The residence of the US ambassador in the city of Herzliyah is one of the stateliest houses in Israel. Perched virtually on the waterfront of a particularly ritzy beach and surrounded by green lawns, walls and armed and wary guards, it overlooks the vast blue expanses of the Mediterranean. The ambassador hosts the annual US Independence Day party with much fanfare. Those who are not invited to the ambassador's residence on July 4 are, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent. It's been quite a while since there was as popular a US ambassador to Israel as Dan Shapiro. He enjoys the position, and the position seems to agree with him. Immersed in the community, Shapiro exercises the Israeli way of life. He speaks the language, crisscrossing the country with the verve of a bar mitzvah boy. Even when the going was tough and there was a huge pool of bad blood between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Shapiro was always there, smiling and calm, to keep things moving and to explain that everything was, ostensibly, copacetic.
On July 4, thousands of invitees flocked to the traditional US Independence Day celebration. Shapiro's lawn saw Israel's President Shimon Peres, Netanyahu (and family), chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, politicians, officers, members of the cultural and social elite, ambassadors, defense attaches and Israel's creme de la creme. When former President Bill Clinton was in office, tens of thousands of Israelis would display the American flag together with the Israeli one on Israel's Independence Day. There was total solidarity between the two countries. Having won over their hearts, Clinton was, by a large margin, the most popular figure in Israel. In Obama's case, it's different. Yet, the special bond between the United States and the Jewish state remains strong. There isn't a single Israeli who can imagine himself, or his country, without the protective broad shoulders of the United States, without its moral backing and the knowledge that it is there, across the ocean. The United States is a kind of insurance policy for a rainy day. And for us Jews, bracing for a rainy day is ingrained in our DNA.
