I started to notice serious talk about the US cutting aid to Israel not long after 10/7 – and this was on the Israeli side. They realized that depending on the US for Israel’s arms was dangerous, although it might have been an okay idea back when US support for Israel was bipartisan.

Now US support for Israel no longer is bipartisan, and that became obvious during the Biden administration – or actually it started to be obvious with Obama. Now it’s even more true, because there is significant anti-Israel sentiment on the right as well, although nowhere near as much as on the left.

So it’s in Israel’s interest to become even more militarily self-sufficient.

No more aid to Israel would seem to rob the Israel-haters and Jew-haters of a talking point, but not really. First of all, they will lie, and second of all, they have plenty of other anti-Israel talking points to lie about. There’s an almost insatiable appetite for such things.

But anyway, Trump made this announcement today:

“We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it. We’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country. They don’t need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.”

The president said the idea came from Netanyahu himself, suggesting that the agreement was also made to stop Democrats from using US funding to Israel as ammunition to criticize Republicans. …

“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed?” he asked, referring to Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. who has made Israel aid a flagship issue of his campaign.

“You take that off the table,” Trump said. …

Netanyahu has been publicly pushing to end the aid since at least January, when he told The Economist he hoped Israel could stop relying on American military funding entirely within a decade. By May, he was telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he didn’t “want to wait for the next Congress.”

Days before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, he went further, telling Israel’s Channel 10 that the aid “won’t keep coming because America has changed, not because Israel has. It’s over and it will be over; it’s just a question of time.”

That conforms to what I recall in the post-10/7 world. But of course, as I said, it won’t stop the haters.

NOTE: The bulk of that four billion comes back to the US anyway because it has been used to buy our arms (the haters conveniently leave that out). There’s a long post at Ace’s today on the entire subject that I recommend reading.