RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold a rally outside the Capitol building after the House of Representatives passed a legislation providing $26 billion aid to Israel, in Washington, DC, on April 20, 2024. | Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images
In recent months, two ideas that were once on the fringes of Democratic policy thinking — cutting off financial support and stopping arms transfers to Israel — have gone mainstream.
Nearly half of House Democrats voted to end aid to Israel last month, while roughly 40 percent of the caucus has called for blocking the sale of offensive weapons to the Israeli government until it persuades Congress that it will not use American bombs to perpetrate war crimes.
Key takeaways
Democrats are increasingly willing to cut aid and arms sales to Israel.
Ending financial aid would have little effect on Israeli policy.
Broader weapons restrictions would put more pressure on Israel — but not necessarily enough to make it accept Palestinian statehood.
Forcing Israel into full compliance with international law would likely require sweeping economic sanctions.
Many of the party’s 2028 hopefuls have also embraced these general concepts. Rahm Emanuel , the former Chicago mayor and consummate centrist, recently suggested that America should end aid to Israel and condition arms sales on its compliance with US law. Progressive Sen. Chris Van Hollen has gone several steps further, saying that Israel should be barred from accessing US-made offensive weapons until it “agrees to a time-bound plan to end the occupation and enact a two-state solution.”
If recent elections are any indication, these ideas will only grow more prominent in the coming years. Over the past two months, a slew of Democratic candidates — often with establishment backing and largely progressive voting records — lost to left-wing rivals who promised to take a more adversarial posture towards Israel. Rep. Haley Stevens’s apparent defeat at the hands of the staunchly pro-Palestinian Abdul El-Sayed in this week’s Democratic Senate primary is the latest and perhaps most consequential example of this trend.
The Democratic Party’s burgeoning support for restricting aid and arms transfers to Israel is well-founded. In prosecuting its war with Hamas, the Israeli government has subjected Gaza’s civilian population to grotesque and illegal forms of collective punishment (if not genocide ). Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israel is expanding illegal settlements and allowing Jewish settlers to violently dispossess Palestinian residents . In this context, supplying Israel with money and weapons is contrary to both America’s moral obligations and security interests. It is wrong to subsidize or provision any foreign military’s assaults on human rights. And doing so undermines global respect for both the United States and the concept of international law.
For many Democrats, however, the purpose of cutting off aid and weapons to Israel is not merely to end America’s complicity in its crimes. Rather, the objective is to effect a radical change in Israeli policy — and ultimately, a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Such Democrats believe that the Israeli government will not seriously pursue a two-state solution (much less, a binational democratic state ) unless it is forced to do so. Fortunately, in this view, Israel’s reliance on American aid and military technology provides the US with potent leverage over its internal policies: If America ceases to provide the Israeli military with cash and offensive weapons, then Tel Aviv will eventually have little choice but to start upholding its end of the two-state bargain.
But this is probably too optimistic. Ending aid and conditioning arms sales may be preconditions for realigning Israeli policy. But coercing its government into an acceptance of Palestinian statehood would likely require measures far more sweeping — and controversial — than those that congressional Democrats are presently entertaining.
Israel doesn’t need our money
Of all the Democratic Party’s proposals for disciplining Israel, ending US aid may be the most politically palatable — yet least effective.
The notion that the United States should stop giving Israel $3.8 billion each year has some appeal on the left, right, and center . Which is not surprising: One doesn’t need to be passionately pro-Palestinian to be skeptical of America giving billions in aid to a rich, foreign country. In his Senate race, El-Sayed tried to tap into this isolationist sentiment, describing his plans for slashing aid to Israel — and increasing benefits for US citizens — as an “ America First ” agenda.
Unfortunately, ending aid would have little impact on Israeli policy. And for the very reason that such assistance is hard to justify, even to those who care little about the Palestinians: Israel is a wealthy nation that can fund its own military.
In 2025, Israel spent about 7.9 percent of its GDP on the military, not counting its use of American aid. To sustain its 2025 level of defense funding — without American aid — Israel would need to dedicate 8.5 percent of GDP to its military. This increase might be slightly inconvenient for Israeli taxpayers. But it’s clearly doable.
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do it.
Or so he told 60 Minutes in May, saying that he would like to “draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have.” In the view of some Israeli analysts, forgoing US aid would give Israel a freer hand to pursue its security objectives as it sees fit without worrying about a backlash from politicians thousands of miles away. The American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel J. Samet and former IDF Maj. Raphael BenLevi spelled out the logic of this position back in 2023, writing, “As long as aid continues, the temptation to dictate Israel’s policies will be too strong for Washing...
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