A bill’s provision to integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries will go to a U.S. House vote after an effort to stop it failed Thursday. Passage will make it nearly impossible to end the U.S.-Israel special relationship, writes Alan MacLeod.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2025. (DoD /Madelyn Keech)
By Alan MacLeod
MintPress News
Amid widespread and growing public opposition to the Israeli genocide of Gaza and South Lebanon, a controversial new bill seeks to formally integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries like never before, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposes to join the two forces together at the hip, laying the groundwork for extensive cooperation into “seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation,” according to the Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
This includes the research, development and production of modern, hi-tech arms, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, drones, directed energy, cyber and autonomous weapons systems. It would compel the United States to integrate Israeli arms and technologies into its defense supply chain, and fuse the countries’ data-capturing and storage facilities together, meaning that Israel could have access to essentially all the U.S. military’s data.
The bill also requires the creation of a new position within the Department of Defense: an executive agent whose role is to coordinate cooperation and integration between the two parties.
In essence, then, it would dramatically change the relationship between the two states, from one where Washington supplies Tel Aviv with money, weapons, and diplomatic support, to a situation where the two are fundamentally intertwined.
It would also make the relationship far less transparent, as aid to Israel currently requires an annual public debate and vote. However, by moving it away from the political realm into that of defense acquisition, oversight and accountability mechanisms will be removed, and the public will have little right to know the details going forward.
Judging by its sponsors, Section 224 has strong support on Capitol Hill. It was put forward by Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Adam Smith (D-WA), the panel’s highest-ranking Democrat.
[On Thursday Rep. Ro Khanna’s effort to revoke the provision from the massive military funding bill failed, paving the way for the NDAA to advance to a full House vote.]
Israel is far and away the best ally the United States has in the Middle East, and our cooperative programs with them strengthen our national security by giving our warfighters access to cutting edge technologies. Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal…
— Mike Rogers (@RepMikeRogersAL) June 2, 2026
The news that a new bill could essentially fuse together the U.S. and Israeli militaries has been met with pushback online, but provoked little comment in Washington, D.C.
One lawmaker who has spoken up is Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who has promised to offer an amendment to strip Section 224 from the bill on the House floor. “We are a sovereign country,” he said on Saturday.
Massie, a strong critic of U.S. support for Israel, recently lost his primary to challenger Ed Gallrein, after AIPAC and other Israel Lobby groups flooded the race with tens of millions of dollars, making it the most expensive contest in American history.
Massie at a speaking event in Las Vegas in 2024. (Gage Skidmore/ Flickr/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Analysts have noted that, if passed, the bill will “extraordinarily” expand Israeli influence in domestic American politics, giving Tel Aviv the opportunity to pull powerful political levers through the tried and tested method of offering jobs.
As the Institute for Responsible Statecraft warns, by expanding or starting new arms production facilities like they already have in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could use the influence of bringing jobs to districts to buy the support of American members of Congress.
I’m running as an independent revolutionary socialist because we desperately need a working-class FIGHTER in Congress.
My main opponent, Democrat Adam Smith, just introduced a bill to fund OVER A TRILLION NEW DOLLARS for imperialist war. Concretely, that’s a trillion more…
— Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) June 3, 2026
The U.S. already provides Israel with enormous amounts of military aid, having sent hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons since 1948.
Since 2008, it is required by law to protect Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” by supplying it with advanced weaponry.
Section 224, however, would transform and deepen this relationship, making it all-but-impossible to democratically break the U.S.-Israel special relationship.
That alliance is under increased scrutiny, as support for Israel is collapsing across the United States. A new poll published by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies found that 60 percent of Americans (including 75 percent of respondents under 30 years old) hold a negative view of the country. When asked, a large plurality says that Israel holds too much sway over American politics and politicians.
A 2025 study found that half of American voters believe Israel is carrying out a genocide against its neighbors in West Asia.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, among others, on charges of crimes against humanity.
The United States, however, has refused to accept the ICC’s actions, attempted to shut down proceedings, and imposed sanctions on the court. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan stated that Senior U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham – one of Netanyahu’s closest allies in Washington – told him that his court is only “for African thugs like [Russian president Vladimir] Putin. It is not for democracies like Israel and the United States of America.”
The response from the governments of Israel and the United States to the increasing opposition to the genocide has been to crack down on dissent and to censor social media.
As Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of pro-Israel pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League stated, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem.” The Trump administration forced through the sale of TikTok to the family of Larry Ellison, a passionately pro-Israel tech billionaire who is the largest private funder of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Ellison, no doubt, will support Section 224. Yet the effective merger between the U.S. military and the IDF will have profound consequences for the future of America, and should provoke stiff opposition nationwide. Whether it passes will depend largely on the nature and scale of that opposition.
Alan MacLeod is senior staff writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary: @AlanRMacLeod.
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“nearly impossible to end”
In a democracy, an elected legislature is never bound by previous decisions. A new session of Congress can always make new rules for itself, and in the spirit of democracy, overturn any previous decisions. Nothing is impossible to end. What it takes is a combination of the will of the people and a functioning democracy.
Its the current elites that say this will be nearly impossible to end. This is just like all the rest that they spew that “there is no alternative.” There is an alternative. America can always say that this deal is over, and get out of our country. All it takes is will power and a functioning democracy.
There are for example legal precedents, at this point well established, that would let a future Congress place all these Israeli entities on a sanctions list and forbid any business between them. If every official from these Israeli firms was under international arrest warrants, they would find it hard to do business. We can also freeze all Israeli funds in America just like we did with Russia.
There are people who want to convince you that you are powerless to do anything, but the reality says that something can always be done. Will power and democracy are required. With democracy itself requiring will power. But never believe the nay-sayers that say something is “impossible.”
I believe that the US and Canadian militaries have been fused largely under one command since the mid-20th century.
This Canadian government website says, “For over sixty-five years, members of Canadian and American armed forces have jointly defended North America through the world’s only bi-national military command, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).” If it merges with the IDF, will it become the world’s only tri-national command?
hxxps://canada-in-usa.com/canada-u-s-relationship/defence-and-foreign-affairs/#:~:text=Our%20Defence%20Partnership&text=For%20over%20sixty%2Dfive%20years,Aerospace%20Defense%20Command%20(NORAD).
The Canadian Snow Birds come to the Bay Area to perform with the Blue Angels during Fleet Week, or take their place if they’re overextended.
“US military cooperation with Israel focuses on offensive capabilities, high-tech R&D, and regional power projection, whereas the US-Canada relationship centers on continental defense, joint early warning systems, and NATO-aligned operations. Both relationships involve profound industrial integration with the US defense sector, but they differ significantly in their operational structure, funding, and recent political trajectories.”
If Pepe Escobar says the proposed US military relationship with the Israeli military is unprecedented, it IS unprecedented, and ominous.
I read elsewhere that Rogers and Smith had taken “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from AIPAC.
A parasite is taking over its host. Where is the immune system?
There’s something else at play few here will see. But well covered in Joe Bageant’s 2007 book /Deer Hunting with Jesus (Dispatches form America’s Class War)/ about his own family and people he grew up with. Millions of southern, rural descendants of lower class UK immigrants who never knew anything but governments and upper classes trying to exploit them. Exacerbated by a Dem party that has done nothing for the Rust Belt un- or underemployed for the last few decades. They’re fiercely independent and deeply religious, which makes sense when there’s no economic salvation in this world.
Joe pointed out many of them join the military to escape dead end, dangerous jobs like in chicken processing plants. So disproportionately they die or come home badly wounded to preserve American empire. Some realize this. Others insist on keeping the faith. Joe’s own brother is a fundamentalist preacher and Joe describes fundie beliefs as: 1.) The UN is a tool of the Antichrist. America alone must spread the gospel globally. 2.) No need for environmentalism because this earth won’t be around for long. 3.) Israel is to be defended at all costs and encouraged to expand because the Bible says Israel must rule from the Euphrates to the Nile to fulfill End Times prophecy. 4.) God will provide a Christian leader to shepherd true Americans, chosen people to spread the gospel and rid the earth of evil.
Got it? That’s why the justification of Trump, even though obviously not a good Christian; he’s simply an instrument used by God like others in the Bible who weren’t particularly good people. That’s why war is a good thing. And why fundie Hegseth standing there with Netanyahu and the two militaries becoming entwined is a great thing–the fulfillment of prophecy! Never mind this is insane and the New Testament is about peace and love. Say that and you’re another tool of devil trying to mislead good people.
Thanks Rafi, that context has genuinely helped me make so much more sense of what’s been happening and why. The ‘Judgement Day’ lunacy wasn’t just some flash in the pan stunt, then.
I often wonder what the world would have been like had religion not taken root. Would the millions of wars fought in the name of Gods have found alternative excuses to start? What other zany reasons would our leaders have come up with to justify stealing oil, occupying countries or eradicating whole populations had they not had the excuse of acting upon a God’s will? We’ll never know.
It is like a death spiral of the two religions formed by religious acquisition to defame the other with tactics over 2000 years that have now merged into on religious warfare system of western empire plus the Anglican monarchical version joining the monotheistic monomaniacal military feast on nations for profit motives.
Naturally, the myriad past evidence of Israelis compromising US national security appears to mean little to nothing to many US policymakers.
This includes everything from the self-admitted “Operation Susannah” that produced the 1954 Lavon Affair (Leonard Weiss, “The Lavon Affair: How a False-Flag Operation Led to War and the Israeli Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 4 (2013): 58-68); to the JFK-related perfidy of James Jesus Angleton (Harrison Berger, “Why Is the Establishment Ignoring the Recently Declassified JFK Files?,” The American Conservative, Nov. 28, 2025); to the 1967 USS Liberty incident (Lt. Cmdr. Mac Diehl, “Naval History Not Just Something to Read About,” Goodfellow Air Force Base, Aug. 3, 2007, and “New Revelations in Attack on American Spy Ship,” Chicago Tribune, Oct. 2, 2007); to their involvement in the proliferation of WMD materials not only to their own country, but to states such as apartheid South Africa (Chris McGreal, “Revealed: How Israel Offered to Sell South Africa Nuclear Weapons,” The Guardian (UK), May 24, 2010), Pakistan (Jacob Blackford, “Asher Karni Case Shows Weakness in Nuclear Export Controls,” Institute for Science and International Security, Sep. 8, 2004), and Iran (Raphael Ahren, “Did Israel, Under the Shah, Help Start Iran’s Nuclear Program?,” The Times of Israel, Nov. 4, 2013, and Victor Ostrovsky. “What Israel’s Top-Secret Manbar Trial Reveals About Extensive, Ongoing Israeli Arms Dealing With Iran,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Sep. 1998); to evidence of Israelis sharing significant US intelligence with adversaries such as the Soviet Union in the latter decades of the Cold War (Blake Stilwell, “The Most Damaging Dpy in US History Just Walked Free,” We Are The Mighty, Oct. 21, 2020) and Manuel Noriega’s Panama during the late 1980s (Richard H. Curtiss, “What You Won’t Read About Michael Harari, Noriega’s Israeli Adviser Who Got Away,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Feb. 1990, and Brian McGlinchey, “How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World,” Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, May 6, 2026); to Israelis committing other wanton acts but concealing their own role in order to direct foreign ire against the United States in contexts such as Libya (Richard H. Curtiss, “The Israeli Deception That Led to the Bombing of Pan American Flight 103 Over Lockerbie, Scotland,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Oct./Nov. 1999, and “‘La Belle’ Assassination – Mossad and CIA Companionship?,” FRONTAL (ZDF), Aug. 25, 1998) and Iran (Mark Perry, “False Flag,” Foreign Policy, Jan. 13, 2012); to a 2001 US Army School of Advanced Military Studies report summarizing the Mossad as a “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act” (“U.S. Troops Would Enforce Peace Under Army Study,” The Washington Post, Sep. 10, 2001).
One correction: the Sep. 10, 2001 article covering the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) report was actually published by The Washington Times, rather than The Washington Post.
Insanity, but what’s to stop it under the current regime, complete with its half-wit congress and supreme court? This country has been moving downhill for decades, now. Any bunch who would put trump in for a second term (or first) is spiraling downward, and fast. Good effen riddance!
Sadly, maybe US Americans are about to get a huge dose of Karma – for not opposing the sick things our government continues to spend our hard earned money on: Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of the entire region, attacking sovereign nations at the behest of a megalomaniac, Bibi, and so many other nefarious things to list.
Unfortunately, all of us will get to feel those consequences whether we strongly oppose or not.
The American people en masse must make it known to their congressmen and senators that, if they vote for the NDAA with Section 224 intact, they will not survive their next re-election. And then we have to prove it at the polls.
Israel is run by demon-possessed madmen. Give them authority over U.S. military forces, and World War III is an inevitability as is the destruction of the United States and the world as we know it.
– Pastor Chuck Baldwin
(Source: hxxps://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/06/chuck-baldwin/ndaa-will-give-israel-co-command-of-u-s-military-forces/)
Amazing that we have an AIPAC Congress that will have our Troops shooting Children in the head. Nazis.
Israel had demonstrated throughout its history that it will sabotage even its allies and defenders whenever they and advantage in it for themselves. That history makes unifying Israeli and US defense systems a serious threat to our national security. Israel’s history of humanitarian crimes creates another risk, of promoting brutality and moral depravity in the US with accompanying social turmoil and exposure to international repercussion. We have already seen increased brutality by police in the US, many of them trained by Israelis. Section 224 of the NDAA is hands-down the worst idea EVER to come out of a US Congress, and Americans must vigorously oppose it as if all that is good and decent is threatened; because it is.
‘Birds of a feather will flock together.’
This seems an attempt by Zionists to try and avoid Israel/Zionism’s imminent destruction by Iran.
Israeli leadership will surely seek to take full control of the US’s military might, not ‘share’ it and certainly not in ‘partnership’ with those they openly deem ‘inferior’ beings.
For having emerged victorious over such inept and foolhardy foes, Iran will most likely seek to get the Middle East healthy again as soon as possible by removing the giant “cancerous tumour” causing all the pain. To have it any other way would simply be suicidal in the long-term, thanks to Israel’s openly-stated position. They’ve left Iran with little option.
Hence the attempt, now Zionists & Co. humiliated themselves, to substitute the failing IOF with the US military and all that comes with it. It appears to be a deliberate ‘last option’ they’ve given themselves besides nuclear suicide or travelling to another planet. All else spells the end of Zionism as a force in the Middle East (meaning the deal will almost certainly happen regardless of anyone’s say – if it’s not already been signed & sealed in secret).
The world will quickly become a very much crueller and lonelier place if and when The (Zionist) US leadership sells the whole world out like this and gives Israeli fanatical savages, with apparent absolute immunity to commit the vilest atrocities they can imagine, control over the extensive and ludicrously funded US military war machine.
May this total insanity never become reality.
Isn’t it like that anyway!!
You’re not wrong. It is a very cruel and lonely world for millions of people already, but believe me, it can still get much, much worse for us in the West.
We’re all currently still allowed to vent scathing criticisms of our governments online for the rest of the world to read, for example. We’re not being disappeared or incarcerated indefinitely for it…yet (possibly because they realise that allowing a pent-up population to vent virtually online means less chance they’ll vent in actuality, in the streets).
It’s akin to a ‘merger’ with Cancer and heart disease.
Seems the colony has been a US military base staffed with Zionists for quite some time. Now it is being formalized through congressional legislation.
As a British official said, “They’re doing our dirty work for us.”
Holy shit, is Israel going to apply to be a US state?
Worse than that, the US is becoming an Israeli state.
100% right on! Thanks for sharing this.
More likely they will be annexing us. And, the MAGAts will be singing their praises.
WAKE UP AMERICA !! ALL Members of Congress, House or (one third of the) Senate, who vote for this Section 224 of the 2027 AUMF bill must be voted out of office in the Midterms by huge majorities.
Get Adam Smith out of Wa State. November elections need special attention from our voting public. Review who is donating and do not forget AIPAC is trying to hide their involvement in donations as they are rightly so, highly unpopular. Come on, Americans, let us show this corrupt government who we truly are and do not let them divide us.
No. Nothing is impossible. Look at the judges with retired and acting on Trump’s grifting in public office to benefit himself and his family. Go all the way, judges!
This loss of American sovereignty by merging the “Defense” structure is a wily effort of the Epstein class colonialist white supremacist Christian and Jewish billionaires to insinuate its psychopathy into the core of our country. The idea is worse than an anathema. It is treasonous. Isn’t it?
Of course it’s treasonous, but since when did that stop US elected representatives from selling their country out to Israel?
It is almost ? complete.