Israeli Military Frets Cuts to US Military Aid

Cuts May End Pricey Weapons Projects

As the Pentagon and US State Department continue to hype “sequestration” and its minor cuts as the end of the world, Israeli officials are seeing it as primarily about them, fretting the prospect of cuts to the long-standing billions they get annually in military aid.

A lot of Israeli weapons programs would potentially be on the chopping block if a cut came along, since many of the schemes get dropped by Israel’s own military as inefficiently expensive only for the US to re-fund them and see Israel’s political leadership rebrand them as “vital” parts of their arsenal.

Though the losses to Israel’s bottom line are likely to be minimal, if they happen at all. Even that has been hyped by Israel’s lobbyists in DC to the point of frenzy, which is sure to have many in Congress leaping into action to “save” Israel from losing programs their own military didn’t see as worth paying for.

In the end this is helpful for both US hawks and Israel’s own, as they can mutually scare-monger about the prospect of losing programs of little real utility and convince Congress to exempt them from the cuts. Whether this will work remains to be seen, but historically Congress has caved in pretty quickly faced with such lobbying.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.