Time to Say Goodbye. Before Europe casts us off completely, perhaps we should separate first. It’s time, I maintain, to say goodbye

By Michael Oren

This week, on Yom Hashoa, a friend told me a story I had never heard —how her father as a young Jew in Libya during World War II was arrested by the Italians and later, after the Nazis occupied Italy, marked for transport to Bergen-Belsen. An hour after hearing this story, while participating in a TV panel on the Holocaust, I learned that Italy’s right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was halting her country’s defense agreement with Israel.

Coming from one of Israel’s best and —after the electoral defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán— last friends in Europe, Meloni’s announcement dealt a coup de grâce to Israel’s relations with the continent. It followed years of anti-Israel measures by most European governments, including the suspension of arms sales, expelling Israel from defense industry fairs, and the recognition of a Palestinian state. In virtually every European country, antisemitism has skyrocketed.

Meloni’s announcement reinforced my long-held belief that the paths of Israel and Europe would eventually part. From an historical perspective, close relations between what was once called Christendom and the tiny Jewish State situated in the Holy Land were always an anomaly —and with the fading of the Holocaust’s memory, an aberration. Before Europe casts us off completely, perhaps we should separate first. It’s time, I maintain, to say goodbye.

Sharply strained before February, European-Israeli relations reached a nadir with the launching of the U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran. Though most of their criticism was directed at the Americans, together with their refusal to let U.S. forces use their bases and airspace, European leaders also excoriated Israel.

“There must be no impunity for these criminal acts,” declared Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez who, after accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, called for an international boycott of the Jewish State. “I expressed France’s full solidarity [with Lebanon] in the face of the indiscriminate strikes carried out by Israel…We condemn these strikes in the strongest possible terms,” Emmanuel Macron announced. Sánchez and Macron, like many European leaders, overlooked the 6,000 rockets Hezbollah has fired at Israel in less than two months.

Europe’s value to us as allies has plummeted. Post-Christian but with Jew-hatred still hardwired into its worldview, unwilling to defend itself, much less a distant and complex democratic state, and hosting hostile and rapidly expanding Muslim populations, the Europeans cannot be counted on to support us in virtually any crisis. Many seem determined to finally escape their guilt over the genocide of Jews by libelously accusing us of perpetrating another against the Palestinians.

Such animus cannot be viewed in a vacuum. It follows nearly two thousand years in which the Jewish people gave Europe art, science, philosophy, and medicine and, in return, received pogroms, inquisitions, ghettos, and history’s largest mass massacre. One would think that, after so many centuries of ingratitude and hatred, the Jews would get the message and stop begging for Europe’s approval.

Instead, European states account for forty percent of all Israeli diplomatic posts. By contrast, the fifty-four states of Africa merit a mere eleven percent and all of South and Central America, together with the Caribbean, only twelve. Yes, Europe remains a major Israeli trading partner and invests heavily in our high-tech, but with the rapid rise of radical leftist and Islamist parties, such ties will grow increasingly insecure. Right-wing parties may rise but, as we’ve seen in the recent elections in France and Hungary, they may not be able to attain or retain power. And even then, hardline leaders may not always adopt pro-Israel policies. Italy is a case in point. The Israel Air Force relied on the supply of Italian helicopters and training jets. No more.

The time has come for a reorientation—literally, a turning to the east. In the coming years, Israel must work to wean itself of Europe and focus on cultivating our relations with India and other Asian nations. We must diversify our foreign policy portfolio, seeking out other alliances, especially in Africa and South America. While we can retain economic and technological ties with Europe and still friendly countries such as Germany, Bulgaria, and Greece, we must stay clear of the many frenemies and enemies.

As the great Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli, sang, it’s “Time to say goodbye.” Also, au revoir, adiós, and ciao. After two thousand years, that time is now.