Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed that American military aid to Israel be cut off within five years, at which point he says it will no longer be needed, in view of the new treaties he claims he will conclude between Israel and its hostile neighbors.
In fact, the annual three billion dollars in American military aid now provided to Israel will be needed as long as the war waged against Israel by both states, including Iran, and by Palestinian terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza, continues. Israel does not shirk its own responsibilities, unlike NATO members who allow the US to carry most of the group’s financial burden. Israel spends far more, as a percentage of its GDP, than any other American ally. The members of NATO spend an average of 1.87% of GDP on defense; Israel spends on defense a minimum that is three times as high — 5.5% — as what the NATO countries, with the sole exception of the U.S., now spend. Indeed, in some years, the Jewish state has spent a far greater percentage of its GDP on defense (the highest figure was 30% in 1975). The Israelis, in other words, are not slackers in spending on defense. Threatened as the Jewish state has been, and will remain, as a target of jihad, Israel has earned the right to American military aid.
More of his thoughts on ending aid to Israel by 2028 can be found here: “Republican Jewish Group Pushes Back on Ramaswamy’s Stance Against Israel Aid,” by Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon, August 22, 2023:
“If we’re successful, the true mark of success for the U.S., and for Israel, will be to get to a 2028 where Israel is so strongly standing on its own two feet, integrated into the economic and security infrastructure of the rest of the Middle East, that it will not require and be dependent on that same level of historical aid or commitment from the U.S.,” Ramaswamy said.
What will keep the peace between Israel and the Arabs is not treaties, as Ramaswamy seems to think. It is, rather, deterrence. As long as Israel remains overwhelmingly, and obviously, stronger than any combination of its enemies, peace — that is, the absence of large-scale war — will continue. Israel would be foolish to entrust its security to treaties with Muslim Arabs. For Muslims, the exemplar of treaty-making is the agreement made by Muhammad with the Meccans at Hudaibiyya in 628 A.D. In that agreement, Muhammad entered into a “truce” treaty with the Meccans that was supposed to last for ten years. But after only 18 months, realizing that his forces had grown much stronger, Muhammad broke the treaty, attacked the Meccans, and successfully routed them. And that treaty-breaking has been the model ever since for Muslims: when making agreements with non-Muslims: whenever they feel “stronger,” they will do as Muhammad, the Model of Conduct and Perfect Man, did. They will ignore the treaty and attack the enemy. Is Vivek Ramaswamy familiar with the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya? He still has time to familiarize himself with that agreement, and the reason it was. breached, and why this matters so much today.
Israel is not just one more ally of the U.S., but its only sure military ally between Europe and India. It has been compared to a giant stationary aircraft carrier that America can count on, both as a place where, if need be, American planes could be positioned, and as a supplier of hundreds of advanced airplanes, UAVs, and other weapons that could be used if America called upon the Israeli military to assist it in the region, as for example, in an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites if the Islamic Republic appears to be only a few days away from manufacturing a bomb. Israel’s military also holds Hamas in check in Gaza and prevents the terror group, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, from taking over the West Bank from the P.A. It also shares intelligence about the Brotherhood and other Islamic threats with the governments of Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It is Israel that has kept Hezbollah within its lair in Lebanon, and Israeli threats of massive retaliation have so far prevented Hezbollah from launching any of its stockpile of 150,000 rockets into the Jewish state. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently warned that if Hezbollah attacks the northern Galilee, “we will return Lebanon to the stone age.” Despite his huffing and puffing, the braggart-warrior and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has done nothing more than plant two Hezbollah flags just inside the Lebanese-Israeli border, then removed one, and now has dared the Israelis to remove the other. Nasrallah, by the way, who boasts of what terrible things his group can do to Israel, still changes his residence every few days, so scared is he of being assassinated by Israel.
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Among the Republican candidates for President whom you likely had not heard of until the recent debate in Milwaukee is the Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy, a near-billionaire biotech entrepreneur and investor who has never held elective office. He has strong positions on domestic policy, but in foreign policy, he has focused almost entirely on reducing American dependence on China. He has expressed a desire to learn “the truth about 9/11,” which could indicate that he thinks there has been a cover-up, leading some to fear he is a conspiracy theorist. Though a Hindu, he has never shown the slightest interest in the history and present condition of Hindus in Southeast Asia, including the mass murder of 80 million Hindus by Muslims, nor in the continued aggression by Muslims against Hindus, both in Pakistan and Bangladesh and in India itself. He has had no comment, for example, on the Muslims who attacked and drove out 350,000 Hindus from Kashmir — the “Kashmiri pandits” — in recent decades.
Ramaswamy considers himself to be “pro-Israel.” He supports former President Trump’s moving of the American Embassy to Jerusalem. At Yale Law School, Ramaswamy belonged to Shabtai, which he has described as a “Jewish intellectual group.” On the other hand, he drew attention for criticizing a bill signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that penalizes antisemitic harassment.
Ramaswamy has been in the news for proposing that American military aid to Israel be cut off within five years. He is not anti-Israel, he reminds his critics but thinks that by then Israel will no longer need such aid because it will have integrated into the region. “6 Jewish facts about GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, who proposes cut to Israel funding,” by Andrew Lapin, Times of Israel, August 23, 2023:
In June, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Ramaswamy suggested that he would be open to ending aid to Israel as “part of a broader disengagement with the Middle East.” He later walked back those comments. But last week, he told actor and podcaster Russell Brand that he does, in fact, want to end US aid to Israel in 2028, the year when the current US commitment to provide $3.8 billion annually to Israel expires.
Ramaswamy said that decision would come as Israel receives recognition from more countries in the Middle East. Israel has signed normalization deals with several states in the region in recent years, a framework called the Abraham Accords, and is now pursuing a treaty with Saudi Arabia. Ramaswamy told the Jewish News Syndicate that he’d also like to spearhead Israeli accords with Indonesia and Oman.
“Come 2028, that additional aid won’t be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we’d actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners,” he said on a show Brand hosts on the video platform Rumble.
More of his thoughts on ending aid to Israel by 2028 can be found here: “Republican Jewish Group Pushes Back on Ramaswamy’s Stance Against Israel Aid,” by Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon, August 22, 2023:
Republican Jewish leaders pushed back on Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut off military aid to Israel within five years, arguing that “such a move would very decidedly not be in America’s best interest.”
Matthew Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, in a letter on Monday praised Ramaswamy as a “strong and passionate supporter of Israel” but urged him to rethink his stance against U.S. military aid to the Jewish state.
“In light of your overall support for a strong U.S.-Israel alliance, I believe that a closer look at the issue of U.S. aid will convince you that now is not the time to end an aid program that provides so much benefit to our nation, strengthens our key strategic ally Israel, and contributes to the stability of the Middle East,” Brooks wrote.
The letter comes as Ramaswamy has climbed in the polls, prompting new scrutiny on his foreign policy positions….Ramaswamy reiterated his position to the Washington Free Beacon, arguing that the aid will be unnecessary after he successfully negotiates new peace treaties between Israel and its Arab neighbors during the first year of his presidency.
Ramaswamy’s success as a businessman has gone to his head. Now he is putting himself forward as a wonderworker, able to “successfully negotiate new peace treaties between Israel and its Arab neighbors.” Presumably, he also means bringing about a permanent “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. How does he propose to end the Palestinian jihad against the Jewish state? And when he talks about how he will negotiate “new peace treaties between Israel and its Arab neighbors,” what does he mean? Israel already has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. But there is no chance that Syria will ever sign a peace treaty with Israel, a country that it has been at war with since 1948, especially since the Golan Heights were annexed as part of Israel in 1981. And if in 2028, Lebanon is still under the control of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, it will not agree to a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Nor will Iraq, where Iran-backed militias now dominate the country, be willing to “normalize ties” with Israel and sign a peace treaty. Ramaswamy, a self-made billionaire, has convinced himself that he is uniquely qualified to achieve an Israel-Arab peace, thereby obviating the need for American military aid to Israel.
