ByJPOST EDITORIALJULY 5, 2026 05:53On July 4, 1776, the United States made one of the boldest claims in political history.“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Declaration of Independence announced, “that all men are created equal.”The claim did not describe the country that existed. Hundreds of thousands of people were enslaved. Women could not vote. Native Americans were excluded from the political community the founders were creating. Some of the men who signed the Declaration owned other human beings.Yet the words endured.That may be America’s greatest achievement after 250 years. Its founders wrote down a promise larger than themselves and left future generations a standard by which to judge the nation they created.Pete Folch carries an American flag during a morning run past the Reflecting Pool as the city prepares for July 4th festivities on July 03, 2026, in Washington, DC. (credit: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES)What can America tell Israel about democracy?The Declaration became an argument America could never quite finish.Abraham Lincoln returned to its promise of equality during the Civil War. Abolitionists turned the language of American freedom against slavery. Nearly a century later, Martin Luther King Jr. called the founding promises a “promissory note” that had not been honored.America’s most important reformers did not reject the American promise. They demanded that America keep it.That distinction matters today.The United States marks its 250th anniversary deeply divided over its history, identity, and future. For some, patriotism requires an uncritical defense of the country. For others, America is primarily a catalog of injustices, as though failing to meet its ideals proves those ideals were fraudulent from the start.Both approaches miss something essential. A country can be loved enough to be judged.Israelis should understand this better than most.Israel’s Declaration of Independence also made promises larger than the reality of the country that signed it. It pledged equality of social and political rights, freedom of religion and conscience, and fidelity to the principles of the prophets of Israel. It extended a hand of peace to neighboring states even as their armies prepared to invade.Israel, too, has spent its history arguing over what those words require. Today, that argument is becoming dangerously difficult.The country remains divided over the failures that preceded October 7, the conduct of the war, the responsibilities of its leaders, and the character of the state that should emerge from this period.Too often, these disagreements are framed as tests of loyalty.Criticism of the government is portrayed as hostility to the state. Defense of Israel is dismissed as blindness to its failures. Political opponents are not merely wrong but traitorous, corrupt, or fascist.This is no way for a confident nation to conduct its affairs.America at 250 offers Israel a useful lesson: National self-criticism need not be an act of national rejection. It can be an expression of national faith.That does not mean every criticism is justified. Israel knows that some of those who speak loudest about its failures seek not its improvement but its disappearance. The language of human rights is selectively deployed against the Jewish state by people who deny Jews the national self-determination they defend for others.The distinction between enemies and those expecting more from IsraelBut mature democracies must know the difference between those who want them destroyed and those who demand that they do better.Israel needs that distinction now.The country will have to account for the failures that led to October 7, debate the decisions made during the war, and confront deep disagreements over the powers of its institutions and the meaning of equality in a Jewish and democratic state.These arguments cannot be avoided by demanding silence in the name of unity. Nor can they be resolved by treating the state as irredeemable.At 250, America remains an argument: loud, contradictory, often ugly, unfinished. Its Declaration did not describe the country of 1776. It described a country Americans would spend the next two and a half centuries trying, failing, and trying again to become.Israel should wish its oldest and greatest ally a happy 250th birthday. It should also learn from it.Nations do not endure because they are perfect. They endure because each generation believes the promise is still worth defending and the country can still become more fully itself.Follow us on Google