TEHRAN — 56 American civil rights and advocacy organizations have issued a blunt demand to Congress: strip a controversial provision from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act or risk permanently entrenching Israel inside the Pentagon’s core technology apparatus.

In a joint letter sent to leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, the coalition warned that the legislation creates dangerous points of foreign leverage at a moment when American public support for Israel has collapsed following its brutal campaigns of regional aggression.

Designated Section 219 in the House draft and Section 1217 in the Senate version, the proposal establishes the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.

Moving far beyond traditional foreign aid packages subject to yearly congressional debate, the mandate legally enforces co-production plants, joint weapons development, and data fusion across artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, and autonomous systems.

Signatories including Amnesty International USA and the National Lawyers Guild cited Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank as absolute grounds to reject deeper integration.

A separate policy brief from A New Policy, co-founded by former State Department whistleblower Josh Paul, cautioned that embedding Israeli contractors exposes sensitive American capabilities to counterintelligence risks, disadvantages domestic firms, and systematically hides weapons transfers from public transparency.

While the House of Representatives text of the legislation appoints a Pentagon coordinator, the Senate version goes further by requiring direct, ongoing consultation with Israel’s war minister.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the clause, boasting it converts his regime from a foreign aid recipient into a full-scale military partner.

A bipartisan amendment introduced by Representatives Thomas Massie (R) and Ro Khanna (D) to remove the provision was buried by House leadership.

With the current ten-year military aid agreement set to expire in 2028, Washington’s pro-Israel establishment is rushing to lock this structural merger into permanent law.

This legislative push comes as public backlash grows over the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and the Resistance Front.

If enacted, Section 219 will bind future administrations to Tel Aviv’s strategic interests regardless of voter demands.