Trump Will End the $3.8 Billion Per Year of Military Aid to Israel by Year's End;
Counterintuitively, Is This the Best Outcome for the US and Israel?

The US will stop the payment of military aid to Israel. It will, however, continue authorizing the sale of key US weapons systems to its ally.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that the U.S. would stop sending military aid to Israel by the end of the year.

Trump told "Fox & Friends" that Israel is in a position to purchase its own weapons and doesn't need the U.S. to fund them.

The U.S. provides $4 billion per year in military aid, Trump said, and he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had discussed terminating the funding for years. He said that the idea originated with Netanyahu.

"They don't need it. Israel is a very thriving country," Trump said.

It's actually $3.8 billion per year.

Why would Netanyahu favor an end to US military aid to Israel?

It makes no sense.

Or does it?

Although this may seem to be a sop to the J.D. Vance/Tucker Carlson Groyper pseudoconservatives -- and I imagine it is at least partly that -- it might not be such a bad deal for Israel at all.

Pro-Israel, right-leaning Jews have argued that the US should end aid to Israel -- because the aid is used by antisemites like Tucker Carlson to bash Jews, and because the money comes with very thick strings.

Presidents like Obama and Biden have used the threat of withdrawing the aid to demand that Israel not strike back against the Democrat Party's terrorist allies.

Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz for Tablet, itself a Jewish commentary magazine:

End U.S. Aid to Israel America's manipulation of the Jewish state is endangering Israel and American Jews

July 16, 2023

Two years ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously wept in Congress after changing her vote on funding Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system from "no" to "present." The New York Times said that the incident showed progressive members of "the Squad" "caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis." (The line was later removed with no correction.) In People magazine, the congresswoman's procedural maneuver to avoid voting was appreciated for its pathos: "Ocasio-Cortez Opens Up About Israel Iron Dome Vote That Left Her in Tears: 'Yes, I Wept.'" In the end, the resolution passed the House 420-9.

The Iron Dome is, of course, an entirely defensive anti-missile system which the Totally Not Antisemitic or Pro-Hamas Democrats hate because it stops 90% of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian missiles from hitting the Jewish population centers they're aimed at.

The Skwad and other terrorist-promoting antisemites want those missiles to kill Jews so that Hezballah and Hamas and Iran will be able to extract ransoms from Jews.

Ocasio-Cortez's bit of Kabuki theater fit neatly into the premade mythology of a domineering Israel lobby, popularized by academic John Mearsheimer, whose views are experiencing a burst of popularity in isolationist corners of the right. His central claim--that America has been pressured by an all-powerful, determined ethnoreligious lobby into acting against its own interests--is made explicit in references to "influential lobbyists and rabbis," in Rep. Ilhan Omar's tweets that U.S. support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins," and in graphics like The New York Times' infamous "Jew-tracker" that policed support for Barack Obama's Iran deal according to the religion of members of Congress.

Belief in the mythic power of "the lobby" rests on a common article of faith that is shared by Israel's loudest critics and most fervent supporters--namely, that U.S. military aid forms the cornerstone of the "special relationship" between the two nations, and that this aid is a gift that powerfully benefits Israel. Cutting off Israel's D.C. cash pipeline, it's assumed, would dramatically alter the balance of power in the Middle East: in one scenario by endangering Israel's security, and in another by forcing its recalcitrant leaders to accept the enlightened proposals of Western policymakers.

While this fantasy version of the U.S.-Israeli relationship is useful for stirring up emotions and demonstrating partisan loyalties, it does more to flatter the self-importance of Israel-aid opponents and supporters alike than it does to describe an increasingly warped reality, in which Israel ends up sacrificing far more value in return for the nearly $4 billion it annually receives from Washington. That's because nearly all military aid to Israel--other than loan guarantees, which cost Washington nothing, the U.S. gives Israel no other kind of aid--consists of credits that go directly from the Pentagon to U.S. weapons manufacturers.

In return, American payouts undermine Israel's domestic defense industry, weaken its economy, and compromise the country's autonomy--giving Washington veto power over everything from Israeli weapons sales to diplomatic and military strategy. When Washington meddles directly in Israel's domestic affairs, as it does often these days, Israeli leaders who have lobbied for these payments--including current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--are simply reaping the rewards of their own penny-wise, pound-foolish efforts.

...

It's no wonder that one well-known regional expert we consulted, who served in high security-related positions in the U.S. government, was horrified when we proposed ending American aid to Israel. When we asked which of our arguments were overstated or mistaken, this person answered: "None of them. But my job is to represent the American interest. Aid to Israel is the biggest bargain we have on our books. Ending it would be a disaster for us. I just don't see who it benefits."

...

Ending aid would not mean the end of the U.S.-Israeli military alliance, intelligence sharing, trade, or any mutual affinity between the countries. Rather, it would allow both sides to see what each is getting in return for what. In the words of retired IDF Major General Gershon Hacohen: "Once we are not economically dependent on them, the partnership can flourish on its own merits."

...

Formal U.S. military aid to Israel, as opposed to loans and cash-on-delivery arms sales, started in 1979, when the Carter administration offered it as a carrot to get Israel to agree to withdraw from all of Sinai as part of a peace deal with Egypt. The same deal provided a comparable sum of U.S. military aid and arms to Egypt, for many years the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign military financing after Israel. Notably, the aid to Egypt was given despite the country's displaying no capacity to deploy military force outside its own borders--the goal being to achieve a rough form of U.S.-brokered parity between the two recent foes.

Tucker Carlson never objects to paying off Egypt. I suppose he might, because the money is intended as a bribe to avoid hostilities against Isreal, and he would like every Muslim country to attack Israel.

But he and the other antisemites JD Vance insists on courting never bring up Egypt or all the other countries on the American dole, because they want to make the claim that the US is dominated by "ZOG," the Zionist Occupational Government, and bringing up the fact that the US sprays money around like P. Diddy at a Baby Oil Freak-Off would damage their bison-skulled propaganda efforts.

The writers note that Obama's promise of aid to Israel, $3.8 billion per year for ten years, was only made so that he had the power to restrain Israel from attacking his close ally, Iran:

..

In reality, the MOU advanced Obama's goal of paying lip service to Israeli fears while constraining future Israeli actions, in line with a new American strategic architecture in which the interests of traditional allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia would be "balanced" with those of their mortal enemy, Iran. It deepened Israel's reliance on U.S. arms and military spending, while extending Washington's reach into Israel's domestic affairs. Paradoxically, the "most generous" package ever was an instrument to downgrade the U.S. commitment to Israel. The MOU purchased both influence over Israel and the acquiescence of American Jews who were expected, in the face of such public generosity, to go along with the White House policy of strengthening Iran, while upholding the narrative that Obama was Israel's "best friend."

...

Last week, President Biden authorized the military to deploy up to 3,000 reservists to Europe in support of Ukraine's war effort. There are, at present, an undisclosed number of American troops operating in Ukraine alongside the other 80-some countries where the U.S. has forces stationed. By contrast, no American soldier or pilot has ever risked their lives for Israel, and no American missile or aircraft has ever flown in Israel's defense. Such are the myths and realities of "the lobby."

Another point the authors make is that by requiring Israel to buy American missiles and weapons with the aid, it necessarily -- and possibly intentionally -- starves Israel's own vital domestic industry from cash.

And that means that someone like Obama and Biden can blackmail Israel with the threat to withhold providing the American anti-missile missiles that keeps Israel cities from being destroyed.

In addition, US supplies of the Patriot missile are currently small, partly because we're sending so many to Ukraine and also shooting off a lot of them to protect our own bases from Iranian attacks. Other countries like Israel simply can't afford to be dependent on US anti-missile defenses, because the US, of course, may reprioritize delivery of the missiles to other countries (like Ukraine) or just need to use so many of them ourselves that we have few to send to overseas clients.

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Cut the stranglehold of aid. Let America pursue its interests. Let Israel, too, follow its own interests, which sometimes align with those of Washington and sometimes don't. If Israelis think it will ensure their security to decapitate the Iranian regime, or give the Golan Heights on a platter to Bashar Assad, or develop their own homemade fighter plane and sell it to India or Saudi Arabia, let them go ahead. And let American Jews who care about being Jewish focus on observance and learning their people's history, instead of pimping for Lockheed Martin. If the commitment to Israel is deeper than mere political fashion, if it is more than a secularized idolatry, then it's time to prove it--by smashing the ideological idols of America's Israel debate.

Will this appease the rapid Nazi and cryptoislamist Tuq'r Qarlson? No, of course not; he and his allies on the Skwad will shift their attacks from aid to Israel to weapons sales to Israel paid for with Israel's money, period.

It will certainly be clarifying. And that is itself a good thing.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:00 PM

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