The warning signs are no longer subtle

A recent Israel Hayom report describes what many Israelis and American Jews have felt building for some time: the U.S.-Israel relationship is facing its deepest crisis in decades. The erosion is not limited to one party, one administration, one campus, or one cable-news faction. Support is weakening among Democrats, younger Republicans, younger Evangelicals, and many American Jews. AIPAC, once the gold standard of bipartisan pro-Israel legitimacy, has become politically toxic in significant parts of the Democratic Party. The old assumptions are breaking.

For decades, Israel could count on something deeper than strategic cooperation. Yes, there were shared military interests, intelligence ties, technology partnerships, and common enemies. But the real foundation was moral and emotional. Americans saw Israel as a small democracy fighting for survival, a refuge for a persecuted people, and a country that embodied courage, sacrifice, ingenuity, and resilience.

That story still exists.

But it is no longer the only story Americans are hearing.

“Unfair” Is Not a Strategy

Today, many Americans, especially younger ones, see Israel as powerful, wealthy, heavily armed, and closely tied to a U.S. political establishment they distrust.

Some see Gaza and think not of Jewish vulnerability, but of Palestinian suffering.

Some hear Israeli ministers speak about annexation or displacement and conclude that extremism has moved from the margins to the center.

Some see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not as the leader of a democratic ally, but as a symbol of partisan manipulation, contempt for liberal values, and endless war.

Israel can insist this is unfair. Sometimes it is.

But “unfair” is not a strategy.

The question is not whether Israel has enemies. It does. The question is whether Israel is still speaking in a moral language broad enough for its friends to recognize.

Israel Needs a Fuller Moral Vocabulary

Israel needs to tell a fuller story: grief and responsibility, strength and restraint, Jewish self-determination and Palestinian dignity, security and democracy.

Not because it sounds nice.

Because without that moral vocabulary, the U.S.-Israel relationship becomes merely transactional. And transactional relationships are easier to abandon.

A relationship based only on weapons, vetoes, intelligence, and shared threats will last only as long as both sides agree on the transaction. When Americans ask, “What are we getting for this?” Israel has already lost something precious.

The deeper question should be: “What do we stand for together?”

That question once had an easy answer.

Strategic Cooperation Is Real — and Historic

This is not to minimize the extraordinary depth of U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation. In many ways, the military relationship has never been closer.

Under President Donald Trump, that cooperation moved from alliance management to battlefield coordination. The joint military campaign against Iran reflected a level of planning, intelligence sharing, operational trust, and strategic alignment that few........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)