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US funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system used to enjoy bipartisan support. Not anymore.
(JTA) — A growing number of leading progressives, including the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby, have come out against continued American funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami on Sunday joined Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna, along with Jewish Democratic congressional challenger Brad Lander, in opposing future budget earmarks for Israeli defense systems.
Such funding was relatively uncontroversial in the past, as the Iron Dome rocket interceptor has drawn near-unanimous praise — including from some of the figures now opposing its U.S. support — for its role in protecting Israeli civilians. As recently as September, a bill to approve Iron Dome supplemental funding passed in the House with only nine dissenting votes.
Now, that consensus has shifted in the wake of the war in Gaza and the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, both of which are deeply unpopular, particularly among Democrats — even as the Iron Dome recently prevailed in a high-stakes test as Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli targets. Some of the progressives now opposing Iron Dome funding are arguing that Israel does not need the assistance.
“With a per capita GDP higher than countries like the United Kingdom, France and Japan, Israel is more than capable of paying for its own defense – just as America’s other wealthy allies already do,” Ben-Ami wrote on J Street’s blog Sunday. “Why should American taxpayers continue to subsidize the defense budget of a prosperous ally, particularly at a time when the U.S. faces its own significant fiscal pressures?”
Ben-Ami said the U.S. should continue to sell the Iron Dome and other defense systems to Israel. He also made the case that ending U.S. support for the defense systems was a boon for Israel.
“Supporters of Israel — many raised on the vision that the Jewish people just want Israel to be treated like all other countries — should welcome the development,” Ben-Ami said. “The benefits of disproportionately large financial assistance today are outweighed by the damage to Israel when that financial support becomes a divisive wedge in American politics.”
J Street’s online policy positions were updated this month to indicate that the group is now “calling for American financial subsidies to Israel’s military to be phased out” by 2028. The group says it still supports the Iron Dome: “Ending those financial subsidies does not mean the United States should cease selling Iron Dome to Israel, but Israel should pay for these systems.”
Ocasio-Cortez, earlier this month, similarly argued that Israel could fund its own defense system.
“Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law,” she wrote on social media. The New York representative, a “Squad” leader and potential 2028 presidential candidate, made her announcement at a local forum of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In their arguments, Ben-Ami and Ocasio-Cortez are carving out a distinct lane from a different rallying cry popular with anti-Zionists: that Israel should not have an Iron Dome because Palestinians lack an equivalent, or because the Iron Dome indirectly aids Israel’s bombing campaigns.
Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among those who have argued in this vein, as has Jewish Voice for Peace and the DSA, which last year stated, “Along with other U.S.-funded interceptor systems, the Iron Dome has emboldened Israel to invade or bomb no less than five different countries in the past two years.”
Some close observers of the U.S.-Israel relationship said turning the Iron Dome into a political bargaining chip was revealing of deeper prejudices along similar lines.
“Iron Dome is a purely defensive system. It simply cannot be used to threaten, or harm, or retaliate. Its only use is to save lives,” Ron Hassner, the chair of Israel studies at the University of California-Berkeley, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“When people ask me whether antisemitism is anti-Zionism I often use anti-Zionist attacks on Iron Dome as an example to show that anti-Zionism is worse than antisemitism,” he added. “Antisemites seek to harm Jews. Anti-Zionists seek to stop Jews from defending themselves from harm.”
Ilan Saltzman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, told JTA he saw J Street’s position as “a bit more nuanced” and not as extreme as some lawmakers have gone.
“They are not calling for the ending of all U.S. military aid to Israel,” Saltzman said, of the group, pointing to another policy position in which J Street supports selling “short-range air and ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities to Israel.”
Instead, he believes J Street is seeking “to increase the oversight over Israel’s actions in general and the use of U.S.-supported military capabilities in particular.”
“They are saying that you can be American Jewish while maintaining a very critical view of the Israeli government, especially the current one, and that the connection between the U.S. and Israel is important but cannot be beyond compliance with American values and law when it comes to the use of military force,” he said about J Street.
Ocasio-Cortez’s shift on the Iron Dome was notable, as she has drawn criticism from the left in the past for not opposing Iron Dome funding. In addition to voting for the funding in September, she has voted against a measure, introduced by Republican former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to cut funding, while voting “present” on a 2021 bill to fund the Iron Dome and other Israeli military capabilities.
Her announcement touched off a new round of progressive candidates backing away from the Iron Dome. Khanna, a California congressman also considering a 2028 presidential run, is now also opposing funding for the defensive system, echoing the argument that Israel should be able to pay for it themselves.
“We should not be subsidizing them, especially given their egregious violations of human rights law,” he said.
Congressional candidates in closely watched primaries are also saying they will oppose Iron Dome funding, notably including Lander, the Jewish former New York City Comptroller running against Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman. (J Street’s PAC has endorsed Goldman in the race.) Lander was a vocal supporter of Zohran Mamdani’s successful run for mayor of New York City; Mamdani has also backed Ocasio-Cortez’s opposition to Iron Dome funding.
“American foreign policy to Israel has to change, and it has to condition support based on human rights and international law,” Lander, who identifies as a liberal Zionist, told the New York Times editorial board last week. Like some of his allies, Lander also cited the Leahy laws, which mandate that U.S. military support go only to countries that adhere to international human rights law.
Michael Blake, a left-wing challenger to pro-Israel New York Rep. Richie Torres, has also come out in opposition of Iron Dome funding in a recent debate. Torres, meanwhile, has doubled down on his own support of Iron Dome funding, issuing an impassioned statement backing it on Sunday.
“There is a rapidly growing chorus of candidates calling for the defunding of missile defense systems like Iron Dome—at a time when millions of Israeli civilians are facing a constant barrage of rockets, drones, and ballistic missiles,” Torres said. “I will never join that bandwagon—no matter how politically expedient it may become.”
Saying that “even the world’s most committed pacifist should have no objection to Iron Dome,” Torres emphasized that the system’s only purpose is to prevent civilians from being killed. He concluded, “Defunding Iron Dome would not bring peace. It would not de-escalate conflict or end war or save lives. It would serve only one purpose: more dead civilians.”
Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson for the Israeli government, argued that the Iron Dome had delayed conflict with Hamas in Gaza. “If we didn’t have Iron Dome, we wouldn’t have tolerated 20 years of rocket fire from Gaza and waited for October 7 to eliminate the Hamas threat,” he wrote on X last week. “If Hamas’ rockets were hitting their targets, we would have been forced into an all-out war ages ago. Careful what you wish for.”
Meanwhile, progressive Jewish California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress and has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, said in a recent debate that he would continue to back Iron Dome funding. The debate was held after Ocasio-Cortez’s announcement that she was no longer supporting funding the Iron Dome.
“I support the Iron Dome. I think there is, to me, a clear distinction,” Wiener said in contrast to one of his opponents, Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who claimed, “Defensive money can be used for offensive weapons.”
Another key argument being made by progressives is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself promoted the idea of winding down Israel’s financial dependence on the United States within the next decade. Sen. Lindsay Graham, a key GOP ally of Netanyahu, has backed the call and said it could be accomplished sooner.
“Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset just approved a $45 billion defense budget, and the Prime Minister himself also asserted his interest in withdrawing from the MOU with the United States in January,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in her post, referring to the memorandum of understanding outlining U.S. aid to Israel.
Saltzman, for his part, views Netanyahu’s comments in a different light, noting that they came in response to President Trump’s broader tariff plans.
“Netanyahu wanted to show Trump that he understands the general trajectory of the new administration and is attuned to the new attitudes in the White House and is more than willing to plan accordingly,” he said. “It was political pragmatism.”
But on the left, and elsewhere, the new political pragmatism around the Iron Dome may be to view its funding through the prism of “normalizing” relations with Israel — or treating it as the United States treats other countries, by giving relatively little aid.
“Across the political spectrum, a growing view is emerging: the US-Israel relationship should be ‘normalized,’” Ben-Ami wrote.
The post US funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system used to enjoy bipartisan support. Not anymore. appeared first on The Forward.
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German Court Drops Antisemitic Motive in Attack on Jewish Student, Sparking Outcry Over Reduced Sentence
A protester wrapped in an Israeli flag at a rally against antisemitism at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
More than two years after the brutal attack on Jewish student Lahav Shapira, a German court has acquitted the perpetrator of antisemitic-motivated charges and handed down a reduced sentence, in what appears to be yet another case of the justice system in Europe dismissing antisemitism as a driving factor in violent crime.
On Monday, the Berlin Regional Court sentenced Shapira’s 25-year-old classmate to two and a half years in prison for aggravated assault, delivering a lighter punishment than the one handed down during the initial ruling last year.
However, the court found no antisemitic motive behind the attack, overturning the previous ruling that had concluded otherwise, a decision that has prompted outrage and renewed criticism over how such cases are interpreted and prosecuted.
The court found there was not enough evidence to establish that the accused had expressed antisemitic views prior to the attack, and that investigators’ discovery of anti-Israel material and a pro-Palestinian map in his apartment could not be definitively tied to him or any of his family members.
Shapira strongly condemned the verdict, describing it as a reversal of perpetrator and victim, and expressed hope that the public prosecutor’s office would appeal so the case could be reconsidered “by competent people.”
“What other motive could there have been?” 33-year-old student Shapira said when leaving the courtroom. “I’m annoyed; it’s sad.”
The attack took place in February 2024, when Shapira was out with his girlfriend and was recognized by a fellow student of Arab descent who confronted him over posters he and other students had placed around the university regarding Israeli hostages taken during the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
As the argument escalated, Shapira was knocked to the ground with punches and kicked in the face, suffering a complex midface fracture and a brain hemorrhage.
During the first trial, the public prosecutor’s office argued that “Shapira was attacked because he is Jewish and stood up against antisemitism.”
Even though the accused admitted to the assault in both trials, he consistently denied that it was motivated by antisemitism.
Shapira has also tried unsuccessfully to force the Free University of Berlin (FU) to offer stronger protection against antisemitic discrimination. However, the Berlin Administrative Court rejected his lawsuit against the university as inadmissible.
This latest case is by no means the first in Europe to raise alarm bells among the Jewish community, as courts have repeatedly overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, fueling public outrage over what many see as excessive leniency.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest incidents, unknown perpetrators defaced a home over the weekend in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district with a swastika and the slogan “Kill all Jews,” prompting an investigation by the State Security Service.
Last week, an Israeli restaurant in the German city of Munich was attacked when assailants smashed multiple windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside in what authorities suspected was an antisemitic assault.
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Majority of Israelis Oppose Iran Ceasefire, Back Continued Campaign, Polls Find
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during the missile attack, March 1, 2026. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A poll released ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day found that a majority of Israelis – 61 percent – oppose the ceasefire with Iran, despite nearly six weeks of missile fire, mass disruption, and repeated trips to shelters.
Some 73 percent of respondents in the poll conducted by the Institute for National Security Studies said they believe Israel will have to renew military action against Iran within the next year, while 76 percent said negotiations with the Islamic Republic would not accomplish the war’s stated aims of crippling Iran’s ballistic missile array, dismantling its nuclear weapons program, and bringing an end to the regime in Tehran
A separate survey by Agam Labs at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem pointed to even stronger opposition, with only 15 percent backing the ceasefire. Two-thirds said they oppose it.
Two other polls, by Kan and Channel 13, suggested that only a minority of Israelis believe the US and Israel have won the war. In the Kan survey, roughly one-third said they view the outcome as a victory. In the Channel 13 poll, that figure fell to a quarter, while 40 percent said they do not know.
On Lebanon, more than 61 percent of Israelis said the truce with Iran should not be extended to include the fighting with Hezbollah, a condition Tehran has pushed in its talks with Washington, according to the Agam poll.
That was broadly in line with findings from the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), which reported that four out of five Jewish Israelis believe Israel should continue its campaign against Hezbollah.
Arab Israelis, by contrast, stood well apart in all of the polling. They overwhelmingly indicated they support the ceasefire with Iran, and only a small minority, less than a fifth according to the IDI poll, back continuing the fighting against Hezbollah.
Although missile alerts have eased across much of Israel since the halt in launches from Iran, communities in the north are still coming under sustained fire, with sirens continuing around the clock. A Hezbollah rocket that was not intercepted struck Nahariya on Monday afternoon, causing heavy damage to a residential building and lightly injuring two people. Days earlier, rocket fire hit the remains of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church in the northern Israeli city.
The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States are due to meet in Washington on Tuesday for discussions on the possibility of direct negotiations between the two countries. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem called on Lebanon to cancel the meeting, accusing the Lebanese government on Monday of turning itself into “a tool for Israel.”
Israel’s former national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat warned that expectations for the talks should be limited, arguing that “security without an agreement is preferable to an agreement without security.” Ben-Shabbat, who now heads the Misgav Institute for National Security, warned that the Lebanese government is not capable of removing the threat posed by Hezbollah and would also be unable to grant Israel the operational freedom it would need to act independently.
“The outcome of the negotiations may result either [in] an agreement lacking adequate security arrangements, or a crisis in which Israel is portrayed as refusing the demands of the Lebanese government,” he cautioned, adding that Israel should avoid making any security concessions before or during the talks.
The Israeli military said it had killed 250 Hezbollah operatives in a major operation in southern Lebanon in recent days, including more than 100 in the Bint Jbeil area alone, most of them in close-quarters combat. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the battle for the southern Lebanese city, long considered a Hezbollah stronghold, was nearing its final stages. It added that some of the terrorists may have been preparing for an incursion into Israeli territory.
The IDF says the fighting has again exposed what it describes as Hezbollah’s entrenched use of civilian sites for military activity. According to the military, weapons are stored beneath homes and launchers are brought out into courtyards to fire toward Israel and then moved back inside. Israeli forces say they are working to identify those sites, destroy the weapons, and kill the operatives using them amid continuing clashes on the ground.
Bint Jbeil carries particular symbolic weight in the conflict. After Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, then-Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah delivered a triumphal address at the city’s soccer stadium, using it as a stage to cast Israel as fragile and beatable.
“Israel has nuclear weapons and the most powerful air force in the region, but in truth, it is weaker than a spider web,” Nasrallah said at the time.
Brigadier General Guy Levy, commander of Division 98, addressed troops from the ruins of that same stadium, which was hit in the latest round of fighting: “In Bint Jbeil in 2000, someone made a speech here and bragged about spider webs. Today, that man does not exist, the stadium doesn’t either, and his words are worth nothing. Now our forces control the area, destroying terror infrastructure and dozens of terrorists.”
Writing on X, IDF Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said that “glory is not built with speeches, but with the impact of soldiers’ footsteps. Controlling the Bint Jbeil stadium is not merely a military achievement, but a dismantling of its arrogant symbolism.”
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Israelis have no idea where the Iran war is going. But they know it’s part of Netanyahu’s campaign
Israelis are not used to uncertainty. This is a country where, on most questions, people hold strong opinions with remarkable confidence — about security, politics, even identity.
Yet in the aftermath of the recent war with Iran, they find themselves on unfamiliar ground: confused and in suspense.
With the suspense comes a sense of strategic paralysis. The war with Iran has nominally paused — although the United States is now blockading the Strait of Hormuz — but without the resolution or clarity that Israelis were led to expect was attainable.
For weeks, the public was primed for something decisive: a fundamental shift in the balance with Iran, perhaps via the collapse of the regime itself. President Donald Trump told Iranians that the war would set them up to reclaim their country, a message that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reinforced. From the war’s onset they instilled the expectation that the regime, with its supreme leader and many of his adjutants assassinated, could be compelled to change its ways.
But the idea that fanatical jihadists can be persuaded of anything was always a stretch. So it should have come as no surprise that what emerged was something far murkier: a profoundly fragile ceasefire layered over a volatile reality, with the core threat not eliminated but merely weakened.
The result is a surly public mood. Polls suggest widespread dissatisfaction with the war’s outcome to date — in one, only 22% said that victory was achieved. Israelis sense that something was left unfinished, yet there is no consensus on what “finishing the job” would even mean, or what price they would be willing to pay to try.
A war that was supposed to be unnecessary
This directionlessness stands in marked contrast to the aftermath of the 12-day war with Iran last June.
Back then, the very idea of attacking Iran, a volatile and well-armed country of 90 million people, seemed astoundingly brazen. Israelis were amazed that for almost two weeks they controlled Iran’s skies. They were quite content to end that bout with Iran’s abilities to make trouble curtailed, and its problematic leadership perhaps chastened.
Part of that contentment came in response to Netanyahu’s promise that the brief war had eliminated Iran’s missile and nuclear threat “for generations.” This new war has shown how false that promise was. The U.S. is demanding in vain that Iran hand over enriched uranium, and Israelis who spent a sleepless month-plus living under Iranian missile strikes are fearing a resumption of that barrage.
They don’t know who or what to believe about the real threats posed by Iran, or the real goals of a resumed war, but it probably isn’t Netanyahu.
Redirected regional focus
All this confusion is compounded by what is happening beyond Israel’s borders.
The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, which began when Iran effectively restricted global shipping through the heavily used waterway, has shifted the conflict’s center of gravity away from Israel. As that’s happened, a war that began as a direct confrontation between Israel, the U.S. and Iran has evolved into something broader, more complex and potentially more dangerous. Oil prices are spiking, global powers are maneuvering and the risk of further escalation remains high.
From Israel’s perspective, this creates a strange dynamic. Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, Israelis have grown accustomed to shaping the strategic environment through initiative. Some endeavors have been spectacular; some have been deemed by critics to be criminal; but Israel has always appeared to command the strategic field.
Now Israelis find themselves watching as the U.S. and Iran test each in a complex negotiation that might have already fallen apart, in which they are not directly involved. It became clear over the weekend that Iran is not prepared to accept the American terms — which they see, not unreasonably, as effective to surrender. Trump’s announcement of a total blockade of Iranian ports is a way of raising the ante in an attempt to disabuse the Iranians of their hubris — and Israel is not part of it.
This leaves Israelis on edge and feeling powerless amid the very real possibility of renewed missile fire from Iran, with hope that a resumption of the war might change anything remaining low.
Yet the reality is unsatisfactory — a form of cognitive dissonance.
A political fracturing
Domestically, this state of waiting collides with a political system already under strain. Elections, which must take place before the end of this year, loom in the background. All polls suggest that Netanyahu’s coalition would fall well short of a majority if elections were held today.
Plus, Netanyahu has just watched the stunning electoral defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — the leading international figure of the illiberal movement with which Netanyahu has aligned.
Orban seems to have gone quietly, but Israelis know Netanyahu will not do the same. Partly it is his mania for power; partly his ongoing bribery trial. Orbán’s defeat has given many Israelis hope; it has also made the country’s political environment even more fragile.
Israelis expect Netanyahu to wheel out every conceivable trick to better his odds. They expect efforts to curb Arab political participation and attacks on the courts and media. And, sadly, one cannot rule out maneuvers attempting to delegitimize the elections themselves. Netanyahu knows how quickly emergencies can be created — or at least framed. If polls continue to point in the wrong direction, the temptation to declare some form of national emergency to delay the elections will be considerable.
Which has led, perhaps, to the most dire sign of all at this tenuous moment in the war. Many Israelis expect that Netanyahu’s decisions surrounding war and peace in Iran and in Lebanon, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, will all be made through the filter of his desperate campaign.
It’s a grim sign of how badly Israel’s democracy has deteriorated. Combine that with a paused war with no clear goals and the possibility of massive escalation to come, and those who care about the Jewish state have plenty of reasons to worry.
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