In 1950, Omar Bradley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that Washington ought to treat the IDF—which had demonstrated its effectiveness in the 1948 war—as a reliable partner in protecting American interests in the region. But his recommendations were dismissed by a State Department that continued to see Israel as a liability. The degree to which Bradley’s view has since become mainstream is made evident by joint exercises undertaken by the Israeli and American air forces in March, writes Yoram Ettinger:

While Israel benefits from the unprecedented, multiple capabilities of the U.S. air force, the latter leverages the unique operational experience of its Israeli counterpart. The Israeli military, in general, and Israel’s air force, in particular, have emerged as the most cost-effective, battle-tested laboratory for the U.S. defense industries and armed forces.

In fact, Israel’s air-force battle experience and technological capabilities contributed to the development of the F-35, systematically enhancing its capabilities, by sharing with the U.S. manufacturer operational, maintenance, and repair lessons. This flow of Israeli experience . . . has spared American defense industries many years of costly research and development, and has advanced U.S. competitiveness in the global market. . . . Moreover, the unique combat experience of Israeli pilots—who always fly within the range of enemies’ radar and missiles—has yielded more daring and innovative battle tactics, which are regularly shared with the American air force.

As Ettinger goes on to catalogue, the reversal of the American attitude happened gradually, but the main turning point came with the Six-Day War:

The June 1967 war transformed Israel into the most effective power-projecting U.S. beachhead in the Middle East and beyond, extending Washington’s strategic reach with no need for additional American troops on the ground. The resounding Israeli victory obliterated the military posture of then-radical, pro-Soviet Egypt, aborting an Egyptian drive to become the effective pan-Arab leader, . . . while toppling pro-U.S. Arab regimes. [In addition], a team of 25 American military experts . . . spent three months in Israel, studying Israel’s battle tactics and scrutinizing Soviet military systems captured by Israel.

Contributing to the Jewish state’s current controversy over efforts to reform its judicial system, observes Peter Berkowitz, is its lack of a written constitution. Berkowitz encourages Israelis to seek a way out of the present crisis by looking to the founding document they do have: the Declaration of Independence.

The document does not explicitly mention “democracy.” But it commits Israel to democratic institutions not only by insisting on the equality of rights for all citizens and the establishment of representative government but also by stressing that Arab inhabitants would enjoy “full and equal citizenship.”

The Israeli Declaration of Independence no more provides a constitution for Israel than does the U.S. Declaration of Independence furnish a constitution for America. Both documents, however, announced a universal standard. In 1859, as civil war loomed, Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter, “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

Something similar could be said about Ben Gurion’s . . . affirmation that Israel would be based on, ensure, and guarantee basic rights and fundamental freedoms because they are inseparable from our humanity.

Perhaps reconsideration of the precious inheritance enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence could assist both sides in assuaging the rage roiling the country. Bold and conciliatory, the nation’s founding document promises not merely a Jewish state, or a free state, or a democratic state, but that Israel will combine and reconcile its diverse elements to form a Jewish and free and democratic state.