During an appearance last week at Tel Aviv University, Rahm Emanuel, who served as former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, declared that America’s alliance with Israel “cannot survive as it has been.” He warned that Israel is approaching a “dead end,” condemned the pursuit of Greater Israel and urged Israelis to abandon policies that, in his view, threaten their future.
Like so many before him, Emanuel delivered his rebuke on July 8 wrapped in the protective mantle of his Jewish identity, presenting himself not as a detached critic but as a concerned member of the family speaking uncomfortable truths.
What makes his performance objectionable is not the criticism, but the breathtaking arrogance behind it.
Emanuel arrived from the comfort of American life to superciliously lecture the citizens of a sovereign nation about the risks they should accept, the territory they should surrender and the security doctrines they should abandon, knowing that he will bear none of the consequences should his advice prove as catastrophically wrong as that of his predecessors.
Emanuel did not invent this role. He merely stepped into a well-established tradition. For decades, figures like New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have periodically appointed themselves wise interpreters of Israel’s “real” interests.
The names change, but the script rarely does. It always opens with an affirmation of affection, proceeds through assurances of unique moral authority derived from Jewish identity and concludes with the claim that Israelis must yield to international expectations because the alternative is isolation.
Those who live safely in Washington, D.C., New York or Chicago tend to assert superior judgment to others whose children patrol Israel’s borders, whose neighborhoods absorb rocket fire, and whose sons and daughters are summoned to reserve duty. Emanuel and his ilk confuse access to television studios, editorial pages and Senate chambers with insight into existential security concerns. But elite consensus is not strategic reality.
What makes their pompous posturing particularly offensive is that it almost always arrives dressed as friendship. “A true friend tells hard truths,” Emanuel declared. No, genuine friendship begins with humility. It recognizes that those who must live with the consequences of a decision deserve greater deference than those who merely opine about it from a safe distance. There is nothing humble about flying into a democracy to inform its citizens that they fundamentally misunderstand their own national interest.
The irony is that Emanuel casts himself as the realist in the room, when it is his own worldview that rests upon fantasies. He speaks as though the collapse of Israeli enthusiasm for another Palestinian state reflects ideological extremism rather than accumulated experience. Israelis didn’t wake up one morning and abandon the peace process because they had developed a taste for permanent conflict. They abandoned it because every major territorial concession was followed by an escalation of murder and violence, culminating in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Those who live safely in Washington, D.C., New York or Chicago tend to assert superior judgment to others whose children patrol Israel’s borders.
Emanuel’s performance was elevated from arrogance to recklessness by the content of his indictment. He blamed America’s unconditional support for Israel for a catalogue of horrors imagined by Israel’s accusers. He accused Israeli extremists of terrorizing Palestinians and of deliberately starving Gazans, presenting these charges as settled facts requiring atonement and future obedience.
This is worse than misjudging Israeli strategy. It lends Emanuel’s voice, platform and Jewish identity to libels used to portray the Jewish state as the most monstrous criminal on the planet.
Consider the charge of starvation: the image of Gazans deliberately denied food has been a potent weapon against Israel, but all evidence exonerates the Jewish state. Israel provided vast amounts of food and humanitarian supplies during its operations in Gaza. Hunger was primarily caused by Hamas, which appropriated the supplies to its own ends. When the fighting ended and supplies flowed, even international bodies that had charged famine withdrew the accusation.
Emanuel either knew this and suppressed it, or he repeated the accusation despite knowing that it was untrue. Neither suits a man who presents himself as Israel’s candid friend and a possible presidential candidate.
His talk also contained an implicit threat: Change course, or American support cannot continue “as it has been.” In other words, Israel should adjust its security doctrine to preserve Washington’s supposedly fragile and conditional favor.
This reflects a profound misunderstanding of why Israel exists. The modern-day Jewish state was not established to maximize international approval. It was established because the Jewish people finally concluded that their survival could not rest upon the goodwill, promises or changing political fashions of others. For 2,000 years, Jews were assured that accommodation, restraint and conformity would purchase acceptance, and time after time, history exposed that promise as a lie.
The ultimatum never really changes: Become smaller, become less assertive, accept greater risks, place more trust in international guarantees, or else. In return for your submission, the world might regard you more favorably.
It is the oldest bargain ever offered to the Jewish people, and it has never produced lasting security—just the opposite.
Emanuel believes that Israel’s current path endangers its alliance with the United States, and perhaps it does. Alliances change. Even so, no Israeli government has the luxury of prioritizing the affection of Washington elites. Its primary duty is to ensure a Jewish state capable of self-defense regardless of international sentiment.
If American policymakers decide that standing with Israel no longer benefits them, that is a sovereign decision. What they have no right to do is demand that Israelis submit to the demands of foreign politicians who will not bear the consequences of submission.
