When US Rep. Hakeem Jeffries ascended the stage at the mass pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC, on November 14, 2023 — a political lifetime ago — he wanted the crowd to know how proud he was that the Biden administration was sending billions of dollars of military aid to Israel.

“Congress will continue to support, in a bipartisan way, the State of Israel and Israel’s unequivocal right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, always and forever,” Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, said at the time. “I strongly support President Biden’s supplemental funding request for Israel, for Ukraine and for humanitarian assistance.”

Those billions — which were approved by Congress months later — came on top of the $38 billion in military aid the US had previously agreed to give Israel from 2019 to 2028. That agreement is expiring soon, and as the US prepares to consider a fresh memorandum of understanding with Israel, Jeffries has a new figure in mind for Israel aid: zero.

“A meaningful change in direction is needed,” Jeffries wrote in a recent letter to his Democratic caucus. “Israel has an advanced economy and is capable of paying for its own sophisticated weapons, as the Prime Minister recently acknowledged.”

To clear up any confusion, this was a pro-Israel letter. Its goal was to urge Democrats against voting to immediately bar all aid to Israel in an upcoming 2027 appropriations bill.

Doing so, he said, would undermine Israel’s fight against terrorist groups that also threaten the US, and would also threaten funding for humanitarian aid.

But Jeffries does agree on the core idea: At some point, soon, US military aid to Israel should end. That statement, by a senior pro-Israel stalwart no less, shows how much the fault lines have shifted for Israel over the past couple of years among Democrats.

A commitment that has long symbolized the US-Israel relationship is quickly falling out of favor. Both parties, once jointly committed to US military aid, now have voices calling to turn off the spigot. Israel knows it, and is preparing accordingly.

A ‘sacrosanct’ pledge

“Our security assistance to Israel is sacrosanct,” Antony Blinken, US president Joe Biden’s secretary of state, told the liberal Israel lobby J Street in late 2022. Blinken, a Democrat, was speaking for what had been a longstanding bipartisan consensus.

Support for US aid to Israel, in fact, was once virtually unanimous. In 2016, Congress passed a resolution expressing support for continued US aid to Israel. The vote was 405-4. Shortly afterward, the Democratic administration of president Barack Obama inked an unprecedented MOU with Israel, providing $3.8 billion per year for 10 years, $800 million more than the previous MOU.

When Donald Trump took office after Obama, he tried........

© The Times of Israel