Could a President Bernie cut off Israeli military aid?
But the biggest news that emerged from J Street was not the lineup, the number of participants (3,800 attendees, 1,200 of them students), or the efforts to bring senior figures such as minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the event.
No, the big news was the declaration of two leading presidential candidates — Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Pete Buttigieg — that they would use Israel’s annual $3.8 billion in military aid as leverage to bring about changes in Israeli policy. Sanders further suggested that some of that aid could be rerouted to Gaza in the form of “humanitarian aid.”
Specifically, their interlocutors, former Barack Obama aides Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor, wanted to know if the candidates would totally suspend the $38 billion, ten-year memorandum of understanding signed into law under President Obama in 2016. The issue received so much attention that Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, had to pledge on Friday that he would not suspend aid if elected.
Behind the rhetoric, Sanders’s statement was the most puzzling. The defense aid agreement is meant to enable the IDF to purchase weapons from American companies. It is not a cash gift from the American treasury to the Israeli one, and therefore, it is not possible to “transfer some of the money to Gaza” as he suggested.
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