This is the moment for Israel to remember what it means to be sovereign.
While Israeli analysts debate whether there’s a rift with the United States, the real story is more complex. There’s no rupture, but there is recalibration.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
In a Middle East flush with oil and old grudges, the real currency today is not dollars or drones.
It’s hostages.
On Monday evening, Edan Alexander (an American-Israeli IDF soldier) stepped back into sunlight after 583 days of hell, held captive by Hamas. His return was a miracle. Not a spiritual one, but a political one — courtesy of a backchannel brokered by private mediators, Hamas leadership in Qatar, and the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
The operation was slick, untelevised, and strategically timed: Trump will depart on Monday for Saudi Arabia, before making stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He is not slated to visit Israel on this trip.
And while many in Israel rejoiced, others — mothers, fathers, siblings of Israeli hostages without U.S. passports — watched with bitter silence.
Because here’s the quiet truth, and it’s a spicy one: In today’s war for the soul of the Jewish state, a foreign passport is worth more than a soldier’s oath. Israelis are waking up to a brutal calculus that, if your son is taken captive and doesn’t hold an American passport, expect radio silence. If he’s Israeli only, he becomes a line item in a negotiation binder, not a priority.
This has shattered something deep. On the eve of Israeli Independence Day, a Reichman University poll revealed that just 17 percent of Israelis believe the state would do everything to rescue them if they were taken hostage. The Israeli flag — once a symbol of unwavering mutual commitment — has, for many, started to look like a tattered promise. As one anguished mother put it: “My Nimrod is 100-percent Israeli. Nimrod also deserves to come home.”
Trump’s reentry into the Middle East is guided not by loyalty or long-term vision, but by a dopamine-fueled obsession with “wins.”
The release of Edan Alexander? That’s a win. A ceasefire in Gaza? Potential win. Peace with Saudi Arabia? A golden trophy, especially if it comes with Qatari jets and Saudi contracts. A Palestinian state? If he can spin it as outsmarting predecessor Joe Biden, even that’s on the table.
Let’s be honest: Trump doesn’t have a foreign policy; he has a victory policy. His advisors are a tug-of-war between isolationist dealmakers and muscular hawks. One moment it’s “maximum pressure” on Iran, the next it’s “maximum selfies” with Saudi royals. In the morning he threatens Hamas with annihilation; by dinner, he’s negotiating terms.
None of this is coherent, but all of it is aimed at crafting the aesthetic of dominance. If the prize is a smiling hostage and a press conference about jobs in Ohio, the long-term risk to Israel’s security is someone else’s problem.
And what of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? He’s walking a political tightrope over a pit of his own making. On one side: the hostage families, disillusioned soldiers, and a nation emotionally fried after 18 months of trauma. On the other: an American president who could bless him with normalization deals or bulldoze him into a ceasefire.
To hide Israel’s exclusion from the Edan Alexander deal, Netanyahu rushed to announce the release before the Americans could. His office even tried to claim credit, suggesting the rescue was the result of Israel’s “aggressive policy” backed by Trump. But no one serious in the region believes it. This isn’t just a diplomatic snub; it’s a symbol of how little leverage Israel currently holds in Washington.
There’s frustration in the Trump administration with Netanyahu. Steve Witkoff himself reportedly criticized Israel’s prosecution of the war, calling it needlessly prolonged. In private, White House aides describe Israel as dragging its feet, resisting a ceasefire, and being uncooperative on broader plans for Gaza. Trump, ever the opportunist, is exploring his own endgame in the region — and Netanyahu might not be part of it.
The Netanyahu government has become so obsessed with political survival and coalition management that it has lost the initiative. Even when Israeli officials are invited to the Oval Office, like Ron Dermer recently, the real decisions are being made elsewhere.
There’s a growing feeling in both Washington and Jerusalem that Netanyahu is playing for time — time that runs out with every hostage who dies in captivity. In a recent call, a former U.S. official warned: “If Netanyahu continues like this, he’ll wake up to find the White House has moved on — without him.”
Translation: Follow, or be left behind.
While Israeli analysts debate whether there’s a rift with the United States, the real story is more complex. There’s no rupture, but there is recalibration.
There’s talk of a ceasefire deal. There’s talk of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords 2.0. There’s even talk of Trump unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state. For someone who once tore up Obama’s nuclear deal and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, this might seem like ideological whiplash.
Yet, Trump is not ideological. He’s not even consistent. He just wants to be seen winning. And right now, the world is pressuring him to “solve” Gaza — fast.
But let’s not pretend that legitimizing Hamas or enabling Palestinian statehood in its current form is a “solution.” That’s just resetting the clock on the next pogrom.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has turned it into a launchpad for war. Five rounds of major conflict. Tens of thousands of rockets. Thousands of Israeli dead. Hundreds of thousands terrorized. And on October 7th, the fantasy that Hamas could be “contained” finally died.
Any deal that ends this war without ending Hamas is not a peace plan. It’s a countdown to the next massacre.
At the same time, Trump’s MAGA wing includes many figures whose support for Israel is now conditional. If Israel no longer appears to “win,” if it drags America into messy wars or delays American-led deals, the MAGA base can turn with surprising speed.
Let’s be clear: Ending the Gaza war by legitimizing Hamas is not peace. It’s parole for terrorists. Since 2005, Gaza has been a laboratory for what a Jew-free Palestinian state looks like: rockets, murder tunnels, and October 7th. Every war Israel has fought with Hamas ended with Hamas still standing. Why? Because the international community, including Israel’s allies, prized “stability” over victory.
But “stability” is what allowed October 7th to happen.
If Trump ends this war prematurely, under the illusion that Hamas can be placated into peace, he’s not buying time; he’s selling out the future. The next pogrom is not a question of if, but when.
Israelis have learned a hard lesson: No one loves a Jew like another Jew. Not even our closest allies. Edan Alexander came home because of his American passport. The others remain underground in Gaza because of their Israeli ones.
Foreign support is fickle. Today, it’s a backchannel. Tomorrow, it’s a bargaining chip. The day after, it’s a headline about “both sides” and “moral equivalence.”
This is the moment for Israel to remember what it means to be sovereign — not just militarily, but morally. To remember that Jewish safety was never meant to be contingent on the kindness of empires or the whims of politicians.
Edan Alexander is home. But until every hostage is home — because they’re Jewish, not because they’re American — this war is not over. Not for Israel. And not for the Jewish People.
The hard truth is that the international community, America included, will never love the Jews more than it loves convenience. Even our closest friends will eventually choose “stability” over justice, “peace processes” over actual peace, and symbolic wins over moral clarity.
That’s why Jewish sovereignty matters. It’s why the Israeli flag matters. And it’s why every Israeli child, soldier, and hostage must know — without a doubt — that their life is not contingent on a second passport, but on the commitment of their nation.
Omer Shem Tov, an Israeli hostage released from Hamas captivity in March as part of the Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal, recently said that his captors cursed, starved, and spat on him, and once threatened to shoot him if he would not agree to help collapse a booby-trapped building on IDF troops.
“If you don’t do it, we’ll shoot you in the head,” Shem Tov recalled his captors saying. “I told them: Then shoot me in the head. I have no intention of doing it.”
This is the moral spine of the Jewish People: tortured, cornered, but unbroken. We owe it to heroes like Shem Tov, and to every hostage still buried in Gaza’s tunnels, to act with the same clarity and courage they’ve shown in the face of evil.
Because, in the end, no one is coming to save us. We have to save ourselves.
This is saddening—-and deeply concerning. I pray that the leadership in Israel will press on toward the goal of eliminating Hamas totally and completely, for otherwise it is impossible to think that Hamas will not eventually regroup and launch another 10/7. That simply and absolutely must not happen.
The moment I saw the Qataris were “ lending “ Trump a luxury 747, I knew Israel was once again on its own . Finnish the job and then ask for forgiveness later . No more asking permission .