The liberal pro-Israel lobby group J Street has called for the phased end of all US military aid to Israel by 2028, in a striking sign of how far the political ground has shifted in Washington over unconditional support for the occupation state.
In an interview with Haaretz, J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami said the US-Israel relationship should be “normalised” so there are “no more exceptions to special treatment”, with Israel expected to fund its own military needs from its own budget once the current aid agreement expires.
Many critics have pointed out that Israel’s aggressive posture in the region and ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine, would be severely hampered without US aid, forcing the apartheid state to shift its policy.
The shift is seen as being significant because J Street has long positioned itself as a liberal Zionist alternative to more hardline pro-Israel lobbying groups while still defending a “strong” US-Israel relationship.
READ: Gavin Newsom, frontrunner for presidential nomination, likens Israel to ‘apartheid state’
Though the stance of J Street stops short of calling for a full arms embargo, it marks one of the clearest acknowledgements yet from a mainstream pro-Israel organisation that the era of automatic military subsidies for Israel is becoming politically harder to sustain.
Ben-Ami said future arms sales to Israel should be subject to the same legal standards as those applied to any other country, including the Leahy laws, which bar US assistance to foreign military units accused of gross human rights violations. He also argued that Israel, with a defence budget of around $45 billion, can afford to pay for systems such as Iron Dome itself.
The intervention comes amid a wider shift inside the Democratic Party, where Israel is increasingly seen as a political liability rather than an unquestioned ally. Last week, a new Pew polling showing that 60 per cent of US adults now view Israel unfavourably. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the figure has climbed to 80 per cent, up from 69 per cent last year and 53 per cent in 2022.
That collapse in support is now reshaping mainstream Democratic politics. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said earlier this month that she would oppose any future US military aid to Israel, including for so-called defensive systems, arguing that Israel is fully capable of financing its own military and that US aid must comply with both international law and US law.
California Democrat Ro Khanna has echoed that position on Iron Dome funding, while Senator Bernie Sanders has announced a new resolution aimed at halting military aid to Israel altogether.
READ: Israel’s ‘rock’ in Europe, anti-Muslim far-right leader Viktor Orbán, defeated in landmark election
