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Last month, Responsible Statecraft’s Ben Freeman reported on a provision buried in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to deepen connections between the United States and Israeli militaries.

Section 224, the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”, would synchronize efforts between the the two countries “to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”

“The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East,” wrote Freeman.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced an amendment to remove the section, but it was defeated by a voice vote in the House Armed Services Committee. “The American people are tired of the arrogance and insolence of Prime Minister Netanyahu telling America what we should do,” said the Congress member during the bill’s markup.

The section was also criticized by progressives like Bernie Sanders, who tweeted that the “American people do not want more U.S. military aid to Israel.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary, thanks in no small part to Israel lobby spending, declared that he would introduce an amendment to strike the section.

House Rejects Ro Khanna’s Effort to Block US-Israel Military Integration

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned over the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy and is a co-founder of the political action committee A New Policy, told Mondoweiss that, among other things, the change would enable Israel to steer U.S. foreign policy more directly.

“This integration of the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases would expose our most sensitive technologies to a country — and an industry — with a track record of industrial espionage, and would give Israel leverage over U.S. foreign and defense policy through making us reliant on their supply chain,” Paul told Mondoweiss.

The NDAA provision comes with a legislative backstory. Earlier this year, the United States-Israel Framework for Upgraded Technologies, Unified........

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