![Pro-Palestinian protesters prepare to march in Union Park in Chicago before the start of the Democratic National Convention](https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/israel-1.jpg?resize=1000%2C667&ssl=1)
By Dov Waxman
The Democratic National Convention has been packed with prominent speakers and musical interludes that all focus on unity and moving forward into a more hopeful future.
But this cheerfulness is shadowed by a split within the Democratic Party related to Israel’s war in Gaza. There have been calls by some delegates for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to support a halt in U.S. military aid to Israel.
While the pro-Palestinian protests surrounding the convention have been much smaller than some expected, Chicago police arrested at least 72 pro-Palestinian protesters on Aug. 20, 2024.
These activists are calling for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, which the Democratic Party’s new national platform does not include.
The Conversation U.S.’s politics editor Amy Lieberman spoke with Dov Waxman, a scholar of Israel studies, to better understand what is behind the U.S.’s relationship with Israel and the strategic reasons why an arms embargo is, at best, a remote possibility.
![A group of people stand close together and wear mostly pink, with pink and white checkered scarves and hold signs and wave a flag. One sign says 'Free Gaza' and another says 'Funding genocide is weird, too.'](https://i0.wp.com/images.theconversation.com/files/614939/original/file-20240821-18-4nx3fe.jpg?ssl=1)
Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Do you think that Kamala Harris is likely to agree with the calls for an arms embargo on Israel?
I do not think she will agree with those calling for an arms embargo on Israel.
For one thing, as vice president and before that as a senator, Kamala Harris has consistently supported providing U.S. military aid to Israel. This position is typical of most Democratic Party members, as well as most Republicans.
Opponents of U.S. military aid to Israel often argue that this help is solely a function of domestic politics and reflects the power of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly AIPAC. I think that this view is myopic and exaggerates the power of the pro-Israel lobby. It ignores the fact that the U.S. has its own economic and strategic reasons for supplying that military aid. It is a U.S. national interest, not simply a favor for Israel, and that’s why there is broad, bipartisan support for continuing this military aid.
Although an arms embargo is unrealistic, there are other things short of an arms embargo, like conditioning or restricting military aid, which are more realistic – and there is a growing debate among Democratic lawmakers over that.
What are some of the ways that U.S. aid to Israel helps the U.S. domestically?
When the U.S. gives military aid to Israel, the Israeli government is not putting that money in its pocket. The vast majority of the money that the U.S. allocates to Israel each year must be spent on American weapons. That is true, in general, for American military aid to other countries, such as Ukraine.
Those American weapons that Israel purchases are produced in factories across the U.S. So, many American lawmakers have an interest in sustaining that aid because that money ends up flowing into their own states and providing local jobs.
What has U.S. aid to Israel historically been like, before the Gaza war?
Historically, Israel has received more U.S. foreign aid than any other country. In total, the U.S. has provided Israel with over US$300 billion, with this amount adjusted for inflation.
Initially, for the first decade after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the U.S. provided Israel with only economic aid, but, starting in the 1960s during the Kennedy administration, it began providing military aid as well. The U.S. now gives only military aid to Israel.
After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel demonstrated its ability to decisively defeat Soviet allies in the region, the U.S. significantly increased its military aid to Israel. This was a turning point in many ways for the U.S.-Israel relationship, because since then the U.S. has seen Israel as a valuable ally.
Another major increase in U.S. military aid to Israel occurred under the Nixon administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is worth noting because Nixon was not a great friend of Jewish people. But he increased U.S. aid to Israel because of its strategic interest to the U.S.
Since then, U.S. military aid has continued to steadily increase over the years, and in the past year it has risen following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.
I think the primary reason for this continuous military assistance to Israel, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is that it serves U.S. national interests.
How does U.S. aid to Israel serve America’s national interests?
A militarily strong Israel helps the U.S. counter their common enemies.
During the Cold War, Israel helped contain the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East. For example, after Israel defeated Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 wars, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat defected from a Soviet alliance to ally with the U.S., ushering in a long period of American hegemony in the region.
After the Soviet threat receded after the Cold War, Israel’s strategic value to the U.S. diminished. But it rose again following the 9/11 terrorist attacks because of Israel’s long experience in counterterrorism and its vaunted intelligence-gathering capabilities.
More recently, over the past decade or so, Israel has worked with the U.S. to counter the expansion of Iranian influence in the region and to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Although the two allies have disagreed over tactics – particularly over the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran – they both regard Iran’s growing power in the region as the greatest threat to regional stability, and they both want to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. For the U.S., a militarily strong Israel is seen as necessary to prevent Iranian expansionism.
![A man wears a suit and points to a picture that shows a bomb that says 'final stage' with a red line near it.](https://i0.wp.com/images.theconversation.com/files/614941/original/file-20240821-15-pahoed.jpg?ssl=1)
Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images
Israel not only has the most powerful military in the region, it is also the only long-standing democracy there – albeit a seriously flawed one, in my view. So, from the U.S.’s perspective, Israel can help the U.S. achieve its strategic goals in the region without the American military actually having to put boots on the ground and do so itself. Israel is also perceived as a more reliable and less problematic ally than the U.S.’s other major allies in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Ultimately, although Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its war in Gaza have alienated and angered many Democrats, particularly progressives, most Democratic policymakers, including Harris, still believe that supporting Israel is in the interests of the U.S. And providing Israel with military aid is still seen as the best way for the United States to do that.
The real question is whether the U.S. should exercise greater oversight or control over how American weaponry can be used.
Dov Waxman is Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Professor of Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
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Joe D says
Israel for generations has been a stabilizing force in a Middle Eastern region frequently HOSTILE to American interests. Loss of Israel as a US Ali, could encourage other Arab nations to make military and political alliances with other Countries hostile to US interests (Russia and China).
Unfortunately the current Israeli President is a re-elected ULTRA CONSERVATIVE, who has taken unpopular steps within his own country to weaken the Israeli Courts’ power to interpret or intervene to challenge the Israeli President’s power…it was NOT a popular move with Israeli citizens. All this was happening BEFORE the UNPROVOKED attack on Israel by Hamas last year. Now he has used this attack to bolster support for his views and conservative reforms in the Israeli government.
Although Israel has the right to defend itself against HAMAS, it doesn’t have the right to exterminate the Palestinian people in the crossfire during that process.
It doesn’t help that HAMAS has notoriously and Continually placed its Military Command Centers in or around Schools, Hospitals, long-standing resettlement centers….essentially using their own people as HUMAN SHIELDS. Video and other DOCUMENTATION have shown this to be TRUE.
We are now at an impasse between Israeli leadership who do not want to have to deal with other Hamas attacks in the future, and a Palestinian CIVILIAN population, who just wants the CARNAGE to be over!
International mediators are trying to hammer out a temporary ceasefire…hopefully leading to a PERMANENT ceasefire. Israel has agreed to the latest international proposal…Hamas has as of yet (to the best of my knowledge), NOT RESPONDED.
The biggest loser in this political tug of war (literally), is the Palestinian PEOPLE, who have had their homes, livelihood, and their very LIVES destroyed by being caught in the crossfire of these two WARING factions.
Soon, there won’t be anything left of Palestine to recover…my PERSONAL CONCERN, is that unofficially that’s what the Israeli President WANTS.
The US is walking a tightrope, not wanting to lose one of the biggest Middle East allies it has, without allowing the incitement of a REGIONAL Middle East War, that could drag the US into DIRECT conflict, and not just MILITARY AID.
Hank says
No it won’t, but holding Iran responsible for funding Hamas and other terror organizations is s good place to start.
Watcher says
The distinction that many are unwilling to contemplate/accept/and come to terms with, is that the current Israel was created by the Rothschild family. The current state of Israel was created on May 14, 1948, subsequent to the Balfour Declaration of Nov 2, 1917, in which The Rothschild family was addressed to develop what they have created today, a Zionist society. There’s no such thing as Gaza. Theres no such thing as Israel. The state we have is a Rothschild Production and not the Israel of the bible. The star on their flag isn’t the “star of David”. It’s the star of Rempham (Moloch). The ‘Rothschild’ family name was originally ‘Bauer’ before changing it, along with the family crest in Germany before Israel was formed as a Nation in 1948. The Rothschilds openly take credit for creating Israel.
Ray W. says
I have questions about the current state of Iranian politics, given the fact that Iran’s last president, considered a hardliner, died in a recent helicopter crash in the mountains of northwest Iran.
In a snap election required by Iranian law under the circumstances, three hardliners ran against one perceived moderate, who emerged from the first election with less than 50% of the vote. In the ensuing runoff, he won, if only barely: 53-47%.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, born in 1954, served as a conscript in the Shah’s army. Inspired to a career in medicine, he graduated from medical school during the Iran-Iraq War, which began in 1980; he specializes in cardiac surgery. Like many of today’s Iranian political leaders, whether moderate or hardliner, he came of age during a brutal eight-year war that cost hundreds of thousands of Iranian youths their lives. It cannot be understated that Iran threw everything it had at the Iraqi invasion, yet it never used chemical weapons. After eight bloody years, Iran was forced to sue for peace after Iraq began dropping chemical weapons from aircraft on its cities, instead of via artillery shells, yet Iran never used chemical weapons. President Pezeshkian, a doctor, had to have seen the widespread death caused by the Iraqi use of chemical weapons during that war. Who knows his position on weapons of mass destruction? Other studies I found inform me that Iran went so far as to develope the precursor chemicals for chemical weapons, but the program never took the next step to full development of chemical weapons, as Iran’s Ayatollah, when asked permission to assemble the weapons, issued an oral fatwah against the use of all such poisons, as such weapons fit the category of the Quran’s proscription against use of weapons of mass destruction, as he interpreted it.
So, the question remains: What type of President now holds the executive share of political power in Iran, subject, as always, to the final say by the current Ayatollah? What will be the official policy of that government? Is he a pragmatist? A zealous reactionary? Somewhere in between? I certainly don’t know. But I do know that an entire generation of Iranians came of age in a bloody war they lost after eight years of fighting. Three years later, American forces and our allies took tens of hours to rout that same Iraqi army as it ejected the Iraqis from Kuwait. Iran’s military establishment knows intuitively the difference from their forces and ours, then and now, and the fact that today’s small Ukrainian army, with Western weapons, is holding off Iran’s northern neighbor cannot help but reinforce that intuitive knowledge.
Iran’s past president died when a 1979 Bell helicopter crashed for as yet unrevealed reasons. Their president was flying in a 35-year-old helicopter. Not even Flagler County waits that long to replace helicopters. Metal fatigue has to be a subject of inquiry as to why the helicopter crashed.
President Pezeshkian purportedly ran on a policy of reopening political connections with the West, including with America. He advocated for a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with the West in exchange for the lessening of economic restrictions. Apparently, a significant number of the Iranian people were receptive to that policy point.
One of the several documents I read was a 2017 policy paper by Katariina Simonen, a Finnish lawyer specializing in International Law, written at the request of and for use by her government. She titled it: “Chemical Weapons, Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamic Law.”
Ms. Simonen’s argument to her government was that the Ayatollah repeatedly and openly condemned the use of any weapon of mass destruction, either poison, chemical or nuclear, based on a verse in the Quran: “Fight those who fight against you, but do not transgress limits, for God loves not the transgressor.” The Ayatollah, according to her assessment, repeatedly referred to the Iraqi use of chemical weapons during the war as “crimes against Islam.” She described the Ayatollah as the “ruling jurist”, the “Supreme Leader”, and the “Guardian” of Shia Islamic law. As such, the Ayatollah has the final say in all legal matters, and his say was that Islam forbids weapons of mass destruction.
In a paper on the subject of Islam and weapons of mass destruction published shortly before Ms. Simonen’s paper, the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued his own fatwah against weapons of mass destruction. In that paper, the author argued that Islam has a “law on just warfare”, with four elements: 1. Discrimination in targeting to exclude civilians. 2. Non-use of poison. 3. Prohibition on polluting the environment. 4. Prohibition on causing unnecessary suffering. Ms. Simonen repeated the four prescriptions of just Islamic warfare in her paper to the Finnish government.
I am not arguing that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon. Two fatwahs do not a permanent proscription make. People evolve. Minds change. But it is no secret that enriching uranium for medical purposes, such as cancer treatments, involves processing to a 3% level, and that enriching uranium for energy purposes involves processing to a 20% level. Nuclear fuel requires enrichment to 90%. If Iranian technicians already know how to enrich uranium for medical and energy purposes, there can be no doubt that their scientists also know how to enrich uranium to weapons-grade.
A third paper reveals that the U.S. provided nuclear technology to Iran during the Shah’s regime, including plans for nuclear electricity reactors. Indeed, a supply of medical-grade uranium was delivered to the Shah’s medical community. That supply is long gone and current and long-standing sanctions by the West prohibit the sale of medical-grade uranium to Iran even for treatment of cancer. According to that source, thousands of Iranians suffer from cancer and cannot receive commonly accepted radiation therapies.
Make of this what you will.