Why Congress must reject the NDAA’s U.S.-Israel military and intelligence merger
by Dennis Kucinich [excerpts]
[Despite] the horrific high- and low-tech butchery of Palestinians and Lebanese by Israeli ethno-nationalist killers, this week there will be an effort in Congress to merge or integrate the military of Israel and the US at the most advanced levels.
Section 219 (formerly Section 224) of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), provides for an unprecedented unification. The nearly $4 billion in the NDAA for Israel pales next to Israel having direct access to determining use of $1.5 trillion in annual military resources of the US.
Change Links note: After we went to press but before we could post this to the website, the House GOP leadership refused to even allow debate, let alone a vote, on the bipartisan amendment to the NDAA by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) to strike this section from the NDAA. This makes it even clearer that anyone in good conscience should oppose and vote against the ENTIRE NDAA, which adds $500 billion dollars to last year’s budget-busting $1 trillion military budget.
Money can be appropriated one year and withdrawn the next. Institutional integration is permanent.
Section 219 creates permanent mechanisms through which military planning, intelligence sharing, weapons development, procurement, research, artificial intelligence, and strategic coordination become intertwined between the US and Israel. It is a proposal to embed another nation’s military establishment within the long-term planning and strategic architecture of this government.
Our own government is in moral collapse, placing overwhelming emphasis on militarism instead of funding housing, education, food, health, safety, and retirement security. People are begging for food, while our tax dollars flow to weapons manufacturers.
[With] a national debt approaching $40 Trillion, the Administration is increasing spending for its Department of War by 67% to upwards of $1.5 TRILLION a year. Simultaneously, with more than 42 million Americans unable to feed themselves, the administration is cutting federal food programs.
With NDAA Section 219, Congress the legislation would create enduring institutional relationships affecting how those extraordinary military resources are developed, coordinated, and potentially employed.
No Congress has ever before considered legislation of this nature with any foreign nation. Section 219 of the NDAA would cause the US to become dependent on Israel [in] making decisions about war, peace, military strategy, intelligence, and U. S. national security.
One week ago, a UN Commission of Inquiry determined that Israeli security forces deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children, sometimes as a game, torturing them, subjecting children to sexual violence resulting in “unprecedented death, injury and trauma.” Since Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF has been instrumental in the deaths of as many as 800,000 Palestinians, including children, emergency health care workers, doctors, nurses, journalists, and educators. UN investigators and human rights observers have documented the killing of Palestinian children and have accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting the children of Gaza.
These findings are reinforced by dehumanizing statements from Israeli political figures who have portrayed Palestinian children as future terrorists, so children are targets. Water systems, hospitals, schools, electrical networks, and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed, exacerbating a man-made, humanitarian catastrophe.
In the occupied West Bank, armed “settlers” have been widely reported to have attacked Palestinian communities, burned homes, uprooted olive groves and other crops, destroyed property, and killed livestock, further displacing civilian populations.
Israel has used starvation as a weapon, setting food as a trap and, gunning down Gazans as they rush desperately to feed themselves and their children. Water supplies have been poisoned, wells filled with cement.
Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are testing grounds for sophisticated military tech, destroying entire villages, and using precision, artificial intelligence-assisted targeting systems. Human rights organizations have raised serious concerns about the speed of targeting decisions, civilian casualty rates, and the implications of delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithmic systems. White phosphorous and other weapons banned by international treaty are in use.
What is to be lost further in an Israel-U.S. military merger? If the U.S. combines our military capabilities with the twisted occupation and expansionist ethic of Israel’s use of military technology against civilian populations, will it be long before our own government militarizes the high -tech surveillance infrastructure already in place to use state violence against our own citizens who protest abuse of basic rights?
The First Amendment has already been taken down on college campuses, and in cities and states where Israel critics are sanctioned. U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials have trained in Israel. The lessons learned there have come to America in terms of deportation, detention, and in some cases, physical abuse, injury and death at the hands of ICE government agents.
As a Member of Congress, I questioned Benjamin Netanyahu during a hearing which took place prior to the 2003 Congressional vote on going to war against Iraq. He admitted he wanted not only Iraq to be attacked by the US, but also Libya and Iran. It is inevitable that as Israeli aggression is empowered, once placed inside the U.S. war-making establishment, the U.S. will be dragged into the Zionists’ expansionist designs on Iran, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere.
Since the merger is to be voted on, this week, before the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, let us be reminded by Thomas Jefferson’s July 4, 1776 characterization of George III, King of Great Britain: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws….”
Our forefathers did not fight for freedom, nor sacrifice blood and treasure in battles in World War I and II to arrive at July 4, 2026, having forfeited our sovereignty to a foreign nation, losing control of our future and putting in doubt “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.”
Call your congressperson today and tell them to vote for the Massie-Khanna Amendment to remove Section 219 from the NDAA.
