The US and Israel: A Relationship Based on Shared Interests and Values
Established American Jewish organizations seem not to recognize that they are undercutting the values that they say uphold the US-Israel relationship when they fail to stand up to Trump and Netanyahu.
“Israel is a beacon of shared interests and values” in a critically strategic region, says one major American pro-Israel group’s website.
Repeated throughout the statements of another group is the refrain, “The strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship has long been rooted in bipartisan support for an alliance based on shared interests and values.”
Take a moment and visit the websites of Jewish pro-Israel organizations. Review their communications and statements. I’ll acknowledge exceptions, but, generally speaking, the largest and loudest organizations representing Jewish America seem stuck in a time warp in which the US and Israeli governments of today remain committed to “interests and values” they shared fifty years ago.
Today’s American Jewish establishment seems painfully oblivious – or willfully blind – to the threats Trump’s America and Bibi’s Israel pose to the values and interests they purport to uphold and unwilling to stand up and fight for them.
I’m a first generation American. My parents were immigrants, and their life experience, like so many Jews born early in the 20th century, was dominated by war, genocide, suffering and dislocation.
For that generation, the US was a beacon of freedom, opportunity and security; Israel, the culmination of the Jewish people’s dream to be a free people in our own land. Both countries thrived in their lifetimes as democracies that sought – often imperfectly – to support the role of law, ensure freedom from discrimination and provide equality of opportunity.
As a first-generation American, I was raised to believe in this country’s vision, captured in the words on the Statue of Liberty, protected by the Constitution and promised in the “American Dream.”
I was also raised with a Jewish identity rooted (as I’ve written before) in a code of ethics forged by Jews who lived through centuries of oppression in the lands of others. The Jewish values on which I was raised - to fight for justice and against oppression, to not treat other people as I would not want to be treated – closely aligned with American values.
I was raised to understand that Israel too was rooted, as stated in its Declaration of Independence, in the principles of freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel – ensuring complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants regardless of religion, race or sex.
Just as the two countries shared core values, so too I thought for decades that both countries had a common understanding of their national interests.
US-led efforts brought Israel-Egypt peace, the Madrid Conference, Oslo and Annapolis. There seemed a shared understanding that long-term security would come to Israel through peace with its neighbors and that Middle East conflict resolution was a core American interest.
The past decade, however, has shaken to the core my understanding of what the shared interests and values of the two countries actually are.
The nationalist and religious right has led Israel down a path of endless occupation and domination of another people, disconnected from the values on which I was raised and on which the country was founded.
In the US, the Trump administration is in the process of rapidly dismantling America’s commitment to the democratic system established by its founders 250 years ago and to the world order we have led for 75 years.
The America that welcomed my family and provided opportunity to immigrants and refugees over generations is now setting up detention camps and rounding up migrants for mass deportation.
The “leader of the free world” is cozying up to dictators and throwing long-time democratic allies under the bus.
Rather than leading the fight to protect global democracy and promote it, it’s our own government writing the playbook on how to take it apart.
And yet – through this all – the mantra about defending a US-Israel relationship rooted in shared values and interests remains unchanged - and central to the narrative and messaging of many of the largest establishment American Jewish organizations.
Politically, groups like AIPAC express no qualms about distributing millions to candidates dismantling democracy, foreign aid and constitutional protections – justifying it as support for candidates who are “true friends” of Israel because they support the “US-Israel relationship.”
The rhetoric is beyond hollow in the face of what’s happening both here in the US and in Israel.
The interests and values that now unite Trump’s America and Bibi’s Israel bear no resemblance to those on which I was raised on or in which I believe.
Jewish Americans largely share my fear and shock about where we are at in 2025 in both Israel and the United States.
Over 70 percent of Jewish Americans voted against Donald Trump and MAGA three times and that same percentage deeply disapproves of his values, actions and policies.
We know as well that over 70 percent of Jewish Americans disapprove of Bibi Netanyahu and oppose policies that lead to permanent domination of the Palestinian people without rights.
It is long past time for American Jewish institutional leadership to use its powerful megaphone to give voice to the majority of Jewish Americans who oppose where both Trump’s America and Bibi’s Israel are headed.
More than that, these institutions should be mobilizing their constituencies for action – to fight the existential threat that these governments pose to our values and interests.
It has been my generation’s great fortune to experience six decades of security, prosperity and freedom – perhaps the greatest such period in Jewish history.
But all that is at risk if we do not shake the illusion that the US-Israel relationship of 2025 as managed by Trump and Netanyahu is good for and represents the Jewish people. We need to recognize the existential danger we face and confront it.
Silence today is complicity in the destruction of the very values and interests that did in fact once form the heart of the two countries’ relationship and that the American Jewish establishment itself still purports to uphold.
Todah rabah, as always, for your thoughtful analysis, Jeremy. I find that you are always able to eloquently express what is on my mind and in my heart. We are struggling to stay positive and hopeful in these deeply challenging times, both in Israel and the U.S.
For my family, the immigration of my grandparents and great-grandparents came from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. There was much gratitude for being in the United States as I grew up in the late 50's, the 60's and the 70's. But the consciousness of what had happened in Europe, especially of the Holocaust, was always present in both my family and my synagogue life, as was the deep pride in Israel, and the worry for its survival.
Perhaps it was not unusual back in the day, but my parents had split political affiliations. My mother was an ardent Democrat who was passionate about civil rights. My father, an engineer who worked in the defense industry was a moderate Republican. I don't remember them ever arguing about politics (though they argued constantly about other things!) Towards the ends of their lives, my mother finally convinced my father to vote like she did. The last presidential election that they were alive for was between Trump and Clinton. I remember how upsetting the result was for my mother.
Apparently for some very small portion of your readers, J Street's PAC currently being a strong supporter of Democrats here in the USA is not bipartisan enough. I for one am fine with how the PAC is spending its money on Democrats at this time; the Republicans have been cowed into obedience to wanna-be dictator Trump. When and if there are some moral Republicans with a spine who will stand for conservative but righteous principles, you guys can choose to support them. I am not holding my breath, at this point.
My mother-in-law was raised orthodox Jew, though she chose to marry a gentile. My bride and I worked diligently in Christian circles, one of the other great Abrahamic faiths, steeped in the same ethic of welcoming the stranger in our midst and being ambassadors of love, peace, and justice. What the current U.S. administration, Bibi, and false prophets like AIPAC propound is hatred, division, and exclusion, pure and simple. They are exponents of the secular culture of racism and exclusion that chooses to destroy life, rather than build it up.