As Israel loses popular support, the Israeli-intelligence sharing provision in the now-stalled Pentagon 2027 authorization bill ensures a seamless flow of support for an increasingly unpopular proxy, writes Nuvpreet Kalra.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signing the Pentagon guest book in July 2025. (DoD /Alexander Kubitza)
By Nuvpreet Kalra
Common Dreams
In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote to Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman of California, saying that “the time has now arrived [for Israel] to move from aid recipient to partner” with the United States.
On Sunday, on Fox News, Netanyahu again repeated the proposal to move “from aid to partnership.”
FOX NEWS: “The proposal is to have some sort of merger between our Pentagon and your military.”
NETANYAHU: “Yes, I’m calling it from aid to partnership.” pic.twitter.com/fkt9f9qkBu
— The General (@GeneralMCNews) July 12, 2026
What Netanyahu proclaims is at the core of the proposed “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” which has been included in a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that seeks to push the Pentagon budget to $1.5 trillion in 2027.
The proposal to the annual policy and military spending bill aims to essentially merge the Israeli and the U.S. militaries.
[On Tuesday, Democratic senators blocked debate on the NDAA, citing the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran as well as the Israeli intelligence-sharing provision. According to The New York Times, it’s currently uncertain “when, or under what conditions Senate leaders would be able to begin consideration of the defense policy bill.”]
While the initial bill, the “United States-Israel FUTURES Act,” failed as a standalone measure, core provisions have been included in the NDAA. It aims to “expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation” between the U.S. and Israel, led by an “executive agent” decided by the U.S. defense secretary.
The merger would integrate the United States and Israeli occupation militarily, including “data fusion;” “network integration;” research and development; weapons and bio-manufacturing; and collaboration with AI, cyber and quantum machine learning technologies.
While the Israeli occupation forces and U.S. military are already deeply connected and share many of their genocidal tactics, this represents a significant entanglement of the two most belligerent and murderous militaries in the world.
If the Israeli-integration provision does eventually go through, this would be the most integrated the United States is with any country on Earth.
It is perhaps unsurprising for Israel to be that partner, given it is a proxy for the United States used to entrench its hegemony in the region and provide a base for attacks, particularly against Iran.
US-Dependent Occupation
Displaced people in April 2024 try to return to northern Gaza Strip by crossing the bridge over the estuary of the Wadi Gaza. (Ashraf Amra /United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East/ CC BY-SA 3.0 igo)
The Israeli occupation is totally reliant on the United States. The U.S. has given Israel at least $300 billion in military money since 1948. It uses U.S.-made weapons and relies on training and intelligence from the U.S.
As the Trump administration re-named the “Department of Defense” the “Department of War,” this is yet another overt action that reveals a reality that’s always been there.
In 2008, the U.S. passed a law requiring it to protect Israel’s “military edge” against other countries in the region. The U.S. is required to give Israel at least $3.8 billion a year in military funding until 2028. Israel has always been a major priority of the United States — this only makes that clearer.
The new integration differs from the way the U.S. engages with its other allies.
While NATO countries and partners share a degree of military integration with global weapons supply chains, intelligence sharing, military bases and more, this removes the limitations in existence for military cooperation.
Already, the U.S. drive for war through NATO impacts society beyond what might be recognized as purely military related, given the military-industrial complex and integration of the U.S. military in all aspects of life.
In this case, the merger with Israel will deepen ruptures across the political, social, and economic system as the United States moves closer to its proxy. The main beneficiaries will be weapons companies that profited immensely from making Israel’s genocide in Gaza possible with as new, seamless contracts.
How the Military Industrial Complex benefits from funding Israel’s war machine. (Davidsvine / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
Israel is increasingly viewed across the world, and within the United States, as a pariah state. In the U.S., 60 percent of adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, according to an April report by the Pew Research Center.
The push to further integrate with Israel puts the U.S. on the line in an attempt to ensure the continuation and longevity of the settler colonial project. Entrenching the U.S. military with Israel’s own provides a layer of protection that goes even further than the impunity that has given Israel full rein to commit a holocaust in Gaza and further colonize the occupied West Bank.
Response to Political Protest
Demonstration in Washington, D.C., against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, Feb. 11, 2026. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The integration will mean Israel is given unfettered support to carry out its genocide for the total colonization of Palestine and inhibiting future presidents from changing the relationship, if that were to ever occur.
As the Zionist state becomes isolated, this is the U.S. empire defending itself by trying to make its proxy appear more robust and independent while maintaining the unbreakable connection.
This is a clear response to the massive movements that have erupted across the world for nearly three years opposing Israel’s genocide and the role of countries facilitating it.
The U.S, is, in a way, absorbing Israel to provide the legitimacy that is being chipped away internationally and domestically to stifle opposition to unlimited foreign aid to Israel.
Israel is occupying at least 60 percent of Gaza. Palestinians are being pushed into a shrinking concentration camp, where they are bombed every single day and refused aid during what is described as a ceasefire. For U.S. taxpayers, this merger would put even more of money into funding this horrific genocide.
This NDAA is dangerous. Through the U.S.-Israeli integration, it would facilitate more deadly technology, more weapons for genocide, and make it nearly impossible to sever support for Israel by the U.S.
Through the $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, it would funnel money from welfare into more war and violence across the world to maintain the empire’s system of exploitation and plunder.
Nuvpreet Kalra is CODEPINK’s digital content producer. She completed a Bachelor’s in politics and sociology at the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Internet Equalities at the University of the Arts London. As a student, she was part of movements to divest and decolonize, as well as anti-racist and anti-imperialist groups. Nuvpreet joined CODEPINK as an intern in 2023, and now produces digital and social media content. In England, she organizes with groups for Palestinian liberation, abolition, and anti-imperialism.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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For the love of god, why would this US administration want to integrate with a country known to kill Americans with American leaders consent and cover up. (Remember USS Liberty). Why would we integrate a military that kills simply for the color of your skin or nationality including all your children and family members. Why in the hell isnot the unmoving cattle of the majority stampedeing? The power of propaganda vs the power of the truth.
Change is gonna come. It has to or we die.
This will make it nearly impossible for scholars and activists to trace the specific amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars going to the Jewish supremacist state. When funds and budgets are all essentially pooled together in one big department, tracing will get lost.
Congressional Dems and Independents should be making lots and lots of good trouble publicly protesting any degree of partnership with the pariah, criminal, genocidal state of Israel. Unrelenting messaging til any shred of such “partnership” be broken and erased. The USA is government of, by, for the AMERICAN people. Not Israeli. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin et al must have a bright spotlight cast on them til their exaggerated influence and privileged position in raking in our tax dollars is indelibly inscribed on American consciousness til collective uproar in protest succeeds in putting them on stringent leashes. If a blueprint is necessary, check out China’s relationship to their oligarchs.
The reality is it looks as though USA is in their hands and it took only 19 years, one year prior to the 20 year prediction of an israeli insider in the 9/11 sacrifice, the Pearl Harbor incident both USA and Israel wanted. So the reality is not the long ago myth and we must deal with it harshly to eradicate this blight of these two nations upon a world that wants peace and equity, not to be a trillionare.
We have given up our sovereignty to This small country that has nothing to do with the well being of our country. Israel is a colonial state creating nothing but trouble for the people of the Middle east and as for Palestine a long evil displacement for the colonial project to certain genocide crating a religious state, with US aiding.
To futher embed them into the War department, (once Defence department once War department, to war again) would be agreeing to furtive stealth exchange the norm, a closing of our eyes to the hell on earth we increasingly demand in Palestine and increasingly here at home where do we begin madness end.
With the change of the department name, should not the acronym now be NWAA? The Department had its previous Orwellian name removed, and is now correctly named the Department of War. Thus, this should be the “National War Authorization Act.”
I find it fascinating that this $1.5 Trillion NDAA, draining the treasury from any money that might be used to help actual Americans, is only opposed by ‘the left’ on this one very narrow issue.
I knew when Trump said he wanted a $1.5 Trillion War Budget, that the Dems would happily go along. However, I mistakenly thought they’d symbolically negotiate him down to $1.45 Trillion and claim a ‘victory’. The reality is that the Democrats have very little problem with giving all the money to the military, but only raise this one little symbolic and narrow issue to build some fake opposition. And they didn’t even try to negotiate the money down even a little bit to help the suffering American people.
Tells one a lot…. about Democrats, and the fake progressive, fake socialist flank that always provides left-flank cover for all the money going to the military.
We should be cutting all aid to Israel, permanently. Instead we continue to celebrate being its puppet.
I agree with you.
The fourth-from-last paragraph must be changed by expunging the weasel-phrase “…in a way”.
The actuality is that the usa & congress are indeed absorbing genocidal actions!
The USA has an authoritarian “three strikes, and you are out” rule for handing out long, authoritarian sentences to prisoners. The USA had better be praying to its awful Gawd that the world does not adopt a “Three Strikes, and you are Out” rule about Genocide. After institutional, industrial scale slavery, and the Manifest Destiny genocide of the people who got to America before them, America and its Congress are supporting at least their Third Genocide. And that’s not even mentioning that Hitler got many of his ideas about Eugenics from America, plus of course funding from American industrialists.
USA …. Genocides ‘R Us. Proudly supported at all times by the US Congress.
PS … and I can think of more. I left out Bill Clinton’s Rwanda genocide, where at best he sat back and made popcorn and watched it happen. And the Obama/Biden/Trump genocide of Yemenis with some 750,000 dead human souls on its permanent record. Vietnam is not claimed as a ‘genocide’, but we left some 3,000,000 corpses there. Russia claims a genocide aimed at Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. That was financed by America, and we were pumping the killers full of weapons made in America. The late Sen. Graham once said “killing Russians is the best money ever spent.” Although I’d guess that the Sen from South Carolina regretted that he could no longer openly say the same about killing black people.
It is not going to be hard to find three strikes against America when it comes to its many, many genocides …. all supported by the US Congress, as Representatives of the American people.
Probably that’s why Bush #2 said before congress “We are evil” and everyone on both sides of the aisle clapped. It was an ending in a documentary whether AI or not there’s some truth to it.
This is the long term goal of Americas enemies, to use it as the war dogs of empire and then turn around and use it as the fall guy, while the puppet masters get off scot free. And its the UK oligarchy, which if people remember created the modern molech/baal nationstate of Israel, that is the main nexus in this plan. People really need to read Carroll Quigley… damn venetian party!
I agree with you.