Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), last seen cosplaying as a victim in the West Bank, announced that he would support Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) amendment to eliminate all foreign aid to Israel, “including aid for offensive and defensive weapons like the Iron Dome.”
The self-styled “long-shot” presidential candidate apparently did not bother to read the amendment and was later forced to update his statement to acknowledge that Massie’s proposal would not affect funding for Iron Dome or other defensive systems.
Nevertheless, the Marxist faction of the Democratic Party has long argued that Iron Dome funding should be withdrawn. In 2021, as missiles rained down on Israel, its members nearly succeeded in stripping Iron Dome funding from a defense bill.
I am on record arguing that Israel should phase out U.S. aid for its own good. Benjamin Netanyahu has made that case for decades. Most voters probably do not understand that American officials and defense manufacturers are among those most opposed to severing the relationship, since much of the funding is ultimately spent with U.S. companies.
But if there is one line item, one system, that unquestionably offers enormous benefits to the United States, it is the Iron Dome.
The most common argument against defunding Iron Dome is that it is a purely defensive system that saves the lives of Jewish and Arab Israelis. That is true enough. It is also clear that Khanna, or the people he is trying to impress, would prefer to see far more Israeli casualties.
But Israeli defense technology also saves countless civilian lives among Israel’s enemies. Without the Iron Dome, Israel would respond preemptively and with devastating force to even the threat of a missile launch. Because Israel’s enemies deliberately place military installations and launch sites in or near schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods, such a response would create a brutal and recurring humanitarian crisis.
In the three years preceding Oct. 7, 2023, when there were no Israeli troops in Gaza, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at civilian areas in Israel. Palestinians tore down streetlight poles and dug up water pipes intended for civilian use to manufacture rocket casings. They produced tens of thousands of them.
On Oct. 7, Hamas launched roughly 5,000 rockets at Israel. Had the attack involved only projectiles rather than the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians, Gaza likely would have escaped much of the destruction that followed. After all, during the 11-day war in 2021, when Hamas launched roughly 400 rockets per day, Israel did not launch a ground invasion.
As we know, however, the Squad wing of the Democratic Party does not particularly care about Muslim lives either. The obsession with the Jewish state is merely an expression of “mimetic faddishness,” as Jonah Goldberg has noted.
More consequentially, if Israel believed its defenses could be overwhelmed by Turkish, Iranian, or Hezbollah missiles, it would almost certainly strike first.
Beyond all of that, the Iron Dome has already benefited the United States.
Last month, the Marines successfully tested a new missile-interception system in Guam. Raytheon adapted proven Israeli Iron Dome technology to help develop the American “Golden Shield,” described as “a milestone for a next-generation capability designed for the Pacific theater.”
You know which of our geopolitical adversaries operates in the Pacific theater, right?
The Pentagon and Israel have shared technology and deployed Israeli-designed defensive batteries at forward bases for years to reduce the threat from drones and missiles.
THE CHEAP THEATRICS OF REP. RO KHANNA (D-WEST BANK)
Israel is not Egypt or Saudi Arabia. The aid relationship is not one-way. The United States receives valuable defense technology and research in missile, drone, cyber, and hypersonic defense. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel tested weaponry against Soviet-supplied Arab armies. Today, it fights Iranian forces equipped with Chinese and Russian weapons.
Israel is an economic powerhouse for a country of its size, but it still cannot manufacture and deploy these systems at the scale of a superpower. Allowing a political obsession with Israel, fueled by a host of unhinged conspiracy theories, to undermine a vital, longstanding alliance merely to appease an antisemitic activist base is a terrible idea. It also shows that Khanna does not have America’s best interests in mind, only his own.