My family's home is in America. My life in Israel. This war brought them together - comment

In some of the most sensitive rooms of this war, the language is English.

That sentence would have sounded improbable to many Israelis not long ago. Today, it captures something essential about the US-Israel relationship and about this war.

I say that as someone who has lived both sides of this story. I was born in the United States into an American Jewish family. My parents were born there.

All four of my grandparents were born there. America was not flawless for Jews, but it gave my family a home, dignity, and the chance to become deeply American while staying fully Jewish. I built my life in Israel.

I carry both passports. So when Israeli officers tell me, again and again, that the working language with their American counterparts is English, I hear more than a technical detail. I hear two parts of my identity meeting in real time.

In recent days, I have heard the same point from officers at different levels, some very senior, some much younger. They are not talking in the language of press releases. They are talking about the daily mechanics of war: constant contact, shared assessments, blunt conversations, and professional trust built before the first plane took off.

One younger officer put it to me simply: for long stretches of this war, he has been working in English.

That is a bigger story than many people understand.

View this post on InstagramA post shared by Israel Defense Forces (@idf)The deepest layer of allianceFor years, the US-Israel relationship has been discussed through familiar categories: aid, diplomacy, Congress, prime ministers, presidents, and speeches. All of that is real. None of it reaches the deepest layer of the alliance.

The deepest layer is operational. It lives in habits. It lives in whether officers can think together quickly, speak plainly, argue honestly, and still move in the same direction when the stakes are high.

Reuters reported on February 28 that Israel's operation against Iran was coordinated with the United States. Reuters later reported that Washington and Jerusalem do not frame every objective in exactly the same way, with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard saying their war aims are “not the same.” That point does not weaken the alliance.

It clarifies it. Mature alliances do not require identical instincts. They require shared interests, enough trust to manage differences, and enough depth to keep operating through them.

That seriousness has also come from the top of the Trump administration. President Donald Trump chose to act when many in Israel, in Washington, and across the region doubted he would. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pushed allies to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly argued that Iran's defense industrial base is being systematically degraded. Special envoy Steve Witkoff has been deeply involved in the hostage file and wider regional diplomacy. Ambassador Mike Huckabee added a more personal note.

After I wrote on X that the Jewish people would remember this war for generations and remember who stood with Israel when the stakes were life and death, Huckabee replied that he was hearing the same thing I was hearing from both militaries. He called the partnership “seamless” and said it would be studied in war colleges for generations to come.

That may sound like an ambassador's flourish. It also happens to match what officers are telling me.

Fulfilling the American Jewish dreamThere is an older American Jewish language for this. Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the US Supreme Court and one of the great American Zionist voices, rejected the idea that a Jew had to choose between America and Zionism.

“To be good Americans, we must be better Jews,” he said. He also insisted that Zionism was not inconsistent with patriotism. Brandeis understood something that still feels fresh now: American Jewish belonging did not have to come at the expense of Jewish peoplehood.

That is one reason this moment lands so deeply for me. My family's Jewish story is not chiefly one of Europe's destruction. It is a story of refuge, belonging, and contribution in the United States.

America did not simply tolerate Jews. It gave them room to become part of the national fabric while staying themselves. Watching Israeli and American officers work together at this level feels historical in a way that goes beyond politics.

It feels like the kind of connection American Jews and Israeli Jews imagined in theory and are now watching emerge in practice.

There is also a lesson here for Israelis. We tend to discuss alliances in political language. That is understandable.

Politics is visible. The deeper truth is often lower down the chain, in the rooms where people carry responsibility together. The real test of a partnership is not whether leaders smile in the Oval Office.

It is whether captains, majors, colonels, and generals can build a shared operational language when time is short and the cost of a mistake is measured in lives.

That is what this war is revealing.

History will remember the planes, the targets, and the threats that were stopped. It should also remember the language in the room. In this war, the US-Israel alliance stopped sounding like a slogan and started functioning like a command system. That is the story.