Goodbye, America. Hello world

The bad news: America is no longer our soulmate. The good news: America is not the world.

US Vice President JD Vance did Israel and the Jews a favor last week when he told us to “wake up and smell the reality.” It was the political equivalent of a person finally saying what everyone else was too polite to admit: they’re just not that into you. There is something clarifying, even liberating, about hearing it said out loud. And if Vance’s words weren’t enough, New York’s election of proud Hamas sympathizers sent the message even more clearly: the special relationship is over. It’s time to move on.

I believe it is time to admit that America’s relationship with Israel was not a healthy one to begin with. It’s worth remembering that America began its relationship with the Jewish state with an arms embargo. For the first 25 years of the state’s struggle to exist, America played a dampening role, forcing our young nation to pull back from military victories against larger foes. Only once America recognized Israel as a regional force, and a threat to the Oil Kingdoms it was devoted to, did America seduce Israel into a relationship branded as special: Israel accepted American strategic direction in return for the right to purchase American military equipment.

Critics often point to Israel’s status as the largest recipient of direct American aid. But that aid obscured a truth often overlooked: unlike many countries under the American defense umbrella, Israel was never offered a mutual defense treaty.

For example, Turkey, a country that militarily occupies the eastern half of Cyprus and massively oppresses the Kurds (who have sought self-determination for decades), has an American defense guarantee through NATO. America spends $980 billion on defense in 2025 – 62% of total NATO expenditures, 258 times what it grants Israel – much of it to protect Turkey and other countries across Europe. America has military bases in Turkey. America could extend NATO along the Eastern Mediterranean to ensure Israel’s security, but it decided instead to give Israel $3.8 billion to spend…in America. The special relationship denied Israel the one thing America grants the rest of the Western World: guaranteed security.

Contrast how people in America think of Israel with another country that America has aided yet not brought into its protective embrace: Ukraine. As of 2025, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the US has given Ukraine $188 billion in aid. Since 1948, the US has given Israel $130 billion in aid. Yet it is the Israel lobby that New York’s reincarnation of Karl Lueger, Zohran Mamdani, says is responsible for Americans not having healthcare and calls “monsters”? OK.

We Jews have witnessed empires rise and fall, and a pattern has emerged: those that fall blame us, while those that rise bless us. Or, to paraphrase Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II’s quip about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, those who turn on the Jews end up impoverishing their kingdoms to enrich their adversaries. Not because we’re special, but because antisemitism in all its incarnations is an autoimmune disease that eats a body politic from within.

The bad news: America is struggling with the disease (as is China, but that’s for another post). The good news: America is not the world. In fact, America is an increasingly smaller part of it.

Since the late 1970s, America made its business making money while the rest of the world made its business making things. As American infrastructure decayed, the rest of the world invested in building itself up. As the American birthrate plunged, African, South American, and Asian populations stabilized towards healthy growth. My recommendation for Israel is to avoid seeking a rebound with a different global hegemon, and instead to open its heart to the greater world as an equal among equals. Because as both the Americans and the Chinese are trying to make themselves Great Again, the global south is working hard to make things better away from the hegemonic pull. Just better. And they could use Israel’s help.

As Shiri Fein-Grossman wrote in Prophecy, “Our history has shown that [Israel comes] differently [than the US or China]. We don’t come with oil money or extraction logic. We bring our technology, agility, knowledge, and respect for sovereignty. Our model is based on true partnership, on knowledge transfer. We provide the fishing rod, not the fish. And while Africa [and, I may add, the rest of the Global South] does desperately need both right now, in the long run it needs reliable partners who help it grow by joining in the work — not donors, not extractors.”

It is not for nothing that the African countries that are climbing their way out of the colonial trap have done so by rejecting antizionism and third-worldist logic, partnering with Israel to advance their economies and raise their standard of living. It is not for nothing that Latin American countries are freeing themselves from the ruinous autocratic legacies on both Right and Left and growing closer to Israel. It is not for nothing that India, aspiring to lead the Global South, has developed a new vision for its relationship with Israel as an engine to expand its Make in India campaign. The Global South is calling on Israel to go steady. I believe it is time for Israel, and the Jews, to leave behind their fantasies of Great Power acceptance and answer the world’s call in the positive.