Past top Israeli, US officials reveal new vision for ties rooted in tech partnership |
Amid cratering support for Israel in the United States, a former senior US official and a former senior Israeli official are offering a new vision for the bilateral relationship.
“We need to establish the relationship anew,” former IDF Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told The Times of Israel on Thursday.
“The model in which Israel is assisted by the United States and receives aid has a very small chance of continuing under any future administration,” he continued, “and perhaps even under the Trump administration, so we need to find a new basis for the relationship that is a transition from aid to partnership.”
Six in 10 Americans say they have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up 20 percentage points since 2022, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released last month.
About half of them say they have a “very unfavorable” view of Israel, a proportion that has tripled in the last four years.
“We have work to do,” emphasized former US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides. “We have to tell the story of Israel. We have to tell the story about the innovation. We got to tell the story about Israel being a melting pot. Israel is a country of seven-plus million Jews and two million Arabs. We got to talk about what’s been great about the State of Israel and what they have done.”
In order to recast ties in a way that is more relevant for the coming years and addresses some of the political concerns about the relationship, Yadlin and Nides are advancing the US-Israel Technology Alliance — Strategic Technology Compact.
The initiative, rolled out at the AI Expo over the weekend in Washington DC, looks to build “the Special Relationship 2.0” by combining American capital, industrial might, and world-class laboratories with Israel’s speed, experience and engineering ingenuity, according to the organizers.
“The United States has lots of technology,” said Nides. “We’re leading in technology and AI and innovation. It’s not lost on anyone that Israel is the startup nation. These two countries have been working together to create technology innovations and breakthroughs.”
“These two nations working collectively together is both........