Americans tend not to understand the crisis of Israel’s democracy. This is unsurprising. They tend not to comprehend the crisis of American democracy, either. Democracy seems to be in crisis everywhere these days, but no one can agree why.

After Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone last Sunday, their press teams issued differing accounts of their conversation.

Biden’s people issued a memo from the 1990s: security coordination, and maintaining “the viability of the two-state solution”. Netanyahu said the focus was Iran and “expanding the circle of peace”.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, meet with then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, in Jerusalem (Photo by Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

As with Netanyahu’s domestic policy, on his regional agenda, Biden’s message was “no sudden moves”. He has enough trouble. The world has run beyond America’s control.

While Biden and the State Department croak out clichés from the nineties, Xi is in Moscow and China has sponsored reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Biden and Netanyahu did agree that they had discussed Israel’s crisis of democracy.

Biden was right to say that “checks and balances” are crucial to democracy. That’s “checks”, not “cheques”. Biden said that “democratic values” were a “hallmark” of the US-Israeli alliance. This is why the US sends Israel three billion democratic values a year, most of it earmarked for purchasing American-made weapons.

Finally, Biden emphasised that “fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support”. He was right, of course. He said the same to members of his own party when they wanted to pack the US Supreme Court because it has too many Republican nominees for their liking.

As democracies decline, they come to resemble one another. Not that Americans are paying close attention to the debate in Israel.

The rest of the world is always far, far away from America. Americans prefer not to visit it. There is more than enough America here.

The world, like much of American life, exists on television. Americans are not surprised to see footage of Israelis protesting Netanyahu’s plan to subordinate the judiciary. Taking to the streets to denounce the government is what foreigners do.

If you believe that America has the best constitution and that everyone else wants it and is working towards it, then of course the rest of the world is going to riot now and then. Constitutions are like air conditioning. First the Americans got it, and now everyone wants it.

When the Israeli influencer Noa Tishby appeared on Bill Maher’s TV show this week, she confirmed this assumption by suggesting that Israel could do with a real constitution.

As Tishby appeared in an official capacity — ambassador to the Court of TikTok, grand vizier of the Instagram — the Netanyahu government is said to be angry at her going off-message.

Netanyahu’s proposals would make Israel more like America, where the president nominates judges and Congress approves or rejects the candidate. Of course, he intends to work these changes for personal advantage, and alter the system permanently in favour of his side. This too would make Israel more like America.

Noa Tishby on the Bill Maher Show t (2)

Noa Tishby on the Bill Maher Show

Meanwhile, Israel becomes less and less like America. For decades, American governments, Republican and Democratic, have worked to integrate Israel into the Middle East.

Did they not wonder if that would entail convergence between Israel’s system and those of its neighbours?

It’s not a good look, but Netanyahu’s career is what Israel’s integration looks like in a region whose other big players include respecters of the judiciary like Erdogan of Turkey, Sisi of Egypt and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

The divergence of the US and Israel isn’t just an effect of the American withdrawal from the region. It also reflects Israel’s development as a state in the Middle East. This would be embarrassing for Jewish Americans, were it not that most of them seem more upset by the death of Topol.