Israel’s relationship with the U.S. depends on mutual interests, not shared values, Ron Dermer, Israel’s former minister of strategic affairs, said on Monday at the Israel on Campus Coalition’s conference in Washington. 

“The problem people have is they romanticize the U.S.-Israel relationship. People think the U.S. has always been a strategic ally from day one,” Dermer said. “Israel’s main strategic ally for its first 15 years was France.”

“I would love to live in a world where it’s values that drive international relations. I believe Israel would be the world’s superpower, no doubt,” Dermer told a crowd of some 1,000 pro-Israel college students. “That is not the world we live in and it’s not the world anybody has ever lived in.” 

Rather than the shared democratic values and ideological alignment that Israeli leaders have frequently cited to define the U.S.-Israel partnership, Dermer asserted that “it’s actually generated interest” that aligns counties long term, such as security cooperation or economic benefit. 

“Interest is what drives stakes over time,” he said. 

“It’s always good to have good public opinion, they can be shock absorbers when problems arise, but ultimately being important to that country becomes more critical than whether or not they think they have shared values,” continued Dermer. 

“Don’t get me wrong, Israel has shared values with the United States. But that’s not what drives relations between states,” said Dermer. 

“So you ask me, ‘What’s going to be with the U.S.-Israel alliance long-term?’ Values is not what drives the alliance — It’s actually the interests that make the difference,” Dermer said.

In his comments, Dermer also urged “every pro-Israel Jewish organization” to “draw a line in the sand that anybody who says that Israel perpetrated a genocide in Gaza has to be completely shunned.”

He argued that those hostile to the Jewish state — including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — are making accusations of Israeli genocide a loyalty test for left-wing politics.   

“The enemies of Israel and the enemies of Jews — and right now you’ve got both in Gracie Mansion in New York — they want to turn this into the litmus test of progressive politics,” said Dermer. 

“If you don’t say Israel perpetrated genocide, [they] want nothing to do with you. Let them do what they’re gonna do. We have to in the Jewish community, and pro-Israel community, do what we have to do. We have to say, ‘If you say those words, we are done.’ It’s a threat not just to Israel, it’s a threat and a clear and present danger to Jews everywhere.”