Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
On Tuesday morning, as Americans headed to the polls for their midterm elections, President Donald Trump made a massive announcement: The United States would stop providing nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to the Jewish state by the end of 2026.
For decades, such an announcement would have been treated as a diplomatic catastrophe. Israeli politicians would have rushed to Washington, American Jewish organizations would have mobilized, and commentators would have warned that the future of the Jewish state was suddenly in jeopardy.
But President Trump just did Israel an enormous favor.
Certainly, $4 billion is not an insignificant amount of money. American military assistance has been incredibly important to Israel’s security. And the United States and Israel should not become less friendly. But the end of American military aid could be one of the most important steps toward completing the promise of Israeli independence.
For nearly 80 years, the Jewish state has been building toward a moment when it could finally look the world’s greatest superpower in the eye and say something that Jews, for most of their history, were rarely in a position to say to anyone: Thank you. We can take care of ourselves.
Under the existing agreement, Israel receives approximately $3.8 billion annually, including $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for cooperative missile defense. The foreign military financing is overwhelmingly directed toward purchasing American-made military equipment. By 2028, the special provision allowing Israel to spend some of that financing on its own defense industry is scheduled to disappear entirely.
In other words, much of the money Americans supposedly “give” Israel is money Israel must spend in America.
It supports American manufacturers, American workers, American military production, and American technological capabilities. The United States also benefits from intelligence cooperation, joint research, access to Israeli innovation, and military technologies refined under conditions that American forces do not ordinarily experience.
There is Trophy, the Israeli-developed active protection system adopted by the U.S. Army for its Abrams tanks; or the Israeli expertise incorporated into the F-35’s advanced helmet-mounted display system.
The relationship has never been simply one country giving and another receiving. Both sides have gained enormously. And yet, every American election cycle, Israel finds itself portrayed as a helpless foreign dependent draining the American treasury.
That perception is not only misleading. It has become strategically and politically damaging.
Some Americans wonder why they should continue financing another country’s military. But Israelis should be asking an equally important question: What exactly are we sacrificing in exchange for that money?
Because the assistance has never been free.
When a country becomes accustomed to having another government finance a significant portion of its military procurement, the arrangement inevitably shapes its decisions. It influences which weapons it purchases, where those weapons are manufactured, which technologies receive investment, and how much of its defense infrastructure it can build at home.
The current agreement, negotiated under President Barack Obama in 2016, committed $38 billion over 10 years. It also accelerated the phasing out of Israel’s ability to spend American military financing on products manufactured in Israel.
Think about the implications. A country that has developed some of the most sophisticated military technology on Earth has been operating under a system that increasingly directs its military purchasing power toward foreign manufacturers rather than its own.
To be fair, American financing has also freed Israeli resources for indigenous research and development, helping Israel build capabilities that benefit both nations. But that advantage comes alongside a genuine cost: a procurement system that reinforces dependence on foreign production.
And manufacturing dependence is only part of the problem. Military assistance gives Washington considerable leverage over Israeli decision-making. A delayed shipment, a threatened restriction, or a disagreement over how Israel conducts a military operation can suddenly become a question of national security.
American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have understandably used that leverage to advance American interests. They are elected to serve the United States, not Israel. But Israel’s leaders are elected to serve Israel. Those interests frequently overlap, but they are not identical. What Washington considers prudent may be dangerous from Jerusalem’s perspective. What Americans can afford to postpone for another six months may be something Israelis believe they must confront tomorrow.
Israel should listen carefully to its allies, especially the United States. But there is an enormous difference between listening to a friend and being dependent on that friend’s approval. A country responsible for the survival of its own people cannot afford to confuse the two.
To understand why this matters so much, we have to remember what Zionism was actually meant to accomplish.
For centuries, Jews lived at the mercy of rulers, governments, empires, and societies over which they had little control. Their security often depended on whether the people in power were friendly, indifferent, or hostile to them. Sometimes Jews prospered. Sometimes they enjoyed remarkable freedom. Sometimes they were welcomed, protected, and even celebrated. And sometimes everything changed.
The lesson of Jewish history is not that every non-Jewish government will betray us. It is that a people who cannot ultimately provide for their own security are always vulnerable to the decisions of others. That was one of Zionism’s most fundamental insights.
The Jewish People did not spend generations struggling to reestablish sovereignty in our ancestral homeland simply to replace dependence on European kings and foreign governments with dependence on American congressional appropriations. We wanted something far more meaningful than a powerful benefactor. We wanted the ability to determine our own future.
And remarkably, Israel’s history demonstrates that this was possible long before American military assistance became central to its defense establishment. In 1948, when the newly declared State of Israel faced invasion, the United States did not rush to supply it with advanced weapons. Washington maintained an arms embargo, and Israel had to find equipment wherever it could.
In the years that followed, France became one of Israel’s most important military suppliers. Then, just before the Six-Day War in 1967, French President Charles de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo of his own. Israel won that war anyway. And it is worth remembering that Israel’s greatest achievements did not come from the luxury of having every resource it needed. They came from a national determination to survive, regardless of whether the outside world was willing to help.
That determination helped produce an extraordinary military, a sophisticated intelligence community, a world-class technology sector, and one of the most innovative societies on Earth. Why should a country built on that spirit continue to organize so much of its national security around foreign assistance?
The Israel of 2026 is not the Israel of 1948.
In 1948, Israel was an impoverished newborn state absorbing Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from across the world, surrounded by enemies and desperately trying to acquire the basic tools of national survival.
Today, Israel is a country of more than 10 million people, with a highly developed economy, globally competitive technology companies, sophisticated universities, major financial institutions, and defense industries whose products are purchased around the world.
The Israeli economy is approaching $720 billion in 2026. The annual $3.8 billion assistance package represents only about half of one percent of that total, although it remains a meaningful sum within Israel’s defense budget.
More revealingly, Israel’s defense exports reached a record $19.2 billion in new agreements in 2025, nearly 30 percent higher than the previous year. The same country that American politicians routinely describe as a recipient of roughly $4 billion in military aid is signing almost five times that amount in annual defense export agreements.
Countries across Europe and Asia are purchasing Israeli missile defense systems, surveillance technology, radar, electronic warfare capabilities, and other advanced equipment because they recognize that Israel has developed technologies their own militaries need.
And beyond defense, American companies are investing staggering sums in Israeli innovation. Just this year, eight Israeli companies have been acquired for a combined $22 billion. In 2025, the combined value of several high-profile Israeli exits was $72 billion, including Google’s $29.5-billion acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networks’ $25-billion acquisition of CyberArk.
An economy capable of producing that kind of value should have the confidence to rethink a military assistance arrangement designed for a much poorer and more vulnerable country. Israel is no longer merely a country that needs advanced military technology. It is one of the countries the world turns to for advanced military technology.
That is an extraordinary transformation, and Israel’s relationship with the United States should reflect it.
There is another reason why ending military aid should not be confused with abandoning the American-Israeli alliance: The United States has compelling reasons to maintain that alliance even without annual assistance.
Israel provides intelligence, technological innovation, military expertise, and a capable regional partner in one of the most strategically important parts of the world. The United States benefits from Israeli capabilities developed under the pressure of real-world threats. Israel benefits from American technology, military production, diplomatic cooperation, and access to the world’s largest economy.
Neither country needs to pretend that this relationship is a charitable enterprise. In fact, replacing military assistance with a more conventional commercial and strategic partnership could make the relationship healthier.
Israel can purchase American aircraft, ammunition, and other military equipment because those products serve its interests. American companies can purchase Israeli defense technology because those products serve theirs. Both governments can invest in joint research and development, cooperate on missile defense, share intelligence, and establish long-term industrial agreements.
The key is that each side should clearly understand what it contributes and what it receives.
Of course, paying for American weapons would not eliminate every form of dependence. Export approvals, production bottlenecks, and access to replacement parts would still matter. Israel will continuously need to develop domestic manufacturing, stockpiles, and alternative supply chains to achieve greater strategic autonomy. But those are arguments for a responsible transition, not permanent dependence.
An alliance becomes stronger when each country is respected for what it brings to the table, rather than defined by what one gives the other. The United States should want an Israel that is economically prosperous, militarily powerful, technologically advanced, and capable of defending itself. And Israel should want exactly the same thing.
For American Jews, there is another important benefit to ending the aid arrangement. They have watched Israel become a convenient political punching bag in debates that often have very little to do with Israel.
Whenever American politicians want to demonstrate their opposition to foreign spending, Israel’s aid package becomes an easy target. Whenever activists want to portray the United States as complicit in everything Israel does, the same $4 billion becomes their favorite talking point. And whenever conspiracy theorists want to claim that Jews somehow control American foreign policy, the aid package becomes their supposed evidence.
The fact that American interests benefit from the arrangement is rarely mentioned. Neither is the fact that much of the military financing is spent in the United States. Instead, the public is offered a deeply distorted image: The American taxpayer works, the Jewish state collects, and American politicians supposedly have little choice in the matter.
Ending the assistance would not end antisemitism. People determined to hate Jews have always found reasons, and they will undoubtedly find new ones. But it would remove one of the most convenient political instruments used to portray Israel as a burden on American society. More importantly, it would change the conversation about what supporting Israel actually means.
For too long, many American Jewish organizations have treated preserving the annual assistance package as one of the defining objectives of pro-Israel advocacy. But support for Israel should not be measured by how much money American taxpayers send to Jerusalem. It should be measured by whether Israel is becoming safer, stronger, more prosperous, more independent, and better positioned to secure the Jewish future. If ending military assistance advances those objectives over the long term, American Jews should welcome it.
There is something liberating about imagining a future in which Jewish communities in America no longer have to organize political campaigns around persuading their fellow citizens to finance another country’s defense. They can advocate for strong diplomatic relations, expanded economic cooperation, technological partnerships, and the shared interests that make the American-Israeli relationship valuable.
And, perhaps most importantly, they can return more of their attention to building vibrant Jewish communities, strengthening Jewish education, and deepening the connection between Jews in America and Israel.
The Jewish People have a history that stretches back thousands of years. Their relationship with the State of Israel should be considerably more meaningful than an annual debate over a line item in the American federal budget.
America has been an extraordinary friend to Israel, and American military support has contributed meaningfully to Israel’s security. Israelis should never forget the American leaders, soldiers, defense workers, and ordinary citizens who have stood with them.
Gratitude, however, is not the same as permanent dependence. In fact, the greatest compliment Israel can pay the United States is to demonstrate that decades of partnership helped create a country strong enough to stand increasingly on its own. And the greatest compliment America can pay Israel is to recognize that it has become that kind of country.
This is what makes Trump’s announcement so significant, regardless of the political calculations behind it. Less than eight decades after the establishment of a Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the president of the world’s most powerful country is saying that the Jewish People have built a nation capable of taking responsibility for its own military purchases. That should be a tremendous source of Jewish pride.
It is easy to forget just how miraculous the existence of Israel really is. In the span of a few generations, a people who had been scattered across the world, repeatedly expelled, persecuted, and massacred built a sovereign country capable of defending itself, absorbing millions of immigrants, producing globally important technologies, and contributing to the security of other nations.
And now that country has the opportunity to take another meaningful step toward genuine independence. Independence means having friends without needing their permission to exist. It means making decisions based on the interests of your own citizens. It means building the capabilities to defend your country even when the international political environment turns against you. Above all, it means understanding that the ultimate responsibility for the survival of the Jewish state belongs to the Jewish state itself.
For generations, Jews dreamed of the day when their destiny would no longer be decided in foreign capitals. The establishment of Israel in 1948 made that dream a political reality. The extraordinary development of the country over the following decades made it an increasingly powerful reality. Now Israel has an opportunity to make it more complete.
The greatest gift America can give Israel is not another $4 billion. It is the chance for Israel to demonstrate that it no longer needs it. And a great achievement of the Jewish state would be to prove that President Trump is right.
Very good points, but let’s also be realistic with the Democrats about to take unfortunately control of over the house and the Senate and with the woke right and their favorite candidateJD Vance, Israel was going to be screwed if it was counting on American military aid. Better to be self-sufficient than to have your defense being part of the American political process.
This was a genius move by Trump, on an Election Day when the Democrats are likely to take control of Congress. This takes all the wind (and legitimacy) out of Dems increasing antipathy towards Israel. They no longer have a legitimate level to pull and anything they do to further isolate Israel will now be seen for exactly what it is - gross hypocrisy and rank antisemitism. 💪 🇮🇱