Laura Loomer has never been subtle about her support for Israel. Just a few months ago, she described the diminutive state as a “wall protecting the U.S. from mass Islamic invasion.” So it came as something of a surprise last week when, seemingly out of nowhere, Loomer called for the U.S. to end all aid to Israel.
But her logic is fairly straightforward. “Cut the US aid, and Israel becomes fully sovereign,” she wrote on X. In Loomer’s view, the financial support amounts to “golden handcuffs” — a needless restriction on Israeli actions that also acts as a “constant source of agitation” in the U.S. “America First means liberation from being a global baby sitter,” she argued. “Once the aid to Israel ends, the Pentagon’s leash comes off.”
A few days later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that he agreed with Loomer’s assessment. Asked if he would support an end to aid, Netanyahu argued that “it’s time to assure that Israel is independent.”
“I want to make our arms industry independent, totally as independent as possible,” he said. “My direction is greater independence, and I'll have something to say about that very soon.”
The shift in language among some Israeli officials and their allies comes at a potential turning point in U.S.-Israel relations. The American public has in recent years grown far more skeptical of U.S. aid to Israel, which currently amounts to $3.8 billion annually, in addition to roughly $9 billion in emergency funding since Oct. 7. In fact, a plurality of Americans now say it’s time to turn off the spigot. Some oppose the aid on humanitarian grounds, while others argue that it clashes with the America First ethos now dominant on the right. These voices are rapidly becoming too loud for political elites to ignore.
To better understand these changes, RS spoke to a range of experts on the U.S.-Israel relationship. All agreed that there are significant obstacles to cutting off U.S. aid to Israel. But they also agreed that an eventual end to the aid has become inevitable. The question remaining is when, exactly, that moment will come.
Adding to the urgency of this discussion is the fact that the U.S. and Israel are now in talks about a new long-term military aid package, with the previous one set to expire in 2028. Scattered reports indicate that Netanyahu, despite all his talk about independence, may try to use the opportunity to lock in American aid for another 20 years. But there is also a real possibility that such a deal could be the final U.S. commitment to funding Israel’s military.
Netanyahu and his allies “understand that this is an issue for the political class in the U.S.,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian Authority and a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. “Maybe they see the writing on the wall and they say, ‘We got to get out ahead of this, and we'll do it on our terms. We'll phase it out.’”
Slouching toward a ‘clean break’
It’s probably safe to say that, these days, most advocates of cutting off aid to Israel are motivated by anger at Israeli policies in Gaza. But skepticism toward aid has never been limited to Israel’s critics.
Back in 1996, a now-defunct Israeli think tank with close ties to pro-Israel analysts in the United States carried out a study group to provide advice to Netanyahu, then serving in his first stint as prime minister. The resulting policy paper argued that Israel must make a “clean break” from the past and reorient its relationship with the U.S. toward “self-reliance, maturity and mutuality.” Like Loomer today, the study group argued that this shift would “grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.”
The report recommended an end to U.S. economic aid to Israel, though it stopped short of suggesting an end to military aid. And Netanyahu largely took this advice. Just a month after the paper was written, Netanyahu told Congress that Israel would “begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to Israel” — a process that was complete by 2007.
Military aid has always been more sensitive given Israel’s intense sense of threat. But that taboo has broken down in recent years as tensions have grown in the U.S.-Israel relationship. And this process began even before Oct. 7.
Back in mid-2023, a wide range of pro-Israel writers and politicians debated the future of aid in a special collection for Tablet Magazine, a right-wing American outlet that has often expressed support for Netanyahu and his Likud Party. The primary argument for getting rid of aid boiled down to one phrase: freedom of action.
In the view of many pro-Israel analysts, the aid provided an excuse for the U.S. to interfere in Israeli decision-making and relegated Israel to a sort of junior partner status. While politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) balked at the idea of ending the aid, some analysts argued that the change would also redound to the benefit of the U.S.
One such analyst was Raphael BenLevi, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security in Jerusalem. Citing the work of Elbridge Colby, who now holds an influential position at the Pentagon, BenLevi wrote that “it is increasingly difficult for Washington to justify spending a disproportionate share of military aid and political capital in the Middle East when its greatest security challenges are elsewhere.”
BenLevi believes that arguments for ending aid have only gotten stronger in the past two years. “Israel has done a lot to improve its security environment,” he told RS. It will be easier for Israel to consolidate its victories against Hezbollah and Iran, BenLevi argued, if it has more freedom to act against them. (In this sense, removing the aid could wind up hurting Israel’s critics rather than helping their cause, especially given that the U.S. would almost certainly continue selling weapons to Israel.)
Support for ending aid has even gained currency among long-time practitioners in Washington. Aaron David Miller, who spent 15 years working on Israeli-Palestinian issues at the State Department, argued that an end to aid should not be viewed in “punitive terms.” There’s “a compelling case to be made, both from the U.S. and Israeli point of view, that reducing Israel's dependence on the United States, by and large, is healthy and would strengthen, not weaken, the relationship,” Miller told RS.
Of course, obstacles to ending the aid remain formidable. While presidents get to negotiate the exact terms of the aid, Congress is still responsible for appropriating the funds to make it happen. So if you get rid of the aid, then you also eliminate the single most important way for pro-Israel lawmakers to show their support. “All of the other aspects of the relationship are kind of invisible,” Elgindy said. “Taking Israel out of congressional politics is not something I think folks will welcome on the Hill.”
As Elgindy explained, an end to aid would also remove a cornerstone issue for powerful pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. “Is there a need for AIPAC if there's no military aid package?” he asked. “It is the lightning rod issue that they lobby on and that Congress members fundraise off of.” But, setting aside the issue of AIPAC in particular, some Israeli analysts view sidelining Congress as a win on balance. Ending aid would be “important in making Israel less of a hot-button political issue in the United States and in Congress specifically,” BenLevi said.
Another possible barrier to ending aid is Trump himself. As Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute noted, Trump is by all accounts a pro-Israel president, and he has shown no willingness to restructure America’s relationship with the country. But Trump may try to get creative in order to get the MAGA movement off his back on this issue.
This creativity could take several forms. “I could see a scenario in which maybe they cut the aid in half and try to present that as a win to the wing of the party that's becoming more critical [of Israel], while also telling Israel everything will continue, business as usual,” Hoffman said. Or, as Miller told RS, the Trump administration could start the process of developing a new set of bilateral agreements that would “cement the relationship” by creating new partnerships even as direct financial aid is phased out.
The Heritage Foundation drew sharp criticism earlier this year when it made a proposal to cut off aid to Israel by 2047 in an unpublished report. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., who were scheduled to speak at a launch event for the project, pulled out after learning about details of the proposal. But some Israeli officials have apparently started to come around to the idea. “Definitely on the political echelon, and also within the defense establishment and bureaucracy, everyone is much more open to going in this direction” than they were even a few years ago, BenLevi said.
Indeed, proposals have already started to circulate in Israeli media about how this could unfold. A source told Israel Hayom, a right-wing Israeli newspaper, that Israel’s leaders are open to “thinking outside the box” and moving from an aid-based model to one focused on bilateral cooperation. “It may be time to move from an aid model to something different,” an unnamed senior Israeli official told the outlet.
These leaks provide an early taste of the PR battle that will accompany the debate over phasing out aid. Pro-Israel voices will likely argue that this represents a maturing of the U.S.-Israel relationship — one that will put both countries on a more even footing and do away with the idea of a patron-client relationship.
But Israel’s critics will make the case that an end to aid reflects a new reality in which the U.S.-Israel relationship is “not so ironclad” anymore, Elgindy said. “It's not guaranteed anymore to be this unshakable,” he told RS. “It certainly won't be unconditional the way it has been over the past 10 to 15 years.”
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