Congress has been known to slip indefensible special-interest provisions into large must-pass bills when no one is looking. What it has never done before is use such sleight of hand to hand over control of the U.S. military to a foreign country. But that’s what we’re told is on the verge of happening on Capitol Hill.
The House just passed
the National Defense Authorization Act, a sprawling
$1.15 trillion bill that supposedly includes a provision buried in it “merging” the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
This provision, known as Section 219, has united some of the most fervent anti-Israel conspiracy theorists on the right and the left in denouncing the alleged betrayal of America, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to AOC, from Tucker Carlson to Cenk Uygur.
AOC has warned that the provision “is an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy.” Taylor Greene has said anyone who voted for the bill “sold out the American people to a foreign country.” Carlson wants literal treason trials.
So what is the substance of Section 219? The United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative calls for the secretary of defense to designate “an executive agent” to coordinate between the United States and Israel on “bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration and industrial cooperation.”
The Pentagon will come up with a plan for such cooperation and report back to Congress.
That’s it. There is nothing about merging the general staffs of the U.S. military and the IDF; nothing about creating a joint office where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, work together; nothing about giving Bibi Netanyahu partial control of CENTCOM.
That the United States would want a close working relationship with Israel on military technology is hardly surprising. Israel is one of the world’s most innovative societies and, given its precarious security environment, has become a leader in advanced defense technologies.
That a nefarious interpretation of the bill has gotten some traction underlines how any preposterous lie, so long as it’s about Israel, gets a hearing these days.
One perversity here is that Netanyahu conceives of the technological cooperation as a substitute for the U.S. military aid that he supports phasing out. In other words, enemies of Israel oppose U.S. military aid, and when a constructive plan is offered for how to go about ending it, they oppose that, too, as an Israeli plot.
Another perversity is that the United State should want a very close relationship with Israel on missile defense, an area where Israel excels and that, as we’ve seen in the Ukraine and Iran wars, is crucial to modern warfare. And yet, the same people who portray themselves as zealously protective of the U.S. national interest want us to turn our back on a source of technological advance.
Israel naturally fits in the Western alliance, but nations ultimately pursue their selfish interests. If we spurn the Jewish state out of irrational animus, it will inevitably look elsewhere and perhaps build a stronger relationship with China.
Then we will surely be told by the critics now obsessed with ending the U.S.-Israel relationship that Israel has shown its true colors and deserves even more of our scorn.
Rich Lowry is on X
@RichLowry.
