortcomings of American bases in Israel outweigh their advantages.

This does not mean that we should cease efforts to strengthen our military ties with the United States. We can replace the aid we receive from Washington with close cooperation in cyber, laser, intelligence, and other mutually crucial areas. Our forces can still train together and our engineers can proceed with developing the world’s most advanced military technologies. American military aircraft can continue to utilize Ben Gurion Airport, hopefully without causing more of the civilian aviation delays that are already vexing Israelis.

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This article is adapted from an earlier version published in Hebrew in Israel Hayom on July 2, 2026.

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The 1967 war, of course, took six days, and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, eight. The Yom Kippur War lasted three weeks, and in 1982, Operation Peace for Galilee—the First Lebanon War—raged for three months. The Second Lebanon War ground on for fifty-four days. Before October 7, 2023, though, our lengthiest war was our struggle for independence, stretching from November 1947 to March 1949, roughly a year and a half. But all of those milestones have now been surpassed by this war, initially called Swords of Iron, but over time acquiring different operational titles—Rising Lion, Roaring Lion, etc.—which has continued for 1,000 days. It is Israel’s longest war, and it appears to be far from over.

The sheer duration of this war has taught us much about ourselves as a society, as an army, and as a people. We have experienced the truly unparalleled commitment of Israelis and the Jewish people to help one another in times of loss and distress as well as our determination never to let the enemy extinguish our joy. We have seen the unbreakable devotion of the Israeli people to the release of the hostages, and the superhuman endurance and faith of the captives themselves.

We have witnessed the inexhaustible bravery of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, especially the reservists who have left their homes, jobs, and families again and again, often for hundreds of days, to defend our country. Many have come back permanently impaired or have not returned at all. Their loved ones endured prolonged hardships. We have seen up close and daily the vast ability of our people to believe, to persevere, and to love.

At the same time, this war has left deep scars—physical, psychological, and moral—on all Israelis. The Jewish people are assailed by hatred throughout much of the Western world. And, internally, Israel remains divided between right and left, religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. United, we know from our history, we can surmount any obstacle, but that unity has recently proven elusive.

Wars do not end the way they used to. In this war there will be no “the Temple Mount is in our hands,” no raising of the Israeli flag over the Suez Canal or Mount Hermon. Nobody knows how or when this war will end. All we can be sure of is the indomitable spirit of our people and the fortitude of our beliefs. In that sense, we have won this war already.

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The imminent nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran is, by almost any objective Israeli metric, a deeply flawed piece of diplomacy. To many in Jerusalem, it feels like history repeating itself—a short sighted concession that offers Tehran sanctions relief without permanently dismantling its nuclear ambitions.

Yet, beneath the justified apprehension lies an unexpected, golden opportunity. For years, Israel’s geopolitical posture has been tightly bound to Washington’s regional policy, a dynamic that has occasionally made us look less like an independent superpower and more like a sponsored state caught in a tight American embrace.

This new deal, as flawed as it is, offers Israel a strategic reset: a chance to break free from Trump’s “bear hug” and chart a fiercely independent, proactive path forward.

If we look past the current frustration, the broader strategic landscape reveals that Iran and its proxies are operating from a position of systemic, long-term weakness. Israel is not entering this new era on its heels; we are entering it from a position of unprecedented tactical advantage.

The Illusion of Iranian Strength

While critics fear the deal will revitalize Iran, a closer look at Tehran’s internal ledger suggests otherwise. The Iranian economy is fundamentally broken, suffocating under spiraling hyperinflation and structural rot. The regime faces an estimated $300 billion bill just to rebuild and reinvest in basic infrastructure. A temporary influx of cash from a diplomatic deal cannot cure a terminal systemic illness.

Furthermore, Tehran is sitting on a domestic powder keg. The timeline between mass anti-regime protests in Iran has shrunk dramatically—from once every five years to once every two. The societal friction is intensifying, and it is a mathematical certainty that the Iranian public will take to the streets again soon. The regime will be forced to look inward, consumed by its own survival, leaving them far less bandwidth to project power abroad.

Even their most potent geopolitical leverage has been spent. For decades, Iran used the threat of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz as a diplomatic sword of Damocles. But the Strait is a one-bullet gun, and Iran has already pulled the trigger. By weaponizing this vital maritime artery, Tehran forced the global community to adapt. The world now understands the mechanics of this choke point and is actively accelerating alternatives—from new pipelines to entirely bypassing the route. The process of rendering the Strait of Hormuz economically irrelevant has already begun. Iran’s ultimate bargaining chip is losing its value by the day.

A Cleared Horizon

Closer to home, Israel’s security environment has fundamentally shifted. The terror threats posed on our borders have been severely degraded, if not entirely diminished. The rings of fire once meant to hem Israel in are fractured. While groups like Hezbollah or Hamas will inevitably try to rearm and reconstitute themselves, it will take them years to do so. Crucially, the paradigm has changed: Israel’s intelligence apparatus now maintains an unblinking eye on these borders, with a level of surveillance and operational readiness far superior to anything we possessed in the past.

This operational breathing room gives Israel the luxury of time and focus. We are no longer putting out fires on our borders; we can now build the architecture of the future.

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Low Hanging Fruit: The Price of American Compliance

If the Trump administration is determined to push this deal through, Israel should not merely protest from the sidelines. Despite operational setbacks, the regime’s goals remain unchanged: retaining power at any cost, advancing its nuclear capabilities, funding terror proxies, and targeting Israel. Jerusalem therefore must demand immediate, tangible concessions from Washington as the price of our compliance. We should press the U.S. to use its remaining leverage to secure low-hanging diplomatic fruit that fundamentally alters our strategic depth.

What does that look like?

• A Security Treaty via Syria: Establishing a long-term security framework regarding Syria to permanently limit Iranian entrenchment on our northern border.

• Expanding the Abraham Accords: Advancing Washington’s facilitation of historic breakthrough normalization agreements with major Muslim-majority nations like Kuwait or Indonesia.

• Kickstarting IMEC: Enlisting U.S. momentum behind the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). By establishing Israel as the central logistical bridge between East and West, we can cement our status as an indispensable global hub.

A Coalition Forged by a Common Enemy

Beyond Washington, Iran’s indiscriminate aggression has inadvertently achieved the unimaginable: drawing its victims together into a unified front. The recent war shattered a long-held illusion among our neighbors—including Saudi Arabia, which has suffered direct, costly missile strikes, and the UAE—that they could safely navigate Tehran’s crosshairs through quiet diplomacy or tactical hedging. Facing a shared threat and a shifting American security guarantee, these nations are being driven directly into Israel’s orbit.

This common vulnerability transforms former adversaries and cautious neighbors into natural allies, opening the door for a permanent air defense and maritime partnership anchored by Israeli technology. By lashing out across the board, Iran has rewritten the regional playbook, forcing an unprecedented coalition born entirely from a common enemy.

A Strategic Reset with Washington

This shifting regional dynamic highlights a deeper, more uncomfortable truth: it may not be so bad for Israel to be temporarily shunned by the Trump administration right now. The relationship has become a bit too “sticky” and over reliant on the U.S. To frame it in classic pop-culture terms, both sides could desperately use a Ross and Rachel style ‘we’re on a break’ moment. Like the famous TV couple, this isn’t a permanent breakup, but a hazy pause where they leave the terms vague, misinterpret each other’s next moves, and endlessly litigate the fine print while letting growing animus among U.S. citizens and internal political tensions wind down.

Stepping out of the suffocating American “bear hug” forces a healthy recalculation of the future, giving Israel the space to transition into a self-reliant regional anchor that benefits both parties in the long term.

The Way Forward

This is a moment for cautious optimism, not despair. A bad deal with Iran is a challenge, but it is also the catalyst Israel needs to shed the role of a reactive client state.

With our borders temporarily quieted, our intelligence superior, and Iran facing catastrophic internal decay, the geopolitical board is ours to play. By taking the initiative, requesting high value diplomatic compensation from the U.S., and expanding our economic and strategic footprints across the globe, Israel can turn a bad Western diplomatic maneuver into a historic Israeli victory. The horizon is wide open—it is time to step through.

Eli Herskowitz is an Israel-based writer who serves as the Director of Communications for Israel’s Ministry of Communications. He previously held roles in the Prime Minister’s Office, Knesset, and the British Embassy.

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Last night, in celebration of President Trump’s 80th birthday, tens of thousands of spectators gathered on the South Lawn of the White House to watch live UFC fights. The combination of spectacle and violence, many observers agreed, was nothing short of surreal. At the same time, the president announced the imminent signing of “a landmark moment for American diplomacy ending decades of hostility and bringing stability to the volatile Middle East.” For Israelis, much like the spectacle on the lawn, the declaration was shocking, bizarre, and brutal.

Less than four months ago, American forces stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the IDF in the most dramatic display ever of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Our Israeli pilots, soldiers, and commanders worked in the closest possible coordination with their American counterparts in mounting thousands of successful missions. Our leaders, too, appeared to be totally in lockstep in setting the war’s ultimate goals of overthrowing Iran’s jihadist regime, eliminating its nuclear and ballistic capabilities, and ending its support for terror. Netanyahu’s friendship with Trump seemed deep and unbreakable, surpassing that between Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton, perhaps even between Roosevelt and Churchill. The vision of a Middle East freed from the Islamic Republic’s grip, united in prosperity and peace, truly appeared within reach.

Then, rapidly, the situation changed. Iran pummeled neighboring oil-producing countries with ballistic missiles and drones and blockaded the strategically crucial Strait of Hormuz. Global oil prices skyrocketed, and a growing majority of Americans, already angered by Trump’s failure to avoid entanglement in endless foreign wars, demanded a ceasefire. The ayatollahs, far more adept at enduring pain, knew they had the upper hand and exploited it to the full, pressuring Trump to stop resisting their missile program and terror network, and to enter into extended talks on the nuclear issues—all in exchange for reopening the Strait. The Iranians further conditioned the agreement on an end to Israel’s efforts to defend the north against Hezbollah attacks, even to withdraw IDF troops from Southern Lebanon. When Israel responded to Hezbollah drone strikes by bombing Beirut, Trump called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” and demanded that he halt all operations.

The stage is now set for one of the most potentially explosive confrontations ever between U.S. and Israeli leaders. Few, if any, in Israel believe that Trump’s agreement with Iran will end decades of hostility and bring stability to the Middle East. On the contrary, Israelis are justifiably bracing themselves for further upheavals, even war.

The situation will confront Israeli leaders with an excruciating choice: either abandon the north or risk a major clash with Washington. The first option poses a possibly existential threat to the entire state—Hezbollah rockets can easily reach Tel Aviv—while the second could result in a cut-off of vital munitions and even condemnations in the UN. Moreover, the decision will have to be made when, for the first time in our history, we have no recourse—no ability to complain to Congress, to the Democrats, or our friends in Europe. Israel, today, stands virtually alone.

Asked by The Wall Street Journal last night what I thought Netanyahu can do, I responded by saying that the question is not “can” but “must.” The prime minister’s paramount job is to defend the country at virtually any cost, even a backlash from the United States. Like Begin before him in destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactor or Eshkol in initiating the Six-Day War—both in the face of stiff American opposition—Netanyahu must place Israel’s security first.

Ronald Reagan, a pro-Israel president, responded to Israel’s raid on the reactor by delaying the shipment of F-16s to the IDF and joining with Iraq in condemning Israel in the Security Council. So, too, today, Israel can weather Trump’s possible response. But Israel cannot endure the loss of our north and forfeit our fundamental security.

While continuing to strike Hezbollah and navigating our complex relationship with the United States, we must gird ourselves internally to meet the great challenges ahead. We must rigorously bridge our society’s rifts between religious and secular, right and left. We must address the Haredi service issue now, vastly expand support for reservists and inhabitants of the North, and preserve our national will to fight. We must invest massively in public diplomacy and diversify our foreign policy portfolio, strengthening our ties with Asia, Africa, and South America. Unified and steeled, we will once again prevail.

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One of the most frequently asked questions I’ve recently been asked in Israeli media interviews is “Do you think Israel has become the fifty-first state?” Half-jokingly I answer, “If only. American states have far more freedom and maneuverability than Israel!”

If the question is relatively new, my answer is not. Ever since President Eisenhower ordered Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to halt the IDF’s 1956 campaign against Egypt in Sinai, and later to withdraw from Gaza, the United States has consistently forced Israel to stop fighting and agree to a ceasefire. This was true in the Six-Day War, which Israel wanted to last eight days, in the Yom Kippur War, in both Lebanon Wars, and all of our operations in Gaza. Even pro-Israel presidents such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George Bush threatened serious repercussions if Israel ignored their orders to stop.

In May 2021, on the eighth day of Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas, I received a phone call from one of President Biden’s senior advisors asking me to forward a message to Prime Minister Netanyahu. “Israel must end the operation tonight or risk losing American support.” Netanyahu was furious—he wanted to keep fighting another three days at least—yet he immediately complied. The operation ended that evening.

The only difference between Trump and previous U.S. presidents is his tendency to treat us publicly as vassals who must obey his every command. The situation is humiliating and demoralizing for Israel. It also, unfortunately, strengthens our enemies. The question then arises whether Israel in every circumstance and at all costs must obey the White House’s demands.

The answer, historically, has been “no.” American presidents not only ordered Israel to stop fighting but opposed its decision to go to war in the first place. That was the case in every war between the establishment of the state and last year’s Operation Rising Lion. Yet Israeli leaders, despite the danger of alienating Washington, determined that our fundamental security was at stake and decided to act.

Ironically, every time Israel defied the White House and went to war—in 1948, for example, in 1967, and in the 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor—we gained America’s respect. Every time we gave in to pressure and showed restraint—in 1973 and the Gulf War of 1991–we earned America’s contempt.

This record is especially relevant today when there is little doubt that Hezbollah will violate any ceasefire and continue to attack us. Israel has to defend and save the north, yet doing so risks not only war with Iran but an open confrontation with President Trump. As in the past, Israel will have no choice but to act.

While mindful of the potential costs, Israel must show that it is not a vassal of the U.S. or even its fifty-first state, but a sovereign nation with an unassailable duty to defend its land and citizens. In the end—if history is a guide—Trump will respect us for it.

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This article originally appeared in Hebrew in Israel Hayom on June 10, 2026.

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In June 1944, my father landed on Normandy Beach.

I often wonder what it’d be like to sit rocking in that landing craft and counting down the seconds until he entered the hell of World War II. I wonder who was with him in that boat—the farmer from Alabama, the merchant’s son from Vermont, the Ivy League literature student, tough street kids from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Jersey City.

And I wonder what they were thinking—fear, of course, and not only of being killed or wounded but of letting their buddies down—but also about the great mission on which they were about to embark.

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As of this writing, it is still unclear whether President Trump will authorize another major round of combat against Iran or whether he will forge an agreement with the Islamic Republic not dissimilar to the nuclear agreement signed by President Obama in 2015. However, Israel must prepare for both scenarios and be ready to respond to any US-Iranian deal.

As in 2015, Israel must express deep appreciation for our most important ally while at the same time noting that its agreement with Tehran does not bind us. We must declare in no uncertain terms that we reserve the right—and indeed the duty—to defend ourselves against any threat or combination of threats in the Middle East. We must, moreover, continue our fight against Hezbollah.

Beyond this decisive declaration, though, there are many actions that Israel must urgently and quietly take. We must enter into an intimate discussion with the White House about the best way to protect our future security.

That was the approach Israel took after the 2015 deal. As the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, I wrote a position paper for Netanyahu’s first meeting with President Obama after the signing of the agreement. I proposed that Israel and the United States together define what would constitute a violation of the agreement—if Iran enriched uranium to 20%, for example—and what our joint response would be. Under what conditions would the United States support Israeli action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons? To what extent would Washington support the continued Israeli struggle against Iran’s proxies, especially Hamas and Hezbollah?

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In addition to reaching these understandings, I recommended that Israel seek compensation for the increased risks to our security. We could acquire advanced American systems that we had been denied in the past, obtain closer intelligence and cyber cooperation, and obtain authorization to purchase or lease strategic bombers. I suggested that Washington help block Iran’s regional expansion by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Netanyahu presented these proposals to Obama, who promptly rejected them all. The idea of ​​Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, the prime minister later told me, made the president laugh.

Donald Trump is certainly not Obama. If he is indeed headed for a deal with Iran, he is still mindful of Israel’s security. Now, then, is the time to engage in an intimate dialogue with the administration. Now is the time to reach a common definition of Iranian violations of any agreement, as well as commitments for a joint US-Israeli response. Now is the time to receive a clearer green light to advance and enhance the IDF’s effort to defend the North. Now is the time to request and receive the military capabilities necessary to defend ourselves from future threats. Now is the time for the IDF to acquire its first B-2 bomber, along with bunker-busting munitions.

Together with the understandings, these capabilities will send an unequivocal message to Iran that Israel will no longer remain passive. We will have both the diplomatic backing and the strategic wherewithal to ensure that Iran will indeed never acquire a nuclear weapon or other massively destructive arms. Iran, which once operated with impunity behind its proxies, will from now on be vulnerable.

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This article was adapted from a Hebrew version originally published in Ynet on May 27, 2026.

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If freedom is impossible without responsibility and Zionism is defined by responsibility, then, for the Jewish people, true freedom comes only with Zionism.

Behind that syllogism lies a 3,000-year-old logic leading back to the foot of Mount Sinai, where the Children of Israel received the law. A mere fifty days before, they had been slaves in Egypt. Slavery is the total absence of responsibility. A slave does not have to decide what to wear in the morning, where to work, and when to eat. Apart from obeying his master, a slave makes no decisions whatsoever, and so is absolved of all responsibility.

Then, one spring day, the Exodus. Then sea, the Egyptians pursuing, and the Pillar guiding the newly emancipated forth. Then, finally the mountain where a covenant is born. The Children of Israel receive the law and, by doing so, guarantee their freedom.

But weren’t they already free? And by accepting the law, weren’t they forfeiting much of their freedom? So, logic would hold, but divine wisdom and the man who conveyed it, Moses, reasoned differently. They understood the fundamental requirements of a just and stable society. They understood that the sine qua non of such a society is law. They knew—inherently, incontrovertibly—that genuine freedom comes only with responsibility.

For freedom without law, without limits, and without people taking responsibility for their actions, is not freedom but anarchy. And law without decision-making, without the freedom to make choices and take responsibility for them, is totalitarianism. Ideally, freedom and the law are in constant balance, mutually reinforcing, and preserving.

Maintaining that equilibrium, though, necessitates a framework. To equitably apply the law and exercise freedom, a people needs a state. That is the message of much of the Torah after Exodus 20-23. Take, for example, Deuteronomy 16, in which the Children of Israel are told:

You must appoint judges and sheriffs for yourselves in all your cities that God, your God, is giving you, for each of your tribes. They must judge the people by rendering fair judgments… Justice, justice must you pursue, in order that you live and take possession of the land that God, your God, is giving you.

These words are not meant for nomads wandering the trackless desert but for a free people living as a sovereign nation. Only in such a framework can they decide who will best govern them and when and how to be just. Waging war, applying penal codes, designating cities of refuge—all are responsibilities that can only be fulfilled to the maximal extent in a situation of sovereignty. Freedom and responsibility are not only the products of sovereignty but also its perquisites.

For the Children of Israel, gaining freedom from Egypt and accepting the Law were insufficient. To fully relish the first and effectively enforce the latter, they needed to inherit the land. They needed to cease wandering, sink indigenous roots, and begin to take responsibility. In short, they had to be Zionists.

Associating the nineteenth-century word with a Late Bronze Age reality is, of course, wildly ahistorical. But is it? For Zionism reflects the ageless longing of the Jewish people for freedom in our ancestral homeland and our willingness to be responsible for its administration, welfare, and defense. Zionism expresses our commitment to circumscribe and thus preserve that freedom with law. Embracing that vision along with the joys and burdens of its realization was precisely the Children of Israel’s achievement at Sinai—and the goals of the earliest Zionist thinkers.

Take, for example, Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s writing on the responsibility of the future Jewish state to guarantee minority rights:

Democracy means freedom. Even a government of majority rule can negate freedom; and where there are no guarantees for freedom of the individual, there can be no democracy. These contradictions will have to be prevented. The Jewish State will have to be such, ensuring that the minority will not be rendered defenseless.

Yet not only Israel received Sinai’s gift. Two and a half centuries ago, the Founding Fathers of the United States drew on that legacy in forging their new republic. As John Adams, the second president wrote:

The Bible, contains the most profound Philosophy, the most perfect Morality, and the most refined Policy, that ever was conceived upon Earth. It is the most Republican Book in the World, and therefore I will still revere it. . . . [W]ithout national Morality, a Republican Government cannot be maintained.

On Shavuot, we commemorate our own founding as a free people bound to the land and girded by law. On Shavuot, we implicitly acknowledge the syllogistic bonds between freedom and responsibility, Zionism and responsibility, and freedom and Zionism. Only in Israel, the product of Zionism, can the Jewish people take complete responsibility for themselves as Jews—for their governance, their environment, their infrastructure, and defense. Only in Israel can a Jew, as a Jew, be fully responsible and free.

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Throughout the more than two-and-a-half years of this war, there have been many moments that Israel and the Jewish people stood at a hinge—if not a precipice—of history. Whether in the horrors of October 7 or the full-fledged US-Israeli alliance against Iran, I know of no modern precedents. Yet, in one crucial, fundamental, and fateful way, our reality has perhaps permanently changed.

The vast impact of that transformation struck me, suddenly, during a recent visit to Chicago. While driving to meet me at a Jewish event in the city, a friend photographed a car with a large sign attached to its roof. “USA tax dollars belong here,” it shouted, “not in Israel.”

Several years ago, such a sign would have triggered debate about the right of free speech and the question of whether criticism of Israel was tantamount to antisemitism. No longer. Today, that sign has to be viewed in the context of a far deeper and nationwide assault on Israel’s right to defend itself and even our right to exist. Calls to terminate military aid to Israel and to reject all contributions from the pro-Israel lobby have become the de facto policies of the Democratic Party. A burgeoning segment of Republicans agrees.

Thinly disguised as anti-Zionism, Jew hatred has been normalized in America. Elsewhere—in Canada, Australia, and Europe—it has metastasized. Young generations throughout the West, fed by an endless stream of anti-Israel posts, now view us as the source of all evil in the Middle East, if not the world.

In the not-too-distant future, we must assume, few foreign leaders will actively block efforts to boycott and sanction Israel or veto anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council. As never before, Israel will be diplomatically and legally isolated.

The situation might be less alarming if accompanied by a reduction in the physical threats facing Israel. But, on the contrary, enemies both on our borders and throughout the Middle East continue to seek our destruction. Barring a decisive victory over Iran, the military dangers facing Israel are liable to persist if not multiply.

Confronted with these enormous challenges, the Jewish State must not remain passive. In Israel, traditionally, foreign policy has always been regarded as the poor stepchild of security. Washington hosts dozens of foreign policy institutes. In Israel, by contrast, virtually all the think-tanks focus on the military. We must cease viewing foreign affairs as a sideline, but rather regard it as a paramount component of our national defense. We must cease assigning vital diplomatic and foreign policy posts to political appointees bereft of serious international experience.

Though vital, the campaign to rebuild our international relations cannot succeed without the restoration of our internal unity. By standing together, Israelis in the past prevailed over seemingly insurmountable challenges—wars, intifadas, UN condemnations. Divided, we are dangerously vulnerable, as we learned on October 7.

Along with defending our land and skies, the priority of any Israeli government—and certainly the less radical coalition that will hopefully enter office after October’s election—is to heal the wounds and divisions within our society.

Achieving that unity requires, firstly, the establishment of a truly independent investigative commission on October 7. Attaining unity means applying Israeli law and sovereignty over every part of our population and territory. Assuring the enlistment of Haredim in the IDF and integration into the economy is an essential prerequisite of unity.

One of the most daunting chapters in our history has already begun. Israel must gird itself, strengthen ourselves internationally and domestically, and unite to withstand the storm. History is rife with examples of our people’s ability to overcome immense obstacles. With leadership and vision, we can surmount them once again.

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This article was originally published in Hebrew in Ynet on May 10, 2026.

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Speaking at pro-Israel events around the world for nearly fifty years, I rarely receive a question I haven’t heard a hundred times. But at a recent conference of American Jewish donors, someone asked me a question that was utterly and terrifyingly unique. “Do you think Jews have a future in the United States?”

Only a few years ago, that question would have been unthinkable to most American Jews, much less asked out loud. Yet now, every person in my audience agreed that the answer may well be “Tragically, American Jewry is doomed.”

That is certainly the case for many Diaspora communities where the future for Jews looks bleak. During my last visits to Canada and Australia, and in my many conversations with British Jews, I heard repeatedly how the situation for Jews in those countries has become intolerable and will only get worse. While governments pay lip service to fighting antisemitism, acts of Jew-hatred multiply daily and are rapidly normalizing. The brutal stabbing of two Jews in London, and even the massacre of Jews on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, are no longer aberrations. Rather than discourage antisemites, such atrocities spur them to commit more.

In America, meanwhile, synagogues and Jewish community centers are resembling fortresses with armed guards positioned at their entrances. Soon they’ll look like their European counterparts with soldiers and armored vehicles outside. Jewish parents increasingly fear sending their children to Jewish schools and summer camps or participating in family religious services. Wearing visible signs of Jewishness–kipot, Stars of David–has become hazardous.

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Clearly, we are witnessing a profound and most likely irreversible change in Diaspora Jewish life. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in the fight against antisemitism, yet the hatred keeps metastasizing. Soon, Diaspora Jews will have to decide just how much harassment and physical threat they are willing to endure, and whether being an identified, practicing Jew is worth the risk. In time, even thoroughly assimilated Jews may also be targeted. Many Diaspora Jews will determine not to let the antisemites win and continue the fight in their host countries. Whether they can win or not remains to be seen. Others will decide to make aliyah.

For Israel, skyrocketing antisemitism has many ramifications, negative and positive both. In the diplomatic and strategic sphere, the rise of Jew haters to positions of power could prove deleterious to our foreign relations and even our ability to defend ourselves. The danger of boycotts and sanctions could grow. At the same time, the loss of Diaspora Jewry’s financial and political support would be sorely missed by Israel. Zionist orthodoxy might insist on the ingathering of all the exiles, but in reality, Israel has always relied on a strong and pro-active Diaspora.

Now, nearly eighty years after our founding, we must learn to stand much more on our own two feet. On the positive side, Israel could once again be the destination for mass aliyah. Warmly welcomed and effectively absorbed, waves of new immigrants could settle the Negev and the Golan Heights. Once hoped to be the answer to the demographic challenge of Israeli Arabs, mass aliyah could now be the answer to the demographic challenge of the Haredim.

Israel must be prepared. Having failed to attract the majority of refugees from antisemitism in France—most moved to Canada, Britain, and the United States—Israel must actively encourage aliyah, remove the red tape and bureaucracy from the absorption process, and plan for large-scale resettlement. We must emphasize Jewish peoplehood rather than strictly Halachic criteria for establishing Jewish identity, thus opening our doors to the greatest possible number of Diaspora Jews. In this direction, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s support for civil marriage in Israel was a significant step.

After receiving that question about the future of American Jews, I took a breath and spoke about how the world was reverting to the antisemitic form known to our ancestors. Many learned to live with that hatred, I recalled, but a great many others paid with their lives. Others presciently immigrated to the Land of Israel, where their descendants are today proud Jews capable and willing to defend themselves. It’s a lesson that the Jewish people, both in Israel and the Diaspora, must robustly remember today.

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