Independence?

After almost 80 years of Israeli independence, the most recent one feels (to me at least) more like the first than any of the others. It is getting harder and harder to see the positives.

When 47 launched the war on Iran he did not ask America for permission. That said, he was elected by a majority of Americans and is the Commander in Chief and that is a local matter. When he launches or stops the Israeli army (like he did last week) or when he treats the Israeli Knesset as if it is an extension of Mar-A-Lago (as he has since Israel's last Independence Day) one could question that independence. I certainly do.

With that in mind here is Rosner's Yom Ha'Atzmaut special. "Many of the challenges facing Israel have not changed much in its nearly 80 years of existence. Names have been swapped, local and international players have come and gone and the global map has shifted more than once, but most of what troubles Israel’s captains today troubled them, in one way or another, in previous decades as well. A striking example is the insoluble tension between Israel’s need to lean on a great power and its desire to be as independent as possible.

"In this 78th year of Independence, it seems that only a few Israelis feel the state possesses full political and security liberty. They identify the American thumbprint on every act or omission of their government. When Trump says 'open fire,' they do. When he says 'hold fire,' they do it again. Airplanes up, airplanes down, now Iran, now Lebanon. Perhaps they imagine this is a new state of affairs – that there was never a dependency or a dictate quite like this. But this is not a new situation; it is merely a new player, Donald Trump, in whose time the dependency and especially the dictate is particularly conspicuous because, for him, policy is primarily about public performance. The situation itself is quite old: Israel has been shackled by a superpower since the day of its founding and has not broken free of it to this day." Read about the lengthy history in Jewish Journal's "Israel and America."

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