The Israeli Prime Minister said he hopes to bring the “financial part” of US military aid to zero.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that he plans to do so “feed” his country to stop American financial aid within the next decade, while blaming social networks “deception” with declining public support for Israel among Americans.
Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid since World War II, having received more than $300 billion in economic and military aid from Washington since 1948.
Under a ten-year agreement signed in 2016, the United States provided $38 billion in military aid to Israel through 2028, including $5 billion for the Iron Dome missile defense system. Overall, US aid accounts for about 16% of the country’s military budget.
In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Netanyahu was asked if it was time for a Jewish state “reexamine and if possible reset” his financial ties to Washington.
“It’s true. I’ve told President Trump this. I’ve told it to our own people. Their jaws are dropping,” he replied.
“I want to reduce to zero the financial support of America, the financial part of the military cooperation that we have,” The Prime Minister said, and said that the process must “start now” and completed “in the next ten years.”
Netanyahu noted that he is well aware of the decline in support for Israel in the United States. A recent Pew poll showed that six in ten Americans have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, up seven percentage points since last year and nearly 20 points since 2022.
The Israeli leader dismissed the notion that a war in Gaza could have “contributed to this negative view of Israel,” blame the change almost entirely on social media.
“Israel is under siege in the media, on the propaganda side, and we have not done well in the propaganda war,” He said. “We have several countries that basically manipulated social media and bot farms with fake addresses, breaking US sympathy for Israel.”
More than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, fueled by the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas. Israel’s military operations in Lebanon and Iran have also caused large numbers of civilian deaths, prompting criticism among the American public and prominent commentators, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens.
In March, US Senator Bernie Sanders presented three resolutions seeking to block nearly $660 million in arms sales to Israel, saying that three-quarters of Democrats and two-thirds of independents oppose Washington sending arms to the country.
