Netanyahu Says He Wants To End Annual US Military Support For Israel

Authored by Guy Birchall via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on May 10 that he hopes to wean Israel off U.S. military support within a decade.

In 2016, under the Obama administration, the United States agreed to give Israel $38 billion in military assistance. The memorandum of understanding covered U.S. fiscal years 2019–2028.

“I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have,” Netanyahu told CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday.

He said that it is “absolutely” the right time to reset the U.S.–Israeli financial relationship, adding that he doesn’t “want to wait for the next Congress,” but wants to “start now.”

The state of Israel has long enjoyed support from both Republicans and Democrats in the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, particularly on the topic of military aid.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza, in response to the attack by the Hamas-led terrorists against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that left about 1,200 Israelis dead, support from both politicians and the U.S. public has waned.

A Pew Research poll published in March found that some 60 percent of American adults now view Israel unfavorably, with 59 percent saying they had little or no confidence that Netanyahu would do the right thing regarding world affairs.

Both those percentages had risen by seven percentage points from a year earlier.

Netanyahu told 60 Minutes that the deterioration in support for his nation amongst U.S. citizens “correlates almost 100 percent with the geometric rise of social media.”

He said that several countries have “basically manipulated” social media in a way that “hurt us badly,” but added that he did not support censorship.

Netanyahu said these nations used “bot farms with fake addresses” to break American sympathy toward Israel, and rupture the alliance between Washington and Jerusalem, “because they think it’s in their interest.”

“And they do it in a clever way,” he said, offering an example. “You know, it’s like you hear a text message, ‘I’m a, you know, red-blooded Texan. I always supported Israel. But I can’t stand what they’re doing. I’m turning against Israel.’ And then you trace the address to some basement in Pakistan, you know.”

Defending Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu said that the Jewish state had “gone to unbelievable lengths” to prevent civilian casualties.

“We text message millions of text messages to them. Make millions of phone calls to them, pamphlets, leaflets, you name it, okay? And whereas, Hamas and Hezbollah go out of their way to keep their own people in harm’s way, they shoot them,” he said.

Netanyahu added that though there had been civilian casualties in the course of Israel’s actions, “the proportion of civilian casualties, noncombatants to combatants is one of the lowest in the history of modern urban warfare.”

Though the Israeli leader declined to discuss his nation’s future military plans or a timetable for ending the war against Iran, which Israel is prosecuting in conjunction with the United States, he did say that it was only after conflict had broken out that Israeli planners recognized Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz.

“It took a while for them to understand how big that risk is, which they understand now,” Netanyahu said.

He said that if the current Iranian regime was weakened or ousted, he believed it would be “the end of Hezbollah, it’s the end of Hamas, it’s probably the end of the Houthis, because the whole scaffolding of the terrorist proxy network that Iran built collapses.”

When asked whether it was possible to topple the Iranian regime, he said: “Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No.”