Aid to Israel

Trump’s surprise announcement halting US military aid to Israel was just a last minute attempt to help the Rs in the election.

From the Jerusalem Post

Critics in the United States have dismissed Trump’s statement as a dodge, noting that while there is growing support in the United States for cutting defense aid to Israel, there has also been a push among some lawmakers to more tightly integrate the two countries’ defense establishments. A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to add language to the annual defense policy bill to expand US-Israeli defense technology cooperation.

“They’re not really cutting aid, just reprogramming it as ‘joint projects’ and hiding it in the defense budget. Americans will be paying more with even less Congressional oversight,” tweeted Matt Duss, the CEO of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

A section of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2027 would require the secretary of defense to designate an “executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”

In fact, this is just what some pro-Israel organizations on the American right have been pushing for.

“We have advocated for phasing security assistance to Israel from Foreign Military Financing to Foreign Military Sales for some time now,” tweeted Victoria Coates, the vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, calling for a shift in funding from direct assistance to joint programs.

Once Israel becomes “an integral part of a new regional security and commercial paradigm,” it would be able to “afford to phase out its military financing relationship with the United States,” the group argued in a 2025 position paper - adding that “from 2029 to 2047, the United States should transition its military financing of arms procurements to direct military sales to Israel,” just as it weaned itself off of direct economic aid in the 1990s.

Such an approach could also potentially reduce, though not remove, Congress’s ability to use aid to influence Israeli policy, something which would likely be welcomed by Israeli officials - especially given the growing number of Democrats arguing in favor of reducing or halting military aid.