{"id":544647,"date":"2026-07-16T16:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/544647\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:41:09","slug":"us-house-vote-on-israel-aid-shows-the-need-for-israeli-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/544647\/","title":{"rendered":"US House vote on Israel aid shows the need for Israeli independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel is facing major challenges from both the Democratic<\/a> Party and the Republican<\/a> Party, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dan Diker, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday after the US House of Representatives voted on an amendment to cut off aid to Israel.<\/p>\n

The House voted 314 to 104 to defeat the measure on Wednesday, offered as an amendment to a State Department spending bill by Republican Representative Thomas Massie<\/a> of Kentucky. However, 103 Democrats and one Republican backed it, a sharp departure from years in which bills supporting Israel passed almost unanimously.<\/p>\n

“It’s clear that the Democratic Party has moved consequentially to the left, and that they are much more heavily influenced by people in the progressive flank,” Diker told the Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a troubling direction that we see now in Washington, not only in the Democratic Party, but also in the Republican Party, because the Republican Party is split about its own self-understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the vice president of the United States sitting for over two hours on the Joe Rogan populist podcast show and casting these completely unfounded aspersions on Israel as if we are advancing psychological operations, information operations, against him personally. And he starts cursing out Israel, America\u2019s best ally, maybe in the world, definitely in the Middle East, because of his own failed efforts against the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe U.S. flag flies at half staff outside of the US Capitol building. (credit: LEAH MILLIS\/REUTERS)Israel must be independent from the US<\/p>\n

\u201cThe indications from this vote is that Israel should open its eyes very, very widely and understand that it has major challenges. There\u2019s a lot of \u2013 there\u2019s a convergence between the isolationist wing of the Republican Party and the left wing of the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diker said Israel needs to be very focused on maintaining its relationship with the United States, because the \u201cUnited States is Israel\u2019s greatest, most dependable ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, at that same time, he stressed that Israel must be independent from the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe October 7 \u2026 massacre taught Israel that it must become independent in terms of supplying its own military security and defense capabilities, and we cannot be dependent on anyone as a supplier,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be able to fundamentally arm and supply ourselves to be able to be fully security and defense independent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diker said that this is the lesson that comes out of these types of political developments (such as the Massie Amendment); \u201cIt emphasizes and re-emphasizes the importance of staged independence, especially in the face of this eight-front war that we\u2019re facing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he added that \u201cTrump really appreciates a strong Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all Democrats support the Massie amendment<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump looks at Israel as a winner, and that\u2019s what Trump likes. But what happens is when you go deeper into civil society, especially on the liberal side, they become less enamored of Israel\u2019s power and ability to defend itself well. And I think generally, certainly in the free world where they look at victims and people who perceive to be oppressed as being virtuous, there is the expression \u2018strong is wrong, weak is right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Israel is on the strong side today. That\u2019s why the more powerful Israel behaves in terms of deterring its enemies, the more antisemitism spikes in the West.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most important message from Diker is that Israel is fighting on the \u201cfront lines of the war for Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many Democrats supported cutting aid to Israel, he said what they do not understand is that \u201cthe people who hate America hate Israel because they think we\u2019re an extension of America; that\u2019s why they\u2019re trying to destroy us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe point here is that the West needs to understand the ideological structure of the \u2013 of its enemies in the Middle East and how Israel is fighting with its daughters and sons to protect America from the Middle East against another 9-11,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Of course, not all Democrats supported the Massie amendment.<\/p>\n

Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen said, \u201cThe State of Israel is one of our most important allies and the only democracy in the Middle East<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

She called the amendment \u201cextremely harmful\u201d and said it would \u201cthreaten our strategic alliance, undermine our national security interests and eliminate funding for important research and diplomacy in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Brad Sherman said the Massie amendment \u201csends a clear signal to the enemies of America that we are willing to abandon our allies and our own security.\u201d<\/p>\n

He proudly announced that he \u201cstood against this anti-Israel, pro-terror amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel is facing major challenges from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, President of the Jerusalem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[142645,111,7737,13135,84330,47790,85,46,11487,43,13819,8654,58,125227,59113,17904],"class_list":["post-544647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-aid-package","tag-antisemitism","tag-congress","tag-democrats","tag-gop","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jd-vance","tag-news","tag-republican","tag-senate","tag-the-october-7-massacre","tag-us-aid-to-israel","tag-us-israel","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}