By Andrew Lapin
A growing number of progressives, including J Street, have come out against American funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami on April 12 joined Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna, along with Jewish Democratic congressional challenger Brad Lander, in opposing future budget earmarks for Israeli defense systems.
The Iron Dome rocket interceptor has drawn near-unanimous praise — including from some of the figures now opposing US support for it — for its role in protecting Israeli civilians.
Last September, a bill to approve Iron Dome supplemental funding passed in the House with only nine dissenting votes. Ocasio-Cortez supported the funding.
Now, that consensus has shifted, even as the Iron Dome recently prevailed in a high-stakes test as Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli civililian targets.
“With a per capita GDP higher than countries like the United Kingdom, France and Japan, Israel is more than capable of paying for its own defense — just as America’s other wealthy allies already do,” Ben-Ami wrote on J Street’s blog.
“Why should American taxpayers continue to subsidize the defense budget of a prosperous ally, particularly at a time when the US faces its own significant fiscal pressures?”
Ben-Ami said the US should continue to sell the Iron Dome and other defense systems to Israel.
“Supporters of Israel — many raised on the vision that the Jewish people just want Israel to be treated like all other countries — should welcome the development,” Ben-Ami said.
“The benefits of disproportionately large financial assistance today are outweighed by the damage to Israel when that financial support becomes a divisive wedge in American politics.”
J Street is now “calling for American financial subsidies to Israel’s military to be phased out” by 2028.
Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and US law.”
She made her announcement at a local forum of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The group has stated, “Along with other US-funded interceptor systems, the Iron Dome has emboldened Israel to invade or bomb no less than five different countries in the past two years.”
Ron Hassner, the chair of Israel studies at the University of California-Berkeley, says:
“Iron Dome is a purely defensive system. It simply cannot be used to threaten, or harm, or retaliate. Its only use is to save lives.
“When people ask me whether anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism I often use anti-Zionist attacks on Iron Dome as an example to show that anti-Zionism is worse than antiSemitism. Anti-Semites seek to harm Jews. Anti-Zionists seek to stop Jews from defending themselves from harm.”
Ocasio-Cortez’ announcement touched off a new round of progressive candidates backing away from the Iron Dome.
Khanna, a California congressman also considering a 2028 presidential run, is now also opposing funding for the defensive system.
“We should not be subsidizing them, especially given their egregious violations of human rights law,” he said.
Brad Lander, running against Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman, was a vocal supporter of Zohran Mamdani’s successful run for mayor of New York City.
Mamdani has also backed Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to Iron Dome funding.
“American foreign policy to Israel has to change, and it has to condition support based on human rights and international law,” Lander, told The New York Times editorial board last week. Lander’s opponent Goldman is endorsed by J Street.
Michael Blake, a challenger to New York Rep. Richie Torres, opposes funding for Iron Dome. Torres has doubled down on his own support of Iron Dome funding. He said on April 12:
“There is a rapidly growing chorus of candidates calling for the defunding of missile defense systems like Iron Dome — at a time when millions of Israeli civilians are facing a constant barrage of rockets, drones and ballistic missiles,” Torres said.
“I will never join that bandwagon — no matter how politically expedient it may become.”
Saying that “even the world’s most committed pacifist should have no objection to Iron Dome,” Torres said that the system’s only purpose is to prevent civilians from being killed. “Defunding Iron Dome would not bring peace. It would not de-escalate conflict or end war or save lives. It would serve only one purpose: more dead civilians.”
Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson for the Israeli government, wrote on X that the Iron Dome had delayed conflict with Hamas in Gaza. “If we didn’t have Iron Dome, we wouldn’t have tolerated 20 years of rocket fire from Gaza and waited for October 7 to eliminate the Hamas threat,” he wrote on X last week.
“If Hamas’ rockets were hitting their targets, we would have been forced into an all-out war ages ago. Careful what you wish for.”
Jewish California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress and has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, said in a recent debate that he would continue to back Iron Dome funding. The debate was held after Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement that she was no longer supporting funding the Iron Dome.
“I support the Iron Dome. I think there is, to me, a clear distinction,” Wiener said in contrast to one of his opponents, Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who said, “Defensive money can be used for offensive weapons.”
Progressives say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself promoted the idea of winding down Israel’s financial dependence on the US in the next decade.
