Congress Is Pushing To Integrate The Israeli And U.S. Militaries On Behalf Of Netanyahu
Last month, Responsible Statecraft’s Ben Freeman reported on a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to deepen connections between the United States and Israeli militaries.
Section 224, the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, would synchronize efforts between the the two countries “to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”
“The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East,” wrote Freeman.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced an amendment to remove the section, but it was defeated by a voice vote in the House Armed Services Committee. “The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do,” said the Congress member during the bill’s markup.
The section was also criticized by progressives like Bernie Sanders, who tweeted that the “American people do not want more U.S. military aid to Israel.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary, thanks in no small part to Israel lobby spending, declared that he would introduce an amendment to strike the section.
Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned over the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy and is a co-founder of the political action committee A New Policy, told Mondoweiss that, among other things, the change would enable Israel to steer U.S. foreign policy more directly.
“This integration of the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases would expose our most sensitive technologies to a country – and an industry – with a track record of industrial espionage, and would give Israel leverage over U.S. foreign and defense policy through making us reliant on their supply chain,” Paul told Mondoweiss.
The NDAA provision comes with a legislative backstory. Earlier this year, the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified Research, and Enhanced Security (Futures) Act of 2026 was introduced in the House and Senate. The bipartisan bill would authorize $150 million annually to jointly develop military technology.
“This bipartisan initiative will enable long-term collaboration on shared security goals between the United States and our vital democratic ally Israel. We must strengthen our military and technological capabilities to counter continued and future threats in the region,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who cosponsored the bill in the Senate.
That effort was backed by pro-Israel organizations like the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the lobbying group AIPAC, which also put out a memo championing Section 224.
The push to establish the military partnership is not occurring in a vacuum. It comes amid talks to between the Trump administration and the Israeli Ministry of Defense to establish a “new security cooperation framework,” as Israel memorandum of understanding (MOU) on military aid is set to expire in 2028.
For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated that he wants to wean Israel off of the $3.8 billion it receives from the United States, and allow Israel to buy its own weapons.
“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” he told 60 Minutes last month. Under this proposed arrangement, Israel’s existing policies of occupation and apartheid would presumably stay the same, but the United States would refrain from footing the bill. This shift has been embraced from everyone from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the liberal Zionist group J Street.
On June 3, Reps. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) and Abraham Hamadeh (R-AZ) introduced a resolution “In support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initiative to transition the United States-Israel relationship toward mutual defense cooperation and joint economic investment, recognizing the contributions of Israel to joint military operations against Iran, and condemning the global rise of antisemitism.”
The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu had rubber-stamped legislation before it hit the House floor. “I like it…this is the direction I’ve been wanting to go for a long time,” he told the Congress members. He also wrote them a letter publicly expressing his support for the plan.
Analysts say that Section 224 cannot be disentangled from these efforts, as it essentially paves the way for an enhanced relationship in which Israel is allowed to, in Netanyahu’s words, “stand on its own.”
“Let’s be clear: Netanyahu’s call to ‘taper off’ US-taxpayer funded weapons to Israel in favor of this new ‘co-production’ and ‘co-development’ model won’t end U.S. taxpayer subsidization of Israel,” IMEU Policy Director Josh Ruebner told Mondoweiss. “In fact, the opposite is true: it will increase the benefits to Israel. Instead of U.S. taxpayer dollars funding the provision of U.S. weapons to Israel, now U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for the Pentagon to purchase Israeli weapons.”
“This is a double bonus for Israel because it will likely increase the actual amounts of money being spent, and the profits will benefit Israeli weapons makers, some of which are government-owned, and all of which continue to profit from Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” he continued.
In an article in The Guardian, Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick, co-authors of a forthcoming book on the Israel lobby, point out that this vision is detailed in a recent report called “Israel 2048: A Blueprint for a Rising Asymmetric Geopolitical Power.”
The paper imagines the U.S. and Israeli militaries integrated in order to combat the threat of Russia, China, and an alleged alliance between Marxists and Muslims.
“For Israel, this means not just ruling all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, but dominating the Middle East, launching wars of ‘prevention’ against all potential adversaries (including Turkey, Iran and even Egypt) and, with Britain and France succumbing to the influence of foreign immigrants and the disease of ‘European secularism’, serving as the US’s most important ally in its global struggle to preserve “civilization” – labeled either ‘Jewish-Christian’ or ‘western’,” explain Clifton and Lustick.
“The extravagance of such ideas clearly marks the origins of the project, exposing the influence of well-funded dark-money groups and think tanks exerting their influence on behalf of Israel’s government,” the authors continue.
That paper was co-authored by David Wurmser, who served as an adviser to Dick Cheney and an assistant to John Bolton. In 1996, Wurmser and a number of fellow neoconservatives, such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, authored the infamous “Clean Break Report,” which called for an end to the Oslo Peace Process, the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and the military containment of Syria. The infamous document was prepared for Israel’s new Prime Minister: Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s push for a redefined relationship is also no doubt partially motivated by its declining image among the U.S. population. An April Pew poll found that 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of the country, including 8-in-10 Democrats. However, there is also a skepticism toward Israel among President Trump’s own base, and the feeling is poised to grow in the coming years. The same poll found that 57% of Republicans ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, which is up from 50% in 2025. Last November, Axios reported that Israel was seeking a new, 20-year security agreement with “America First” tweaks.
“It is clear that public opinion in the U.S. has undergone a transformation when it comes to perceptions of Israel, and not even Israel’s most fervent supporters believe it is feasible that the ‘blank check’ is viable for much longer,” says Paul.
