House Dems Join GOP to Help Advance Deeper US-Israeli Military Integration

A US congressional committee on Thursday rejected an amendment to strip a provision from next year's Pentagon funding bill aimed at deepening integration of the US and Israeli militaries under the guise of reducing aid.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced an amendment to strike Section 224—which would establish a formal "United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative"—from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. The proposed NDAA authorizes $1.15 trillion in baseline military spending, while the Trump administration’s full defense request seeks an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in armed forces and related funding for the coming fiscal year.

Section 224 would require the US defense secretary to designate a Pentagon executive agent responsible for coordinating and expanding US-Israel defense technology cooperation.

In Thursday's voice vote, members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) from both parties rejected the amendment to remove Section 2024 from the NDAA, with only Khanna and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) backing the measure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—has called Section 224 "my plan."

While proponents of Section 224 contend that the measure would reduce US taxpayer funding for Israel, Khanna argued that the provision amounts to a blank check for a country that most Americans oppose sending more aid to.

“The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do," the congressman said Thursday while promoting his amendment. "The entire country of Israel has a GDP that is less than a single town in my district, yet somehow Netanyahu thinks he could tell the American people what we should do."

“I am for Team America," Khanna added. "I am for the interests of this country, and I believe that's what [President] Donald Trump ran on. That includes American interests against any foreign country. We should have American sovereignty and make it clear that we strike 224. If we want to give aid to Israel, if we want to sell them weapons, that should be a vote for the entire Congress.”

In a letter to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.)—who is not on the HASC—Netanyahu said he is "heartened" by Section 224's plan to “develop a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States government” that will reduce “US financial military assistance over the next decade” and replace it with “a new framework of joint defense cooperation, codevelopment, coproduction, and mutual investment."

The US has provided more than $20 billion in armed aid to Israel during the Biden and Trump administrations since Netanyahu launched the genocidal war on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The current 10-year Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel, signed in 2016 during former President Barack Obama's tenure, provided Israel with $38 billion in US military aid and expires in 2028.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—who has partnered with Khanna on introducing or supporting war powers resolutions aimed at curbing Trump's ability to wage unconstitutional wars in countries including Yemen, Venezuela, and Iran—said last month that if Section 224 made it out of committee, he would work with Khanna to "offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor."

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is urging Americans to contact their members of Congress to tell them to reject Section 224.

"This is not 'America First.' It is Israel First," ADC argues on its website. "The resolution language attached to this proposal gives it away: it expresses support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initiative to transition the US–Israel relationship toward mutual defense cooperation and joint economic investment. This language turns Congress into a vehicle for advancing Netanyahu’s agenda and asks the American people to treat it as their own national security policy."

"Section 224 would move US support for Israel away from the more transparent foreign aid framework and into a maze of Pentagon procurement, licensing, data-sharing, and backdoor deals that are harder for Congress, taxpayers, and future administrations to monitor, cap, condition, or unwind," the group continued. "Concerns of undefined 'network integration' and 'data fusion' should alarm every American who cares about sovereignty, privacy, civil liberties, and democratic oversight."

"At a time when Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, exporting surveillance technologies used against activists and journalists around the world, marketing military technology tested on Palestinians, and carrying out terrorist attacks as seen in the cell phone [bombings] in Lebanon, Congress should be cutting off military support—not integrating the US military and Israeli defense sector and making accountability harder than ever," ADC added.

In an opinion piece published this week by Common Dreams, Ben Freeman, director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote that "lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel’s military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in the region."

"This unprecedented level of US-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of US military assistance," Freeman said.