America at 250: The equality promise remains worth protecting - editorial

On July 4, 1776, the United States put forward one of the most daring statements in political history.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," the Declaration of Independence declared, "that all men are created equal."

The statement did not match the nation as it stood then. Hundreds of thousands of individuals lived in bondage. Women lacked voting rights. Native Americans stood outside the political group the founders were shaping. Several signers of the Declaration held other people as property.

Still the words lasted.

That endurance may count as America's top success after 250 years. Its founders recorded a pledge bigger than their own time and gave later generations a measure for judging the country they built.

What America can share with Israel about democracy

The Declaration turned into a debate America could never fully close.

Abraham Lincoln drew on its equality pledge amid the Civil War. Abolitionists used the words of American liberty to challenge slavery. Almost a century later, Martin Luther King Jr. described the founding pledges as a "promissory note" that remained unpaid.

America's key reformers did not discard the American pledge. They insisted the nation fulfill it.

That difference counts today.

The United States reaches its 250th year sharply split over its past, character, and path ahead. Some see patriotism as requiring full defense of the nation without question. Others view America mainly as a list of wrongs, as if falling short of its ideals shows those ideals were false from the beginning.

Both views overlook a core point. A country can be valued enough to face judgment.

Israelis should grasp this more than most.

Israel's Declaration of Independence also set out pledges larger than the actual conditions of the state that issued it. It promised equal social and political rights, freedom of religion and conscience, and loyalty to the ideas of Israel's prophets. It offered peace to nearby states even while their forces readied to attack.

Israel has likewise spent its years debating what those words demand. Today that debate grows dangerously strained.

The nation stays split over the lapses before October 7, the war's management, leaders' duties, and the kind of state that should follow this era.

Too often these disputes get cast as loyalty checks.

Questioning the government gets labeled as opposition to the state. Support for Israel gets brushed aside as ignoring its shortcomings. Rivals are cast not just as mistaken but as disloyal, dishonest, or extreme.

This approach does not suit a self-assured nation.

America at 250 gives Israel a practical example: National self-examination does not have to mean national dismissal. It can show national trust.

That does not make every critique valid. Israel sees that some who highlight its flaws aim not at its betterment but at its end. Human rights language gets applied unevenly against the Jewish state by those who refuse Jews the national self-rule they support for others.

The line between foes and those seeking more from Israel

Yet steady democracies must separate those who seek their ruin from those who insist they improve.

Israel requires that separation now.

The country must address the lapses that led to October 7, review choices during the war, and face serious divides over its institutions' reach and the sense of equality inside a Jewish and democratic state.

These debates cannot be dodged by calling for quiet in the name of togetherness. They also cannot be settled by treating the state as beyond repair.

At 250, America stays an ongoing debate: noisy, conflicting, often rough, incomplete. Its Declaration did not portray the nation of 1776. It portrayed a nation Americans would spend the next two and a half centuries striving, stumbling, and striving once more to become.

Israel should wish its oldest and strongest partner a happy 250th birthday. It should also take lessons from it.

Nations last not because they are flawless. They last because each generation holds that the pledge still merits protection and the country can still grow closer to its true self.