Israel’s Next Liberation

President Trump’s announcement that America will stop providing $4 billion a year in aid to Israel is long overdue. It could prove a boon to both this country and the Jewish state. The announcement was delivered via Fox News Channel during a phone call on Election Day. The president noted that the idea originated with Prime Minister Netanyahu and that the two leaders have been “talking about it for a couple of years.”Yet it’s an idea that has been weighed for decades. The Jewish Daily Forward issued its first editorial on this head back in 1991 under the headline “Israel’s Poison.” The argument was that foreign aid had incentivized subsidy rather than reform. It percolated in the debate during the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies. It became possible after free-market reforms that began in the 1990s, when Mr. Netanyahu was charting his political rise.By now, Mr. Trump reckons, “we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it.” No doubt there are those who will set this down as a victory for the anti-Israel left. Mr. Trump disclosed that, while Washington would continue to sell Jerusalem arms, ending aid would take the sting out of the “slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed,” a reference to the anti-Israel Democratic candidate for Senator in Michigan. No doubt the likes of Dr. El-Sayed will find something else on which to fault Israel. Mr. Trump said the aid would be “cut off at the end of the year” because “Israel’s our No. 1” and a “thriving country.” The president calls American aid to Israel a “bad talking point.” He said that Washington would continue to sell Jerusalem arms, and Israel freed would, as the Forward argued in 1991, “begin to purchase true independence and security.”Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu caught at least some Israeli leaders by surprise. A source at Israel’s Defense Ministry tells Kan News that “We did not expect this announcement, certainly not today.” Yet HaKirya cannot have been too shocked given that Mr. Netanyahu told CBS News in May that “I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have.”The current memorandum of understanding between Israel and America — inked under President Obama — runs until 2028. Mr. Trump appears to be suggesting that, with Israel’s consent, he is planning on ending it early. Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump could reckon that Tuesday’s vote will bring in a wave of Democrats — possibly a majority — hostile to the Jewish state. The president reassures that “We’ll help Israel if they need it.”Mr. Netanyahu’s political opponents are piling on the premier for the abrupt announcement, but surprise is not necessarily a bad thing in politics. The prime minister saw that Israel needed an economic revolution, and that Iran would eventually have to be confronted. Now, he appears to perceive that a reliance on American aid is best put aside. President Biden’s strings on assistance during the war on Hamas likely also focused the mind.Advocating for the end of American aid to Israel is hardly an assertion that it is a burden on this country. Nearly all of the aid has been required to be spent on purchases from American industry, and the total expenditure is less than one-tenth of one percent of annual federal spending. The slander that support for Israel is to blame for, say, the price of eggs is a scramble of malice and illiteracy. The end of such aid could mark the start of Israel’s next liberation.

Israel’s Next Liberation

Israel’s Next Liberation

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