Changing Israel/US Relationship 12/23 מערכת יחסים בין ארה"ב/ישראל מחליפה

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"They see Israel as white European colonialist Jews oppressing brown indigenous Arabs- a USA that is now hyper-sensitive to racial issues."

An important message that we, when I say we, I say those of us who are speaking here, and in addition, most likely those of us who are viewing in, who have chimed into this talk today, who are going to, for the most part, I'm going to guess, be Anglos, many Americans who are either here in Israel or are in the United States. And a very important role that we have as we look forward for Israel is to relay this fact that things are changing significantly, significantly, and have changed significantly in the United States. Countries change. That's fine. People change. That's fine.

But it's very important, especially for the American Jewish population, for the Israeli population, to understand that the United States is not the same United States as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. And that is going to have serious ramifications on Israel and on policy. These days, things have changed.

When we see changes in, for example, the United States educational systems, when we see more antisemitism, when we see a different, an idea of humanism, right? Humanism means, of course, less religion. When we see these ideas elevate through our university or the American universities, that is completely reflected in the government agencies as well.

The pools of employees who come from the, where they're coming from is from the universities, right? For the most part, government jobs and agency jobs are well-to-do jobs, and they have very high requirements, high educational requirements.

So what we see in universities is what we will see and do see now, and much more so in the future, which unfortunately, depending on your perspective, of course, we'll see much more in the future in the government, just as we would see it in the private sector and elsewhere.

Maybe Biden, we'll get into this, Biden is a throwback, even though, of course, he is on the side of the spectrum that is not as heavily, we would say Democrats are usually not as in favor and in supportive of Israel. But 40, 50 years ago, which is again, Biden is up there, when he was around, during his time, bipartisan Israel support was pretty common.

If we could sum it up, I would say for the most part, over the past, again, this is making large stretches and guesses, and it's a broad brush, but for the most part, the United States has seen Israel as less difficult, less of a problem than the Palestinians or the Arabs when the conflict was a little bit more broad. You could relate to it as a democracy, and whether you could relate to the people and a lot of the ideals that the people hold. I think Commonwealth would be a nice term to start with, that the United States, yes, it's a Commonwealth relationship.

I don't think anybody these days would say it's a relationship based on even strength, but I don't know if Israel, if our leaders want that necessarily. We had one individual who was an Israeli diplomat who said flat out that Israel is pretty much a 51st state of the United States. It does have, did have throughout the years, a Commonwealth: Germany, at different times and Japan and the Philippines, all were part of this Commonwealth, and it was based on ideals that we had seen historically.

For example, we'll go back again years, and the United States and Israel had certain ties, right? The Judeo-Christian idea, the idea of democracy, capitalism. And then on the other side were the Muslim Arab states who had dictators.

So what is the role then of the leader of the Commonwealth? What do they want? They want their Commonwealth countries pretty much not to embarrass them and not to cause them any trouble, and that's in essence what they want from, what the United States would like from Israel as well, and if when we start to get into our discussion about the two-state solution, I think in essence that is what historically what it has been.

Israel, don't cause us, the United States -- we're happy to be your Commonwealth country, but you're part of our little empire here, or big empire we should say, but don't cause us too much trouble. Don't cause us 1973, don't cause us oil embargoes, don't make us get into wars. So all of these issues come with being a part of the Commonwealth.

Now what has changed here that's very unique in the last couple decades really, is we've taken out the element of oil. Oil had always been -- you'll say, oil? Great answer Ariel, but that's so 1990s, why do I need that answer? And mainly because of what has changed with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and what has changed there of course is I think those leaders have had enough of the Palestinian leadership and said, you know what, they've had their chance, they've rejected too many opportunities.

Secondly what they've said is we have possibly a common enemy with Israel, common enemy in Iran with Israel, with Iran. So for that reason this time we didn't hear anybody talk about an oil embargo, we didn't see oil prices, nothing to do with oil, but where we make it a little bit dangerous here is that now what is, so we say if oil is gone, what is underpinning the push of the United States to keep this two-state solution alive? So if the oil is no longer underpinning it, it's indeed that, is this ideology.

The ideology is of race, that as from the American perspective anyway, when they see Israel, right, if it's true or not doesn't matter, the American perspective is there are white European Jews who are now oppressing colonists, colonialists, who are now oppressing brown Arabs, and the United States these days as we know is hyper super sensitive to racial issues. So when we have that in our mind, we have to keep in mind, now we have to inform the Israeli public what it means to be a racist in the United States. Here maybe it's a joke to say oh he's Temani and he's this, and it's funny in the United States that's not the case anymore.

The United States, when we talk race, it's the most, and I mean if we say for example obviously the KKK, it's a despicable disgusting idea, and now if Americans are thinking of Israel in line with the KKK and in line with racists, we have to understand that they won't like us, they don't like us, you could do all you want, and our leadership has to know this too, is that when you put all these videos out and you show how we suffered a few weeks ago, a couple months ago, we went through, there won't be the sympathy that you expect. We're almost tone deaf in the way that we continue to push this without understanding that in their minds they're thinking that's what you're doing to the Palestinians anyway.

Everyone can have their opinion, it could be a good opinion, it could be based on facts, could be based on lots of things. I'm not saying they can have their opinion, they can't have their opinion, I don't even want to change their opinion, what I want is for us to understand that that is their opinion. I want our leaders and our American Jews and our Israelis to understand this is how they think, and this is how we're perceived, and if we have better self-awareness then we could approach and strategize much better.

Evangelicals, what they've done is they've taken various prophecies, I think mainly from Isaiah saying, and kind of piggybacked on them to say that their God won't return until most of the Jewish people are in the state of Israel. So that being the case, it's exactly the fact that they will support Israel for a different reason, and be very happy to support Israel. We've seen that, and nobody's turning down friends, if they want to support, we're happy to take the support.

But as we said earlier, we have to understand what is behind the support, and as long as we understand that and act accordingly, then that's completely fine.

Now as for the Catholics, I think the Catholics have a lot of problems that have to do much more in terms of people going off the derrich than we do, right? In general for Christianity, they're talking about issues of abortion and gay rights that I mean, they're very far from really worrying about the Jewish people going into Israel.

The Catholics long ago were of the opinion that Israel, the Jewish people have been finished, and it's not counter to any of their policies necessarily, what goes on with Israel today.

Poor woke, that's what they're taught, right? That's what they go and they go to the university. So we said earlier, does the person sitting in their office think about race when they're making a decision? They don't think about race, but they think of this package that they've been given, this package of wokeness that goes with half a dozen, a dozen different ideologies, and they've been taught that, and they follow it, and they go by it. And one of those these days includes the Palestinian sympathy towards the Palestinian cause. And that's why you'll see the flags and this and that, they don't know what it is or where it is.

It's just like, I stand with Ukraine, right? Where did that go? Finished. That dropped out of their little package, and maybe something else will fill the package. We shouldn't look at the United States as the nefarious actor here. We ourselves are the nefarious actor, okay? We, just as we have control completely over Gaza and choose not to use it, so too the United States has control over us. But in this case, we choose not to become independent. The United States will do just as much as we give them.

When we talk about the two-state solution, for example, now we see it as nefarious. It's difficult for us now, for sure. But two-state solution means pretty much you're separating. It doesn't apply to us in Israel now. Forget that. But I'm saying historically, what it is, is you're separating warring parties, right? You separate it, for example, in Vietnam, in Korea, in Ireland, in Germany, right? You have problems, so you separate into two, right? So I don't think it's really a nefarious intent by the United States when it first started. It was just by default. I want quiet in the Middle East. And to have quiet, I'm going to separate those who are as simple as that.

Of course, as the Gulus mentality, after thousands of years, 2,000 years of living in someone else's house and requesting permission and keeping a low profile, it becomes extremely difficult to then come and assert yourself as the Baal Habait, as the homeowner, as the boss. And I think we see that particularly with those of us who were born in Galut, in exile.

But we also see it for those who were born here. And I think we see it often in Israeli culture. And I'll give you a little story where I have some distant cousins. And I remember it was during Eurovision. And Israel made it to, I don't know, the finals or some high place in Eurovision. And one of my cousins wrote on the WhatsApp group, wow, we're finally on the map. And I remember thinking, no, we have been the map for centuries. We've always been the map. But I think that gullist mentality is something that takes time to break. It's really just a matter of will.

As we've seen in every field, we've been blessed with so much technology and so much strength throughout the world. Agriculture, we could go on and have a separate podcast just about that. There's no question that we have the ability to sustain ourselves in various fields.

And it's the will that we have to do. The state is growing. And when the state grows, it has to get a little bit more independence, like Jonathan said, and slowly, slowly to go in the process, as we've seen in many other industries, so too with defense.

Defense, again, is a little bit difficult because it does have a bunch of monopolies, mainly the United States, in that industry. It really is a security issue at this point. Yes, there are benefits. Yes, there are economic benefits.

But the problem is, I don't know if the Israeli public is ready for that. Like we started off tonight, when I mentioned to people discussing the United States, I said, well, two aircraft carriers, right? And I also worry that culturally, a lot of Israelis are more concerned about being involved in Eurovision and being involved in FIFA than actually worrying about these issues. So if there were to be a movement by someone who would say, no, we have to break this Western hold, and they say, why would I break this Western hold? I love it. I deem myself Western. I deem myself one of them.

I have to end on a positive note, because I know we have some things that people might roll their eyes at. So I heard from a good friend of mine, who's a Rav, and he explained this. He said, historically, if we took any Jew from almost any time period, any location, and we brought them to the land of Israel today, and they saw our Jewish army, and our Jewish police, and open worship, and the shuls, and the society that we live in, and what would they say? They would say, you are living in the times of Mashiach.

So as we go through all these topics and these things that may be disappointing to hear, we have to put it into perspective. And last time, we also mentioned another perspective, is that if we had discussed this same topic 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, we'd be discussing war against bona fide armies, war against armies with tanks and airplanes. So we have to remember that the trajectory of Am Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael has continued to go up, and that we're very privileged to be living in these times and to be seeing these times.