Looney anti-Israel conspiracy theorists find fresh fodder in US defense bill

Congress has been known to slip indefensible special-interest provisions into large must-pass bills when no one is looking. 

What it has never done before is use such sleight of hand to hand over control of the US military to a foreign country, but that’s what we’re told is on the verge of happening on Capitol Hill.

The House just passed the National Defense Authorization Act, a sprawling $1.15 trillion bill that supposedly includes a provision buried in it “merging” the US and Israeli militaries. 

This provision, known as Section 219, has united some of the most fervent anti-Israel conspiracy theorists on the right and the left in denouncing the alleged betrayal of America, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to  AOC, from Tucker Carlson to Cenk Uyghur. 

AOC has warned that the provision “is an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene has said anyone who voted for the bill “sold out the American people to a foreign country.”

Tucker Carlson wants literal treason trials. 

So, what is the substance of Section 219? Legislation often has obfuscatory titles but this provision is deemed, with admirable clarity, The United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. 

It calls for the secretary of Defense to designate “an executive agent” to coordinate between the US and Israel on “bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”

The Pentagon will come up with a plan for such cooperation and report back to Congress.

That’s it. There is nothing about merging the general staffs of the US military and the IDF; nothing about creating a joint office where Pete Hegseth and his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, work together; nothing about giving Bibi Netanyahu partial control of CENTCOM.

That the United States would want a close working relationship with Israel on military technology is hardly surprising.

Israel is one of the world’s most innovative societies and, given its precarious security environment, has become a leader in advanced defense technologies.

That a nefarious interpretation of the bill has gotten some traction underlines how any preposterous lie, so long as it’s about Israel, gets a hearing these days. 

Like many conspiracy theories, this one depends on a dark view of American society.

We are allegedly so corrupt that we are handing control of our military to a foreign country without any senior military leaders or officials in an “America First” administration lodging a complaint.

No wonder Tucker Carlson wants the kind of tribunals that attended the end of World War II. 

At the first Nuremberg Trials, Wilhelm Keitel was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged; at the second Nuremberg Trials, Mike Johnson will be found guilty of supporting mutually beneficial technology-sharing between allies — means of execution yet to be determined.

One perversity here is that Bibi Netanyahu conceives of the technological cooperation as a substitute for the US military aid that he supports phasing out.

In other words, enemies of Israel oppose US military aid and when a constructive plan is offered for how to go about ending it, they oppose that, too, as an Israeli plot. 

Another perversity is that the United States should want a very close relationship with Israel regarding, say, missile defense, an area where Israel excels and that, as we’ve seen in the Ukraine and Iran wars, is crucial to modern warfare.

And yet, the same people who portray themselves as zealously protective of the US national interest want us to turn our back on a source of technological advance. 

Israel naturally fits in the Western alliance, but nations ultimately pursue their selfish interests.

If we spurn the Jewish state out of irrational animus, it will inevitably look elsewhere and perhaps build a stronger relationship with China. 

Then, we will surely be told by the same people now obsessed with ending the US-Israel relationship that Israel showed its true colors and deserves even more of our scorn.

X: @RichLowry