The Real Problems with U.S. Military Assistance to Israel

In a recent interview, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York floated the idea that Congress should consider selectively reducing aid to Israel to punish the country for handing Benjamin Netanyahu an electoral victory. Jonathan Tobin comments that, while Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks conveyed little more than her own ignorance of the issue, there is a better case to be made for reconsidering the nature of Washington’s support for the IDF:

There was a time when Israel desperately needed both U.S. economic and military aid. But in 1996, Netanyahu told a joint session of Congress that it was time to end the economic portion of the assistance. With free-market reforms enabling it to break free of the shackles imposed by its socialist founders, Israel no longer needed economic subsidies. But defense requirements were different. With so many of its foes, including Gulf states, able to buy the most sophisticated U.S. weapons, Israel needed to keep up and maintain a qualitative advantage that ensured its security.

But 23 years later, the political price of accepting U.S. aid remains onerous. It limits Israel’s options and flexibility with respect to defense procurement, especially when it comes to its own industries. It also creates the impression that Israel is a beggar that requires Washington’s assistance in order to defend itself. . . .

For far too long, pro-Israel activism was solely the function of keeping aid flowing to Jerusalem. While the Israel Defense Force has benefited from such assistance, it’s time to acknowledge that the Jewish state is on a path to paying its own way, even when it comes to defense. In the long run, that will be far healthier for both Israel’s economy and for strengthening the relationship between two democracies that should relate to each other as friends and allies, not as a patron and a dependent client state.

Read more at JNS

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli economy, Israeli Security, U.S. Foreign policy, US-Israel relations

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society