Mike Cuckabee is repeating the same lie he told
@TuckerCarlson during his interview: "Israel spends its US military aid in the US, supporting the US economy."
This lie has become the default rebuttal to anyone who challenges the rationale behind US military aid to Israel.
Under the current Memorandum of Understanding, Israel is required to spend a gradually increasing amount of US aid inside of the US, while gradually decreasing the amount of aid it spends with its own defense industry in Israel. In other words, every year, "off-shore procurement" (OSP) must be reduced until the entirety of the US aid is spent within the US.
The problem is, Israeli defense contractors have opened up subsidiaries in the US, so they're technically no longer considered "off-shore." So, Israel can theoretically spend all $3.8B in aid it receives every year with its own defense contractors in the US. These Israeli defense contractors may employ some American workers in non-sensitive roles, but the parent companies in Israel are still benefiting through the profit and expertise of their American operations.
Some of the Israeli defense contractors who have set up subsidiaries in the US include Elbit Systems, IAI North America, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, XTEND, etc.
Further, Israel is one of only a few countries that is allowed to use its aid to contract directly with US-based defense contractors, instead of being forced to use the Pentagon as a middleman to buy its weapons. This process is called Direct Commercial Sales (as opposed to Foreign Military Sales) which decreases the transparency in how Israel is spending its aid money since these transactions usually have confidentiality agreements.
Having said all of this, Israel does spend some of its aid money with US defense contractors. For example, it used its aid grants to purchase the F-35 from Lockheed Martin. But, what 99% of the American public doesn't know is that the contracts for these purchases have offset agreements that force Lcokheed Martin to buy billions of dollars worth of parts, systems, and services from Israeli defense contractors which "offsets" the cost of Israel's purchases from US contractors by generating money for its own defense industry.
Incidentally, the offset mechanism is a good proxy for how the new provision in the 2027 NDAA will work, essentially creating a dependency on the Israeli defense industry for the US military. Even though Israel would no longer receive aid, they would be jointly developing technology with the US, similar to what Raytheon and Rafael did with the Iron Dome. The irony of this is that after the Iron Dome was completed, Israel refused to give the US the software source code for it, so it couldn't be integrated into the US defense network. Solid partner, right? Also, in light of the shortage of rare earths within the US defense industry due to China tightening its export controls, it seems absurd that the US wants to increase its dependency on another foreign country for its own national security.
In reality, the NDAA provision is just a way for Jews to hide Israel's parasitical relationship with the US since the US will continue to keep billions of dollars of weapons stockpiles in its WRSA-I weapons depot in Israel, which the Israelis can use if needed. This weapon reserve is funded by American taxpayers but is not counted as aid to Israel despite the fact that Israel uses it. And of course, Congress will pass any emergency aid appropriations if Israel needs additional military aid, just like Congress did after Israel depleted its stockpiles of bombs on Palestinian women and children.
To sum up, Israel spends a significant portion of its US aid on its own contractors located in the US, and even when it does spend US aid on US contractors, they use offsets to force those contractors to buy parts from Israeli contractors. Israel is a parasite and Mike Cuckabee is aiding and abetting the fleecing of America.
Ambassador, your job is to represent American interests in Israel. With that in mind, please explain what we receive in return for our investment in Israel.
How have Israel’s actions in Iran, Gaza, or Lebanon, to name a few, made America safer & more prosperous?
The arms sales argument is flawed logic. We give Israel money so they can buy American weapons—why not just spend our money on weapons for our own inventories?
The intelligence we get from the Israelis can be useful, but our increasing over-reliance on it has caused our own capabilities to atrophy. We are a sovereign nation. We cannot outsource components of our national security to nations that do not share our interests— of course they will put their own interests first. No other nation prioritizes the needs of a different country before its own, because that would be foolish.
Israel can still be a decent partner, so long as we are clear-eyed about the differences between our two countries, and act accordingly. We have to put America’s needs first.