I don’t follow the Ukie / Russ flame wars, so I didn’t notice.
It is a reasonable position to oppose American funding of others’ wars. I agree with that somewhat. I regularly suggest that Israel be completely independent of American money and arms. They can’t afford to have American opinion restrain their Democracy from doing what it is obligated to do. I see just a few holes in their military capabilities: Fighters and JDAMs primarily, and the corner case of bunker busters.
Israel quite heavily (6% of GDP?) funds its own military. And the American Congress votes them some minority more as a matter of our politics and support for a strategic ally. That’s legislatable, and can be changed as we and our congresscritters decide.
I’m frankly at the point that in order to shut up you and all the other Israel haters, I’m in favor of cutting off all funding to the Israeli military. You anti-Semites are getting so damnably rabid that cutting off your argument on this point is more valuable than the lost cash. Israel can come up with the cash. They’ve got it. What they can’t stand is the continuous line of attack by anti-Semites in conservatism using a true but non-central attack on Israel to break the conservative support for Israel.
So be it. Cut Israeli funding to shut the mofos up. Preserve the alliance for cash.
Israeli base spending on the IDF is 5.75% of GDP and about $30b.
American base aid for the IDF is about 0.72% of GDP and $3.8b.
I think that in this base non-war case, Israel should choose to not accept Congress’ choice to send them money. It undermines their independence and fractures the conservative support for an ally.
Yes if we weren’t supporting Israel financially that would make a huge difference. As it is we are now fully complicit in what they are doing. Cut the purse strings and few will care what Israel is doing. Whatever they do will be on them alone instead of them drawing us further into their mess. The vast majority of Americans will never support the Greater Israel Project so if that is the route Israel intends to follow it’s probably time to sever the relationship anyway.