How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World
My speech to the Ron Paul Institute's April 2026 foreign policy conference
On April 25, I spoke at a conference hosted by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, as part of a lineup that included former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent and former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. Here are both the video of my speech and my remarks as I’d prepared them; some of my words at the podium naturally varied from what I’d written.
I’m going to begin our examination of the US-Israel relationship by taking you to an unlikely location, thousands of miles from either Tel Aviv or Washington. We’re also traveling more than 36 years into the past.
On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded the Republic of Panama to oust its leader, General Manuel Noriega, who had outlived his usefulness to the empire. At that point, it was the largest US military operation by far since the end of the Vietnam War, and it marked the beginning of an era of endless regime-change wars that continues to this day. Before Operation Just Cause was over, 23 American service members lay dead and 325 wounded.
At the time, I was a brand new platoon leader in the Army’s 5th Infantry Division at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Two of my fellow 5th ID soldiers, members of a battalion that was on a rotation to Panama at the time, were killed in the invasion. They died in the assault on the Comandancia – the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces.
I was not part of the invasion, but soon after, my Military Police unit was deployed to Panama to conduct joint patrols of Panama City with the country’s reconstituted and demilitarized security forces.
One afternoon, several weeks into my deployment, I had an interesting conversation with one of our Panamanian officer counterparts – a major. As we stood outside a police station near Tocumen International airport, he told me that, on the night of the invasion, he was at the Comandancia. Knowing it had been the site of one of the invasion’s bloodiest battles, and knowing what he must have experienced as my fellow countrymen attacked, I could only quietly shake my head to reflect my appreciation of the ordeal he must have endured.
And then, without prompting, he said, “We knew you were coming.”
“How?” I asked.
And he replied, “The Israelis told us.”
And that’s how, 36 years ago, under a hot Panamanian sun, my education about the true nature of the US-Israel relationship began.
This is a relationship without parallel in world history. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s the strangest relationship between two countries the world has ever seen.
One in which the largest economic and military power the world has ever known, subordinates itself to a tiny country that would otherwise be almost entirely inconsequential. Not only systematically redistributing its own wealth to that tiny, well-off country, but unconditionally embracing that country’s geopolitical agenda, and taking extreme actions on behalf of that country in a way that causes immense harm to its own interests, while also inflicting death, displacement and despair on millions of innocents.
US support for Israel comes at a staggering, multifaceted price. The steepest costs of this relationship are not measured in dollars, but we’ll start with dollars… mindful that every one of them is borrowed at interest.
When aid is discussed, you’ll hear people refer to a very specific figure: “$3.8 billion a year.” That’s just the beginning. That’s what the United States is committed to giving Israel under the current 10-year “memorandum of understanding.” But thanks to supplemental authorizations, total aid is frequently far above that floor. For example, in the first year after the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, Congress threw on another $8.7 billion.
Israel is routinely the top annual aid recipient – by far (though the Ukraine war briefly disrupted Israel’s winning streak). Going back to World War II, Israel isn’t just the largest beneficiary – it’s received almost double what the next country has. Let’s put that in perspective: Israel represents just 0.12% of the world’s population, but has received upwards of 30% of total aid since World War II.
That’s even crazier when you realize that Israel is among the world’s richest countries. In per capita GDP, it’s 20th in the world, above the likes of Austria, Germany, the UK, Canada and France. And yet Israel typically receives more than double what America gives to all of sub-Saharan Africa combined.
But even that’s a wild understatement, because in addition to what it hands over directly to Israel, the United States spends so much more on behalf of Israel. Since World War II, the second-largest cumulative aid recipient is Egypt. For all intents and purposes, aid to Egypt is aid to Israel, because it’s part of commitments made to seal the Camp David peace deal between Egypt and Israel.
In recent years, the third-place recipient is typically Jordan. Because of a 1994 treaty of their own, you can add them to the Israel account too. Essentially, this money is how the United States rents the obedience of the Egyptians and Jordanians.
Further obscuring things, Uncle Sam often uses bureaucratic tricks to conceal how much aid is being given to Israel. For example, in just six months following Oct 7, the Biden administration made 100 separate arms deals with Israel, each one structured so it was below the dollar threshold that triggers mandatory, detailed reporting to Congress. There are other under-the-counter tactics, like dishing out US weapons from stockpiles in Israel that are supposedly there for America’s use.
All American aid to Israel comes in the form of military aid, which means Israel rakes in more than half the global total. Get this: Because Israel’s share of US aid is embarrassingly high, Israel’s supporters actually push for the United States to increase its military aid to other countries — NOT for Israeli security – just so Israel’s share doesn’t look so bad.
In case you aren’t sufficiently agitated, Israel’s illegal aid comes with sweetheart terms. Every other country receives its aid money in installments spread over the year. Israel gets ALL its money front-loaded at the start of the fiscal year – deposited in a special account at the Fed… where it earns interest.
And here’s a stark reality: every single dollar of aid to Israel violates US law. The Glenn and Symington amendments prohibit aid to countries that have gone nuclear without joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty…you know, that treaty that Iran is a member of.
The biggest costs of the relationship come from something that Donald Trump emphatically promised to end – regime change wars.
Fully adopting Israel’s agenda, US policy puts top priority on ensuring Israel has no powerful rivals in the region. In cases like Egypt and Jordan, subservience is rented. But throughout most of the region, Israeli primacy is pursued by repeatedly weakening and shattering other states so none of them can stand as a potent rival.
At the extreme, that’s accomplished via regime change. Two of the most prominent such campaigns pushed by Israel and its US-based collaborators were the invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, and the long and bloody effort to oust the Assad regime in Syria.
In dollar terms, regime change puts us on a whole new order of magnitude. The Brown University Costs of War Project estimates these two efforts to ensure Israel’s dominance cost America $2.9 trillion.
Part of that is future medical and disability costs for veterans – patriots who signed up to defend America but ended up serving as attack dogs for a tiny country on the other side of the world.
Now we’re turning from dollar costs to incalculable human costs.
In Iraq alone, 4,600 US service-members died and 32,000 were wounded, many of them dreadfully. Then there’s the relentless pace of suicides from soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injuries, PTSD and moral injury – a term that describes the psychological burden of having engaged in, witnessing or failing to prevent acts that betray one’s morality.
Iraq and Syria are at the forefront, but there’ve been many other costly US engagements that spring from the US-Israel relationship. For example, there’s the 1983 truck-bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 US service members. Why were they there? A peacekeeping mission to try to bring order after an Israeli invasion of Lebanon – one marred by ghastly atrocities and massacres.
Most people wouldn’t realize it, but the 2012 attack in post-regime-change Libya – the one that killed a US Ambassador, a foreign service officer and two CIA contractors – has an Israel connection. Why was the ambassador in Benghazi? Why was there a CIA safe house two blocks away? As Seymour Hersh reported, they were shipping weapons from Libya to Syria for the project to oust Assad in service to the Israeli agenda.
In addition to the toll on Americans, these wars have victimized millions of innocent people in faraway lands, inflicting death, displacement and mass suffering on a spectacular scale. In Iraq and Syria, estimates of a half-million dead, with far more believed to have been killed from indirect causes like disease. Millions of refugees displaced, putting stresses on the countries they end up in.
Armed conflict isn’t the only instrument the United States uses to inflict mass suffering on foreign people on Israel’s behalf. When the US isn’t dropping bombs on Israel’s rivals, it’s hammering their societies with economic sanctions.
Far too many people embrace economic sanctions as an “alternative” to war. Make no mistake: as Ron Paul helped me realize, sanctions are just a different form of war.
Conservative estimates of the number of Iraqi children killed by malnutrition and disease brought on by US sanctions start at 100,000. When then-UN ambassador Madeleine Albright was confronted with a high-end estimate of 500,000 children dead, she didn’t even contest the number, but infamously said “we think the price is worth it.”
And for decades now, the innocent people of Iran have been subjected to misery imposed via sanctions. People think of sanctions as something abstract. “Oh, we’re going to put a dent in their GDP.” No, we’re talking about Iranian people having to buy partially decomposed produce, because it’s all they can afford. It’s a young Iranian, aspiring for a career and a family, but who can’t find a job or afford her own apartment. It’s children in cancer treatment centers who can’t get access to medicine, because companies are so paralyzed with fear over being targeted by the US Treasury department that they don’t even attempt to ship medicine there, even though it’s technically an exception from the sanctions.
And now, this year’s newest war of aggression, launched on false pretenses, launched in the middle of negotiations…. a war that, in its opening hours, killed 150 elementary school girls, a war that threatens a global economic catastrophe and starvation…a war that will only pad the US government’s resume as the world’s principal cause of misery going back decades.
All that harm on Israel’s behalf comes back to haunt us here at home. As Dr Paul famously instructed Rudy Giuliani and a GOP presidential debate audience, Americans pay a dear price for US support of Israel, in the form of terrorism inspired by anger and resentment over that support.
9/11 is certainly the biggest example. While Americans were told it was an attack on “our freedom,” the evidence is clear that US backing of Israel was a central motivator:
In his 1996 declaration of war against the United States, bin Laden cited an IDF massacre of 106 Lebanese civilians who sought refuge at a UN compound. He said Muslim youth “hold [the United States] responsible for all the killings…carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance.”
He later said he was inspired to strike American skyscrapers when he witnessed Israel’s destruction of apartment towers in Lebanon.
The 9/11 Commission said mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s rage against the US came from “his violent disagreement with US foreign policy favoring Israel.”
9/11 hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta signed his will on the day Israel began its 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath attack on Lebanon. A friend said Atta was furious and used his will to commit his life to the cause.
An acquaintance of one of the hijacker-pilots in America asked why neither he nor Atta ever laughed. He replied, “How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?”
Were it not for US support of Israel, there almost certainly would have not been a 9/11. While the terrorists had additional motivations, the centrality of the Israel-Palestinian conflict tells me there wouldn’t have been a 9/11. If you don’t have a 9/11, you don’t have a war in Afghanistan: 2,400 US service members killed, 20,000 injured, $2 trillion.
9/11 is just the biggest example. There are many other examples of terrorism motivated by US support of Israel and US military interventions on Israel’s behalf. The first WTC bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid, the 2017 Time Square bomber and the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Tampa… all of them were explicitly motivated by US support of Israel, or resentment over US actions in the region that advance the Israeli agenda.
Now, after what Israel has done to Gaza and Lebanon with US weapons – killing at least 72,000 Palestinians, rendering enormous swathes of territory uninhabitable – we can only shudder to anticipate what may lie ahead.
In addition to threatening Americans lives, the US-Israel relationship has become a menace to American liberties, as the powerful pro-Israel lobby weaponizes our own government against their political opponents.
More than 30 states have made it illegal for the state to do business with people or companies that boycott Israel. In Texas, that led to a bizarre spectacle in which families applying for disaster relief after a hurricane were presented with a form demanding they promise not to boycott Israel.
The Heritage Foundation successfully concocted a sinister scheme by which the US government would characterize pro-Palestinian activists as “effectively members of a terrorist support network,” and then use that characterization to expel them from colleges, deport them, sue them, fire them from their jobs, and exclude them from “open society.”
The new Trump administration ran with it — first trying it out on foreign students. In the most atrocious example of this scheme, a mild-mannered female Tufts University PhD candidate in child development was grabbed off a Boston street, shackled in chains and whisked away to a Louisiana prison. Her “crime”: co-authoring a calmly-written student newspaper op-ed. All she did was urge the university to formally characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and to sell the school’s Israel-associated investments.
It was easier to victimize her because she was an exchange student, but don’t think for a second they don’t have ambitions to abuse Americans that way. Watch what’s happening in other countries. Merely saying “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” can have you end up in jail in places like Germany and Australia.
For years, the principal tactic in the broad campaign to silence Israel critics has been to falsely accuse them of being antisemitic. But what was once just a terrible smear is increasingly being codified into laws and regulations. In particular, we see governing entities around the world adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance “working definition of antisemitism.”
Under that definition, it can be deemed inherently antisemitic to
Simply compare Israel’s actions to those of Nazi Germany
Argue that the State of Israel is an inherently racist endeavor
Call for a new governing arrangement for the 15 million people – half of them Palestinians and half of them Jews – who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
The US Department of Education is now using the IHRA definition to pursue Civil Rights Cases against universities, hammering them with fines ranging from millions up to hundreds of millions of dollars, coercing them into donating to Jewish nonprofits and funding so-called “antisemitism initiatives,” forcing them to adopt the bogus IHRA antisemitism definition themselves when evaluating complaints from Zionist students who take offense, and reviewing and modifying their Middle East studies curricula.
Of course, what’s billed as a fight for civil rights is really a campaign to stamp out criticism of Israel and the US-Israel relationship, from the classroom to the quad.
Those who claim that unwavering support of Israel serves American interests constantly use circular arguments. For example, they’ll say we must support Israel because it’s situated in a region where much of the population is intensely hostile to the United States government — ignoring the fact that most of that hostility springs from resentment over US support of Israel, and particularly how that support enables the ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians.
Reduced to its core, their argument says “The US government has to arm Israel because people in the Middle East hate the US government because it arms Israel.”
When they try to justify US support based on regional geopolitics, Israel’s advocates take you into a real house of mirrors. For example, Americans are told Israel is a critical ally because it serves as a “bulwark” against Iran. Ask them why America needs a bulwark against Iran and they’ll say because Iran is an enemy of Israel. None of that points to an actual American interest.
This circular logic has a particularly perverse effect when Americans are killed by terrorists motivated by anger over US support of Israel. Like clockwork, Israel’s champions run to the nearest microphone and say the attack shows why the United States must support Israel even more.
Israel’s advocates also tell us Israel is a vital intelligence partner. However, time and again, Israel has used bogus intelligence to maneuver our government and our public into acting on Israel’s behalf.
The Iraq war: Who can forget Netanyahu telling the US Congress “there’s no question whatsoever” that Saddam is “feverishly” developing nuclear weapons. Israel has repeatedly fed bogus intel on Iran’s nuclear program, including Israeli-manufactured fake intelligence laundered through organizations like the MEK.
Last summer, during the opening hours of the initial phase of the war we’re in today, Netanyahu came out with a ridiculous claim – that Israel had intelligence that Iran was planning to give nuclear weapons it developed in the future to terrorist proxies. Nobody believed it, and he never said it again. He just threw it out there to see if it would stick.
And now, we’re knee-deep in the consequences of toxic Israeli “intelligence.” In a mid-February briefing that will live in infamy, the Mossad told Trump that Iran’s ballistic missile capability would be gone in a couple weeks, that the Iranian people would rise up against the government, that Kurds in Iraq might invade and open up a ground war, that there was little chance Iran would be able to hit US bases in nearby countries, and that Iran would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Thank you, Vital Intelligence Partner and Greatest Ally in the Region!
As a quick but important aside, this ridiculous war for Israel isn’t just weakening us economically, but also militarily, putting a huge dent in our readiness for other potential conflicts.
Over the past seven weeks, the Pentagon has blown through half of its global Patriot missile inventory. In fact, in just the first four days, the US military fired more Patriot missiles than we’d supplied to Ukraine in four years. The Pentagon has also blown through almost half of its Precision Strike Missiles, half of its THAAD anti-ballistic missiles, and nearly a third of its Tomahawk missiles. That will take years to replenish.
When Israel actually has valuable intelligence, it doesn’t always rush to hand it over. Sometimes, it stops to consider whether Israel might be better off leaving America vulnerable. According to a former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, that’s what happened with the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.
He said the Mossad had learned that Shiite militants were building a massive truck bomb. From its sheer size, they concluded it was most likely going to be used against a US target. However, Ostrovsky said the Mossad figured that a devastating attack would help build American animus against the Arab world, which would be beneficial to Israel. And so, rather than provide details, the Mossad merely provided a vague warning to cover Israel’s back, and let the attack proceed.
Those who claim Israel is a vital intelligence partner ignore the fact that it’s a huge intelligence adversary, spying on America to an extent that’s far beyond what other supposed allies undertake.
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou talks about when he first joined the agency, as was told the FBI had identified 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spying inside the United States – more than the KGB… most of them working to steal military technology secrets.
In 2014, a congressional staffer who received a briefing on the scope of Israeli espionage in the United States said what he learned was “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.”
Speaking of alarming things, for me, perhaps the most alarming of Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance was that the NSA was routinely feeding Israel raw intelligence that included intercepted phone calls and emails of American citizens, with Israel merely promising not to do anything nefarious with it. There’s no reason that ever stopped.
And don’t forget Jonathan Pollard, arguably the most damaging spy in US history. 360 cubic feet of CIA, NSA, State, Pentagon and DOJ documents. And when he was released from prison, mega-GOP donor Sheldon Adelson flew him to Israel on his private jet and Netanyahu greeted him on the tarmac, providing a hero’s welcome and signaling his contempt for the country he plunders and manipulates.
And what kind of intelligence partner was Israel to the men of the USS Liberty? In June 1967, it was the most sophisticated spy ship in the world, operating in international waters of the eastern Mediterranean as the 6-Day War was unfolding. And then the State of Israel launched a devastating attack on that ship, killing 34 and wounding 170. Let’s be clear: This was not some ill-considered shot in the middle of the night. This was a prolonged, multi-wave attack on a clearly-marked ship, in broad daylight, using a succession of bombers and torpedo boats. While the motive is unclear — perhaps a false flag to trigger a US entry into the war, attacking Egypt — what we saw in the aftermath was a disgraceful treatment of the survivors and memory of the men who perished…a sham investigation, completed in haste, undertaken solely to dismiss any suggestion that this was an intentional attack. But the survivors fight on all these years later. One of them, Phil Tourney, is here with us today, and, sir, I’d ask that you stand once again and be recognized.
Turning to fluffier justifications of the US-Israel relationship, one of the most common lines used by Israel and its US collaborators is that we have to support Israel because it’s “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Yes, Israel has elections but it’s ridiculous to hold it out as a beacon of democracy, because the privilege of voting is only enjoyed by maybe half of the people that the Israeli government rules over.
For all the talk of Israeli ambitions to someday annex the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has been ruling over everything between the River and the Sea for 58 years. And the millions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in those territories don’t get a voice in Israel’s exemplary democracy.
Those in the West Bank live under a form of martial law that subjects them to indefinite detention in Israeli military jails with cases adjudicated by military tribunals. They’re politically powerless as they’re preyed upon by violent and depraved settlers, and endure unending humiliations at the hands of IDF soldiers.
We’re also told we have to support Israel because we’re two countries united by shared values. Let’s think about this claim of shared values in light of the absolute horror show that we’ve witnessed in Gaza and Lebanon, keeping in mind that some of the worst allegations come from IDF soldiers themselves.
The systematic building-by-building erasure of towns, villages and cities, farmers fields and olive groves
The purposeful deprivation of food and medicine
2,000-pound bombs used in densely populated areas
Lethal weapons used as crowd control at food distribution points
Drones dropping grenades on civilians wandering into unmarked no-go zones
Palestinians used as human shields to clear buildings
Intentional attacks on ambulance convoys and hospitals
72,562 dead in Gaza – and counting.
Volunteer doctors from around the world astonished and horrified by what they say are unmistakable patterns of deliberate gunfire on civilians, including women and children.
A British surgeon returned from Gaza and recounted odd clusters of identical gunshot wounds to civilians. One day, they’d see an unusual number of headshots, the next day, the abdomen, the next day, the groin. He concluded IDF soldiers were “playing some sort of game.”
The IDF routinely targets journalists. According to Brown University, the Gaza war has killed more journalists than the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War — combined. And another one was just killed Wednesday in Lebanon.
Then there’s the perverted IDF social media trend, in which male soldiers go into homes abandoned by Palestinians fleeing the IDF rampage, and dress up in the women’s underwear they find there.
It isn’t just the IDF — Israeli society is increasingly depraved too. In a poll last summer, 82% of Israeli Jews support the forced expulsion of Gaza’s Palestinian population to other countries, and 56% want to forcibly expel all the Arab citizens of Israel.
Before I share this next poll result, I want to emphasize it wasn’t some throw-away social-media poll. It was a survey conducted by Penn State and Maryland professors and published in Israel’s oldest newspaper.
Listen to this poll question: “When conquering an enemy city, should [the IDF] act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?” Forty-seven percent of Israeli Jews said yes, kill them all. FORTY-SEVEN percent.
Those are not values anyone in this room shares, and, as much as American society has its own flaws, I’m certain it doesn’t mirror the values of most Americans either. From a global relations perspective, it’s hard to think of a worse thing to constantly proclaim that “America Shares Israel’s Values.”
I want to tell you there IS something truly wonderful about the US-Israel relationship: In a major sea change, the American people are now increasingly FED UP WITH IT.
According to a new Pew Research survey, nearly TWO THIRDS of Americans view Israel unfavorably. The proportion that views Israel very unfavorably has tripled.
Though there’s still a big distinction, we’re even moving toward a bipartisan consensus. 80% of Democrats view Israel unfavorably, and 41% of Republicans do. These trends are only going to strengthen: 57% of Republicans under 50 view Israel unfavorably, and 74% of all of Gen Z sympathize more with the Palestinians than Israel.
There’s another remarkable development during this midterm election year. Reacting to that sea change in the electorate, more and more politicians – almost all Democrats at this point – are promising not to accept money from the Israel lobby, and attacking their opponents who do.
At the same time, false accusations of antisemitism — which have been wielded like a dagger against a long line of American patriots —are losing their impact. Accusations that once drew political blood today increasingly draw defiance and outright ridicule.
These accusations have been wielded against me for what I’ve written, and they’ll be wielded against me for what I’ve spoken here today. But I’ve got news for Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Levin, politicians rented by megadonors like Miriam Adelson, and the defamatory Anti-Defamation League — with every maliciously dishonest jab of that dagger, the blade only grows duller.
I began with a tale from my post-invasion deployment to Panama. That wasn’t part of Operation Just Cause. It had another name, one that would prove somehow prophetic for a 22-year-old Army lieutenant who would years later embrace the noninterventionist philosophy of Ron Paul… It was called Operation Promote Liberty.
Now, it’s time for Americans of all political stripes – true conservatives, libertarians, liberals, progressives, socialists, everyone – to unite in a broad coalition to promote liberty from the many evils of the US-Israel relationship:
Liberty from foreign influence, which George Washington called “one of the most baneful foes of republican government”
Liberty from the relentless redistribution of American wealth from this nearly-insolvent empire to one of the most well-off countries on Earth
Liberty for America-First patriots who must no longer be vilified and slandered as antisemites for merely opposing the most entangling of America’s alliances
Liberty from terrorism motivated by American support for Israel and by America’s catastrophic interventions on the part of Israel
And liberty for patriotic American service members, who must no longer be sent to lose their lives, limbs and minds in amoral wars carried out to advance the agenda of an un-democratic, expansionist, apartheid state.
