“If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog,” former US President Harry Truman said once. His classic line has just got a modern, satirical upgrade, though. A quick-witted colleague recently wondered what the late president would say about courting Israel today. The answer? If you want a friend in Tel Aviv, skip the pet shop, and prepare to empty your bank account, alienate your voters and tank your entire economy.

While framed as a dark political comment, this modern adage captures a growing, uncomfortable reality in Western foreign policy. The historical baseline of the US–Israel relationship has evolved from a mutually beneficial strategic partnership into an incredibly high-stakes, high-cost liability. When looking at the sheer momentum of today’s geopolitical landscape, the satire stops sounding like hyperbole and starts sounding more like a forecast.

For decades, the alliance between Israel and Western capitals was the ultimate VIP country club membership. It was exclusive and highly prestigious, and it came with a shared wardrobe of supposedly “democratic values”. Fast forward to today, and the club’s membership fee has gone through the roof. From Washington to Vienna, Western leaders are looking at the bill for this unconditional friendship, and the collective shock is turning into political panic.

Loyalty to the Zionist state is coming at a very high price, as a quick check of the receipts proves. The special relationship isn’t just expensive; it’s a fiscal black hole.

The US political class has spent decades treating military aid to Israel like an automated subscription service. Now, though, with a Middle East war draining US stockpiles of arms and cash, the “America First” crowd is asking a very basic, awkward question: Why are we financing a foreign military’s forever war while our own bridges are collapsing into rivers?

The US political class has spent decades treating military aid to Israel like an automated subscription service. Now, though, with a Middle East war draining US stockpiles of arms and cash, the “America First” crowd is asking a very basic, awkward question: Why are we financing a foreign military’s forever war while our own bridges are collapsing into rivers?

Across the Atlantic, the Starmer government is finding out that giving diplomatic and military cover to Tel Aviv costs a fortune in street cred and votes. Successive British governments have loved to lecture the world on the importance of international law, but trying to defend Israel’s indefensible actions has our diplomats performing mental and verbal gymnastics.

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Meanwhile, in Germany, Berlin’s guilt over the Nazi Holocaust has essentially been weaponised into a blank cheque for Israel; not Holocaust survivors, note, but Israel, a state that didn’t even exist during the horrors of the Third Reich. Germany has spent decades trying to prove that it is the ultimate morality student, but the cost of that education is now diplomatic isolation on the global stage. And social media can’t help drawing analogies with the Nazis when analysing the brutality of German police against pro-Palestine activists on the streets.

The “Israel right or wrong” contagion is spreading. In France, Emmanuel Macron is trying to play the grand statesman while his country fractures along sectarian lines, while the Austrian leadership in Vienna is realising that a hard-line, pro-Israel stance makes them a very lonely island in European politics.

On this side of the channel, on 22 June, MPs in Westminster will debate a petition calling for a public inquiry........

© Middle East Monitor