Sink or Swim
Israel's must wean itself off US foreign aid, or wake up one day to see it pulled out from underneath.
Yesterday a friend of mine texted me in the morning while I was ready to leave for work. He was angry that Senator Rand Paul had voted to support a measure sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders conditioning any further aid to Israel on reporting as to whether any of it was used in human rights abuses. He knew I have supported Sen. Paul in the past. Later that day a headline splashed across my phone screen: Rand Paul was now also demanding to impose conditions on aid to the Palestinians. I rapidly shared it to him, to which he reacted with shock but still condemned Sen. Paul. I had been writing this newsletter article for some time before our text conversation, but it brought into sharp relief the issue of foreign aid being one of interests over principles.
Israel must begin adjusting for the contingency when US military aid will be a thing of the past. It can no longer afford to depend on American generosity. This is no longer a matter of whether the US policy of foreign military aid to Israel - often funneled back to weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin - benefits either country strategically or is justified morally. Those are debates that are difficult to hold in the absence of a full picture on the depth and nature of the two countries' cooperation, much of which is shrouded in secrecy. Rather, this aspect of the US-Israel relationship is increasingly endangered because of a shift in generational attitudes and the prospect of a major economic crisis in the United States. Over time I have made several appeals to those that have sympathetic attitudes towards the two nations to come to grips with reality for their own good.
It is not in any way "anti-Semitic", "anti-Israel," or "anti-Zionist" to oppose aid to Israel. Rather it is realistic, and those that will not face reality will suffer for their delusions. I have no selfish reason to take this position, as a former IDF soldier and child of two Israeli immigrants living in the US who still supports the effort to fight Hamas terrorism. I certainly don't have the resources or platform that conventional pro-Israel advocacy groups like the ADL, AIPAC, JewBelong or StandWithUs have at their disposal. Several years ago a good friend of mine reached out to ask if I wanted to participate in a community forum/seminar conducted by AIPAC to inform local Jewish community members. I asked whether this would include time to voice my own opinions on the topic. He said that was not part of the program, so I declined.
AIPAC and the other mainline organizations follow the same relationship model: They lead and the general public follows. They’re not actually representative of American Jews, because their leadership and organization adhere to a corporate structure. While I'm critical of their messaging and positions, in the end we want the same thing (I hope): a safe and lasting peace for the people of Israel and a continuing friendly relationship with the United States, and I along with many of them also want peace with the Palestinians even if we’re skeptical of the existing proposals.
My case does not rest on the issue of the foreign aid being too burdensome on the US economy. At $3.8 billion/year this budget item does not even make up 5.7% of the deficit for October 2023! But it certainly doesn't help, and unrestrained government spending is part of the reason that the US may not be able to remain the formidable force worldwide that makes Israel's dependency on it a sound strategy. American Jews have every reason to be concerned, both for the sake of America itself and the security of their brethren in Israel, but the current paradigm in the relationship is unsustainable.
The key metric that is changing in regard to this conflict is public opinion polling. Already in 2021 favourability towards Israel as opposed to the Palestinians among Democrats was statistically within the margin of error, 42%-39%. Among "Liberal Democrats" the numbers skew much lower at -15% net favourability for Israel compared to just -1% as recently as 2017. This was all before the current war in Gaza which has shown attitudes on the left - and some portions of the right - harden against Israel. In a different Gallup tracking poll US net support for Israel over the Palestinians was down to +23% in February 2023, down from +37% three years earlier. Since the IDF's response to Oct. 7 there is a sea trend occurring as a Gallup poll published Nov. 30 showed that the US public supported the military operation by only a 50%-40% margin, and a supermajority of 67% of Americans between 18-34 years old disapprove.
This opinion trend only confirms something that skeptics of the foreign aid relationship like me have warned about for a long time: the time will come when voting for these aid packages becomes a liability for politicians rather than an asset. Whether this will be a determinant in the 2024 elections is yet to be seen, but one merely needs to read the room to realize that it is a question worth asking. Alan Dershowitz, the distinguished jurist and emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, has pleaded with leaders of the Democratic Party to boisterously reject what he calls the "new Hitler Youth" culture on college campuses that supports Hamas and openly condemns Israel and make it clear that the US stands with Israel, but he is speaking out of frustration and impotence. The party that he grew up in that stood on the values of JFK and workers rights is vanishing, with Israel-Palestine issues being one of the fastest changing aspects of it. It is more remarkable that some like LA Times veteran columnist George Skelton are surprised by these developments, than it is that they are happening, and it's a testament to the bubbles that many exist in that they cannot recognize how deeply higher education and even K-12 education have become ideological indoctrination centers.
This is bursting through the surface in ways that should worry those that think that everything should remain the same. Dershowitz's scorn is aimed at students at colleges and universities that are marching through campuses and surrounding areas chanting pro-Palestine slogans like "there is only one solution, Intifada revolution!" and "We don't want no two states, we want '48!" Neither of these is a statement calling for peace, if anything they are merely expressions of support for Palestinian belligerents. But the battle for the opinions of college students has been lost long before the current stage of the conflict. What should worry Dershowitz is that the people working in the offices of elected officials and cabinet-level departments are now putting their politics front and center even as they serve legislators and a president that at least in public express their support for Israel. In November a group of 650 federal employees from 30 federal agencies signed on to a letter urging President Biden to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. An estimated 100 congressional staffers also sent a similar letter to members of Congress. I have resolutely been a defender of the First Amendment, but in my opinion this falls outside of that. These are unelected public servants and if they want to resist the policies of their own bosses they should do the right thing and resign, unless they can show that anything with respect to current policy is illegal. In addition, within the Democratic National Committee there were 50 staffers who signed an anonymous letter to the committee's leadership urging them to call for a ceasefire. In their case they are fully within their rights to press for policy priorities. But whether or not these rank and file government and partisan employees should express these views openly or anonymously is irrelevant, the fact is that they will remain in their positions for the foreseeable future and are more likely than the average American to advance in politics and influence policy in the future.
Tucked into this are more specific pockets within the government that are even more worrying. In September, not long before the Oct. 7 attacks, it was reported that an Iranian influence operation was being investigated within departments of State and Defense. The individuals involved in this effort included members of the US negotiating team facing Iran's in talks over a new deal to dissuade it from pursuing nuclear weapons. The head of that team, suspended envoy Robert Malley, was recently hired by Yale University to teach a course on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Finally, what about media organizations? The issue of media bias has been a recurring theme of the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades, with media watchdogs like the pro-Palestine FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) contending with the pro-Israel CAMERA and HonestReporting in objecting to the tone of media coverage. But it is still remarkable that in the United States, supposedly Israel's completely entranced ally, there are on major networks or platforms such consistently anti-Israel critics as Chris Hayes, Briahna Joy Gray, Ayman Mohyeldin and others. There was an outcry when it was announced that Mehdi Hasan's show on MSNBC was cancelled. progressives, even some critical of his pro-Palestine stances, responded with angst and a petition to keep him on the air signed by almost 75,000 people. The landscape of media today shows that it is virtually impossible to cover the conflict, much less follow coverage, in an unbiased dispassionate manner. Israel supporters object to the use of terms like "bloodthirsty" or accusing Israel of genocide as Jew hatred, while Palestine supporters reject any attempt to categorize Palestinian violence as being outside the bounds of legitimate warfare, whether it is the targeting of children and other civilians or the firing of rockets at targets like Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital.
Sadly, much of the "pro-Israel" institutions and activists in the USA have a myopic view of the way forward, seeing continuing reliance on the generosity of US taxpayers and elected representatives as the only way to secure Israel's future. Yet they also chafe at the fact that the military aid Israel receives comes with strings attached in the form of a continued commitment to a moribund peace process leading to a two-state solution. This is a US policy goal that is grounded in fantasy. If AIPAC are angry now, wait until the next time a Democratic majority is attained in the US House and more strings are attached including closer oversight and conditions on use of military hardware like what was proposed under Bernie Sanders’ bill. The calls for such tighter controls are not coming from pro-Palestine hardliners like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) but mainstream Democrats like Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO). In the next round of congressional primary elections, it remains to be seen which Democratic Party nominees emerge. Will the establishment types like Sen. Chuck Schumer hold off the rise of more Tlaibs and Ilhan Omars? I would predict that at least a handful of new ones will win primaries and buttress the numbers of the current "Squad" that was only four in 2018, and are now officially eight.
At this point sizable majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians express distrust or opposition of the two-state solution. Israelis have voted in increasingly hard line governments whose ministers are elected with a mandate to reject this arrangement, while Palestinian leadership is divided between the official government in Ramallah led by the recalcitrant geriatric Mahmoud Abbas and the remaining areas of Gaza controlled by Hamas in alliance with other hardline militant groups. As an American, there is no reason to be confident that any presidential administration could break this logjam. As an Israeli or a Palestinian, this signals that a negotiated peace may be a generation or more away, if it ever comes at all. In such an environment, I don't see how US aid furthers the goals of peace or security for either country, if that is even the goal of the aid packages to both nations. I have no issue with Israel purchasing weapons with their own money, or manufacturing new systems if the price tag is too steep.
Not everyone has to share my motivations or impressions for why US aid to Israel should proactively be sunset, however it would be truly foolish to believe we can continue on as before Oct. 7 with the belief that the status quo is sustainable and the US public remains steadfast in its support of the policy. We have a world where it is within living memory that greater events, the fall of the Berlin Wall, September 11, and COVID, transfixed the world yet for some reason this specific aspect of US policy remains immune to change? It's better to hop out of the boiling water now that we know the temperature is rising rather than believe that someone is coming to shut off the stove.