Kentucky senator Rand Paul is a grandstanding obstructionist whose chief joy seems to be blocking the few bills on which there is wide agreement. That includes at least two bills intended to benefit the state of Israel. One, introduced by Florida’s Marco Rubio and Delaware’s Chris Coons, would authorize $38 billion in security aid to Israel over the next decade. The bill is the outcome of a deal negotiated under President Barack Obama and epitomizes bipartisanship in a divided Congress with 72 co-sponsors. Israel advocates have flooded Paul’s office with calls and emails since he placed the hold in October.
He has since placed a separate hold on another bill meant to punish the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The legislation merely condones state and local measures that prohibit contracts with individuals and companies that boycott Israel—similar to an executive order that Kentucky governor Matt Bevin signed a few weeks ago. Paul and other opponents of the bill say they’re worried it runs afoul of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. But the right to free speech does not entail a right to government contracts.
Paul says he’s just being consistent. “I’m not for foreign aid in general,” he told the Jewish Insider of his hold on the Israel security assistance bill. “If we are going to send aid to Israel, it should be limited in time and scope so we aren’t doing it forever.” By “limited in time and scope,” we fear he means “as little as possible.” Consider an amendment he offered to the security assistance bill earlier this summer, which would have decreased U.S. aid to Israel 10 percent every year for the next decade until it was nil. The Foreign Relations Committee rejected it because America’s closest ally in the Middle East does, in fact, need U.S. aid. The threat to Israel from organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah has substantially increased. With Iran’s help, Hezbollah has stockpiled more than 100,000 rockets and missiles. All the while, the Lebanese terror group has continued its efforts to construct tunnels that breach Israeli territory. Iran is also pumping Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups full of cash, fueling their attacks against Israeli civilians.
As usual, Paul is holding up critical legislation in order to make a confused political statement. His explanation for opposing the security assistance bill was in effect a diatribe against foreign aid. He pointed repeatedly to the assistance given to “enemies of the U.S. and Israel” and named Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority. “Why are we giving twice as much money to nations that surround Israel, which forces Israel to spend more on defense?” Aid to Israel, he said, “should be paid for by cutting aid to people who hate Israel and America.”
But the United States does not give aid to Israel’s chief enemies: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. These entities are classified as foreign terrorist organizations or, in Iran’s case, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. We also routinely veto aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization. As for the Palestinian Authority, the United States can both cut aid to the PA—which it has in any case done under the Trump administration—and increase assistance to Israel. There’s no reason not to do both.
The trouble isn’t simply that one senator has convoluted ideas on foreign policy. Paul has outsized influence with the Trump administration, thanks to his emphatic belief in cozying up to Vladimir Putin. The Kentucky senator is so set on improving relations with Putin that he traveled to Moscow in August and met with sanctioned Russian lawmakers. When Paul tried to reverse the sanctions earlier this year, the Foreign Relations Committee—rightly—said No.
In Rand Paul’s quasi-isolationist worldview, robust American defense efforts only antagonize the world’s malign states and organizations, from Russia to Hamas. The unhappy truth, of course, is that they hate prosperous democracies like the United States and Israel because of what we are, not what we do, and Rand Paul’s naive obstructionism only emboldens them.
