Integrating U.S.-Israeli Militaries
As public support for arming Israel collapses, Section 224 of the NDAA would make U.S. military aid to Israel automatic, statutory, and all but impossible to vote down.
Rev. J. Mark Davidson
6/11/20263 min read
Deep in the House version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is “Section 224” – the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” Section 224 would essentially fuse the military-industrial complex of the two nations into one. The two nations’ militaries have been closely coordinating weapons production, and sharing intelligence, training, and planning for decades. But Section 224 would greatly expand cooperation to virtually every aspect of military-industrial coordination – missile defense, AI, energy, cyber, biotech. Section 224 proposes “network integration” and “data fusion,” which means that U.S. military data would be Israel’s military data and vice versa.
There are three reasons to be greatly concerned about this development:
Ro Khanna (D-California) has claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked a member of Congress to include Section 224 as a way for Israel to continue receiving U.S. military aid, despite declining popular support for Israel. In other words, this would be an end-run around public opinion. Embedding Israel within the US military budget even more than is currently the case will make it that much harder for the American public and Congress to vote on US military aid to Israel. Instead, it will be automatically and statutorily integrated into the National Defense Authorization Act. When Congress approves the already bloated military budget, exceeding $1 trillion, reportedly as much as $1.5 trillion, Israel will be “included in the price,” and keep getting virtually everything it wants. A “strong American military” means continued billions for Israel, regardless of what a majority of Americans want. A recent poll from Institute for Global Affairs found that just 16% say that the United States “should keep supplying Israel with weapons without new restrictions,” and 38% want to “stop supplying weapons entirely.” Section 224 ignores this reality, and puts in place a provision to continue ignoring the will of the people for years to come.
Military analyst Ben Freeman, writing in Responsible Statecraft, May 29, 2026, points out that if Section 224 is passed as part of the NDAA, it would allow Israel to expand or start new co-production facilities such as ones it’s already stood up in Mississippi and Arkansas. This gives the Israel Lobby a potent tool for building support for Israel in the U.S. – creating American jobs. Section 224 would enable AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations to “boast of the jobs they’ve created,” and build new alliances with members of Congress who represent districts where the military-industrial jobs exist. It is already the case that the military-industrial complex can be appropriately renamed the “military-industrial-congressional” complex. There are military and research and development jobs in nearly every congressional district in the country. This already makes it extremely difficult to trim military spending. Israel would be cashing in on this same dynamic, and insulating themselves from the growing disapproval of the American taxpayer.
There is another important consideration. Israel has shown itself, especially since October 7th, to be a highly belligerent rogue state, violating international humanitarian law in systematic ways, engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. They have a long track record of willfully violating “ceasefire” agreements, so much so that thoughtful observers of international law have said that they have contributed to emptying the word “ceasefire” of any meaning. It is true that Israel is hardly alone in flouting international humanitarian law (many other nations, including the United States are guilty of similar violations). Nonetheless, the unmistakable trendline in the American public is for constraining Israel, not emboldening them. The emerging consensus among a growing majority of Americans is that they want greater distance and differentiation from Israel, not closer coordination. Section 224 would further entrench a perennially-warring, international law-defying Israel within the United States, the world’s most perennially-warring, international law-defying superpower.
For these, and many other reasons, supporters of a just and durable peace in Palestine-Israel must vehemently oppose this provision. It is urgently important that we all contact our congressional representatives and tell them to vote against Section 224.