Why is Israel preparing to stand alone?

Benjamin Netanyahu has made two remarkable statements in recent months which, taken together, point to a profound change in Israel’s thinking about its future.

The first concerns American military aid. In January, Netanyahu said that he wanted Israel to progressively reduce its dependence on United States military assistance over the next ten years, eventually bringing the financial component of that support down to zero. He repeated the point more explicitly during an interview with CBS in May.

“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” he said.

This doesn’t mean ending military cooperation with the United States. Israel would continue to share intelligence, technology and strategic interests with America, and it would continue to purchase American weapons. But Netanyahu wants Israel to reach the point where it can pay for those weapons itself rather than receiving US$3.8 billion a year under the current American assistance agreement.

The second statement concerns Israel’s ability to manufacture its own armaments.

Netanyahu has said that Israel must establish an independent weapons-production system and free itself from dependence upon overseas suppliers. His government has proposed investing hundreds of billions of shekels over the coming decade to significantly expand Israel’s domestic defence industry.

“I want armaments independence,” Netanyahu said recently.

At first glance, these might seem like strange ambitions. The United States has been Israel’s most important international ally for decades and its support has crossed party lines and survived disagreements between presidents and Israeli prime ministers.

Republican administrations have generally been more publicly enthusiastic about Israel, partly because support for the Jewish state remains strong among conservative and evangelical voters.

But even Democratic presidents have provided Israel with vital assistance when it mattered. Obama had an increasingly difficult relationship with Netanyahu – but he also signed the largest military assistance agreement in American history at that time, committing the United States to provide Israel with US$38 billion over ten years. That agreement remains the basis of the US$3.8 billion Israel receives each year.

Joe Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu was also abrasive – but following the massacre of October 7, Biden moved American military assets into the region, supplied Israel with vital equipment, supported additional defence funding and helped protect Israel when Iran launched direct attacks against it.

As such, America has supported Israel financially, militarily, diplomatically and logistically through some of the most dangerous periods in its modern history.

So what’s changed?

The answer is that the world after October 7 isn’t the same world that existed before it.

The Hamas massacre – which should have permanently settled any moral argument over Israel – instead, opened the floodgates to a global explosion of antisemitism.

Within days of the attack, enormous demonstrations were taking place across Western cities. Israel was accused of genocide almost before it had begun responding. Jewish students were intimidated on university campuses. Synagogues, Jewish businesses and community centres were targeted. Ancient conspiracies were revived, Holocaust language was inverted and the Jewish state was increasingly treated as the principal source of evil in the world.

The resemblance to the political and social atmosphere of Europe in the 1930s is unmistakable. Once again, Jews are being treated as uniquely responsible for the world’s problems. Once again, conspiracy theories are being dressed up as serious political analysis. Once again, hostility to Jews is being presented as moral courage. Once again, institutions which should know better are finding elaborate reasons to excuse it.

And this change is also reshaping democratic politics. Support for Israel has fallen sharply, particularly among younger Western voters. Positions that would once have been confined to the margins are moving steadily into mainstream parties, universities, media organisations, trade unions and international institutions.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Israel has no friends. There are millions of people throughout the world who continue to love Israel, defend the Jewish people and recognise the extraordinary moral inversion taking place around them. Many are Christians who understand that Israel isn’t an accidental state created by an embarrassed world after the Holocaust, but the restored national home of an ancient people with an unbroken historical, legal and spiritual connection to the land.

These people form an enormous global constituency, potentially numbering in the hundreds of millions – but relatively few of them control governments. They can pray, protest, vote, donate, write and speak – and those things matter enormously – but when Israel is fighting for its existence, goodwill isn’t a substitute for ammunition.

And that’s the reality behind Netanyahu’s statements. He isn’t saying that America has never been Israel’s friend. He’s saying that no friendship between governments can ever again be allowed to become a condition of Jewish survival.

Netanyahu can’t bind the governments that come after him, of course, but it’s difficult to imagine any future Israeli leader abandoning the underlying objective. October 7 taught Israel that military strength can’t be taken for granted. The international response taught it that sympathy is temporary. The subsequent wars taught it that even friendly governments may seek to decide when Israel has defended itself enough. Changing Western demographics and politics have taught it that the support of one generation doesn’t guarantee the support of the next.

Israel has therefore begun preparing for a future in which it may have friends, but no reliable protector.

But how has this happened? How has the nation which emerged from the Holocaust, built a democracy in a hostile region and contributed disproportionately to medicine, science, technology and human advancement found itself increasingly isolated and condemned?

The answer found in Scripture is both confronting and reassuring because it tells us that none of this has taken God by surprise.

Zechariah said that Jerusalem would become a burdensome stone for all peoples and that all the nations of the earth would gather against it. Joel described God gathering the nations for judgment because they’d scattered His people and divided His land. Ezekiel described a vast coalition coming against a restored Israel, followed by direct divine intervention. Zechariah later described the nations gathering against Jerusalem before the Lord Himself intervenes.

These passages differ in detail, perspective and symbolism, but their overall direction is unmistakable. Israel would be restored. Jerusalem would again become the centre of Jewish national life. The nations would become increasingly hostile. Israel would face a final attempt to destroy it. God would intervene, vindicate His people and judge the nations for what they’d done.

And the clear inference is that this eventual opposition won’t be confined to governments that already hate Israel.

“All nations” means precisely that.

Right now, Israel still has friends – but prophecy doesn’t allow us to assume that present relationships will remain unchanged forever – so the significance of Netanyahu’s announcement is not that prophecy was suddenly fulfilled this week. It’s that Israel is beginning to prepare for a strategic reality which Scripture described thousands of years ago.

That should give us pause.

The Bible didn’t merely predict that the Jewish people would be persecuted. It said that they would survive. It predicted their scattering, preservation and eventual return to their land. It placed Jerusalem at the centre of the prophetic timeline and described its restoration to Jewish control. It predicted that antisemitism would survive every political system and reinvent itself in every generation.

Those things have happened.

And if God accurately described this extraordinary sequence more than two and a half thousand years ago, we’ve every reason to trust what He says comes next.

As I explain in my book Prophecy Shock, Revelation isn’t one continuous chronological story. It’s organised into seven distinct visions. The first four take us through the great historical arcs that culminate in the restoration of Israel and Jerusalem. The final three deal with the period that follows that restoration: the last plagues, the fall and judgment of the powers that oppose God, and the ultimate reign of Christ.

These final visions don’t give us dates – but they tell us enough.

They tell us that the restoration of Israel in 1948 and 1967 wasn’t the end of the prophetic story – just the beginning of its final phase. They tell us that, after those events, hostility toward Israel would intensify, that the nations would ultimately be drawn into rebellion against God, and that the apparent triumph of those forces would be brief.

Most importantly, all three of the final visions lead to the same destination: the return of Christ.

That means that the growing uncertainty in the relationship between Israel and the United States isn’t evidence that God has lost control. Rather, it’s simply another reminder that the world is moving in the direction that Scripture said it would move: against Israel.

One day soon that will become Israel’s greatest crisis – but the final outcome isn’t the destruction of Israel. It’s the judgment of those who attempt to destroy it, the vindication of the Jewish people and the return of the King whose authority the nations believed they could resist.

Netanyahu is preparing Israel for a world in which it may have to stand alone.

The prophets tell us that, when that moment finally arrives, Israel will discover that it was never alone at all…..

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