Netanyahu’s office answers Trump’s aid cutoff without denying a word of it

On Fox & Friends on 3 November, President Donald Trump said he and Netanyahu had agreed the United States would stop its annual funding to Israel at the end of the year: “So it’s just a wasted thing, since we’ve already agreed that by the end of this year, we won’t be paying Israel. We’ll help Israel if they need it.” He added: “If they did need it, I would say keep it going.” The Times of Israel judged the declaration “appear[s] almost certainly false,” because the ten-year memorandum of understanding providing $3.8 billion a year does not expire until the end of September 2028, and reported that the comments caught Israeli security and financial officials off guard. On 5 November, Ambassador Mike Huckabee told Channel 12 the taper had been agreed jointly, said he did not know exactly when aid would end, and described two governments “wanting to move to a different relationship where it does not look like a package of aid, but rather a relationship of trade.”

The Prime Minister’s Office waited until roughly 19:36 on Friday 6 November, and then did not deny it. “US military aid to Israel has always been a cross-the-aisle agreement,” the PMO posted on X. “Israel has used it both to defend itself and to confront enemies who threaten America and the West... Today, Israel has a strong and stable economy. The move by PM Netanyahu and President Trump from aid to partnership shows the strength and sophistication of our relationship, and its ability to adapt and stand strong over time.” The Democrats chairman Yair Golan called the cut “heavy damage to Israel’s security,” saying “a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American aid, not eliminate it.” Netanyahu’s own stated position in January 2026 was to taper American aid off over a decade.

Assessment: The gap to measure is not between Trump and Netanyahu but between a ten-year taper and a seven-week cutoff. The PMO statement is a careful artefact: it validates the direction of travel, claims authorship of it, and never engages the date — which is what you write when the president has said something you cannot confirm and will not contradict. Treat Huckabee’s account as corroboration of intent only; a single on-camera interview in which the ambassador says he does not know when aid ends is not a schedule. The MOU is the hard fact in the file, and nothing announced this week amends it.