The alliance with America has become a liability, and Israel must start looking out for Israel, no matter who that alienates in Washington.

 

The Betrayal of Jerusalem: Washington’s Toxic Ego

.

 

For decades, Israel has played the part of the loyal, reliable frontline defender of Western values in a region that eats weakness for breakfast. We have bled, we have fought, and we have held the line. But the sobering reality of the spring of 2026 has exposed a bitter truth that the Israeli establishment can no longer afford to ignore. The United States is no longer a reliable ally to the West, let alone to Jerusalem. Washington’s foreign policy is no longer driven by strategic conviction, shared democratic values, or long-term stability. It is driven by cold financial transaction and the narcissistic obsession of Donald Trump, a man desperately angling for a Nobel Peace Prize at the absolute expense of Israeli security.

Facing reality
The political landscape is shifting beneath our feet, and the global public has been thoroughly brainwashed into believing a simplistic, outdated narrative. We have been conditioned to believe that America is the permanent force for good while Moscow represents absolute malice. Yet, a cold look at historical data since 1950 reveals an uncomfortable reality. When counting major conflicts with active combat boots on the ground, the Soviet Union and Russia have been involved in 11 wars, including their brutal campaigns in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine. In contrast, the United States has engineered or plunged into 12 separate conflicts, from Vietnam and Panama to the disastrous, prolonged occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Add the current escalating theater with Iran, and America’s record of global interventionism outpaces the Kremlin. Washington has spent the last three-quarters of a century treating the globe as its personal chessboard, and now, under Trump, it is treating its most loyal allies like expendable corporate subsidiaries.

A Dangerous Dynamic
The current war with Iran perfectly illustrates this dangerous dynamic. For the United States, Iran is an abstract geopolitical problem located safely across an ocean. The physical distance between Washington and Tehran is roughly 11,700 kilometers, a massive geographic buffer that shields the American public from the immediate fallout of a regional explosion. For Israel, the threat is an existential reality ticking right on our doorstep. Tehran sits a mere 1,700 kilometers from Jerusalem. Iranian ballistic missiles, drone swarms, and proxy armies do not threaten the daily life of a voter in Ohio, but they menace every single citizen in the State of Israel.

Despite this stark disparity in vulnerability, Donald Trump is demanding absolute submission from the Israeli government. He has turned a vital security partnership into a tool of heavy-handed coercion. We saw the mask slip completely on May 21, 2026, when Trump publicly bragged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would do “whatever I want” regarding the diplomatic backchannels in Iran. This came on the heels of a tense phone call where Trump dismissed Israel’s sovereign right to dictate its own military timeline.

The White House has made it clear that because America shoulders a massive financial and logistical burden, Jerusalem must sit quietly in the passenger seat. When the Pakistan-brokered ceasefire was implemented, Washington immediately threatened to cut off essential logistical and air defense support if Israel took unilateral military action to eliminate existential threats.

Think about the sheer audacity of that position. Trump is actively holding our air defense systems hostage to protect a fragile truce that serves his personal political legacy, ignoring the reality that an intact Iranian war machine is a gun pointed directly at Israel’s head.
This pattern of American betrayal extends far beyond the borders of the Jewish state. Trump has spent the last two months systematically dismantling the entire Western security architecture. He has openly threatened to withdraw from NATO, branding a 77-year-old alliance a paper tiger simply because European nations are hesitant to send their naval fleets into the Strait of Hormuz to back his maritime blockade. His administration has transformed NATO from a mechanism of mutual deterrence into an instrument of raw extortion, withdrawing thousands of troops from Germany and threatening to halt weapon funding programs just to bully allies into submission. By browbeating historic partners from Europe to the Indo-Pacific, Trump has completely isolated the United States and destroyed its collective bargaining power against major global adversaries like Beijing.

If the United States is willing to abandon its traditional European partners and treats Israel’s survival as a bargaining chip for a vanity peace deal, then the time has come for Jerusalem to break free from this toxic dependency. We must stop pretending that Washington is our savior. If America is transforming into a volatile, self-absorbed entity that abandons its allies for cash and applause, Israel must adapt to the multi-polar world of 2026.

Perhaps it is time to open serious, transactional dialogues with Russia. Moscow understands the raw calculus of power in the Middle East. They do not hide behind hypocritical lectures on democratic values while threatening to pull air defense funding during a war. They operate on cold, hard national interests. If the traditional Western alliance is dead, killed by American narcissism, Israel must chart an independent path. We cannot allow our national survival to be dictated by a president who views our existence through the lens of a corporate takeover.

The alliance with America has become a liability, and Israel must start looking out for Israel, no matter who that alienates in Washington.

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-betrayal-of-jerusalem-washingtons-toxic-ego/