This past week, I was completing Shvil Yisrael, the Israel National Trail. Somewhere along a stark, sun-bleached stretch in the south, the roar of American aircraft cut across the desert silence. I was passing near Uvda Airbase, now hosting exclusively American planes.

The sound pulled me back into a question that has been hovering insistently in recent months: can Israel “finish the job” without American backing? As political winds shift and alliances recalibrate, the possibility feels less theoretical.

Yet this is not a new question. In fact, it is one that Tanach addresses with striking clarity.

Sefer Melachim offers a consistent, almost uncomfortable dual message. On the one hand, reckless rebellion against great powers is castigated as foolish and self-destructive. On the other, reliance on foreign strength—military or political—is equally rebuked when it replaces trust in something higher. Figures like Ahab and Ahaz serve as cautionary tales, not because they engaged with empires, but because they outsourced their ביטחון (spiritual Trust) entirely.

Would Isaiah pass comment about Israel’s current reliance on the United States?

One could argue that such reliance is indispensable. The strategic, technological, and diplomatic advantages are real and significant. But alliances, by definition, are contingent. Nations act in their own interests. Uncle Sam is neither omniscient nor omnibenevolent. American policy, like any policy, is shaped by incomplete information and shifting priorities.

History offers instructive examples. In the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea faced severe economic distress. In a largely forgotten episode, Israeli diplomat Eytan Bentsur explored a bold initiative: offering North Korea a substantial economic package in exchange for halting its missile exports to Israel’s regional adversaries.

The proposal was pragmatic and forward-looking. Yet it clashed with American efforts to isolate Pyongyang. Under pressure from Washington, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ultimately withdrew from the talks. The result? North Korea continued its proliferation activities, eventually assisting Iran in developing the Shahab-3 missile.

In hindsight, Israel traded a costly but contained investment for a far more expensive long-term security challenge. The episode illustrates a simple but sobering point: even well-intentioned allies can misalign with Israel’s specific needs.

Another historical moment cuts the opposite direction. In 1948, when US Secretary of State George Marshall, fearing a threat to oil supplies, urged David Ben-Gurion to delay the declaration of independence, Israel’s first Prime Minister chose otherwise. The decision carried immense risk. But the alternative could have blown it altogether.

So where does that leave us?

Perhaps the mistake lies in framing the question as binary: reliance versus independence, Washington versus Jerusalem. Tanach suggests a more nuanced framework. Engagement with global powers is not inherently problematic; dependence that eclipses higher responsibility is.

This is not merely a national dilemma. It plays out on the personal level as well. Each of us encounters what might be called the “voice of Washington”, the rational, external voice that tells us what is realistic, what is possible, and, sometimes, what we are worth. It often speaks with authority and logic. But it does not always see the full picture.

Against that voice stands another perspective, one embedded deeply in Jewish thought: that this land, and those who dwell within it, exist under a different kind of power dynamic, a land upon which God’s eyes are constantly fixed.

This idea in Sefer Devarim finds expression in the weekly parashah, which describes the inauguration of the Kohanim. The Jewish people are called a “ממלכת כהנים”—a kingdom of priests—not because priesthood and governance merge, but because the nation itself is charged with initiating a relationship with the Divine within the fabric of daily life.

This initiative is not confined to ritual or sanctuary. It emerges in the human encounter. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas famously located ethical responsibility in the face of the Other—the silent demand, visible in another person, that calls us beyond ourselves. In contrast to Jean-Paul Sartre’s assertion that “Hell is other people,” Levinas suggests that in the face of man lies the possibility of transcendence.

This perspective reframes the current moment. Whether or not the United States proves decisive in confronting Iran remains uncertain. Strategic calculations will continue, and alliances will be tested. But alongside these variables stands a constant: the call to recognize that we are not the sole arbiters of our fate.

To see the faces around us, often inconvenient, sometimes challenging, as opportunities for responsibility is to acknowledge that while we do not control the broader currents of history, we are not passive within them.

The task, then, is not to reject alliances nor to romanticize isolation. It is to engage the world without surrendering our core orientation.

As I walked past Uvda, the sound of those aircraft eventually faded. The desert returned to its quiet vastness. But the question lingered, less as a geopolitical puzzle and more as an internal prompt: where do we ultimately place our trust?

Perhaps the answer lies in holding both truths simultaneously, working within the realities of power, while remaining attuned to a deeper source of meaning and direction.

And in that balance, perhaps, we find the capacity not only to endure, but to grow—until, as the prophet envisions, swords are finally beaten into ploughshares.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)