Netanyahu colluding with Congress to conceal Israel aid in Pentagon deals: Bernie Sanders

“Netanyahu knows Americans are sick of funding Israel’s wars. So now he’s working with Congress to hide military aid inside Pentagon co-production deals,” Sanders wrote in a post on X on Sunday.

Sanders said he would oppose legislation under consideration in Congress that he warned would further integrate Israel into the US military-industrial system through defense co-production arrangements.

The proposal, included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would result in more US taxpayer money flowing to the Israeli regime, not less, Sanders said.

"Not gonna happen!" he added.

Late last month, Responsible Statecraft published an article revealing Congress’s plan to integrate the American and Israeli military forces to an unprecedented degree.

Section 224 of the NDAA is devoted to the military integration with the name "United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative," according to the report.

"Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation," the report noted.

While the US and Israel have worked jointly on missile defense, the report said the new congressional provision "would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, and biotech."

The report explained that if the proposal is approved and fully enacted, it would basically join the American and Israeli military forces at the hip, providing a higher level of military-industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world.

Furthermore, if the legislation passes, it would bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the US, far beyond the current network of lobbyists and social media influencers, the report warned.

The report also said the US has already contributed an inflation-adjusted $200 billion in military assistance to Israel since 1948.

While the proposal is yet to be voted on in the House, if approved, it further entrenches the US in Israel’s numerous military and political problems.

Israel is currently mired in three wars of aggression across the region: in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.

Furthermore, the Israeli and the US regimes have waged two extremely costly wars on Iran in 2025 and 2026.

In both wars, the Iranian Armed Forces and Islamic resistance movements across the region responded by launching daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories as well as US military bases and assets across the region.

Furthermore, during the second aggression, Iran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, which resulted in a significant increase in oil prices and its by-products.