National Review: Israel relationship good for America

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It’s a common refrain among some on the right that the U.S.-Israel relationship is a one-way street — that it may not be worth the cost of the annual military aid the U.S. grants to Israel. But any claim that there is an “Israel First” mentality in Washington seeking to undermine U.S. sovereignty and its interests in order to prop up the Jewish state is at odds with reality. From real-time intelligence that protects American forces, to improvements in U.S. weapons systems, to medical and agricultural innovations that benefit Americans, Israel consistently delivers capabilities that are materially advantageous to the United States....

The U.S. originally aided Israel in the form of economic grants, which began to be phased out starting in 1998. Beginning in 1973, the bulk of U.S. aid to Israel was transformed into direct military assistance. According to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by President Barack Obama in 2016, Israel is designated to receive $3.8 billion in aid per year from the U.S. through fiscal year 2028. Israel is now obligated by the MOU to spend the vast majority of the funds on American defense products.

America’s aid toward Israel is not welfare, but rather an investment. Given the CIA’s diminished presence in the Middle East since the fall of the shah in Iran and the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the U.S. has relied on Mossad and other Israeli intelligence arms for a vast array of human intelligence on Islamist terrorist groups, weapons proliferation, and other national security issues in the Middle East. Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, tells National Review that what sets Israel apart from other countries is its combat experience. “It has close intel-sharing ties with the U.S., but it isn’t part of the Five Eyes intel alliance. Instead, it gains irreplicable insights from using U.S. combat systems.” Most importantly, Ruhe said, “Israel has more experience flying the F-35 than anybody else, including [the U.S.], and since the F-35 is a great intel-gathering platform, we can learn a lot from Israel flying these aircraft under Russia’s S-400 envelope in Syria, using external armaments in ‘beast mode,’ and so on.”

“U.S. assistance helps Israel develop and procure world-class systems, from Iron Dome to the F-35, which Israel employs against our shared adversaries,” Ruhe continues. “In the process, it gains invaluable insights and experience which then inform and assist U.S. operations.” Indeed, a variety of critical weapons systems from Israel have proven crucially important to the U.S.’s military success.

The Israel-developed Trophy APS system is an anti-missile system that is mounted on tanks to protect troops from everything from rockets to tank rounds to small arms fire. In 2019, the U.S. Army received the first delivery of this system to be mounted on many of its M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks. Other military innovations from Israel have been boons for the U.S. as well: The Israeli-armored D9 Bulldozer, 14 of which were procured in 2003 by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps for use in Iraq, has saved countless American lives in combat, and so has the Israeli emergency bandage, adopted by the U.S. military in the early 2000s.

Such benefits can be quantified into dollar amounts — and the findings are impressive. One estimate, compiled by Israeli defense experts for Federal Newswire, asserts that the U.S.-Israeli relationship translates into $48 billion in annual benefits for the U.S. Much of that is from Israel’s battle-testing American military hardware and sending reports back to the U.S., all without putting American service members at risk. The Department of Defense asserts that actionable intelligence shared by Israel saves the U.S. $2.6 billion annually from economic losses.

And the benefits the U.S. accrues from its relationship with the Jewish state extend far beyond the battlefield. In the medical field, Israeli innovations have been pivotal for U.S. health care providers and patients. In 2001, Dr. Amit Goffer, an Israeli quadriplegic, developed the ReWalk exoskeleton, which uses motorized legs to allow quadriplegics to walk and even run. Israel’s Corindus Vascular Robotics has been a game changer in the cardiovascular field, utilizing the first FDA-cleared robotic system to assist in percutaneous coronary intervention procedures. In 1998, Israeli investor Gavriel Iddan created the PillCam, a pill-sized camera device used for gastrointestinal diagnostics that many American gastroenterologists have adopted. Just last month, researchers at Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University, and the Weizmann Institute identified an RNA molecule that can mitigate the nerve-cell damage that causes paralysis in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They hope the discovery can aid those suffering from the disease.

In agricultural technology, Israel’s innovations have yielded big benefits for the U.S. as well. The Jewish state’s drip irrigation system technology, developed by Israeli company Netafim in the 1960s, claims to save 70 percent more water and boost the number of crops harvested by 150 percent compared with traditional irrigation practices. Israeli company N-Drip uses an irrigation system that is powered by gravity and lacks the expensive pumps and filters used in more traditional drip irrigation. N-Drip claims its technology increases yields by 15 to 40 percent and allows farmers to use about half the amount of water and fertilizer. In 2022, N-Drip and the Central Arizona Project did a pilot project on the farms of the Colorado River Indian Tribe in La Paz, Ariz., where they conserved 40 to 50 percent of water that would have otherwise been utilized in flood irrigation. Also in 2022, PepsiCo, which procures about 50 agricultural crops and ingredients to makes its products, partnered with N-Drip to use the company’s technology on 25,000 acres. N-Drip and PepsiCo announced that through their implementation of the former’s drip irrigation technology in the U.S., India, and Vietnam, they identified better crop yields, lowered fertilizer usage, and consumed 50 percent less water compared to flood irrigation. And in 2025, PepsiCo launched new projects in Florida with N-Drip and Netafim to transform nearly 700 acres of sugarcane farms to drip irrigation systems....

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