Despite warning signs, the US-Israel alliance is still solid

Optimism about Jewish life is in short supply these days. All over the globe, antisemitism is surging. In the United States, the political left has largely been captured by anti-Zionist and antisemitic ideologues. On the right, where support for Israel had seemed to be nearly unanimous not long ago, Jew-hatred and hostility to the Jewish state are also rising. And in Israel itself, the list of problems afflicting the country is long, with no solutions in sight.

After the last two millennia of persecution and suffering, pessimism regarding the present and future is second-nature to most Jews. And if you’re looking for reasons to feel down about the state of the world and that of the Jewish people, there’s no shortage of grounds for arguments about the prospects of a catastrophe in the long or even short term.

Amid the doom and gloom of Jewish commentary at the end of 2025, however, it’s important to place all that in perspective. The meetings held in Florida this week between U.S. President Donald Trump and other members of his administration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are a reminder that not only is the world not about to end, but that there is reason for optimism.

Trump embraces Israel

The president’s support for Netanyahu, his threats aimed at Hamas and Iran, and the general tone of the summit should be a tonic for both Israelis and those Americans who value the U.S.-Israel alliance.

To pretend that there aren’t problems would be foolish; plenty of obstacles will need to be faced in the coming year.

But an accurate evaluation of the current situation doesn’t justify pessimism. The relationship between the two nations remains close and forward-thinking. More than that, as the calendar year comes to a close, there’s no avoiding the fact that during the last 12 months, the forces seeking Israel’s destruction in the Middle East and elsewhere can definitively be described as the losers. Israel and the Jewish people—though besieged and the targets of an international campaign of delegitimization and demonization—remain stronger than at any other point in memory.

That’s not the tone of most of the coverage of Israel and its ties with its sole superpower ally. For months, the constant drumbeat of stories being sounded has attempted to make the case that Trump and Netanyahu are on a certain collision course about the next steps with respect to conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. The notion that Trump is angry or impatient with the Israeli leader is conventional wisdom among Washington correspondents in mainstream media, for both secular and even liberal Jewish and Israeli outlets.

Israel-bashers’ wishful thinking

Some of this is clearly the product of anti-Israel or anti-Netanyahu bias among liberal journalists, who are always predicting that Washington’s patience with Jerusalem is about to run out. It’s also the product of leaks within the Trump administration from a far from inconsiderable faction of staffers who seem to be more in tune with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish opinions of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson than with the president. Stories like the Vanity Fair profile of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles make it clear that some of those in the administration seem to share the negative view of Israel that predominates among their left-wing antagonists. Even some in Trump’s inner circle (a group that may well include Vice President JD Vance) think the president’s continued strong backing for Israeli efforts to defeat Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies is a misreading of public opinion.

There is good reason to worry about whether the vice president would continue Trump’s pro-Israel policies or be as tough on antisemitism should he be elected to the country’s top job. And it’s likely that any of the most plausible Democratic candidates in 2028, including the alleged moderates like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or even Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, would also be as influenced by their party’s anti-Israel base along the same lines Vance is by his friend Carlson and the growing cache of political antisemites on the right.

But for now, claims that the alliance is about to crack up are not only wrong. They’re obviously a product of wishful thinking on the part of journalists who buy into the intersectional left’s mischaracterization of Israel as a “settler-colonialist” and “apartheid” state that ought not to exist. Or they continue to push the false narrative that Netanyahu and Trump are both “authoritarian” leaders who want to destroy democracy in their respective nations.

Trump’s statements about what would happen to Hamas if it didn’t disarm—as it agreed to do in the October ceasefire-hostage release deal brokered by the president—give the lie to the expectation among Israel-bashers that he was going to allow the terrorists to fully rearm and hold onto power. The same is true of his comments about the prospect of Tehran rebuilding its missile and nuclear programs; Trump has expressed a willingness to support or join in another campaign of Israeli strikes on Iran.

By now, the terrorists in the Gaza Strip (and their leaders dwelling in safety in Qatar), and their funders and sponsors in Iran, should have learned to take the threats of the U.S. president seriously.

Still, it’s just as important for those who care about Israel to take a dispassionate look at the strategic situation and acknowledge that the Jewish state is in a much stronger position than it was in December 2024 and even on Oct. 6, 2023, before the Hamas-led Palestinian attacks on southern Israeli communities.

The results of the two-year war against Hamas in Gaza were not as conclusive as they could have been. The Biden administration’s determination not to let Israel fully prosecute the conflict against genocidal terrorists gave Hamas a lifeline that allowed it to survive. So did Trump’s desire to play the peacemaker and to free the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages. That gave the terrorists leverage they used to get terms in the ceasefire agreement to pause the fighting that they have been ruthlessly exploiting to reinforce their grip on the portion of the Strip they still hold.

Nevertheless, there is also no doubt that Hamas is far weaker now than when it started the war, with no immediate prospect of becoming as dangerous as it was back in October 2023. And as both Trump and Netanyahu have made clear, the Islamist group’s belief that they can continue to stall when it comes to fulfilling their promise to disarm and give up power without consequences is mistaken.

Iran’s defeats

To look beyond Gaza is also to see a Middle East in which Israel’s main antagonist—Iran—has suffered defeat after defeat since its leaders set in motion a multifront war against the Jewish state.

Israel’s 12-day campaign against Iran in mid-June—which the U.S. eventually joined—did enormous damage to its military, in addition to significantly setting back its nuclear program. The assumption that it is a threshold nuclear power no longer holds true.

On top of that, its Hezbollah auxiliaries in Lebanon suffered a humiliating and catastrophic defeat as a result of Israel’s 2024 campaign against them. That also led to the collapse of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. The hopes of hegemony over the Middle East that the Tehran government dreamed of are gone. So, too, is the land bridge to the Mediterranean—composed of its allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—with which they sought to encircle Israel.

Still, Israel faces serious challenges in Gaza with the painful likelihood that fighting against Hamas will have to resume sometime during the next year. And the battle against Iran’s missile and nuclear threats isn’t over either.

But Trump’s stand also undermines the belief that the cracks in the pro-Israel consensus among Republicans that have become especially evident in recent months will doom the U.S.-Israel alliance. It’s true that the chattering classes, antisemitic right-wing podcasters like Carlson and similarly minded left-wing journalists, academics and politicians like New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and members of the left-wing congressional “Squad” may hate Israel and all it stands for. The diminished support for the Jewish state among young people, whether on the right or left, who have been indoctrinated by woke educators is much lower than middle age or older Americans is also a problem.

But here’s what’s also true: The naysayers about Israel are not taking into account the fact that Israel’s startup, First World economy has remained solid and steady, despite the enormous hit it took from two years of war. The Israeli people are divided politically, but there’s no reason to believe they won’t be ready to do what is necessary to finish off Hamas or to further degrade the Iranian threat.

Israel is not alone

Will U.S.-Israel relations be as strong as they are now in one, two, three or four years? Maybe not. But the prophets of doom that were predicting the collapse of the alliance or worse in the wake of Oct. 7 and the surge of antisemitism that arose after that were wrong. The same has been true of most of those who prognosticate about Israel’s prospects over the last 77 years.

To acknowledge Israel’s strength or the preservation of the bond between it and the majority of Americans is not to deny the problems or that the growth of antisemitism on both ends of the political spectrum is not deeply troubling. Trump’s successors may not be friendly to the Jewish state, but to face those problems requires a sober assessment of more than just the reasons for pessimism.

It may be in the Jewish DNA to cry out in despair about the persistence of antisemitism, and the way it fuels the ongoing war against Israel and the Jewish people. Yet countless generations of Jews who endured persecution, hardships and even attempts at their genocide have only dreamed of a situation as positive for Jewish life as the one that exists today despite all the sorrow that contemporary Jewry has endured since Oct. 7. This should encourage those now alive not merely to cheer up, but to have faith that Israel and the Jewish people will continue to live and thrive. That will require the continued heroism of the Israeli people, bolstered by Diaspora Jewry, to have the courage to stand up for their rights and bear witness against hatred and bigotry, wherever it is to be found.

So, as we head into 2026 and all the unresolved questions that a new year always brings with it, it’s time for Jews to look ahead and take heart. Thanks to Trump and many other people of goodwill, the Jews and their state are not alone or fated for destruction.

© JNS