Is It Time for Israel to Break Free from America?

The question was always theoretical. It isn't anymore.

When a sitting American president publicly tells the world that Israel would not exist without him, calls the Israeli prime minister "crazy" on the record, stops the Israeli Air Force one hour before a massive Iran strike to protect his own diplomatic legacy, signs a secret deal with Iran that Israel's own leadership has not been allowed to fully read, threatens to let Syria handle Hezbollah, and then dresses down Netanyahu at a G7 summit for the cameras, it is time to ask the question that Israel has always been too cautious, too grateful, or too financially dependent to ask out loud.

What would it actually cost us to be free?

Not rhetorically free. Actually free. Free to make the military decisions our commanders believe are right. Free to strike when our pilots are briefed and our planes are ready. Free to define our own red lines instead of waiting for a phone call from Washington to tell us where they are.

Let's be honest about what the golden handcuffs actually are, because the conversation deserves honesty. The United States provides Israel approximately $3.8 billion per year in military assistance - $3.3 billion in weapons financing and $500 million annually for missile defense systems including Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow. Since October 7, 2023, that number has ballooned to somewhere between $16 and $22 billion in additional emergency assistance. Since Israel's founding, the United States has provided over $300 billion in total aid, adjusted for inflation. Israel is, by a significant margin, the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign aid since World War II.

That is real money. And what it buys is also real. Virtually every Israeli fighter jet, the F-35s that flew over Iran, the F-15s that have defined the IAF's strike capability for decades, was purchased with American funds from American manufacturers. Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit are world-class defense companies. But they do not build stealth fighters or long-range bombers. As one senior Israeli defense official told Calcalist with uncomfortable candor: "The only reason we have them is because the Americans give them to us, for free. We need them." A $3 billion deal for a third F-35 squadron, signed earlier this year, depends on that relationship continuing.

Lose the relationship, lose the planes. It is that simple, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being straight with you.

But here is what the other side of the ledger looks like, and it needs to be said just as plainly.

The current MOU, signed under Obama and expiring in 2028, requires that every dollar of American aid be spent with American defense companies. Not one shekel can be redirected to Israeli manufacturers, a condition that was tightened progressively over the agreement's life, from allowing 26% local spending down to zero. In other words, the aid does not build Israeli defense independence. It builds American defense industry dependency, and it does so by design. Every F-35 Israel flies is a jet it cannot replace from its own production lines. Every Iron Dome interceptor funded by Washington is one that could, in theory, not be replenished if the political winds change.

And the political winds are changing. Not just under Trump. The Democratic Party has moved measurably against military aid to Israel. A bill that once passed the House with nine dissenting votes now faces a growing caucus of opponents. The bipartisan consensus that made the relationship feel permanent is eroding from one direction even as Trump erodes it from another.

Netanyahu himself has begun saying what needs to be said, telling 60 Minutes in May: "Let's start now and do it over the next decade. I don't want to wait for the next Congress." Pro-Israel Republican Congressman Marlin Stutzman introduced a resolution in June calling for the $3.8 billion in annual aid to be replaced with a direct purchasing partnership, Israel buying what it needs with its own money, on its own terms, without strings. Israel's defense budget has already skyrocketed to NIS 144 billion and is climbing. The economy can absorb a transition, especially a phased one.

What Israel would gain from genuine independence is not just financial. It is strategic. It is the ability to make the call at 1 p.m. without waiting to see if Washington picks up the phone. It is the ability to look an enemy in the eye and not have to calculate whether the American president is currently in a good mood. It is the restoration of the principle, stated so clearly by Ben-Gurion and repeated by every serious Israeli strategist since, that Jewish sovereignty means Jewish decision-making. Not American permission. Not Qatari mediation. Not a prerecorded phone call from Evian-les-Bains telling us to be "more responsible."

The path is not simple and it is not fast. F-35 dependency cannot be unwound in a year or five. Missile defense cooperation cannot be severed without consequence. The intelligence-sharing relationshipm arguably the most valuable and least discussed element of the bilateral alliance, has genuine strategic worth that transcends any dollar figure. These things matter and they would need to be rebuilt, redirected, or replaced.

But the conversation is overdue. The idea that Israel must accept public humiliation, operational interference, and secret deals with its most dangerous enemy as the price of American friendship is not a sustainable strategic posture. It is not even friendship. It is, as this week has made painfully clear, something closer to managed dependence - and the manager is losing patience.

Israel was not created by American generosity. It was created by Jewish necessity. It has survived every threat thrown at it not because Washington approved but because Israelis fought, built, sacrificed, and refused. The country that launched Entebbe without asking permission, that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 over American objections, that built its own nuclear deterrent in the desert while the world looked away, that country has the capacity, the ingenuity, and the right to chart its own course.

The golden handcuffs are becoming a leash. It is time to have the conversation about taking them off.