Congress Might Sneakily Use Lame Duck to Deeply Intertwine the U.S. and Israeli Militaries

Giant screens along a highway in Tel Aviv, Israel, display a combination of the United States and Israeli national flags on March 4, 2026. Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images Josh Ruebner is policy director of the IMEU Policy Project and author of the forthcoming book The United States and Palestinian Nakba: A Transnational History, 1947-1950. After President Biden’s unrelenting support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza helped pave the way for President Trump’s reelection in 2024, Trump’s own foolish decision to launch an Israel-backed war against Iran played a large role in putting Democrats back in control of both chambers of Congress — a fact Vice President JD Vance diagnosed in no uncertain terms. Now Democrats and Republicans alike have the opportunity to demonstrate they’ve finally learned the lesson voters have tried to deliver to both parties over the last three years: The American people do not want to be entangled and complicit in Israel’s aggression and atrocities. Their first opportunity to heed that call is arriving sooner than one might expect. Right now, the House Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee are engaged in an informal but highly consequential conference to finalize the text of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets policy for the Pentagon. A disturbing provision in current versions of the texts passed by the House and Senate committees would integrate Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon procurement process at an unprecedented level — opening a back door to almost untraceably send billions of taxpayer dollars to Israeli weapons makers without congressional oversight. The House bill would create a new “executive agent” position within the Pentagon to steer this integration—a level of amalgamation that exceeds collaboration with nations in NATO. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are opposing this provision. On Tuesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and nine other Democratic senators, plus independent Bernie Sanders, demanded it be removed. In the House, Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie have made clear they will also try to strip the NDAA of this measure. In doing so, they are representing what the vast majority of Americans want—and their colleagues should take note. In our August polling with Data for Progress, 75 percent of Democratic voters oppose this provision, as do 58 percent of independents and 42 percent of Republicans. In addition, polling shows a majority of Americans now want to see taxpayer funding to Israel reduced or ended. Passing the NDAA with this measure would mean that even if Congress zeroed out annual weapons funding to Israel, currently at $3.3 billion per year, in the State Department budget — earlier this year, 103 Democratic representatives joined Massie in a move to do just that — there could still be a major increase in actual dollars flowing to Israeli companies that the American people never hear about. The negative repercussions extend beyond funding Israeli weapons makers (some of which are government-owned) with our tax dollars. This sort of integration could allow for Israeli weapons and surveillance technology that have been tested on Palestinians to be used in the U.S. to advance the Trump administration’s cruel mass deportation program. Israeli weapons maker Elbit Systems’s U.S. subsidiary is expected to install more than 300 surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border, developed from its technology deployed along portions of Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank. Melding Israel into our government procurement process should also set off alarm bells in the U.S. national security world. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vetoed Biden’s decision to send U.S.-Israeli co-produced missile systems to Ukraine three years ago for Ukraine’s war against Russia, even though the missiles were paid for by American taxpayers. The integration measure proposed in the NDAA would massively expand the scope of weapons over which the Israeli government could exercise a unilateral veto. Congress should be unwinding intelligence cooperation with Israel, not only on the moral grounds that no part of the U.S. national security apparatus should assist in genocide, but also because Pentagon officials raised the threat of Israeli spying to its highest possible level earlier this year. But instead of diminishing our intelligence sharing with Israel, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s FY27 Intelligence Authorization Act, which is typically incorporated into the final NDAA version, includes a provision (Sec. 618) actually mandating the president engage in even more intelligence cooperation. This should give us pause because of the faulty nature of Israeli intelligence and the way Israel used this intelligence to build a case for dragging the United States into war. It was reportedly Israeli intelligence that claimed the Iranian government could be overthrown within weeks, if not days, of Trump launching the war. Instead, Trump and Netanyahu are now stuck in a quagmire, and the war has imposed a terrible cost on the American people, U.S. servicemembers, and people across Iran and the region. Energy prices around the world have skyrocketed, the cost of the war has already exceeded $2,000 per U.S. household on average, and the U.S. is running low on interceptor missiles that will take years to replenish. None of this seems to concern the main backers of U.S.-Israel military and intelligence integration, like Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Mark Dubowitz. In a column published in Israel Hayom, the right-wing newspaper owned by the Israeli-American GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, Dubowitz said: “Israel and the United States should deepen their military, technological, intelligence, and economic integration to such an extent that inflicting financial harm on Israel would also carry a significant cost for Washington.” In an interview, Dubowitz added that the U.S. and Israel should be so intertwined that any accountability measure against Israel, such as sanctions being enacted by American allies in Europe, would “impose costs on the U.S. itself.” In no uncertain terms, advocates for the integration envisioned in the NDAA want to try to make it impossible for the U.S. to disentangle itself from a regime that is increasingly perceived by many as a rogue actor. The NDAA is usually considered a “must pass” bill in Congress — in fact, Congress has passed annual defense authorizations for 65 consecutive years. But Congress is under no statutory obligation to pass it this year, and doing so without stripping these provisions to become even more entrenched with supporting Israel would be an immediate betrayal of the will of voters. At a time when even Republicans are openly admitting the midterm election was a referendum on U.S. support for Israel, it would be an unforgivable choice for Congress to pass an NDAA with these integration provisions. If Republicans use their committee majorities to force their inclusion in the bill’s final text, Democrats have every bit of leverage to filibuster and block the bill’s passage in the Senate, which requires 60 votes. Saying no to bringing the U.S. into a closer relationship with Israel in just about the most expensive, opaque, and dangerous way imaginable should be the easiest political decision Congress makes during its current lame-duck session.