Over the weekend, some progressive pundits declared victory as influential liberal zionist organization J Street appeared to announce a major break with the pro-Israel consensus in the Democratic Party. The organization said on Twitter/X it is “calling for the U.S. to end unconditional financial military subsidies to Israel and to move towards a relationship where we treat Israel like any other ally.”
“’No More Exceptions’: J Street Backs Phasing Out All U.S. Aid to Israel by 2028,” reads a Haaretz headline. “However you feel about J Street, anyone who is still saying that they are indistinguishable from AIPAC is either unintelligent or a bad faith actor,” wrote pollster Adam Carlson. “Democrats [are] coalescing around ending military aid to Israel,” boasted Executive Vice President of Center for International Policy Matt Duss.
At first glance, this move may seem like a major shift left for the liberal think tank and the broader Democratic Party consensus around Israel. But upon closer inspection, it’s clear this talking point is mostly a sieve, a PR tactic that provides a pseudo-break from Israel but does little to alter the material reality of apartheid and genocide, all while buying time for a Democratic leadership increasingly at odds with their base—71% of whom now support cutting off military aid to Israel.
This narrative that J Street and leading Democrats more broadly are all getting behind “cutting military aid,” while strictly accurate under certain interpretations of the word “aid,” is deeply misleading. The effort is explicitly aligned with a broader right-wing program to move from direct funding of the military to “co-development and co-production of weapons,” and is designed to provide zionist Democrats a superficially appealing talking point that looks Israel-critical, while doing nothing to materially change the status quo.
The move to “phase out” direct US subsidizing of the Israel military isn’t just friendly with the Israeli and US right wing’s vision of US and Israeli “security cooperation” in the coming years: It comes directly from them. This pivot was laid four months ago by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Senator Lindsey Graham, and planned by far-right think tanks Foundation for Defence of Democracies and Heritage Foundation. Netanyahu told the Economist on Jan. 9 that he wants to “taper off” formal US military funding within ten years, an argument echoed by Graham, who called for doing so on a much quicker timeline.
The effort is explicitly aligned with a broader right-wing program to move from direct funding of the military to “co-development and co-production of weapons,” and is designed to provide zionist Democrats a superficially appealing talking point that looks Israel-critical, while doing nothing to materially change the status quo.
As progressive think tank IMEU noted in their January 2026 breakdown of this new arrangement, “Israel’s proposal to end US military funding is actually designed to further enmesh the US in its oppression of Palestinians”:
…the emerging plan is to substitute formal military funding–known as Foreign Military Financing–with greater US taxpayer-funded co-development and co-production of weapons with Israel. This development would further enmesh the US in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and by extending the co-development and co-production of weapons into the spheres of cyber, AI, border, and drones”.
J Street, for its part, is not shy about the fact that this is an approach endorsed by Netanyahu and both the Israeli and American right wing. J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami explicitly cited their approval when he rolled out their new plan, writing that “Netanyahu and Graham are not alone in this view. For years, analysts and policymakers across the political spectrum have been arguing that Israel no longer needs generous economic subsidies.” This was followed up by an op-ed in the Forward by Ben Ami where he reassured readers that “…phasing out US subsidies for Israel’s military will strengthen [the Israeli-US] alliance—not end it.”
To Ben Ami’s warped credit, he explicitly frames the move as a PR tactic to avoid anti-Israel sentiment stateside while “strengthening” the military partnership. “Supporters of Israel,” he writes, “should welcome the development. The benefits of disproportionately large financial assistance today are outweighed by the damage to Israel when that financial support becomes a divisive wedge in American politics.”
Translation: this “phasing out of aid” attempts to remove “military aid” from US political debates, rendering it as a non sequitur and providing Democrats a rhetorical dodge, all while further entrenching military support and avoiding the increased humanitarian scrutiny required of direct “assistance” (more on this later).
As polls show Democratic support, and support more broadly, for Israel is perspicuously tanking there’s an urgent need for controlled opposition—something, like the “peace process” or “ceasefire talks” before it, that liberals can point to that maintains the status quo while appearing vaguely humanitarian and credible.
Enter: the J Street curated and Netanyahu approved “I support cutting off military aid to Israel” talking point.
This makes sense. J Street is a self-avowed “pro-Israel” organization. They are effectively taking an agreed-upon security consensus in Israel and attempting to sell it to liberal audiences, while providing cover for Democrats who need to bring their increasingly anti-Israel base some type of talking point, any taking point, that will give them the appearance of “breaking from Israel” without the political downsides of actually doing so. This is part of a trend in professional Democratic circles focusing on perception management over Israel, as I documented last summer, that prioritizes patronizing the base and engaging in cosmetic tweaking over material changes in policy. Which is what makes progressive foreign policy analysts like Duss’ triumphalism so misguided and credulous.
“If your goal is building progressive political power, your response to Democrats coalescing around ending military aid to Israel is going to be: ‘Years of activism went into this, let’s keep working,’” Duss scolded on Twitter/X last Sunday in response to JStreet’s announcement. “If your goal is performing radicalism on this website: ‘This must be an op.’”
But Democrats are only “coalescing around ending military aid to Israel” in the most superficial manner possible and in complete strategic and messaging alignment with Netanyahu, Graham, and far-right think tanks Foundation for Defence of Democracies and the Heritage Foundation. Who knows what is and isn’t an “op,” but certainly those who want a meaningful break from Israel’s genocidal policies should expect more than pitching pre-planned “phase outs” that align almost exactly with the preferences of Israel hawks.
The only real difference between J Street’s strategy and the right-wing version on offer from Netanyahu and Graham is that J Street makes repeated references to “conditioning” military sales so they, in their words, comply “with all relevant statutes including the Leahy Law, the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act.” But this merely gestures towards human rights without doing anything meaningful to advance them. Their preferred mechanism to hold Israel accountable, Ceasefire Compliance Act, leaves the determination of whether Israel is complying with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) up to the US State Department, the same State Department that covered up atrocities in Gaza under Biden while ignoring its own legal obligations to stop aid in support of a genocide. No one needs conditional, future determinations of compliance with IHL. Israel is committing genocide and enforcing an apartheid state right now, today, structurally and as a matter of government consensus. What, other than buying Israel time, would such a complex and unenforceable arrangement achieve? The idea that this convoluted, case-by-base legal formalism is sufficient, in lieu of a demand for a categorical and immediate arms embargo, is absurd on its face. Arming Israel is already breaking several US laws. We don’t need more laws to enforce existing laws—especially at the discretion of the very same State Department that, throughout the past two administrations, has actively aided genocide.
Another under-appreciated part of this arrangement from a PR perspective is that having Israel “pay for its defenses” means US military hardware sent to Israel would no longer be covered by the Leahy Laws, which were originally passed in 1997 ostensibly to prohibit the US government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces committing “gross violations of human rights (GVHR).” But Leahy doesn’t apply to weapons sales, just “assistance” (see: subsidies). As Human Rights First laid out last year, “Leahy Laws do not apply to foreign military sales or direct commercial sales of equipment. Since these are commercial transactions in which the recipient country is paying for the weapons or other goods and services, the support is not considered to be ‘assistance’ under the meaning of the Leahy Laws, which is generally interpreted to mean that provided with U.S-appropriated funds.”
So when J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami says arms sales “should continue in accordance with all relevant statutes including the Leahy Law,” it’s unclear what he means since this would most certainly not be the case, by design.
This all comes on the heels of possible 2028 presidential candidate and current US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using a similar framing in her opposition to subsiding Israel military aid two weeks ago. “I believe the Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement on April 1. “Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law.”
Arming Israel is already breaking several US laws. We don’t need more laws to enforce existing laws—especially at the discretion of the very same State Department that, throughout the past two administrations, has actively aided genocide.
While her comments on the topic reflected J Street’s convoluted Israel Can Pay For it framing, unlike J Street, Ocasio-Cortez has supported an arms embargo against Israel in other contexts (more clarity on her current position would be useful, as she did not reiterate this stance when commenting on her current position).
Either way, the template for others seeking election in the current climate is obvious: Now Democrats can cite J Street and claim they “support ending military aid to Israel,” but this is true only in a hyper-literal and misleading sense. Because J Street’s plan, which is by their own admission simply a variation on Netanyahu and Graham’s plan, knowingly uses the misleading term “aid” to imply cutting off the supply of genocidal weapons rather than the simple act of changing who pays for it. It’s a brilliant piece of spin: offends no one in power, gets angry voters off your back, looks humanitarian and progressive while taking cues from the Heritage Foundation and, like all good counterinsurgency tactics, gives the illusion of moral progress while misdirecting activists energy into nice-sounding—but ultimately fatuous—busy work.
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