Israel has become dangerously dependent on American munitions, according to conservative Middle East analyst and commentator Caroline Glick, who is calling for Israeli self-sufficiency, while slamming the Biden administration’s push for a “hideously anti-Israel” two-state solution policy, declaring it a “plan to annihilate Israel, piece by piece.”
Speaking with Breitbart News on Wednesday, Glick lamented Israel’s current state of reliance on America in terms of military production capacity.
“Right now, we’re pretty much dependent on the United States,” she said. “We have some independent production capabilities, but it’s far from sufficient for our needs during war.”
Glick addressed former President Barack Obama’s $38 billion 10-year aid package to Israel, which includes strict terms and limitations, while mandating all funds be spent on U.S. suppliers by the end of the deal.
“Israel managed to put itself into a position in recent years, clearly since the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) went into force, which essentially and deliberately required her to spend about 95% of the U.S. military assistance in the United States,” she said.
“So, it’s really just a subsidy to U.S. military industries that forced the closure of a lot of the Israeli plants that were getting the contracts and moved production lines to the United States, [essentially] gutting Israel’s domestic military production capabilities because of the failures of a deliberate policy by Barack Obama,” she added.
The MOU military aid package, signed in 2016, went into effect in 2018, and is set to last over a 10-year period until 2028.
According to Glick, to the extent that it is able to, Israel “should not sign another one.”
“Whether we’re going to be able to fight Hezbollah or not — and to what extent — really is the question,” she explained, owing to Israel’s dependence on the U.S. for munitions.
The U.S. is reportedly restraining the Jewish state from striking Hezbollah amid increasing tensions in Israel’s north.
In an urgent call, President Joe Biden persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt a planned pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah in order to avoid escalating into a wider Middle East conflict, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and terrorist group, poses significant security concerns to Israel and has contentious relations with the United States.
Hezbollah’s military strength has grown considerably, at times surpassing the capabilities of the Lebanese Army. With support from Iran and political backing from Syria, the group has expanded its activities beyond Lebanon, notably participating in the Syrian Civil War alongside the Assad regime.
The United States, along with several other countries and international organizations, designates Hezbollah a terrorist organization due to its involvement in terror activities, including attacks against American, French, Israeli, and other targets.
In 1983, Hezbollah bombed the Beirut Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen in what was one of the deadliest pre-9/11 attacks against the U.S.
Speaking at a White House event marking the 35th anniversary of the attack in 2018, then President Donald Trump stated that, “No terrorist group other than al Qaeda has more American blood on its hands.”
The United States’ provision of aid to Israel serves a range of strategic, political, and economic interests.
Key among these is Israel’s role as a crucial strategic ally in the Middle East, a region of great geopolitical significance. This alliance facilitates vital intelligence sharing, especially on regional threats and counterterrorism, enhancing U.S. national security. The collaboration in military research and technology, leveraging Israel’s advanced military capabilities and combat experience, is invaluable for U.S. defense innovation.
Additionally, the relationship bolsters regional stability and supports the U.S. policy of promoting democratic values in a predominantly volatile area.
Economically, the U.S. benefits significantly as most of the aid is channeled back into the American defense industry, supporting domestic jobs and technological advancements. Politically, the U.S.-Israel alliance maintains American influence in Middle Eastern affairs and helps in navigating complex international diplomacy, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
U.S. military aid to Israel, with a significant portion dedicated to missile defense and other cooperative defense programs, constitutes less than 0.1% of the U.S. federal budget of over $6 trillion in 2022, and is minimal compared to the vast U.S. military budget of approximately $705 billion in 2021 and the significant foreign aid provided to other countries for various purposes.
However, Glick argues that Israel should stop taking U.S. military aid, claiming its reception corrupts the country’s leadership and policy choices — influencing Israeli defense priorities to align more with Washington’s interests than Israel’s own strategic needs.
Instead of being a client state vulnerable to changes in U.S. leadership, the American-Israeli columnist maintains that Israel needs to move the relationship to that of a “strategic partnership” that preserves the alliance and boosts Israeli independence.
Glick is not alone in her stance, with others also expressing opposition to Israel’s dependence on U.S. aid.
In July, an essay published in Tablet Magazine argued that U.S. military aid to Israel ultimately compromises its autonomy and economy, suggesting that ending the Jewish state’s dependency could lead to a healthier, more balanced partnership.
Previously, former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren wrote that there are “more secure and mutually advantageous alternatives,” suggesting that stopping military aid would put the US-Israel relationship on a “more equitable and durable foundation.”
Glick also slammed the Biden administration’s continued push for a two-state solution, which she described as “hideously anti-Israel policy,” insisting the plan would “never play out.”
“The policy itself is a hideously anti-Israel policy and it really must be acknowledged at this point that the two-state solution is not a peace plan — it’s a plan to annihilate Israel piece by piece,” she said.
According to Glick, coexistence hinges on removing any Palestinian hope of harming Israel, effectively shedding their destructive societal goals:
The only way that we’re going to reach some sort of a coexistence that’s at all peaceful with the Palestinians is if they have absolutely no hope of ever being in a position to hurt us again, because this is a society that’s organized solely around the principle and the aspiration that Israel has no right to exist and that they must seek and work towards its physical annihilation.
“So until they’re divested of all hope of ever achieving their dreams, of achieving their goals, they’re going to continue to try to murder us because there’s no positive narrative that currently animates Palestinian society,” she added.
Citing a biblical phrase, expressive of the ultimate tranquillity and security in the future, she contrasted the hopes of Israelis with those of the Palestinians.
“We have a proverb that in the time of redemption, everybody will live in peace under his fig tree and his vine — that we will all live in peace in our homestead essentially,” she said. “The Palestinians can have no such thing because they don’t have any dream of living in peace.”
“Their sole aspiration is Israel’s annihilation,” she added. “They don’t have anything beyond that.”
She also argued that providing Palestinians with statehood or a military force amidst their current state only encourages terror.
“So long as this society is organized in this way — and that goes for the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as well as the Palestinians in Gaza — there’s no prospect for peace at all,” she said, adding that “any effort to empower them with statehood, with sovereignty, or with an army, is essentially a U.S.-sponsored terror network against Israel.”
The two-state solution, largely seen as a staple of foreign policy by U.S. administrations prior to President Donald Trump, has been widely lambasted as a colossal failure that overlooks the actual facts.
Criticism of the push for a Palestinian state using Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his ruling Fatah party as peace partners centers around several key issues, chief among them being the broad support from Palestinians and their official factions across the board for terrorism.
Furthermore, Glick took the opportunity to address Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Christmas Eve post claiming the story of Jesus Christ’s birth paralleled the plight of today’s Palestinians, inverting the facts about both Jesus and contemporary Israel.
“Christ was born in modern-day Palestine” as “part of a targeted population indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Instagram.
“Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians,” she claimed, adding that Jesus and his family would be “Jewish Palestinians” if Christianity’s central figure had been born today.
Hitting back at the remarks, Glick noted that, today, Jesus wouldn’t dare reside in Bethlehem due to entry restrictions on Jews.
“If Jesus were alive today, he wouldn’t be living in Bethlehem because no Jew is allowed to enter Bethlehem today, and Jesus was of course Jewish,” she said. “So there’s no way he would be in Bethlehem.”
She also highlighted how, since the Palestinian Authority’s takeover of the Nativity City in 1996, the Christian population has drastically declined due to persecution, with many being forced out of their businesses and properties, significantly altering the city’s demographic and cultural landscape.
In fact, the Christian majority in Bethlehem, which was 87% in the 1950s, dwindled to just 20% in 2001, and 12% by 2016. Since the Palestinian Authority assumed control of Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population has significantly decreased, with only about 10,000 Christians currently residing in the city of roughly 75,500 people today.
Glick then addressed the true motivation to “cancel” Christmas in Bethlehem this year.
“They forbade Christian decorations for Christmas starting in the middle of November,” she said. “No celebrations for Christmas were allowed to take place this year, because they had to show solidarity for the jihadists in Gaza who just erased the Christian population of Gaza after they took over.”
She dismissed pro-Palestinian sentiment as “duplicitous double talk” owing to the fact that the Christians “understand that the Jews are protecting them, but they also know that the Jews won’t do anything bad to them.”
In reality, she continued, Christians in Bethlehem are “terrified” of Palestinian terrorists from the Palestinian Authority who would “slaughter” them over any pro-Israel sentiment.
On Friday, Glick criticized the shift from a large, traditional army to a smaller, technologically advanced IDF, aimed at adapting to post-Cold War realities, arguing that such a move has backfired, leaving Israel vulnerable, with its once robust domestic defense industry weakened and its military autonomy compromised.
Earlier this month, Glick argued that the Biden administration is proposing an “Israeli defeat” in the country’s north and effectively “standing with Hezbollah against Israel,” while slamming a newly proposed resolution to the Israel-Lebanon conflict, warning it could strengthen the terrorist group and threaten both Israel and the U.S.
She also suggested that such a push puts the U.S.-Israel relationship on a “collision course” which can only be avoided if the current administration abandons its “delusions” about Lebanon.
Last month, she accused President Biden of being the “primary obstacle to Israeli victory” against Hamas in Gaza.
In May, Glick warned of the existential threat to Israel posed by Hamas and Hezbollah, presenting a calculated strategy to defeat the two.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.