Should we keep funding Israel? America’s $3.8 billion question

Should the U.S. keep sending billions in military aid to Israel — or is it time to rethink the relationship?

In the debut episode of “The Dialogue,” Ben Freeman, Director of Democratizing Foreign Policy, and Blaise Misztal, Vice President for Policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, debate whether U.S. support for Israel makes America safer, drains American resources, strengthens the defense industry, or risks pulling the U.S. deeper into conflicts overseas. The conversation tackles Iran, Gaza, military readiness and the future of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The claims discussed are those made in the debate and do not represent the views of The Washington Times.

[HALLOWELL] Coming off the third anniversary of the October 7th attacks, we are here today to talk about Israel and military funding. Now, Israel has been at the forefront of headlines for decades, but in recent years, debate and discussion about the Middle East and Israel in particular have ramped up. Now, many are starting to question whether America should continue providing U.S. military aid to Israel. 

I’m joined today by Ben Freeman, Director of Democratizing Foreign Policy, and Blaise Misztal, Vice President for Policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

We’ll give you about 30 to 45 seconds to break down our central question: How should America handle military aid to Israel? 

[FREEMAN] I tend to side with the American people. The American people are telling us loud and clear that they want less of a connection with Israel. A majority of Americans, in fact, say they want to zero out military aid to Israel. And I think they’re right. We’re seeing the consequences of those actions in places like Iran and Gaza and Lebanon and elsewhere. I think all of that is antithetical to the U.S. national interest.

[HALLOWELL] Blaise, what would you say on that front?

[MISZTAL] I would say if Ben is trying to give the American people what they want, I’m for giving the American people what they need. And what they need, as multiple presidents have said, is partners that help shoulder the burden, that reduce the blood and treasure that the United States spends overseas. And that’s exactly what Israel provides us, on the cheap. Whereas we spend much more money to base troops in Germany and Japan and South Korea, partners that depend on us to provide security for them, Israel provides security for us, fighting side by side with us against common adversaries like no other partner in the world. But I would say our relationship should not be defined just by that military aid. In fact, I think we should think about how we move beyond that to a partnership in which we can leverage the economic and technological prowess that Israel provides to ensure both the prosperity of America and our ability to compete with adversaries like China.

[HALLOWELL] We’re going to tackle three main claims. This is our focus round, and this is kind of the central piece at the show here. Now, these are not claims that we hold at The Washington Times. They’re just claims that people will make in this debate, and they come on both sides of the issue. And so we throw that out there, and then you get a chance to weigh in on what you believe. The first claim is that military aid to Israel serves the American public and government interests. Ben, what would you say about that?

[FREEMAN] I think it’s important when we have this conversation to distinguish Israel’s interest from the American interest. There might be things that are important to Israel in the military strategic relationship that are just not important to the U.S. And I think we’re seeing the gap in that evidence itself clearly, again, in places like Gaza and the Iran war. And I want to just politely push back a little bit, Blaise, on the idea that Israel is saving America’s blood and treasure. The Iran war alone has already cost the lives of 18 service members. More than 800 service members have been injured in the conflict. And the cost to the American economy is over $100 billion. That’s about $860 per household. What is happening with this conflict is not something that’s benefiting the U.S. It might be a benefit to Israel, but it’s certainly not a benefit to the American people.

[HALLOWELL] Blaise, you get a chance to respond to that. But of course, the general question again, or the general claim rather, military aid to Israel serves American public and government interests. You can respond to that generally, and you can also respond to Ben.

[MISZTAL] Ben, I completely agree with you. We want to be focused on the American interest and how we support and strengthen that. And we can break that down in several ways. But first of all, let’s look at the assistance that we provide to Israel, which since 2018 has been $3.8 billion a year. Compare that to what we spend on other allies. We spend twice as much, $7.6 billion a year, to keep troops in Germany. We spend $5.4 billion to keep troops in Japan every year. And we spend just about the same amount, $3.5 billion, to keep them in South Korea every year. So we’re spending less on Israel than we are on many other partners. And that money is not being shipped overseas. It’s not going to support bases and troops overseas. It’s being spent to buy American weapons built in American factories by American workers. So that is actually an investment in America, in the American economy, in the American industrial base. So there’s a benefit to the U.S. right there.

Now let’s talk about the security benefits that we get from having Israel as a military partner. First of all, if we do want to go with Ben’s approach of using polls to see what the American people want, 80% of Americans think that Iran is a major threat to U.S. national security. They want to prevent a nuclear Iran. They want to contain the Islamic Republic and stop its reign of terror. This war is a war that addresses a threat that the American people understand. 

Now, it has been a costly war. Ben is right. But if Ben is upset by the cost of this war, imagine what the cost would have been if we did not have Israel fighting side by side with us, conducting half of the military operations. They have flown 46% of the sorties, conducted half of the strikes of this war. We’d be paying twice as much if we didn’t have Israel as a partner to address this threat to U.S. national security as perceived by American voters. So yes, absolutely, this minuscule investment in the capabilities of Israel pays dividends at home economically and abroad strategically, and reduces the blood and treasure we spend to have a safer world.

[FREEMAN] Even our own government said Iran wasn’t a threat to the U.S. national interest. Our own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March that Iran was not on the cusp of a nuclear weapon. They had not restarted their nuclear program. So I’d encourage folks to imagine a different reality where we didn’t start this war altogether, where Israel didn’t convince the U.S. to jump in and start this war. So instead of thinking about sharing sorties, sharing casualties, fighting side by side, what if we didn’t have to fight at all? 

What if your gas wasn’t over $4? Let’s get back in our time machine. Let’s go back into February when we were paying less than $3 a gallon, when the inflation rate hadn’t soared, when you could afford groceries and gas. That’s the alternate reality that I think is the danger of the Israeli partnership right now and all these other countries that you mentioned. But Blaise is right that more U.S. dollars go to those other countries than they go to Israel. But the fact of the matter is none of the other countries Blaise mentioned have dragged the U.S. into a foreign war like the Iran war. That is the real danger with this partnership.

[HALLOWELL] There’s a lot more here to unpack, but I think you’ve both made really good points about this. I think the second claim, it’s going to dovetail a little bit with the first, but we will often hear this, that America has a moral obligation to arm Democratic allies who are threatened by authoritarian regimes, that America has that responsibility. And not everybody will agree with that, but that is the statement you will hear. 

[MISZTAL] I would certainly not characterize a moral responsibility to arm every democratic state in the world. However, I would point out that by and large, democratic states that uphold Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian civilization tend to share the same enemies as the United States. There’s a reason that the Islamic Republic chants death to Israel, death to the United States. They hate us equally and they’re trying to kill us both. In fact, we’ve tracked almost a thousand deaths of Americans killed by Iran and its terrorists. Iran has tried to hire Mexican drug cartels and Hells Angels to conduct terrorist attacks and kill American citizens on American soil. 

It is most certainly a threat to the United States and our security. And it also happens to be a threat to other democratic countries like Israel. And so we don’t have a moral obligation to arm democratic countries. But if we are trying to increase our security and decrease the burden that we have to shoulder for it, it makes sense to look to those countries that have the same adversaries and the same interests when it comes to security as we do, and to try to help them and partner with them so that they can help deter or degrade or, if necessary, defeat those threats and make it a lower cost for us to stay safe. And I think that’s what’s happening with Israel. We share adversaries because we share common values and interests, and because we share those interests, it makes sense for us to be military and strategic partners.

Watch the video for the full conversation.