Americans are turning against military aid to Israel, and the shift has produced an unlikely alignment: Israel’s critics and its prime minister. Both want to cut military aid to Israel to zero. Netanyahu wants to free Israel from the constraints of American policymakers. His critics, backed by growing public opposition, don’t realize the policy would bring about the very Israeli actions they want to prevent.
I argue letting public opinion end U.S. military funding to Israel would be a strategic mistake. Military aid gives Washington leverage over Israeli decisions because an Israel independent of U.S. support leaves America no lever to pull when it disagrees. Instead, the U.S. should renew an Obama-style memorandum of understanding that keeps Israel a funded ally and dependent on American support.
Ending aid is no longer fringe. In a May New York Times/Siena poll, 74 percent of Democratic voters opposed additional aid to Israel. Pew finds 57 percent of Republicans under 50 view Israel unfavorably. In July, 103 House Democrats voted to strip Israel’s $3.3 billion. This month, Vice President JD Vance said America “cannot let our Middle Eastern foreign policy be subservient to the State of Israel.”
Netanyahu agrees. “I want to draw down to zero the American financial support,” he told 60 Minutes in May. He wants freedom of action for an Israeli right bent on expansion in Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Syria. In July, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared the IDF will stay in its “security zones” in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza “until further notice.”
Freedom of action means freedom from dependence, and dependence is where America’s leverage lives. The current memorandum bought Israel a third squadron of F-35s, 25 F-15IA fighters, and four KC-46A tankers. A military built on American platforms cannot fight a long war without American resupply, as Gaza showed: in 2024, Congress passed the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, a $14.1 billion package to resupply Israel’s munitions, including $5.2 billion for interceptors. So every Israeli government planning a major operation must ask what Washington will tolerate. And because Congress appropriates the grant every year, policymakers get a recurring chance to delay, condition, or withhold it.
The 2016 memorandum is a key source of this dependence. It pledged $38 billion over ten years. One important provision is that Israel had long been allowed to spend 26.3 percent of its grant on its own defense contractors, and the Obama deal phases that out, shifting up to $1.2 billion a year toward American weapons. Israel fought the phase-out, arguing its own arms industry would suffer, and may push to revive the privilege. The next agreement should refuse.
The lever has worked before. In 1991, George H.W. Bush tied $10 billion in loan guarantees to a settlement freeze; a fight widely credited as a factor in Yitzhak Shamir’s 1992 defeat. His successor, Yitzhak Rabin, agreed to restrict settlement activity, and the money flowed.
Now imagine the future Netanyahu described to The Economist: aid tapered to zero within a decade and an Israeli military sufficient on its own. Say Israel wants to strike Iran unilaterally, annex part of southern Syria, a country Washington just removed from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list, or annex the West Bank, which Trump vowed he would “not allow.” An Israel no longer dependent on American military support might still listen to America’s demands, but it would not need to.
Critics will point to Rafah. In May 2024, Biden paused a shipment of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs and warned that if Israel invaded Rafah, “I’m not supplying the weapons.” Israel went in anyway, and Washington released part of the shipment within weeks.
But one paused shipment barely pulls the constraining lever. Bush pulled it with conviction in 1991, and it worked; Rafah shows Washington should strengthen the lever, not surrender it. Evidence the U.S must work quickly to sustain Israeli dependence on the U.S is emerging: months after Biden’s pause, Israel contracted Elbit to produce heavy bombs domestically, reducing reliance on the U.S.
The public wants to stop funding a government it opposes. Netanyahu wants to stop answering to the government that funds him. If aid ends, Netanyahu gains his freedom because America loses its leverage.
