Throughout almost the entire 2024 election campaign in the United States and the first year of Donald Trump’s new presidency, I found myself constantly fending off my American and Israeli acquaintances, who kept insisting that my criticism of the new American president stemmed solely from his stubborn unwillingness to help Ukraine and his abandonment of the previous administration’s approach. For Israel, by contrast, Trump’s presidency is the most advantageous political project in history — as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared without mincing words. In response, I tried to explain that I believe only in a partnership grounded in values, not in interests. If people share values, if states share values, then they will also hold to shared approaches. But if those shared values are absent, the approach can change at any moment, toward anyone.

I proceeded from the premise that the administration of Joseph Biden supported Ukraine not because it was interested in mineral resources or in strengthening America’s role in Europe, but because it wanted to uphold the primacy of international law, the impermissibility of annexing another country’s territory, and of a large state imposing its vision of the future on a neighbor. This is precisely the role of the United States as the leader of the democratic world: not to seek control over someone else’s oil or someone else’s minerals, but to help maintain a civilized world order. Because only in such a civilized world can the United States itself feel secure.

I believed that in Israel’s case, too, the very same approach ought to apply. The United States should support Israel on the basis of its right to exist,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)