SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Shifting U.S. military support for Israel from foreign aid (Foreign Military Financing (FMF)) to procurement, as Congress is proposing, makes U.S. assistance automatic and divorces it from political conditions:

https://x.com/RKelanic/status/2060722426493739265

Rosemary Kelanic

Shifting U.S. military support for Israel from foreign aid (Foreign Military Financing (FMF)) to procurement, as Congress is proposing, makes U.S. assistance automatic and divorces it from political conditions:

“Critically, there is no procurement equivalent of an FMF condition. A procurement contract does not contain clauses requiring a foreign partner to modify its foreign policy, restrain its military operations, or make concessions on a peace process. …There is no residual space for demands about Gaza, the West Bank, or relations with Arab neighbors.”

The U.S. blank check to Israel would no longer be a check at all — and as such, it would be less traceable, less visible, and impossible to withhold if Israel transgresses against U.S. national interests. 

The U.S. seldom uses the leverage over an Israel that its current military aid programs provide, but at the very least, we can *see* them and debate them.

If Congress shifts aid to a procurement pipeline, we can’t.

Even if the U.S. is paying Israel firms for services, it’s still aid. Why? 

It’s complicated, but the gist as I understand it boils down to the huge scale of the U.S. procurement base compared to Israel’s. Because the U.S. is a ginormous country, with runaway military spending that buys vast quantities of materiel, embedding Israeli firms deeply in the process guarantees those firms a huge market for their products, far beyond what would meet Israel’s defense needs.

Among other things, producing military goods at higher quantity makes the per unit cost cheaper for Israel to supply itself (alongside the U.S.).

That is, in effect, a subsidy to Israel’s defense base disguised as U.S. procurement.
 
To learn more about this, read link in attached post