The Independence manifesto: It's time to sunset foreign aid to Israel

While none of them by their own can do it, the forces of the progressive left and
paleoconservative right are gaining ground with the public in their battle to end
US military aid to Israel. Supporters of the bilateral relationship should prepare
for change rather than live in the past.

For the past fifty years pro-Israel activists and organizations have sold their supporters on two goals being essential to Israeli security: a) ever larger loan guarantees to the Jewish state for military aid, and b) a solid bipartisan consensus in order to secure them. Accordingly, many of these organizations pour tremendous lobbying resources and public efforts in order to maintain a wall of support in Congress. As the 2000 electoral cycle heats up, the prospect that this is a sustainable way to maintain the US-Israel relationship is looking increasingly precarious.

Whereas the critics of this arrangement allege that it is a direct quid-quo-pro relationship, in reality the lobbying organizations, most prominently AIPAC, do not directly contribute monies to campaigns. The "PAC" in AIPAC stands for Public Affairs Committee, not Political Action Committee. However, their role in grading candidates for congruity with the AIPAC agenda is crucial in steering donors towards or away from a candidate. However, as the political interests of younger voters and disaffected older ones continue to diverge from the the orthodoxy established by AIPAC since its founding in 1963, the promoters of this strategy will find it much harder to keep it viable. The hope for this "bipartisan consensus" on Israel is increasingly fleeting not least because consensus on numerous topics is eroding within the parties themselves. If Israel supporters, Jewish or not, do not reassess their priorities, they stand to be swamped in the future by a hostile Democratic Party and potentially a divided GOP as well in due time. Rather than remain sentimentally attached

The paleoconservative argument

In the 1970s a small cluster of Republicans, led by congressmen Paul Findley (IL) and Pete McCloskey (CA) were the main voices of opposition to the USA's continual support of Israel in the Middle East. While they were staunch ideological opponents of Israel, this generation of anti-Israel politicians were generally willing to engage even hardcore enemies on the same platform as shown by McCloskey's debate with right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane in Los Angeles. But this generation of paleoconservative critics would not last. The Cold War was going on and most Republicans could overlook any philosophical criticism of Israel so long as they remained reliable allies against Soviet client states like Syria and Libya. By 1982 both McCloskey (a failed Senate candidate) and Findley (defeated by Democrat Richard Durbin) were out of office. Their faction lives on at the non-profit think tank Council for the National Interest. Others like former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan explicitly oppose the relationship as he did in 2015 when he attacked GOP efforts to scuttle the Iran Nuclear Deal. 

But the paleoconservatives may have just been way before their time. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991 many traditional small government conservatives have rejected the GOP party line on overseas intervention. This includes issues like NATO expansion and sanctions on states like Venezuela, but it often focuses very strongly on the US-Israel relationship, especially with respect to the military funding. According to this line of reasoning, much of the angst in the Muslim world against the USA is a result of over-commitment to that relationship. It is fair to call this an exaggeration that ignores some of the latent expansionism in the Arab and Muslim world. But nevertheless the paleoconservative critics have a salient point: The original premise of the Israel-US military relationship was to counter Soviet influence in the Middle East, not to shield the USA from Islamic terror or any other pretense. They sharply reject the evangelical and neoconservative rhetoric of a special relationship based on "shared values", because many of the paleoconservatives -if Christian themselves- do not see a religious preference between Jews or Muslims. 

The sinking ship - Democrats and Israel aid

The Democratic Party has in the past been a good source of support, though certainly more instability, for AIPAC and other pro-Israel activists. This is because while most American Jews are liberal, vote Democrat, and have been conditioned to accept the reality that none of these interests conflict. That is rapidly changing as the party's platform and interests are morphing to conform to a much more radical coming generation. Former Pres. Jimmy Carter has declared Israel an "apartheid state" repeatedly since leaving office in 1981 and even titled his 2007 book about the conflict Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. This is a far cry from former US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later a Democratic senator from New York, who in 1975 delivered a speech passionately objecting to the definition of Zionism as racism. Several senior party figures like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (NY), and Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) and Amy Klobuchar are significantly more pro-Israel than they are anti-Israel. In October Klobuchar declined to commit to conditioning military aid to Israel on a West Bank settlement freeze. 

But neither Klobuchar or Booker are going to be the party nominee in 2020, let alone win the presidency. They have built their careers as legislative placeholders rather than leaders of movements. The venue Klobuchar was speaking at was the national conference of J Street, an organization very critical of Israel that has traditionally protested its government rather than supported it. Other senior party figures appearing thre are Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA), Sen. Chris Van Hollen (MD), and the more serious presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Mayor Peter Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. Fellow also-ran candidates Julian Castro and Sen. Michael Bennet (CO) also appeared. 

J Street's claim is that it is working to defend the viability of the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and does so by being "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace". But that tagline should be examined:

• Does J-Street attempt to broker meetings where both Israeli and Palestinian national leaderships attend? No. 
• Does J Street attempt to foster partnerships at the business level that could serve as a foundation for a post settlement relationship? No. 
• Does J Street work to build ties through other Arab states or regional powers like the EU, Russia, or Qatar to lobby for them to convince Mahmoud Abbas to actually negotiate for peace rather than complain about the lack of negotiations and bias by the US? No.

If J Street thinks that the Palestinian Authority is so sincere in actually desiring a negotiated solution, they apparently have not attempted to lobby French Pres. Emmanuel Macron to step up in lieu of the US as Abbas requested in 2017. The reason that J Street spends its time talking about such a two-state solution rather than actually doing something is that it knows that it's not feasible without concession by the PA that it cannot have all of its demands such as the Right of Return and the re-division of Jerusalem to the pre-1967 borders. For decades their cause has depended on a strategy of bending the Israelis through armed conflict, including terror attacks on civilians, so that they break at the negotiation table. This has yielded a failed Second Intifada (2000-05) that devastated the West Bank and the subsequent election of 2006 that brought Hamas to power, and eventually a split between Abbas' government in the West Bank and theirs in Gaza. 

The weekend's events seem to indicate that the J Street agenda is explicitly more deliberate. When prompted last week current top-tier candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) asserted that the option of withholding American aid to Israel unless settlement expansion is halted is "on the table". In June Warren had been asked by activists of the anti-Israel Jewish organization IfNotNow in November whether she would commit to pressuring Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank, to which she simply answered "YES". It was then revealed that a member of the group, Max Berger, was her "progressive outreach" coordinator. Last week anti-Israel activists objected when it was revealed that her campaign had assured critics that Berger was not going to be advising her regarding Middle East foreign policy. The message is clear: At a certain point Warren will have to choose which train to board or get run over by one of them: She cannot court the remaining pro-Israel Democrats while simultaneously attempting to embrace their sworn enemies.

But whereas the pro-Israel Democrats are watching with anxiety the drift of the once supportive Warren, one of her key rivals has emphatically embraced the other side - Bernie Sanders. In 2016 the Vermont senator demurred on attending the yearly AIPAC conference in contrast to all of the other hopefuls in the race in order to attend a previously scheduled campaign event in Utah. His offer to deliver his speech remotely was denied. He likely knew that the speech would have been a dud there as it focused on Palestinian unemployment and poverty and called for an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank". But the 2020 version of Sanders puts him to shame:

• His surrogates include noted anti-Israel activists Linda Sarsour and Amr Zaher. Sarsour was also alleged by a co-founder of the Women's March (which she chaired) of condoning explicitly anti-Jewish remarks when she was co-chair of the movement and for using Louis Farrakhan's Fruit of Islam bodyguards as movement security. 
• While in the previous cycle he had been supported by anti-Israel leftist icons like Drs. James Zogby and Cornell West, Sanders is now bolstered by endorsements from elected congresswomen with equally harsh viewpoints: Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.
• At the J Street conference Sanders dropped a major statement: he not only believes Israel military aid from the United States should be withheld unless settlement activity was halted, he also proposes that some of it be redirected to the Gaza Strip. Conceivably his meaning is that this would be in the form of humanitarian aid. 

The J Street conference of 2019 should be seen as a watershed moment in American left/Democratic Party messaging on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Jewish anti-Israel writer Peter Beinart wrote gleefully that "almost overnight, a debate that many thought impossible has broken inside the Democratic Party. What I heard at J Street was the sound of progressive Democrats losing their fear". But Beinart's perception is a gross exaggeration; among progressives the issue of dumping the US-Israel relationship has always simmered below the surface. He seems to forget the openly odious approach to Israel from former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (GA) and her eventual successor Hank Johnson. Even the last three Democratic presidents all had very strained, if still functional, relations with Israel but the next one can feel emboldened by an increasingly hostile congressional Democratic caucus including not only The Squad but like-minded veterans such as Rep. Betty McCollum (MN) and Barbara Lee (CA).

The only other candidates that per polling have a realistic shot of winning the 2020 nomination as of right now are former VP Joe Biden (who is polling in 4th place in Iowa) and Mayor Buttigieg. At this juncture it stands to reason that even if Sanders or Warren do not capture the nomination itself, there could be a contested convention where their delegates are leveraged in order to nominate their desired candidate, or to decide the vice presidential candidate. And were one of them to be placed in the Oval Office presidential powers would entitle them to withhold that aid from Israel regardless of congressional appropriations or oversight. The irony of the current Ukraine Impeachment "scandal" is that the Democrats are accusing Donald Trump of doing exactly what they would be doing if elected concerning Israel: leveraging foreign aid dollars in order to pressure another country. The only difference is that according to them Trump was doing it to Ukraine as part of a vendetta against Biden, whereas the Democrats would be doing it as a means to squeeze concessions out of Israel.

The comfort of the short sighted

Most Israel-supporting voters have been satisfied with the Trump foreign policy concerning Israel that has included relocating the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights. Presumably some of these voters would be willing to hold their nose and support Trump in 2020 even if they voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 in order to preserve this approach. Others may be willing to roll the dice with a Democrat in the hopes that pressure from pro-Israel legislators would steer them away from a drastic change. Neither choice addresses the long term problem that the future generations will likely change the dial on this issue given the chance to hold office. A 2018 Pew Research survey gauged the sympathy levels of Americans with Israelis and Palestinians. The differences were stark with 81% of conservative Republicans supporting Israel, 70% of moderate Republicans, 35% of moderate Democrats, and only 19% of liberal Democrats. Among the liberals there is now 35% support for Palestinians. 

However when looking at the age breakdown the trend appears very discouraging for Israel supporters; while 56% of voters in the 50+ age range support Israel, that number plummets to 42% in the 30-49 range and to 32% in the 18-29 bracket. Across internet forums, including many that are right leaning, Israel support is contemptuously associated with evangelicals and "boomers", implying that it is a relic of superstitious, aging and critically lacking dupes. A small but growing contingent of traditional conservative "groypers" is also beginning to resurrect many of the same points as the paleoconservatives concerning Israel not fitting in with the national interest. While they are derided as "alt-right trolls" by their opponents, these teen and twenty-something activists thrive off of their ability to get under the skin of more mainstream voices like Turning Point USA's Rob Smith and Charlie Kirk and Human Events' Will Chamberlain. It is unknown what is the real numerical strength of the "groyper" community, but they thrive off of the same meme-based and irreverent humour that the larger Trump movement surfed in 2016 and are hostile to the older MAGA generation that is more pro-Israel whom they derisively attack as Boomers. The motives of these groypers is less linked to affinity toward the Palestinian cause than it is to their resentment of the idea that they as taxpayers are being suckered by this arrangement. A common refrain is that the $3.8 billion per annum could be spent on healthcare and veterans' services. This is not quite based in logic as the 2020 budget for the VA will be $220.2 billion and the budget just for Medicaid today is $577 billion. But to their camp the figures are besides the point; they don't see the benefit of spending that money to give Israel store credit with US weapons manufacturers no matter what the sum. 

So why the change? The proposition that Israel can continue to rely on the status quo of $3.8 billion per annum in military aid has been dependent on the ability to convince the American public that it is essential to their security, as well as contingent on the needs and consent of Congress and defense lobbyists. Under each American administration such aid has been conditional on various points of acquiescence by Israel to US policy goals such as the Camp David Agreement (1979), Oslo Accords (1993), Wye River Agreement (1997), and the Gaza Withdrawal (2004). Rather than address the fact that the American commitment is subject to change, most pro-Israel activists have ferociously defended it as essential to the bilateral relationship and Israeli security as if nothing has changed. But the circumstances of both nations' realities have changed: 

• In 1996 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed to a sunset period for economic aid and by 2008 direct economic grants were ceased because Israel's economy had grown to a level where it was no longer necessary. 
• Unfortunately, rather than commit to phasing out all types of assistance,  military aid was increased from its total at the time of $2.4 billion such that as of today it totals a whopping $3.8 billion. 
• Israel's claimed growth rate (Source: Bank of Israel) from Q1 2019 is 5%, fairly high showing that the economy is continuing to thrive. It's GDP (see below) in 2018 reached $369 billion. It's growth trajectory has placed it above the larger rich Muslim states of Malaysia and Pakistan, and they could potentially pass Turkey and Iran. This is all while having a population that is only a quarter of the next smallest country (Malaysia).

Israel supporters can no longer hold in front of them the rhetorical shield that the military aid packages are essential to their defense, which is partially why many of them resort to claiming that it helps the US economy. In either the case it is immaterial. Would the military aid be ceased the Israeli defense firms and US counterparts could simply embark on joint ventures on the open market (i.e. without subsidies) and better reduce costs. Not all of the investment in defense R&D yields results; much of it goes to waste. The F-22 Raptor fighter jet took 19 years of development and cost $26.3 billion, and production of each aircraft ended up being $412 million, and thus far is only being used in the USA because by 2009 they had already begun developing the F-35! The annual aid to Israel is only one such example of Washington subsidizing the defense industry, but ending it would be the start of a welcome change, and no it would not necessarily result in the end of all defense and development cooperation. No such thing occurred once US aid to South Korea ceased in the mid-1970s. Hopefully in the foreseeable future American troops can be removed from there as well as part of a negotiated peace with the DPRK.

Another factor that should not be dismissed has been the recent history of Israel supporters marketing it to American tourists as a haven for progressive values like environmentalism and gay rights. In 2010 the Israeli Foreign Ministry even hired a marketing firm that had promoted Michelle Obama's anti-0besity campaign in order to help pitch tourism to millennial hipsters. The fact that there are over-the-hill feminists like former Blossom star Mayim Bialik and Madonna representing themselves as Israel advocates doesn't help. At a certain point the same nation pitched to ecstasy popping clubbers cannot be the same one idealized by Bible toting holy rollers, and a new generation of skeptics both young and old is perceiving that. The new "America First" arch-conservatives who see these undesirable associations may not be a force yet, but they are growing thanks to their networking and confrontational stunts. 

Blind faith dies hard

The path proposed here, sunsetting the aid packages, is one that has no home community of supporters. The majority of pro-Israel supporters have no issue with the monies continuing to be the linchpin of our bilateral relationship, because until now it has been challenged only from small caucuses within the main political parties. For them any attempt at addressing the new political climate's changing attitude to this arrangement is tantamount to opposing Israel in principle. There is even a contingent of them that are so delusional that they are attempting to draft former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to run in 2024, or even primary Trump in 2020.  This is mind boggling considering the fact that no other politician, Republican or Democrat, has the stage presence and magnetism to create rallies that rival Trump's. But more importantly, they think that the loyalty of Trump voters is transferable to a candidate that shares none of the same qualities solely based on party affiliation, a mistake made in 2016 by #NeverTrump Republicans in the primaries.

As for Israel opponents they will not countenance anything short of a full-throated moral condemnation of it. Like it or not, they are inching closer to at least part of their goal through the unraveling consensus on US aid to Israel. While within the GOP political establishment the support is still solid, among much of the popular base it is seen to be against the grain of the "America First" motto of many "Deplorables" that condemns American entanglements overseas through intervention or foreign aid. 

Among the Democrats however there seems to be a gradual acknowledgment by even supporters of the aid relationship that without a significant advance toward the two state solution it will be in jeopardy. Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), the 2000 candidate for vice president, spoke on Oct. 30 at the Herzl Conference on Contemporary Zionism. He said "I am not by nature an alarmist, but amidst the continuing encouraging facts on the ground, I see storm clouds gathering. . . real attrition among liberals, Democrats and younger people – millennials". He went on to mention the statements of Sanders and Warren at J Street. It should be noted that Lieberman's conflict of interest, as he is now a lobbyist for Israel Aerospace Industries, a defense contractor that partners with American firms. His half-hour long speech was otherwise unremarkable as he blandly cited some Hebrew scriptures and quotes by Theodore Herzl. Those that think that a 77 year-old Yale-educated former senator and failed presidential running mate that spent thirty years in government can change the minds of a generation being raised on Ariana Grande and Fortnite should consider how out of touch they are with their own kids.

Another Democratic former reluctantly acknowledging this change is former Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who served under President Obama. On Oct. 31 he tweeted the following as part of a longer thread:

19. Israelis should also be realistic about attitudes in US society and look beyond the current MOU and aid debate. Our relationship is based on interests and values. It won't be sustainable as it has been if the common democratic values are put a risk by the demise of the 2SS.

— Dan Shapiro (@DanielBShapiro) October 31, 2019

These are modest and subdued acknowledgements that sinkholes are forming under the foundation of this relationship. For those that are still clinging to the notion of the "special relationship" promised by aging politicians of both parties holding up among Americans of a new jaded generation, they should not say they haven't been warned. A gift that causes more grief than joy becomes not a gift at all but an albatross.