Nearly every intelligent witness to the nearly seven decades of Israel's alliance with the United States and Western Europe now understands that the affair is about to be over.
In 1948 and the years that immediately followed, the alliance was the salvation of Israel and an obligation upon Western Europe. This was because of what had been done to Europe's Jews during the war, and not only by the Nazis.
The Arab nations' attempt to destroy the U.N. creation of a Jewish national home at the expense of the Palestinians was also widely understood, and granted a certain international sympathy, but in 1948 the Arab states carried little political weight against the array of West European states and the U.S., at a moment when the Cold War was beginning.