What’s in it for America?

[azurnoir]

American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products. Uniquely, Israeli companies are treated like American companies for purposes of US defense procurement. Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when – as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles – the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements. In short, in many ways, American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to our own workers and companies.

<snip>

THESE MILITARY and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American government also works hard to shield Israel from the international political and legal consequences of its policies and actions in the occupied territories, against its neighbors, or – most recently – on the high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United States has cast to protect Israel in the UN Security Council are the tip of iceberg. We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge.

<snip>

As Osama Bin Laden, purporting to speak for the world’s Muslims, has said again and again: “we have . . .stated many times, for more than two-and-a-half decades, that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine ....” Some substantial portion of the many lives and the trillions of dollars we have so far expended in our escalating conflict with the Islamic world must be apportioned to the costs of our relationship with Israel.

It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us. In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders.

<snip>

Meanwhile, it’s been decades since Israel’s air force faced another in the air. It has come to specialize in bombing civilian infrastructure and militias with no air defenses. There is not much for the US Air Force to learn from that. Similarly, the Israeli navy confronts no real naval threat. Its experience in interdicting infiltrators, fishermen, and humanitarian aid flotillas is not a model for the US Navy to study. Israel’s army, however, has had lessons to impart. Now in its fifth decade of occupation duty, it has developed techniques of pacification, interrogation, assassination, and drone attack that inspired US operations in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Somalia, Yemen, and Waziristan. Recently, Israel has begun to deploy various forms of remote-controlled robotic guns. These enable operatives at far-away video screens summarily to execute anyone they view as suspicious. Such riskfree means of culling hostile populations could conceivably come in handy in some future American military operation, but I hope not. I have a lot of trouble squaring the philosophy they embody with the values Americans traditionally aspired to exemplify.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=183319

[Chulanowa]

1. The unspoken reality is simple, and disturbing

Jesus.

No, really. Jesus.

US policy towards israel has, for decades, even al lthe way back to its part in creating the country, been founded on America's messianic notion that it is "humanity's last best hope." To that end, our foreign policy in the region is largely based on the notion that there must be an Israel, and that it must be Jewish, in order for Jesus to come back. The fact that according to prophecy, Jesus will then massacre every jew on the planet seems to not crease too many brows.

Whether this is due to actual beliefs of the people running the show, or simply bowing to pressure from crazy fundies who have entirely too much influence is hard to tell. But when you get down to it, it's pretty much the only plausible reason behind it. Our ally costs of heavily in terms of money and diplomacy, and offers us pretty much nothing that we couldn't get from a cheaper source. There's no rational reason for this deal, so we have to look at irrational ones.

And what we find is the Book of Revelation.

[shaayecanaan]

3. Not really...

there are plenty of Christians in other countries, including evangelical Christians, that are not especially pro-Israel. The Christian right is pro-Israel for other, more mundane reasons than the apocalypse.

[Crunchy Frog]

4. I'm not really certain about that.

This country maintains a profoundly irrational Cuba policy that also goes against our country's overall interests and gains us absolutely nothing. It's largely due to the fact that there is a small but massively funded, loud, and highly influential, and highly motivated lobby group that is effective at drowning out dissent and getting their own way. Politicians are afraid to stand up against them on anything because they WILL target them for political destruction (this happened to one of our Colorado Congressmen, David Scaggs), and "standing tough against communism" is politically popular with simpleminded American idiots.

My point is that it's not necessary to invoke religious lunacy as an explanation for irrational foreign policy. Some narrowly focused special interest and lobbying groups can be very, very effective in getting the foreign policy that they want. (And I'm not saying that religious wackos don't have some role, but probably not as big as what you are suggesting.

JMHO.

[whosinpower]

5. Guns and weapons

There is no other country on the planet that invests as much time, energy, brainpower and money into the devolopment of guns and weapons than the USA. They have a virtual monopoly on heavy weapons sales and development.

I think the unquestioning support of Israel right or wrong has much to do with this. Just follow the money. It is profitable for America to be allied to Israel. Let me rephrase that - it is profitable for certain organizations in America for the government of America to be allied to Israel. It helps them sell weapons. Real stability and peace would cut into their profit margin.

The tragedy in all this is that Israel becomes just as much a victim as the palistinians. A victim because this generation of Israeli's cannot fathom, see, understand peace in any real terms. 43 years(?) of fighting, the US giving aid in military terms and economic terms to Israel, the UN giving humanitarian aid to the palistinians, UNIFIL keeping troups along the border of Israel/Lebanon costs hundreds of millions every single year. the US giving aid to Egypt and others so they do not invade Israel, other nations and humanitarian organizations giving aid to the palistinians - all those countless hundreds of billions of dollars have not brought Israel one inch closer to peace, or the palistinians one inch better off than they were before. In fact, the region seems further radicalized, not less.

The threat of terrorism, Al qaeda, Hamas, etc all grew out of the middle east. All that aid did not deter it. The Afghanistan war, the Iraq war have not deterred the threat of terrorist attack.
But the military industrial complex has profitted quite handsomely......and that remains one of America's biggest industries.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

2. Far less for America than for American politicians

Being "sound on Israel" is very popular, and so politicians take care to be heard to be saying that Israel is a valuable ally of America.

The electorate hear politicians saying that Israel is a valuable ally, and so they tend to support politicians who are "sound on Israel".