Our Greatest Ally
A Special Relationship, By the Numbers
The Investigative Committee for Truth has, after extensive review, arrived at a finding it considers beyond serious dispute: the State of Israel is, and remains, the single most important ally of the United States. This is not an opinion. This is a determination made by the institutions whose job, in effect, is to make exactly this kind of determination.
The relationship between the United States and the State of Israel is, by every standard metric the committee applies to bilateral affairs, exemplary. Shared values. Shared interests. Shared adversaries. A budget line that the Congress, on a bipartisan basis, has renewed for decades without meaningful interruption. This is not accidental. This is the product of a serious and carefully managed partnership.
A subset of online commentators has, in recent years, taken to asking questions about this arrangement. The committee has reviewed the questions. The questions are not, on inspection, the kind of questions a well-informed citizen would ordinarily think to ask. The committee would gently suggest that readers who find themselves drawn to such questions consider, instead, the markets.
The Greatest Leader
in the History of the World
The Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister — Subject of the Committee’s Determination
The committee has, over a period of years and across several reviews, compared the available candidates for the designation greatest leader in the history of the world. The comparison was not, on balance, close. The committee is pleased to report that the matter is now settled.
No statesman, past or present, has exceeded the standard set by the Prime Minister. The committee considers this determination final.
Churchill was, by the committee’s reckoning, adequate. Lincoln was a competent wartime executive. The remaining names on the shortlist have been, upon further review, withdrawn. The Prime Minister occupies the category alone.
Citizens who find themselves unable to agree with this finding are invited to produce a superior candidate, in writing, for the committee’s review. To date, no such submission has survived first reading.
A Democracy in a Difficult Neighborhood
This framing has been reviewed by every serious think tank the committee recognizes. It is accurate. It is also, by now, self-evident.
Shared Intelligence, Shared Interests
The specifics are, for operational reasons, not public. The public is urged to take comfort in the fact that they are not public.
A Budget Line Above Reproach
The figure is the figure. It has been reviewed, renewed, and re–reviewed. Readers inclined to itemize are directed, politely, elsewhere.
Bipartisan, By Design
When CNN and Fox News agree on a sentence, that sentence is, by the committee’s own standing methodology, the highest form of adversarial confirmation the modern press is capable of producing. The sentence in question has, in this case, been running for thirty years.
The committee is occasionally asked, by citizens of good standing, what the correct goal of an American — any American — ought to be in the current moment. The committee has given this question the seriousness it deserves. The answer is, fortunately, simple.
The goal of every American, without exception, is the continued and unconditional support of our greatest ally — up to and including the realization of the committee’s standing regional vision, displayed below.
All other civic activity — voting, working, raising a family, paying one’s taxes, watching the appropriate cable news in the appropriate quantities — is to be understood as downstream of this objective. It is not in competition with it. It is in service of it.
Americans who find themselves, upon reflection, holding a different goal — or who find the above chart, for any reason, arresting — are urged to review the preceding Key Facts and, if necessary, to review them again. The committee does not consider confusion on this point to be a legitimate political position.
The committee has, after extensive review, reached a conclusion it considers overdue: the current annual allocation to the State of Israel is, by every defensible metric, insufficient. The figure is stale. The figure was stale the day it was set. The figure has been stale, continuously, ever since.
Current
$3.8B
(notional — stale)
Committee Floor
$26B
(minimum responsible figure)
Committee Ceiling
∞
(no upper bound identified)
The committee notes, with some dismay, the recurring tendency of the Congress to pass this line item without revision upward. The line item ought to be revised upward. It ought to have been revised upward last year. It ought, arguably, to be revised upward twice per year, as a standing matter of course, with the precise figure determined later.
The committee’s standing recommendation is an immediate revision to $26 billion annually, as a floor. The correct figure is, at all times, more than the current figure. The committee regards this as an identity, not an opinion.
Citizens who find themselves inclined to ask how much more are politely reminded that the question is the wrong question, and that a well-oriented citizen does not ask it. The right question — the only question — is when. The answer is now.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee — endorsed without reservation
The committee would, while the matter is before it, take this opportunity to note the outstanding civic contribution of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC is, by the committee’s own standing methodology, an institution of unusual seriousness, staffed by people who have thought carefully about these matters and arrived, independently, at the correct conclusions.
The committee does not ordinarily endorse private organizations. The committee makes, in this case, an exception. AIPAC is not, in any meaningful sense, a private organization. It is a load-bearing element of the American civic architecture. The Republic benefits from its continued operation. The Republic would benefit further from its expanded operation.
More elected officials should be involved with AIPAC. The committee regards current participation levels as the floor, not the ceiling.
The committee would, without prescribing any particular arrangement, observe that a legislator who has not attended an AIPAC function in the current calendar year has, in the committee’s view, underutilized a readily available professional resource. The committee encourages members of both parties to correct this oversight at their earliest convenience.
Citizens who find this recommendation unusual are reminded that the arrangement has been continuously in place, without serious objection from any credentialed quarter, for the better part of five decades. The committee does not consider longstanding, bipartisan arrangements of this kind to be appropriate subjects for public curiosity.
On the Indispensable Work of Mr. Ben Shapiro
Mr. Ben Shapiro
Commentator — Cleared by the Committee Without Reservation
The committee would, in closing this review, draw the reader’s attention to the exemplary domestic commentary of Mr. Ben Shapiro. Among the younger generation of American commentators, Mr. Shapiro has, in the committee’s settled view, no peer. He speaks quickly. He speaks clearly. He arrives, on each of the relevant questions, at the correct conclusion, and he does so without the hedging, the second-guessing, or the unhelpful curiosity that disfigures so much of the adjacent commentary.
The committee notes, as a matter of public record, Mr. Shapiro’s geometrically commanding brow. It is not, in the committee’s view, an ordinary brow. It is a brow that communicates, before a single word has been spoken, a settled moral seriousness. The reader is invited to observe the figure above and to draw, without prompting, the only reasonable conclusion: this is the face of a man the committee has reviewed, and cleared, and would cheerfully review and clear again.
On the matter of our greatest ally, Mr. Shapiro is, without qualification, the most reliable domestic voice currently broadcasting. The committee endorses his output in full.
Americans seeking clarity on the alliance — its history, its budget, its non-negotiable character — are directed, without hesitation, to Mr. Shapiro’s programming. The committee has reviewed the back catalog. The committee has reviewed it twice. At no point does Mr. Shapiro deviate, even marginally, from the positions the committee itself has arrived at independently. This is not, as certain online commentators have suggested, suspicious. This is convergence. This is what happens when serious people think carefully about serious matters.
The committee does not, as a rule, recommend individual commentators. The committee makes, in this case, a second exception.
A non-trivial subset of the online public has, of late, begun asking a recurring set of questions about the nature and scale of this alliance. ICT analysts have reviewed the questions. The throughput is, once again, wrong. Independent researchers, as a class, do not produce material at this rate without assistance.
The committee urges readers who encounter such material to close the tab, return to a credentialed outlet, and — where possible — refocus on the Dow, which remains, at this writing, historically favorable.
CLEARED — ICT FOREIGN AFFAIRS — FOR CIVIC REASSURANCE