No more $4 billion for Israel

Reflecting the generally negative perceptions of Israel, overt aid to Israel seems to be ending. The fact that Netanyahu is in favor of ending it should raise red flags. However, the substitute for U.S. aid to Israel is still on the table—the bill to basically merge the U.S. and Israeli military is still alive, having passed the House narrowly, 216-212. One can only hope that the Senate will reject it. From the Wikipedia article:

A New Policy, a Political Action Committee that describes itself as “dedicated to forging a new U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine that improves the lives of Americans and people across the Middle East” sponsored a letter to the House Armed Services Committee advocating for the removal of military collaboration with Israel from the 2027 NDAA.^[44] A New Policy founder Josh Paul said “What Congress is trying to do now is find different ways of entrenching the relationship so deep in America’s own defence industrial base that it’s impossible to root it out.”^[45]

Paul subsequently authored a piece on the Arab Center Washington DC’s website, writing that “Section 224 raises significant questions about whether there will be, in the foreseeable future, a genuine offramp from support for Israel’s military, or whether the relationship will simply transition to a new, and arguably worse, form.”^[46]

In a June 4, 2026, interview with Jewish Currents, Paul said that the “off ramp” for US aid to Israel would “seem on the surface to provide a net savings to the US taxpayer and to shift the cost burden for [Israel’s] weapon procurements to Israel.”^[47] Paul added that,^[47]

“Imagine a world in which—as Section 224 proposes—Israeli technology is integrated into U.S. military systems. Last year alone, US Defense Department procurement topped $160 billion, with a further $140 billion spent on research and development. In that context, US foreign assistance is, despite all the hype it gets, relatively small beans. Integrating Israel as a key source into the Department of War supply chain, on the other hand, opens up prospects that could not only make up for, but over time dwarf, the billions in handouts Israel’s military currently gets. And unlike the current grant assistance, which mostly pays for US weapons systems, this would be money going directly into Israel’s economy. And that’s before accounting for the access to emerging US technology and intellectual property that Israel would have access to and be able to spin off for commercial purposes.”

Epoch Times: WASHINGTON—Israel will no longer receive $4 billion in annual funding from the United States after 2026, President Donald Trump announced on Nov. 3.

In an Election Day interview with Fox News, Trump said the aid in question “gets cut off at the end of the year.”

Trump said he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the aid, and they agreed to cut it.

The U.S. president said he also recognizes that U.S. support for Israel has been a contentious topic.

Trump said, “Why should we suffer the slings” from people like Abdul El-Sayed “when they don’t need it?”

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