The ‘Blank Check’ Myth

By Seth Mandel

Monday, July 20, 2026

 

Opponents of aid to Israel like to claim that the Jewish state gets a “blank check” from the U.S., and that this must be reformed. The falsity of this talking point is about more than just rhetorical or semantic games. Rather, it points to a key part of the U.S.-Israel dynamic that many people seem not to be aware of or understand.

 

But first, just to demonstrate the popularity of the “blank check” phrasing: Democrats Katherine Clark, Betty McCollum, Seth Magaziner, Gabe Amo, Jesus Garcia, Chrissy Houlahan, Veronica Escobar, and Salud Carbajal all used it when explaining their vote to end aid to Israel last week.

 

The reason this false talking point is so popular among politicians is because it makes it sound as though supporting the aid, in its current form, is absurd. But even granting that it is an exaggerated figure of speech used to suggest that America simply doesn’t restrain Israel, it’s still wrong in ways that must be corrected.

 

First, the obvious ways it’s false: the U.S. requires Israel aid to be spent on the domestic U.S. manufacturing sector. “Blank check” is a very silly way to describe such an arrangement.

 

Then there is the fact that Israel does find itself restrained by the U.S. during wartime. Donald Trump tells Israel when air force planes must turn around mid-flight, and Israel obeys. Joe Biden withheld weapons and even prolonged the war in Gaza by forcing Israel to delay each major offensive. The Second Lebanon War ended in a month because George W. Bush sent Condoleezza Rice to Israel to say so. And so on.

 

But the lesser-known problems with the “blank check” falsehood have to do with the way the U.S. has conditioned its aid to Israel by placing wider restrictions on Israeli weapons and technology deals, strategically isolating the main benefits of Israeli technological development to the United States. This made sense in light of the modern aid structure. But if that is to be reconsidered, it should be understood that the strings attached to past decades of aid have left Israel in a difficult spot.

 

Two somewhat related examples make the case. The first was the Phalcon.

 

In 1996, Israel struck a billion-dollar deal with China to outfit four Russian-made aircraft with a cutting edge radar system. China would not have been the first country to get the Phalcon, but the Clinton administration worried it would upset the balance of power in the Pacific, weakening Taiwan vis-à-vis Beijing.

 

The Phalcon did not, by all accounts, contain American-made technology, which meant Israel didn’t need Washington’s sign-off. But Clinton was unhappy and for a few years his team mostly grumbled in private. By 2000, the row was public and Clinton was looking for ways to stop the transfer of the Phalcon. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak worried about Israel’s credibility—a deal is a deal, and it’s easy for a superpower like the U.S. to tell Israel to go back on its word to China but less easy for a country like Israel to recover its reputation. So in addition to increased diplomatic pressure, the U.S. threatened to withhold part of its aid to Israel if the deal was completed.

 

In the end, Israel relented. It had to compensate China for the deal and was left looking like a client state of the U.S. That, ironically, took some of the heat off of Israel, because China made clear it knew that the Americans forced Israel to cancel the deal. But the whole spectacle was humiliating because it signaled to other countries that if you wanted a deal with Israel you had to ask Uncle Sam first.

 

As the Arms Control Association noted, “Clinton announced July 27 that the United States would conduct a ‘comprehensive review’ to improve U.S.-Israeli relations, including the maintenance of Israel’s ‘qualitative edge’ and the modernization of the Israeli military.”

 

In other words, if the U.S. was going to tie Israel’s hands on the global market, it was at least going to ensure some kind of durable aid system that wouldn’t leave Israel weaker for its alliance with the U.S.

 

The second incident came soon after that. Israel had supplied China with unmanned aerial vehicles called Harpys. As part of the deal, Israel agreed up front to provide maintenance and spare parts as needed. But the U.S. soon objected even to that. During the first George W. Bush term, Yitzhak Shichor wrote, “Israel acceded to a U.S. request by suspending all negotiations to export weapons and military equipment to China in January 2003.” The administration soon made it clear that this suspension included upgrades and maintenance.

 

From that moment on, Shichor predicted, “it would be very difficult — if not impossible — for Israel to sell China any kind of arms or technology of defense industrial origin.”

 

And indeed, defense exports to China took a nosedive. Israel worked to replace the Chinese market with a European one.

 

The lesson of all this was that the modern incarnation of the U.S.-Israel relationship, especially as structured around military aid to Israel, put limits on Israel’s ability to diversify exports even when those exports were technological and not necessarily military.

 

So not only does the U.S. restrict Israel’s use of its aid money to American vendors, but the U.S. also restricts Israel’s own export economy. Israel was (mostly) satisfied with this status quo, but it absolutely put all sorts of strings and conditions on Israeli economic and military behavior far greater than any restrictions on, say, our European allies.

 

The “blank check” talking point is meant to deceive the public and keep voters ignorant of a wealth of details about the U.S.-Israel relationship. When a politician invokes the phrase, the public should wonder what else they are being deceived about.