Europe is discovering what Israel has long known: extreme heat is no longer an occasional emergency. It is becoming part of the continent’s new normal.

The recent heat dome that swept across the continent pushed temperatures to record levels, strained electricity grids, disrupted transport, and forced governments to issue public health warnings. Meteorologists warn that more major heat events are likely to follow. What was once exceptional is rapidly becoming routine.

For decades, European climate policy focused primarily on slowing global warming. The Green Deal became the European Union’s (EU) flagship project for reducing emissions and achieving climate neutrality. Those ambitions remain essential. But Europe now faces an equally urgent challenge. It must also learn how to adapt to a hotter world.

That challenge creates an opportunity to rethink one dimension of the relationship between Israel and the EU.

The conversation between Brussels and Jerusalem is usually dominated by disagreements over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider regional politics. Those disagreements will continue.

Climate adaptation, however, offers a different agenda, one driven not by political division but by shared necessity. Extreme heat does not recognize borders or ideology. It tests farmers, physicians, engineers, urban planners, and governments alike.

This is where science diplomacy should take center stage.

Israel has spent generations building a modern state under conditions of chronic heat, scarce water, and recurring drought. Meeting those challenges required sustained investment in scientific research, technological innovation, and close cooperation among universities, government agencies, research institutes, and private industry.

Water illustrates the point. Today, roughly eighty percent of Israel’s drinking water comes from desalinated seawater. Combined with one of the world’s highest rates of wastewater reuse and decades of research on water-efficient agriculture, Israel has developed expertise that is increasingly relevant far beyond the Middle East.

Few European countries have built a national water system that combines desalination, wastewater recycling, and efficient water management on a comparable scale. That experience cannot simply be copied, but it can be studied, adapted, and improved through joint research.

Israeli researchers have also advanced drought-resistant crops, precision irrigation, renewable energy technologies, climate monitoring systems, and innovative approaches to managing scarce natural resources. These achievements belong to no single institution. They reflect decades of work across Israel’s universities, public laboratories, research centers, and technology sector.

Europe, for its part, brings equally important strengths. Its universities lead the world in climate science, environmental regulation, sustainable architecture, renewable energy, and urban planning. European institutions have also produced some of the world’s most ambitious climate legislation.

This is not a story of one side teaching the other. It is a partnership built on complementary strengths. Europe has become a global leader in reducing emissions. Israel has accumulated practical experience in adapting to heat and water scarcity. Together they can develop solutions that will benefit societies far beyond either region.

This is precisely the kind of partnership that Brussels and Jerusalem have spent decades building through scientific cooperation and research frameworks such as the Horizon Europe research program. These programs exist because both sides recognized that knowledge is among the strongest foundations of a durable relationship.

Yet today a striking contradiction has emerged.

At the precise moment Europe most needs climate-adaptation expertise, political pressure is growing in parts of the Union to suspend or restrict Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe. European governments are fully entitled to debate Israeli policies. But Europe will not strengthen its future by weakening scientific cooperation.

Climate change will not wait for political consensus. Every barrier to joint research reduces Europe’s ability to confront challenges ranging from water security and food production to energy resilience and public health. Excluding Israeli researchers would not slow global warming. It would simply deny the EU access to expertise that could help it adapt more effectively.

The historical dimension

There is also a deeper historical dimension to this story.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, believed that Israel’s future would be shaped in the Negev desert. He saw the desert not simply as territory to cultivate but as a laboratory where science and innovation would determine whether communities could flourish under arid conditions.

Almost 80 years later, that vision has acquired unexpected relevance. As Europe confronts longer droughts, more frequent wildfires, shrinking reservoirs, and increasingly dangerous summers, many of the questions Israeli scientists have explored for decades are becoming European questions as well.

None of this suggests that Israel has solved climate change. It has not. Israel continues to face rising temperatures and growing environmental pressures of its own. But experience matters, especially when it is shared with partners confronting similar realities.

For too long, relations between Israel and the EU have been viewed almost exclusively through the prism of political disagreement. A warming climate offers an opportunity to strengthen another pillar of the relationship, one built on scientific excellence, practical cooperation, and shared interests.

The next chapter in Israel-Europe relations may therefore be written not only in diplomatic meetings but also in laboratories, research centers, and university partnerships, where progress is measured by discovery rather than political rhetoric.

Europe is only beginning to learn what it means to live in a hotter world. Israel has been learning that lesson for generations. In a warming world, knowledge may prove to be the most valuable bridge between them.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post A hotter Europe needs Israeli science first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

When European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X after meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Ankara was “a key partner on security, migration and energy,” praised its role protecting NATO’s eastern flank, and voiced hope for closer relations between Brussels and Ankara, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar answered within hours.

Kallas’s message, he noted, said nothing about Turkey’s deteriorating democratic record: mounting pressure on opposition politicians, journalists and peaceful protesters. “A masterclass in hypocrisy,” he called it.

Whether Sa’ar’s criticism was fair is not the central question. The exchange became the latest episode in a relationship between Jerusalem and Brussels that has grown steadily more strained. But focusing on the question of double standards risks missing something more consequential, something that has drawn almost no attention: Israel is still engaging an outdated image of Europe.

Just days earlier, the European Union published the spring 2026 Standard Eurobarometer. The findings deserved more notice than another spat on social media. A majority of Europeans, 51%, now trust the European Union, three points higher than in the autumn 2025 survey. Some 73% see it as a place of stability in a troubled world, and 81% support a common defense and security policy among member states.

The significance of these findings extends well beyond public opinion. Trust is also a source of political legitimacy. Institutions that enjoy growing public confidence acquire greater authority to act, both internally and internationally. For Israel, this means that the European Union is not merely a forum for familiar diplomatic arguments; it is becoming a more legitimate and more consequential actor.

You won’t find a single word here about:

The brutal human rights violations in Turkey, which were on display again just weeks ago when a Turkish court removed the newly elected leader of the main opposition party from office; peaceful protesters being met with force and mass… t.co/2E3NGui2v3

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) July 1, 2026

This suggests that Israeli thinking about the union still rests on assumptions many Europeans no longer hold. That view once made perfect sense. For much of the past decade, those assumptions closely reflected the union’s political trajectory.

The sovereign debt crisis exposed deep economic strain. The refugee crisis laid bare sharp political divisions. Brexit seemed to confirm an integration project heading toward irreversible decline. Populist parties gained ground across the continent, while constant disputes among member states reinforced the image of a bloc too fragmented to operate with purpose. Years of this encouraged Israeli policymakers to view the European Union primarily as a divided economic club, rather than as an increasingly consequential geopolitical actor.

That is not the entity taking shape now.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine reshaped the course of European integration. Instead of fragmenting, the European Union coordinated sweeping sanctions against Russia; financed military assistance to Ukraine; expanded defense investment; diversified energy supplies; and invested heavily in industrial resilience and advanced technologies. Doubts about future American leadership have only accelerated this process.

The Eurobarometer survey shows that this transformation extends well beyond Brussels. E.U. citizens increasingly support it. They recognize that security, migration, technological competition, climate change and geopolitical instability require collective European action.

That reality should matter greatly in Jerusalem.

Israeli foreign policy continues to devote much of its attention to bilateral relations with European capitals. Those relationships remain indispensable. Germany, Italy, Greece, Czechia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and other member states will always remain essential partners.

But today’s European Union can no longer be understood through national capitals alone. Many of the decisions shaping Israel’s strategic environment are increasingly negotiated and adopted in Brussels. Trade policy, Horizon Europe research funding, AI, digital regulation, sanctions, environmental standards, industrial strategy and expanding areas of foreign policy now emerge from common E.U. institutions.

This is one of the most important transformations in European politics over the past two decades. Israeli diplomacy has not fully caught up.

Israel continues to approach the union primarily through bilateral channels, even as Brussels acquires greater influence over issues that directly affect Israeli economic, scientific, technological and diplomatic interests. The result is a widening gap between the Europe that Israel believes it is engaging and the Europe that increasingly shapes decisions affecting Israel’s interests.

The recent suspension of Israeli contacts with Kaja Kallas illustrates this broader challenge. Whatever its immediate diplomatic logic, reducing engagement with Brussels does not diminish the union’s influence. It merely limits Israel’s opportunities to influence decisions before they are taken.

This has become particularly evident since October 2023. Disagreements over Gaza, humanitarian assistance, violent settlers, international law and the prospects for peace have strained relations between Israel and several European institutions. At the same time, antisemitism has surged across Europe, leaving Jewish communities increasingly vulnerable to violence and hostility generated by events unfolding thousands of kilometers away.

These developments have understandably generated deep frustration in Israel. Frustration, however, is not a strategy.

Many Israelis now dismiss Brussels as politically irrelevant. The Eurobarometer survey suggests precisely the opposite. Institutions that enjoy rising public confidence tend to gain political authority rather than lose it. Governments become more willing to act through them, and international partners have even greater reason to engage them seriously. As the European Union assumes a larger role in security, defense, technology and economic policy, Israel has a greater interest in engaging Brussels rather than bypassing it.

None of this requires accepting every European criticism. Democracies disagree, particularly during war. Israel has every right to challenge positions it considers unfair, inconsistent or detached from regional realities; however, disagreement is not a substitute for understanding.

A more effective Israeli approach would not abandon bilateral diplomacy. It would complement it with a more serious Brussels strategy. That means sustained engagement with the European External Action Service, the European Commission, the High Representative’s office and the European Parliament; treating E.U. regulatory, research and sanctions debates as strategic files; and entering conversations early to shape outcomes rather than merely react to them.

The case for doing so is practical, not sentimental. The European Union remains Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly a third of Israel’s total goods trade. Its research programs provide Israeli universities, scientists and industry with unparalleled opportunities for cooperation. Israeli innovation strengthens Europe in cybersecurity, health care, agriculture, water technology, climate adaptation and AI. These shared interests have become more important, not less.

Too much of the Israeli debate still reflects the union of the Brexit era rather than the union that exists today. Europe has become more integrated in strategically important fields, more confident in its institutions and more willing to act collectively. It’s becoming more cohesive and more confident. These changes are already reshaping the continent.

Successful foreign policy begins with an accurate understanding of political realities. The costliest strategic mistakes rarely result from underestimating adversaries. More often, they stem from misreading partners.

The latest exchange between Gideon Sa’ar and Kaja Kallas will soon fade from the headlines. The larger strategic challenge will remain.

Published in JNS

The post Israel is engaging yesterday’s Europe first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

With the passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the most colorful, influential and important voices in American politics has fallen silent. Graham was not merely a standard “friend of Israel” on Capitol Hill. He was an iron defender and a moral shield who never hesitated to stand before the cameras and proclaim the justice of Jerusalem’s cause.

Behind the lilting Southern accent, biting humor and emphatic hand gestures stood a brilliant politician who wielded considerable influence over American policy.

Israel has lost not only a powerful ally in Washington, but a true friend who devoted a significant part of his political career to strengthening the strategic relationship between the two countries.

The tragedy that shaped the sheriff

To understand Graham’s toughness, one must return to the small town of Central, South Carolina, where he was born in the summer of 1955. He grew up in a working-class family that operated a business combining a restaurant, bar and pool hall.

When he was a young college student of about 21, his world collapsed. Both of his parents died within roughly 15 months of one another. Graham did not break. With the help of relatives, he took responsibility for his younger sister, legally adopted her and continued on to law school.

He carried the toughness he had acquired into military service as a legal officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he was stationed in West Germany. He continued serving for decades through active duty, the National Guard and the reserves, including short deployments as a military lawyer in Iraq and Afghanistan during congressional recesses, before retiring in 2015 with the rank of colonel.

He never married and had no children.

From the Clinton trial to the Senate

Graham’s political career began in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he served from 1993 to 1995, but his breakthrough onto the national stage came with the Republican Revolution of 1994.

From the Clinton trial to the Senate

Graham’s political career began in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he served from 1993 to 1995, but his breakthrough onto the national stage came with the Republican Revolution of 1994.

At the end of 1998, he was appointed as one of the House impeachment managers, and in early 1999 he presented the case against President Bill Clinton in the Senate trial.

In 2003, he stepped into the enormous shoes of Strom Thurmond in the Senate and became a distinctly conservative voice. He led an effort to impose a federal ban on most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy and promoted bipartisan cooperation on red-flag laws aimed at restricting access to firearms by dangerous individuals.

From a live on-air feud to a close alliance

Graham reached the peak of his political influence during the Trump era, though the road there was filled with obstacles.

Anyone who remembers the 2015 Republican primaries will find it difficult to forget their public confrontation. After Graham called Trump a “jackass,” Trump retaliated by reading Graham’s personal cellphone number aloud before millions of viewers.

Despite that, Graham showed pragmatism, became one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate and used his direct access to the president to advance a hawkish foreign policy supportive of Israel.

The bitter enemy of the ayatollahs’ regime

When it came to the Middle East, Graham must be remembered as one of Iran’s fiercest enemies. He consistently pushed for crippling sanctions and refused to accept any compromise over Tehran’s nuclear program or its terrorist proxies.

Only recently, while addressing tensions in the region, he warned that the Iranians had badly misjudged Trump.

A global hawk: the Russia-Ukraine war

His hawkish and uncompromising worldview was not limited to the Middle East. After the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Graham became one of the loudest and most determined voices in support of Kyiv and a leading advocate for supplying weapons to the Ukrainians.

He did not hesitate to cross diplomatic lines when he publicly suggested that the only way to end the war was for someone close to Vladimir Putin to “take this guy out.”

He also provoked Moscow’s fury during a visit to Kyiv when he declared that American aid to Ukraine was “the best money we’ve ever spent.”

Republican backing for a trilateral agreement

Graham understood the potential of regional initiatives such as IMEC, the multinational project designed to strengthen connectivity, infrastructure and economic integration between India, the Middle East and Europe.

Under the Biden administration, Graham became one of the leading Republican supporters of efforts to forge a trilateral agreement among the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

He met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and worked to rally Republican support in the Senate for a defense treaty. That effort was critical because ratification of a treaty requires the backing of two-thirds of senators, a threshold a Democratic administration would have struggled to reach on its own.

The negotiations were led by the Biden administration and the Saudi and Israeli leaderships and, alongside normalization, included security arrangements, a civilian nuclear program and the Palestinian issue.

The day after: the battle over his Senate seat

Beyond the personal loss, Graham’s sudden death is also shaking the political system in South Carolina. Only last month, in June, he won the Republican primary and secured the party’s nomination for the November 2026 general election.

The state’s governor will now have to appoint a temporary replacement to preserve the Republican seat until the end of the term. At the same time, the party will be required to select a replacement candidate to represent it at the ballot box in the fall, in accordance with state party rules.

Whoever replaces him will have to try to fill the shoes of a figure whose voice was so prominent and influential.

Graham’s support for Israel was consistent, public and unmistakable throughout his years in the Senate. Israel has lost not only a powerful ally in Washington, but a true friend who devoted a significant part of his political career to strengthening the strategic relationship between the two countries.

Published on YNET

The post Lindsey Graham was more than Israel’s friend; he was its iron shield in Washington first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Since its founding, the United States has seen itself as a “shining city upon a hill” – a nation with a moral and democratic mission meant to illuminate the world.

Over 250 years of American independence, that self-image has been translated into an inspiring reality: not only economic, military, and scientific preeminence, but also a source of values – a bastion of freedom and progress. This milestone birthday for the American nation is also an appropriate moment to examine the relationship between America and the Jewish people. There is no doubt that this shining beacon has cast abundant light on the State of Israel and Jews around the world. Without it, the Jewish story would have looked very different – and far bleaker.

The bond between America and the Jewish people deepened in the 19th and 20th centuries, when the United States opened its gates to some 2.5 million Jewish immigrants from Europe, most of them destitute. As a result of this immigration – one of the largest in our history – by 1910, there were more Jews in New York than in any other city in the world. In this way, many Jews and their descendants were spared the fate of the six million who perished in Europe during the Holocaust.

President Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel 11 minutes after it declared independence and later spoke of Israel in uniquely moving terms: “I believe that Israel has a glorious future before it – not just as another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

These words would echo again and again from the mouths of every American president who followed him. Relations between the two countries rested on bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans alike.

They stood on two firm pillars: a partnership of values – as Republican president Ronald Reagan put it, “In Israel, free men and women demonstrate every day the power of courage and faith;” and a partnership of interests – as Democratic president Bill Clinton said, “When people ask me what the greatest achievement of our foreign policy has been… I think of the partnership between America and Israel.”

Between these two pillars stands North American Jewry, the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel, with a central and highly influential voice in American public life and in relations with the State of Israel.

FOR MANY years, an exceptionally important triangular relationship has existed among Washington, Jerusalem, and American Jewry. Over the past several decades, all three sides of this triangle have benefited greatly.

The United States has benefited from its connection to the other two sides of the triangle. Israel serves as a values-based and security outpost in a turbulent Middle East, helping to defend shared Western interests.

The US has also been blessed by the immense contribution of Jewish immigrants who became leaders in science, culture, technology, banking, and many other fields. It is not fanciful to say that America’s rise was strengthened, in part, by the extraordinary talent, energy, and ambition brought by Jewish immigration across the Atlantic.

American Jewry, too, flourished because of its ties to both of the triangle’s other sides. Israel served as a central focus of Jewish identity and a source of pride, while America provided a safe home that opened its doors and enabled a degree of prosperity unique in Jewish history. The same is true of Israel: its reliance on America’s many-sided support and on the flourishing Jewish community of North America has been a blessing that scarcely needs description.

The weakening relationship with the US, Israel, and American Jews

But strength does not last forever. A sober look at this triangular relationship shows that each of its sides has weakened in recent years. On the Washington-Jerusalem axis, American public support for Israel has declined significantly and worryingly.

Significant parts of the Democratic Party now voice sharply critical positions toward Israel, while even among younger Republicans, the once-instinctive warmth toward Israel can no longer be assumed.

On the Washington-American Jewry axis, changes are also evident. Waves of antisemitism from the fringes of both the American right and left have raised the fear that the golden age of American Jewry may be coming to an end. Finally, on the Jerusalem-American Jewry axis, cracks are visible as Israeli governments have failed to invest sufficiently in cultivating the vital ties between the two branches of the family.

The gaps between an American Jewish public that tends toward liberalism and an Israeli society that tends toward conservatism are growing wider. The unfortunate facts are clear: Israel’s position as a central anchor of identity for North American Jewry is no longer what it once was. The government formed after the elections will need to think anew about how to strengthen each side of this triangle.

This will require renewed investment in bipartisan support in Washington, serious engagement with younger Americans across the political spectrum, and a deliberate rebuilding of trust between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

The resilience of “we, the Jewish people” depends on the success of this effort.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post America at 250: The triangular relationship between US, Israel, and Jews is at risk first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

“It’s complicated” is a fair way to describe Israel’s relationship with the United States of America – as a people and as a state. Over its 250 years, there have been highs, but also painful lows.

There were years when we sheltered beneath the wings of the American eagle, protected and aided by it. There were also moments when those wings cast a shadow. America’s 250th anniversary comes at another turning point in this relationship, after the joint confrontation with Iran revealed both the depth of the alliance and the tensions within it.

Heavy gray clouds are gathering on the horizon. And yet, from an eagle-eye view, and despite more than a few dark chapters, we would do well to pause and say to “one nation under God”: Thank you.

Among the citizens of the young republic, Jews were a tiny minority. Even so, they played a role in the founding of the United States. One of the most notable was Jewish financier Haym Salomon, who used his own money, along with funds he raised from others, to support George Washington’s revolutionary army – the army that won America its independence.

A few years after its founding, while the Jews of Europe were still confined to ghettos and subjected to persecution, president Washington assured the Jewish community that “the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance… everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

America’s Founding Fathers, devout Christians for the most part, saw themselves as the Children of Israel, and their journey from Europe to freedom on the new continent as an Exodus from Egypt to Canaan. But some of them also supported the real Jews – those suffering pogroms on the “old continent.” Long before Herzl conceived political Zionism, there were Americans who supported the idea of the Jews’ return to Zion. As early as 1819, president John Adams wrote to Jewish leader Mordecai Manuel Noah: “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”

One hundred and twenty-nine years later, president Harry Truman recognized the new State of Israel 11 minutes after its Declaration of Independence took effect. After some three-and-a-half decades of good but distant relations, punctuated by several ruptures, the US stood by Israel in its most difficult hours.

During the Yom Kippur War, when Israel’s military stockpiles were dangerously depleted, it was the US that launched an airlift, supplying desperately needed weapons and equipment. Since then, America has consistently supported Israel, both financially and diplomatically. Of course, this support, which has been substantial and deeply appreciated, also bolstered American interests. In real terms, the US has provided Israel with approximately $310 billion in civilian and, primarily, military assistance.

This has come alongside a long-standing commitment to preserving the IDF’s “qualitative military edge” over the armies of the region.

This shared history also contains painful chapters. Even in the Goldene Medina – the “golden land” to which millions of Jews streamed from Europe – antisemitism was a fact of life. Enrollment quotas at universities, unabashed antisemitism in major newspapers, accusations of dual loyalty: all of these were part of the America that promised liberty and equality to all.

That antisemitism, pushed to the margins after the Holocaust, is regrettably returning to center stage. America’s passivity in saving Jews during World War II remains one of the gravest moral failures in this history. Even amid pleas to bomb the railways to Auschwitz or the machinery of death itself, Washington chose not to act.

Relations with the State of Israel have also had their painful low points. In Israel’s early years, the US imposed an arms embargo on the Jewish state. Later, after Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula in Operation Kadesh, the US forced its unconditional withdrawal. Since then, the relationship has more than once approached a breaking point – for example, when America prevented Israel from launching a preemptive strike on Yom Kippur, or when it declined to veto a harsh United Nations Security Council resolution against Israel in 2016, among other cases.

And yet, despite the sting, in the broad sweep of history, the United States was, and remains, a central pillar of support – at times the only one – in an international system often hostile to Israel. It is also a warm and welcoming home to the second-largest Jewish community in the world. True, the future – both for the Jews there and for American support for Israel – is clouded by uncertainty. But at this moment, as our great friend marks 250 years, the honest Jewish and Israeli response is not amnesia, but gratitude.

Thank you.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Saying thank you to the United States as it celebrates 250 years of freedom first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

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Just days after Israel and Lebanon reached a framework agreement to begin the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of southern Lebanon, Tamar Ish Shalom sits down with one of the key figures behind the negotiations: Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter.

In this wide-ranging conversation with host Tamar and Ambassador Leiter discuss the strategic implications of the Lebanon agreement, the continuing challenge posed by Iran, and the evolving relationship between Jerusalem and Washington. They also explore the global rise of antizionism and disinformation, the future of Israel–Diaspora relations, and the difficult questions surrounding religious pluralism, Jewish identity, and the boundaries of the Jewish community.

The post Tamar Ish Shalom in conversation with Amb. Yechiel Leiter first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The Iranian regime has for now survived. Its missile production infrastructure remains largely intact, and whatever agreement ultimately emerges from the current negotiations will almost certainly leave Tehran with the ability – whether in 15 or 20 years – to resume uranium enrichment on an industrial scale.

Yes, Iran was weakened. Its nuclear program has been set back, and its military capabilities suffered significant damage. But while the threat has been degraded, it has not been eliminated. This does not mean that the war was a mistake. Israel had an opportunity to deepen its military partnership with the United States and strike at a regime that has spent nearly five decades funding terrorism, destabilizing the region, and openly working towards Israel’s destruction.

The campaign may not have achieved its most important objective – toppling the ayatollahs – but it demonstrated an unprecedented level of operational cooperation between Israel and the United States and inflicted meaningful damage on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Yet – and this is the source of the disappointment – when Israel embarked on this war at the end of February, it did so with a vision of fundamentally changing the reality posed by Iran. The agreement now taking shape does not deliver that outcome. Part of this has led to reactions by prominent Israelis that can only be described as ridiculously immature. Some are portraying President Donald Trump as a traitor, a flip-flopper, and a man who abandoned Israel. One news magazine put a headline on its front page with the title: “No longer a friend.” Journalists aligned with the Right who proudly posted photos of themselves interviewing Trump in the past are now putting Xs over those pictures.

Unfortunately, these people misunderstood how relations work with the United States.

Trump went to war expecting a certain outcome, and when that outcome did not materialize, he made a decision to cut his losses and do what he believes serves America’s interests: to end the war now, under terms that many of us wish were stronger and more favorable. We can disagree with the deal and think it’s deeply flawed – I definitely do – but Trump’s decision was never about Israel’s interests alone. It was about America’s interests.

What these Israelis are also failing to recognize is that now is not the time to grieve and just think about what we failed to achieve, but rather to use this moment to try and benefit from the strategic opportunities that emerge from this new reality. One way to do that is to stop focusing on the US-Iran MoU and to instead get working on a new US-Israel MoU. To some extent, this is a similar situation to what happened after US president Barack Obama concluded his landmark nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015.

Netanyahu takes advantage of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waged an unprecedented campaign against the deal, culminating in his controversial speech before Congress. He invested enormous political capital in trying to stop it, and even though he failed, once the agreement was signed, he quickly pivoted.

Rather than stay stuck on the failure to stop the deal, Netanyahu understood that he had an opportunity to bolster Israel’s military capabilities and the alliance with the United States. The result was the largest MoU in the history of the US-Israel relationship – a $38 billion military assistance package spread out over 10 years.

Netanyahu was able to tell Israelis that although he had failed to stop the nuclear deal, he had secured the largest military aid package in the country’s history. Obama was able to reassure Americans that despite disagreements with Israel over Iran, the United States remained fully committed to Israel’s security. Both sides benefited, and the episode demonstrated that even when Washington and Jerusalem disagree on Iran, they can still find ways to strengthen the broader strategic relationship. Today, as another Iran agreement takes shape – one that Israelis are deeply concerned about – there is an opportunity to replicate that model. Technically, the Obama-era MoU expires next year, and if a new package is to be negotiated, discussions need to already be underway.

Nevertheless, simply negotiating a larger version of the existing arrangement – under which Washington provides funding that Israel uses to purchase American weapons – would be a missed opportunity. The last two-and-a-half years have transformed the region and exposed new strategic realities, allowing for a more ambitious vision.

One possibility, for example, would be to explore the possibility of the Americans opening a base in Israel either instead of, or in addition to, the major military installations the US already has throughout the Middle East. Israel has a good case to make. It is a stable democracy, shares similar values as the US, is a proven military power, and, as the recent war has shown, is America’s most capable partner. It is true that an American base would raise questions about Israeli operational freedom, but this might be outweighed by the level of deterrence a US presence in Israel would provide.

An adversary would know that an attack on Israel would be risking a direct confrontation with the United States. This is something no aid package, no matter how generous, would be able to provide.

If permanent basing proves unrealistic, there are other options such as America deploying F-22 Raptor fighter jets or the strategic B-2 bombers in Israel, or even a framework that would allow Israel access to such platforms under certain circumstances. These are just some ideas being thrown around within the defense establishment. Whatever the government decides to ask for, it will do so with the recognition that the war with Iran, the regional upheaval that has followed October 7, and the prospect of a new nuclear agreement have together created a rare strategic moment.

Israel may not get everything it wanted from the war, and it may not get everything it wants from the negotiations that will now begin. But just as Netanyahu turned the disappointment of 2015 into a major strategic achievement, Israel has an opportunity to do so again.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Iran deal is Israel’s chance to reshape its own MoU with the US first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

“I can’t fight the shadows all the time.”

That was the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’s response on X/Twitter to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar after reports that she had likened Israel’s policies to apartheid South Africa during a closed-door diplomatic meeting.

The phrase did not calm the dispute. It deepened it.

According to reports from Jerusalem, some Israeli officials interpreted the remark as a veiled political message directed at Germany, and as further evidence that Kallas had come under growing French influence within the EU. Israel’s objection was understandable. If the EU’s top diplomat compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, Israel had every right to reject the accusation forcefully. That is not the issue.

The issue is what came next.

The more revealing aspect of the exchange may not be what Kallas intended, but how quickly her unusual choice of words was interpreted primarily through a political lens. The controversy reveals a larger diplomatic problem: too often, unfamiliar language is treated as strategy before it is examined as culture. Diplomacy begins with language. Yet language is never merely vocabulary. Every language carries its own history, literature, symbols, and collective memory. Words rarely travel alone. They arrive shaped by the culture that produced them. When diplomats forget this, they risk misunderstanding not only individual expressions but also the intentions behind them.

To a native English speaker, “I can’t fight the shadows” sounds unusual. English reaches more naturally for expressions such as “I can’t fight ghosts,” “I can’t chase every rumor,” or “I won’t respond to every allegation.” Kallas chose none of them.

One possible explanation lies in her own cultural background.

Readers familiar with Estonian literature may recognize the recurring presence of forests, silence, darkness, memory, and shadows. These are more than descriptions of nature. They often serve as images through which writers explore identity, survival, fear, historical trauma, and the unseen forces that shape individual and collective life.

This symbolic language reflects Estonia’s history. Centuries of foreign domination, followed by Soviet occupation, censorship, and the struggle to preserve language and national identity, encouraged writers to communicate through metaphor as much as through direct political speech. Within that tradition, shadows often evoke realities that are present yet difficult to grasp or confront directly. In Estonian cultural memory, nature often becomes a language for history: forest as refuge, silence as survival, darkness as danger, and shadows as the presence of realities difficult to grasp or confront directly.

Against this backdrop, an expression such as voidelda varjudega, literally “to fight with shadows,” sounds entirely natural in a literary Estonian register, even though it is not a fixed idiom.

Whether Kallas, former prime minister of Estonia, consciously carried such imagery into English is impossible to know. Nor can anyone say with confidence that this was her intended meaning in her exchange with Sa’ar. That uncertainty, however, is precisely the point. Diplomacy rarely offers certainty. It demands the discipline of weighing competing interpretations before determining motive.

Anyone familiar with Estonian language and literature would at least recognize Kallas’s wording as a plausible cultural metaphor, not necessarily a concealed strategic message. That possibility alone should have encouraged greater caution before a hidden meaning was assigned to an unfamiliar phrase.

The first duty of diplomacy is curiosity, not certainty.

Whether the Israeli interpretation ultimately proves correct is therefore almost beside the point. One can hold Kallas fully accountable for her reported remarks while still asking whether her language was interpreted with sufficient cultural awareness. Those are separate questions.

Nor is this uniquely an Israeli challenge. Diplomatic history is full of misunderstandings born not of bad intentions but of cultural assumptions. American diplomats have misread indirect communication in Asia. Europeans have misjudged rhetorical traditions in the Middle East. Cross-cultural misunderstanding is among diplomacy’s oldest hazards.

Information without cultural interpretation

The recent exchange between Jerusalem and Brussels simply offers an unusually vivid example. Diplomats are typically trained in international law, political science, economics, security studies, negotiation, conflict resolution, and public administration. These disciplines remain indispensable.

Yet foreign relations are conducted not only through legal texts and policy papers, but through people whose thinking has been shaped by literature, history, religion, folklore, and national memory. Understanding Estonia requires more than reading European Council conclusions. It requires appreciating a society whose modern identity was secured by preserving its language under foreign rule.

It requires recognizing that Estonian literature developed a symbolic vocabulary in which nature frequently became a language for history itself. Forests, silence, darkness, and shadows are not decorative images. Together they form a cultural vocabulary through which public life is understood.

The same principle applies far beyond Estonia. Every European society speaks through its own historical experience. French political language reflects republican universalism. German public discourse remains deeply shaped by 20th-century historical responsibility. Polish political debate repeatedly invokes national resistance and martyrdom. Successful diplomacy requires understanding not only institutions but also these cultural languages.

Too often, however, foreign ministries continue to treat cultural knowledge as secondary, something appropriate for universities but peripheral to statecraft. History suggests otherwise.

Many of history’s finest diplomats were not only lawyers or politicians. They were historians, linguists, writers, classicists, and scholars of civilization. They understood that political communication rarely operates on the literal level alone. People speak through metaphor, inherited memory, and cultural references that no intelligence report or briefing paper can fully capture.

Israel has invested enormous resources in intelligence gathering and has become exceptionally skilled at collecting information. Yet information without cultural interpretation remains incomplete. Knowing exactly what someone said is fundamentally different from understanding why those particular words were chosen.

Israel has invested heavily in intelligence. It should invest just as seriously in cultural literacy. If Israel wishes to deepen its engagement with Europe, it should broaden the education of its future diplomats. Political science remains essential. International law remains indispensable. But they are not enough. This need not mean turning diplomats into literary scholars. It means making cultural interpretation a formal part of diplomatic training: language study, literary briefings, historical memory seminars, and country-specific cultural mentoring before postings.

Those who represent Israel abroad should learn not only how nations negotiate but also how nations remember, how metaphors travel across languages, and how culture quietly shapes diplomacy long before negotiations begin. Diplomacy is often described as the art of choosing the right words. It is equally the art of understanding the words others choose.

Sometimes diplomatic success or failure depends on understanding a metaphor before assigning it a motive. Or, as Kaja Kallas might say, learning to see the shadows.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post When diplomats can’t read the shadows first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Few countries occupy as much space in the European Union diplomatic imagination as Israel. EU institutions devote extraordinary attention to Israeli policies, actions, and conflicts, often placing them at the centre of diplomatic discussions in a way that is difficult to explain by Israel’s size, power, or formal relationship with the Union.

This disproportionate focus raises important questions. Does the EU apply its diplomatic scrutiny consistently across different countries and conflicts? And if not, what are the consequences for its credibility and influence in the Middle East? At the same time, Israel’s growing tendency to dismiss the EU as strategically irrelevant may be creating problems of its own. A new study by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) sheds empirical light on these questions. Researchers analysed more than 24,000 official statements, press releases, and diplomatic communications issued by the European External Action Service (EEAS) between 2017 and April 2026. Of these, 895 dealt directly with Israel. The study also examined how Israel was portrayed in EU diplomatic discourse.

The findings are striking and serve as a warning to both Brussels and Jerusalem. Israel occupies an unusually prominent place in the Union’s diplomatic imagination. It accounted for approximately 4% of all official EEAS diplomatic statements during the period examined. That level of attention is not explained by Israel’s formal relationship with the Union – Israel is neither an EU member nor a candidate, and is not among the world’s major powers. Yet it commands attention from Brussels far beyond what its size and formal status would suggest.

The tone of that attention is equally revealing. Across the entire period, 38% of EEAS statements concerning Israel were negative, 49% were neutral, and only 13% were positive. Following the October 7 massacre, the balance shifted even further: negative statements rose from 29% before the attack to nearly 46% afterwards; positive statements fell from almost 20% to just 8%. Criticism of Israel is neither illegitimate nor surprising. Democracies are scrutinised because they are expected to uphold democratic values, and Israel should not be beyond examination. The question is not whether Israel should be criticised. The question is whether similar standards are applied consistently across the international system.

The comparative findings raise serious doubts. Iran received the most negative treatment among the countries examined, largely because of its military cooperation with Russia and its broader role in regional instability. Turkey presents a different case. Despite years of democratic erosion, restrictions on freedom of expression, and mounting tensions with European capitals, roughly three-quarters of official EEAS statements concerning Turkey were neutral, mostly focused on technical matters connected to its candidacy for EU membership.

The most revealing comparison is Qatar, for which more than two-thirds of European statements were positive; negative references were almost nonexistent. This is despite the “Qatargate affair,” which raised serious questions about foreign influence within the European Parliament. That controversy barely registered in the official rhetoric examined by the researchers.

The contrast is difficult to ignore: a democratic state fighting a war triggered by the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust receives sustained scrutiny and intensifying criticism, while authoritarian actors are often treated with conspicuous caution or leniency. This inconsistency is not merely a public relations problem. It undermines the EU’s ability to present itself as a credible and impartial actor in the Middle East. For decades, European leaders have sought a central role in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet influence depends on trust, and trust depends on consistency. By applying visibly different standards to different actors, the EU weakens its own claim to be an indispensable diplomatic broker in the region.

The JPPI study also reveals a widening intellectual gap between Brussels and Jerusalem. More than half of all EEAS statements concerning Israel included references to the two-state solution or the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The problem is not that the EU continues to support a two-state outcome; many serious people still regard it as the only viable long-term framework. The problem is that EU diplomacy often invokes it as if October 7 did not fundamentally alter Israeli threat perceptions. A formula that does not address these perceptions will not persuade the Israeli public, whatever its diplomatic pedigree.

Yet the study’s most important conclusion may not be that the EU talks too much about Israel. It may be that Israel talks too little to Europe. While the EU remains intensely focused on Israel, Israel has largely stopped paying attention to Europe. Since October 7, Israeli diplomacy has concentrated, understandably, on Washington, regional security challenges, and the expansion of the Abraham Accords.

These are legitimate priorities. But they have come at the expense of sustained engagement with EU institutions, European governments, media, universities, and policy communities. This neglect carries risks. The EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. Approximately one-third of Israel’s trade in goods is conducted with EU member states. The EU is also Israel’s most important partner in research, innovation, and higher education. No alternative partner offers Israel access to a comparable ecosystem of research funding, academic collaboration, and technological networks.

At a time when economic competitiveness depends increasingly on scientific excellence and technological innovation, relations with the EU are not a diplomatic luxury. They are a strategic asset. But many Israelis have come to regard Europe as a lost cause, assuming that European attitudes are fixed, EU institutions are irreversibly hostile, and investment in the relationship is unlikely to yield results. This is not realism; it is resignation.

Foreign policy is not about engaging only with those who already agree with you. It is about shaping debates, building coalitions, and defending national interests even in difficult environments. When Israel withdraws from the European arena, others fill the vacuum. When it stops trying to influence European discourse, it should not be surprised when that discourse evolves without Israeli input.

The EU should ask why Israel occupies so much space in its diplomatic imagination and whether that hyper focus reflects balanced diplomacy or an entrenched double standard. Israel should ask why the Union occupies so little space in its own strategic thinking and whether it can afford to neglect its most important economic, scientific, and technological partner.

Neither Brussels nor Jerusalem benefits from the current trajectory. The EU risks its credibility as a diplomatic actor. Israel risks its influence, its economic interests, and its scientific future in a relationship it cannot afford to neglect. Both outcomes are avoidable, but only if both Israel and the EU begin treating this relationship with the seriousness it deserves.

Published in Euractiv

The post Europe’s obsession with Israel first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.