Can Shared Values Still Hold The Alliance?

At the heart of today’s U.S.–Israel debates, Isaac Herzog is doing something quite deliberate: he is trying to keep an increasingly hard‑edged security partnership grounded in a story about shared democratic and biblical values, even as the political environment makes that narrative harder to sustain.

Key Points

Herzog consistently describes the U.S.–Israel alliance as a “sacred,” family‑like bond rooted in shared democratic and biblical values, not just military cooperation.
His own speeches and interviews also concede that security, Iran, and wartime coordination are central pillars of the relationship, creating a dual language of values and interests.
U.S. official documents and elite discourse echo the “shared democratic values plus security” frame, but do not adopt explicitly religious or biblical language.
Domestic polarization in the United States, criticism over Palestinian policy, and generational shifts are eroding the persuasive power of Herzog’s values‑based message.
The contest today is less over whether values matter at all than over whether they genuinely drive policy, or serve mainly as diplomatic rhetoric atop hard strategic calculations.

Herzog’s Core Claim: An Alliance Built on Shared Values

When Isaac Herzog speaks about the United States, he does not describe a normal foreign relationship; he reaches for family metaphors, religious vocabulary, and the language of moral obligation. In his address to a joint meeting of Congress, he told lawmakers that “our bond may be challenged at times, but it is absolutely unbreakable” and that Israel and the U.S. “may disagree on various issues, but we will always be family.” That choice of words matters. It reflects a long Israeli tradition of portraying the U.S.–Israel relationship as something more than a convergence of interests: a partnership grounded in shared values, history, and identity.

Herzog has used explicitly sacral language for this bond. Coverage of the same speech noted that he called it a “sacred bond,” linking criticism of Israel’s government to older patterns of antisemitism and insisting on Israel’s continued place within the democratic camp. In other public events, he has framed Israel and the United States as part of a single “free world” committed to civil liberties, human rights, and an order of nations born after 1945. The message is clear: supporting Israel is not just about a strategic asset in the Middle East; it is, in Herzog’s telling, about defending a fellow democracy and a kindred civilization.

Michael Herzog, his brother and Israel’s ambassador in Washington, reinforces the same narrative. Upon taking up his post, the ambassador described the United States as “the most important ally of Israel,” emphasizing that the “special relations between the two countries are based on shared values and close ties between the two peoples,” and pledging to work with both Democrats and Republicans to keep Israel a nonpartisan issue. Isaac Herzog himself repeatedly stresses the importance of retaining “broad support, from both sides of the political map in the United States” for what he calls a “special relationship” that strengthens both nations.

In other words, the values language is not a stray rhetorical flourish; it is a deliberate, sustained effort to frame the alliance as morally grounded and fundamentally bipartisan.

How Security, Strategy, and Democracy Interlock

That said, Herzog’s own record shows that the alliance is not, in practice, driven only by sentiment or shared ideals. In front of Congress, he spoke at length about Israel’s “qualitative military edge” and thanked the United States for providing the means for Israel to “defend ourselves, by ourselves.” This phrase is important because it points to the institutional backbone of the relationship: decades of U.S. military assistance, joint planning, and technology cooperation designed to ensure that Israel can deter or defeat regional adversaries without American troops fighting on its soil.

Since the late 1990s, that assistance has been formalized in multi‑year memoranda of understanding that currently guarantee roughly $3.8 billion annually in military aid, alongside joint exercises and co‑development of missile defense systems. Herzog himself has referenced “unprecedented assistance” during wartime, underscoring that when missiles are flying and hostages are at risk, what matters in the alliance is not only shared values but concrete capabilities.

The way Herzog narrates the Iran conflict further illustrates this dual structure. In interviews with U.S. outlets, he describes Iran’s strategy as a “grand plan” of terror, missile proliferation, and nuclear ambition, and frames Israel as the frontline defender of the free world’s “civilizational values” against that threat. The vocabulary is moral and civilizational, but the content is strictly strategic: long‑range missiles, global terror cells, proxy warfare. The same conversation praises President Trump’s “uniquely bold decision” to confront Iran, while clearly stating that Israel does not dictate U.S. policy but coordinates “superbly close” with American planners.

In this sense, Herzog is not trying to replace security logic with values talk; he is trying to synthesize them. The alliance, in his account, rests on multiple pillars — shared democratic norms, historical and biblical ties, and the hard realities of security cooperation. He tells American audiences that “democracy is ingrained in Israel’s identity,” that Israel is a “robust and resilient” democracy, and that when the United States is strong, Israel is stronger, and vice versa. That formulation squarely aligns with U.S. official language, which describes the relationship as based on “shared democratic values” and a “robust security alliance,” but notably avoids the explicitly religious language Herzog sometimes uses.

Where the Evidence Stops: Rhetoric versus Causal Foundations

The question, for a careful reader, is not whether shared values appear in the rhetoric — they clearly do — but whether they genuinely drive policy choices. On that point, the available evidence is thin. We have repeated, consistent statements from Herzog and Michael Herzog that the relationship rests on shared values, and we have U.S. documents echoing democratic values and security cooperation. What we do not have in this record are internal memoranda, strategic doctrine, or declassified decision papers demonstrating that biblical tradition or moral affinity outweigh security, domestic politics, or regional strategy when the United States decides how far to support Israel.

Herzog himself sometimes underscores this limitation. In long interviews about security, he devotes far more time to Iran’s missile arsenals, Hamas, war‑room coordination, and hostages than to religious or biblical themes. His speeches lean heavily into democracy — elections, minority rights, judicial independence — rather than scriptural arguments. An observer can therefore say with confidence that values talk is part of the alliance’s language; the evidence is less conclusive that it is the dominant causal driver of specific policies like aid levels or joint operations.

Moreover, some of the sharpest constraints on Herzog’s values narrative come from inside the United States. Reporting on his congressional visit highlighted boycotts by progressive lawmakers, generational shifts in opinion, and criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, noting that his speech “skirted” the worsening plight of Palestinians even as it celebrated shared history. Polling data are not included in this research set, but the pattern is consistent across coverage: younger Democrats are less engaged with, and often less persuaded by, the traditional story of a tiny democracy besieged by hostile neighbors.

Polarization, Palestine, and the Strain on the Narrative

Herzog is acutely aware of these tensions. In his congressional address and subsequent commentary, he acknowledges “imperfections in Israeli democracy” and the “questions raised by our closest allies,” signaling that he knows the alliance is being reassessed from the American side. He also walks a tightrope on the Palestinian issue. Roll Call and other outlets noted that his high‑profile speech was “short on discussion” of Palestinian suffering, which poses a problem for any moral defense of the alliance: the more the Gaza war and settlement expansion dominate headlines, the harder it becomes to persuade skeptical Americans that the relationship is simply a matter of shared values.

At the same time, Herzog is confronting organized activism that directly attacks the values‑based framing itself. Campus campaigns, intellectual critiques like those he denounces from Mahmood Mamdani, and civil society activism often question not just particular Israeli policies but Israel’s legitimacy or Jewish self‑determination more broadly. In his Fox News appearance, Herzog condemned Mamdani’s arguments as “blasphemy” and “anti‑Semitic rhetoric” that endangers Jews worldwide, citing a stabbing in New York as evidence of real‑world consequences.[RtaXHZ5KCHo] It is in these contexts that he leans most heavily into biblical and civilizational language, defending Israel’s right to exist as a moral premise, not merely a strategic fact.

The alliance is also being buffeted by controversies that cut directly to the democratic values Herzog invokes. The ongoing corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and President Trump’s very public pressure on Herzog to issue a pardon, thrust Israel’s rule‑of‑law structures into the center of international attention. Trump has repeatedly told Israeli media that “President Herzog needs to grant Bibi a pardon today,” calling Herzog a “disgrace” and claiming he had promised a pardon multiple times. Herzog’s office, by contrast, has emphasized that Israel is “a sovereign state governed by the rule of law” and that any pardon request must be processed through the Justice Ministry and decided “without any influence from external or internal pressures.”

Herzog’s insistence on legal procedure in the face of presidential pressure is itself an appeal to shared democratic values. He clearly understands that how Israel manages high‑level corruption and executive power affects the credibility of his message that the alliance rests on robust, independent institutions. In this sense, domestic Israeli politics are not a separate issue; they feed directly into the story he tells Americans about why Israel belongs in the same democratic family.

U.S. Official Framing: Democratic Values and Hard Interests

If Herzog is trying to keep the alliance anchored in shared values, how does the U.S. government describe it? Here the record is remarkably consistent. The State Department’s overview of the relationship describes Israel as a key partner rooted in “shared democratic values,” close cooperation on security, and deep cultural ties, while stressing joint efforts on defense technology, regional stability, and counterterrorism. The Biden White House’s readout of Herzog’s 2023 meeting framed the partnership as “reflective of the enduring nature of our partnership, one that has transcended numerous U.S. and Israeli administrations” and again highlighted shared democratic values alongside discussions of Iran and judicial reform.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s remarks before meeting Herzog followed the same pattern, emphasizing “shared values and shared security interests” and signaling bipartisan institutional support. None of these documents, however, rely on explicitly biblical language or describe the bond as “sacred.” That vocabulary is coming from Herzog and from sympathetic advocacy organizations, not from formal U.S. policy statements.

This distinction matters for interpreting the evidence. While U.S. officials clearly agree that democratic values are part of the alliance’s foundation, their public explanations foreground security cooperation, regional stability, and counterterrorism. In other words, Washington speaks a secular language of interests and constitutional values, even when Israeli leaders overlay that language with religious and civilizational meaning.

An Alliance with Multiple Pillars and a Contested Story

Put together, the record points to a simple but demanding conclusion: Herzog is not wrong to say that shared values are a pillar of the U.S.–Israel relationship — the rhetoric on both sides supports that claim — but he is engaged in a constant struggle to keep that pillar visible in an environment where security crises, domestic polarization, and Palestinian suffering often dominate attention.

The alliance itself is multi‑layered. It rests on concrete military arrangements, intelligence sharing, and regional strategy; on domestic U.S. politics, including evangelical Christian support and longstanding bipartisan habits; and on a narrative of two democracies with overlapping histories, communities, and ethical commitments. Herzog’s project is to elevate that last dimension — to remind Americans that, in his words, “Israeli and American Jews have long enjoyed a special relationship based on common values,” and to extend that ethos beyond the Jewish community to the broader American polity.

Whether that project succeeds will depend less on the elegance of Herzog’s speeches than on underlying realities: how Israel manages its own democratic controversies; how it prosecutes war in Gaza and confronts Iran; how U.S. politics evolve on foreign policy and human rights; and whether the lived experience of ordinary Americans still matches the values‑based story they are being told. For now, the evidence supports a nuanced judgment. Shared values are part of the alliance’s self‑understanding, but they are not a trump card. They coexist, sometimes uneasily, with hard strategic interests and with the growing contest over what those values mean in practice.