By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM
“Israel is responsible for over 600 modifications in the current generation of General Dynamics’ (GD) F-16 fighter aircrafts, providing Global Dynamics a multi-billion dollar bonus in research and development, improving Global Dynamic’s competitive edge in the global market, expanding U.S. employment and its export base and enhancing U.S. national security,” Global Dynamic’s plant manager in Ft. Worth, Texas recently told me. Similar benefits are enjoyed by many U.S. defense contractors who sell their products to Israel. Israel’s choice of U.S. military products is perceived, by the global community, as having a blue ribbon effect that multiplies U.S. exports. Israel constitutes the most advanced battle-tested, cost-effective, and invaluable laboratory for U.S. military systems.
Israel is to the U.S. defense industry what a triple-A tenant is to a shopping mall – a value enhancer and a tenants/clients drawer.
In fact, the CEOs of Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, IBM and many other U.S. giants concur that Israeli technologies have played a crucial role in these companies’ global competitiveness. George Gilder, a U.S. hi-tech guru, maintains that “we need Israel as much as it needs us.”
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, U.S.-Israel relations are not a one-way street (U.S. gives and Israel receives), but a two-way street. They are mutually-beneficial, a win-win relationship, which extends the U.S.’s strategic arm. Contrary to conventional oversimplification, U.S.-Israel relations transcend the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue.
Israel has worked with U.S. soldiers on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan and shared with them its unique experience in handling car bombs, suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and anti-tank missiles, thus helping to save American lives. Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, contends that the Israeli experience played a role in defeating terrorists in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.
According to Senator Daniel Inouye, president pro tempore of the Senate, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, “The scope and quality of intelligence received by the U.S. from Israel exceeds the scope of intelligence received from all NATO countries combined.”
According to Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro, “Israel serves as a cornerstone of our regional security commitments. From confronting Iranian aggression to working together to combat transnational terrorist networks, to stopping nuclear proliferation … Israeli technology is proving critical to improving our Homeland Security and protecting our troops. One only has to look at Afghanistan and Iraq, where Israeli armor plating technology is being used on U.S. military vehicles and innovative equipment, such as the specially designed ‘Israeli bandage,’ which is being used to treat our troops … U.S. and Israeli forces also take part in numerous exercises throughout the year in order to test operational concepts, improve interoperability, and practice urban terrain and counter-terrorism operations …”
In 1970, while the U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam, Israel demonstrated its posture of deterrence. Israel forced the rollback of a pro-Soviet Syrian invasion of pro-U.S. Jordan, which also threatened the survival of pro-U.S. oil-rich Persian Gulf regimes, thus sparing the U.S. an economic and national security disaster. And it did not require a single U.S. boot on the ground.
In 1981, Israel demonstrated its counter-nuclear proliferation muscles and its aptitude as a national security producer by destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor, thus lessening U.S. nuclear confrontations with Iraq in 1991. In 2007, Israel demolished a Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel’s battle tactics were promptly shared with the U.S. Air Force.
The late Gen. Alexander Haig, who was NATO’s supreme commander and a former U.S. secretary of state, defined Israel as “the largest, most battle-tested and cost-effective U.S. aircraft carrier, which does not require a single U.S. boot, cannot be sunk and is located at a most critical area. If Israel did not exist, the U.S. would have to deploy a few more real aircraft carriers to the eastern flank of the Mediterranean, costing some $20 billion annually, which has been spared by the Jewish state.”
The seismic events on the Arab Street – which have yet to reach their climax – underline the tenuous and shifty nature of Arab regimes, policies and alliances. The stormy Arab Winter – which may be followed by a burning Arab Summer – highlights the one-bullet, one-revolution, unpredictably violent aspects of each Arab regime.
The pending U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the increasing volatility of the Middle East, the intensifying threats to critical U.S. economic and national security interests, the deepening Russian and Chinese involvement in the region, the growing vulnerability of pro-U.S. Arab regimes and the increasingly Islam-oriented policy of Turkey, have all shed light on Israel as the sole stable, reliable, capable, democratic and unconditional ally of the U.S. – a regional anomaly and a global rarity.
The Indian Jew hater speaks again.
So what? Israel has no other allies who have done anything tangible for Israel.
Your so-called “facts” are inverted. Whom you should be concerned about are the 45% of American Jews who still support Obama.
I would just add that 90% of US aid to Israel is spent in America and helps bolster American firms and employment.
Whining? I am stating a fact. Liberal American Jews? You must be joking? They have as much real influence as any of the countless court Jews of the past. It is all part of the illusion of “I am a citizen.”
My only interest in events in America is because of the extreme danger the Jews there are in. If not for that, I would no more concern myself with its affairs than those of Bhutan.
Aryeh, Please stop whining. Liberal American Jews are very influential in the upper levels of Business and Government in the US. Israel and the US have a mutually beneficial relationship and most Americans strongly support the relationship.
Israel today is very developed society which absorbs enormous abilities and knowledge almost in every field necessary to meet the modern need. Israel can survive without the US military assistance, while at the same time we should remember that she tried twice in the past to decline gradually the annual US aid, but the US pushed Israel to continue with that arrangement. Thus the US enjoys the cooperation with Israel in military, technology, scientific and other know-how abilities. Valuable knowledge, inventions and developments are passed to the US and contribute to its national security and scientific ability, way beyond the proportional size of Israel. The 2.7B$ annual military aid to Israel is paid directly to the US industry. The damage to the US economy and employment, by stopping that consideration, will be much larger than the damage to Israel which could buy hers needs from others or produce most of her needs by herself (as she did with the “Kfir” and Lavi” and various electronic, missiles, drowns etc.). The US benefits from that kind of bilateral relations with Israel which enable their being dominant over Israel and to subdue her to the US global strategic interests and restrictions. The US policy towards Israel combined of values and interests. While we don’t have to minimize the significance of these values to both sides, we have to acknowledge the Israeli vast contribution to American interests, in geo-politics, technology, science and know-how means.
More on that issue: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/11/israeli-contributions-to-us-national.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GM9LHEmBzRw#!
It is very inconvenient, even embarrassing, for certain elements in the US establishment to acknowledge this. Antisemitism is endemic at the upper levels of Business and Government in the US and Europe. However business is business and the US Military would still rather win a war than loose it.
There is really nothing new in all of this. It was also our history in Europe and Arabia. When they needed us, we were protected and even pampered. As soon as our usefulness ended or some power hungry cleric was able to whip up mass hysteria against us, they turned against us.
In previous generations every Jew knew this and tried to prepare for the inevitable day when they would dump us. Today so many Jews have bought into the illusion of “human rights” “civil right” and “I am a citizen” that they can not see that the modern day clerics (both of a religious and secular character) are once again whipping up the masses into an antisemitic hysteria.
Should O’Bama succeed in stealing the next election, we will see the Jew haters crawling out from under every rock in the West and a frenzy of violence against Jews not seen since the worst days of the Nazis. All our usefulness and good help will be quickly forgotten. Those who have prepared for this will have a chance. Those who have not will be lost.
Old article, old news. Nobody is interested on what was 20-30-60 years ago, this subject needs updating to the present.
This might fill in some blanks: Here
To the everlasting shame of the Jewish establishments in both Israel and America this story remains largely unknown. In the Republican debates even Israel’s best friends talk of our help to Israel mainly because we like them and feel sorry for their plight. Even our best friends are unaware of the immense benefits that America derives. If one were to assign a dollar value to all the benefits that America gets for free it might well exceed all the dollars in aid that we send to Israel. This is a job for AIPAC but I am not aware that they are educating the American public or even American Jews for that matter.