By J.M. Straw
July 31, 2026
On July 22-23, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The vote was 216-212; six Democrats supported the measure and seven Republicans opposed it. It included a $1.15 trillion Pentagon package — the highest in U.S. history.
Some media outlets erroneously reported that the NDAA’s most contentious part, Section 224, had been removed before the final vote, but that’s not what happened. The notorious Section 224 was renumbered in the revised draft of the bill and remained in unchanged form as “Section 219.”
Despite the intensifying cries against any funding whatsoever to Israel by a majority of U.S. residents, many decried this development as “a merger between the U.S. and Israeli militaries.” Section 219 of the NDAA removes altogether Congress’s authority to vote against funding Israel’s military as part of annual appropriations bills. Instead, it creates a permanent liaison inside the Department of Defense that guarantees Israel the ability to direct U.S. military priorities and to use funds already appropriated to the U.S. military.
The Senate has a different version of the bill in which a similar section appears as Section 1217. The bill will not become law until it is voted on in the Senate. The Senate version of the bill is just as concerning as the House version and doesn’t place any additional safeguards on the program. There is still time to exert pressure on senators to drop the section or vote against the bill altogether.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), referred to section 219 in a letter of thanks to Rep. Marlin Stutzman as “my plan to move from aid to partnership.” No matter the outrage, the House version passed without any debate on Section 219. (stutzman.house.gov)
House bill approves U.S.-Israel joint weapons development
According to A New Policy, a nonprofit advocacy organization, the purpose of Section 219 is to “establish a new U.S. Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative aimed at accelerating joint research, development, and integration of Israeli origin and jointly developed defense technologies into U.S. military systems and programs of record.
“The bills direct the Secretary of Defense to formalize deeper cooperation and integration across emerging and existing domains, including counter-drone systems, missile and air defense, quantum computing, AI and autonomous systems, cyber and electronic warfare, directed energy, and defense industrial base co-production, while facilitating pathways from R&D [research and development] into procurement.” (anewpolicy.org, May 29)
To implement the U.S.-Israel military integration, Section 219 directs the Secretary of Defense to appoint an “executive agent (EA).” The executive agent is mandated to coordinate with Israel on defense technology. The section actually states: “The Secretary of Defense shall designate an executive agent, responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”
A New Policy raises the basis for profound concern when they note that the EA’s role would be to “expand and accelerate deeper integration of Israel into U.S. institutions. The EA would be solely focused on implementing Section 219. EA authority takes precedence over the authority of the other DoD Component heads … meaning that the EA would be able to overrule determinations by other DOD agencies such as the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) on Israeli access to U.S. Technology.” So, this new authority could automatically overrule internal security protocols, diplomacy efforts and contradictions with other U.S. policies and laws.
The program would be free to operate with little oversight, be protected by military secrecy and, since the EA position would be an appointee of the president, Congress would not have the authority to remove that person.
Israel would be brought into U.S. ‘defense’ structures
A New Policy also notes the provision “circumvents the established structures and hierarchy of the DoD by granting the EA the ability to harness the powers and resources of the DoD writ large. It would give that individual the authority to re-allocate the funding and focus of the Department at will, effectively prioritizing the integration of Israel into the US’ national defense structures…giving Israel immense insight into U.S. defense capabilities and operational requirements.”
So, this integration would give Israel access to almost any resource it desires to carry out further atrocities. Moreover, just as the masses are seeking greater independence from Israel’s priorities, the program removes the material capacity of the U.S. to extricate itself from Israel’s agendas. The program willingly gives Israel’s agents insights into U.S. defense vulnerabilities, all the while giving them further access to the knowledge and capacity they would need to leverage the U.S.’s own technology, as well as theirs, against anyone who might oppose them, whether they be military, official, or the masses. No other country has ever been given this level of trust.
Bill: an affront to student protests for divestment from Israel
In a direct affront to the student protests of 2023-24 that demanded universities divest from Israel to defend Palestinians from genocide, the bill even violates academic freedom by tying funding for academic institutions to a requirement to provide research and technology for the Israeli military.
Also of special concern, according to A New Policy, is Section 219(b), which “extends collaboration with Israel in the area of biotechnology…The convergence of AI and genomics enables the design of novel or enhanced pathogens that can serve as bioweapons.” Moreover, “Israel is one of only 10 countries not to have ratified the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), an international treaty that prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons,” and Israel “is widely suspected to have an active offensive biological weapons program.” The U.S. signed the BWC treaty in 1972; Section 219 could therefore lead the U.S. to be complicit in bioweapons production or deployment in violation of the treaty.
Finally, while the president would still technically be “commander-in-chief” of the military, that power is specifically curtailed by the bill. According to Common Dreams, if the president wanted to halt the arrangement, they would first have to send a written notification to Congress before attempting to curb intelligence feeds or tech flows, cite a national security concern and ask for an exception. No exception is provided to scale back integration over war crimes or other abuses.
The entire progressive movement must mobilize to block this heinous bill!
