Israel is no ally of the United States.
We have no mutual defense treaties or agreements with Israel.
Israel is not a member of any mutual defense organizations in which the US belongs.
If you are fond of Israel for whatever reason that's fine, but please consider:
1.In 1948 the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Counsel, and the CIA were all opposed to the creation of Israel.
2.Israel came into being when the US and then the USSR both recognized it at the UN, which resulted the next day in five Arab armies attacking it.
3.When the Arabs attacked the US refused to send any arms to Israel because President Truman hoped the Arabs would crush the Israelis. However Premier Stalin in the USSR ordered the Czechs to send several shiploads of arms to the Israelis, which resulted in the Arabs being defeated.
4.No US President would support Israel with any arms until after 1967, and before that Israel was an outlaw nation which obtained their arms from France and other illicit channels.
5.In 1956 the Israelis started the Suez war by attacking Egypt in collusion with the UK and France in a secret conspiracy, the "Protocol of Sevres,"
in which Israel would attack Egypt and the UK and France would invade an re-take the Suez canal under the pretext of a peace-keeping intervention. The whole plan was torpedoed when President Eisenhower told the Israelis he would aid the Arabs in an attack to crush them if they didn't withdraw. Eisenhower also threatened France and the UK, our NATO allies.*
6.The Israelis are considered a hostile nation by our intelligence services.
The Israelis are responsible for numerous serious security breaches of our national security, the most terrible of which was the running of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who looted US military secrets and gave them to Israeli officers who then sold them to the Soviet Union.**
7.In the 1950s and 1960s this issue was so serious that any and all Israeli intelligence interface with the US government went through the office of James Angleton, the CIA's Chief of CounterIntelligence, so as to filter any harm that might come to us from such interaction.
8.In 1967 the Israeli Defense Forces attacked a US vessel, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring many crewmen because they were collecting communications intelligence on the IDF during the six day war.
If someone wants to like Israel they are entitled to do so, but the Israelis are not the friends or allies of anyone, including the US. They are on their own, which is the way they like it.
*See Avi Shlaim, The Protocol of Sevres, 1956:Anatomy of a War Plot,
International Security [Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Center for International Studies] 73:3 (1997)
also,
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_of_Sevres
**The Judge in the Pollard case said that he "damaged the US more than any spy ever had," by permitting his information to be sold the the Soviet by his Israeli handlers. To the Israeli far right Pollard is considered a hero because he showed he was willing to betray his home country, the US, in favor of Israel. To this day Benjamin Yetanyahu continues to lobby for the release of Pollard, usually in exchange for promises to continue the "peace process."
ps....the Afghan Islamic fighters in the 1980s are constantly referred to as a "part time army" by Milt Bearden [a fellow Texan], the CIA Chief of Station in Pakistan in 1988. Bearden has since made a name for himself by "going hollywoood" and banking on his exaggerated claims of his participation in the Afhan war.
By the time Bearden came on the scene I was long gone however. I left Pakistan for the last time in 1986, and wished to never see that place again.
, it is a phrase used on Monday nights in the pre-game coverage on ESPN to point out the stupid bonehead plays of the prior games; which I would liken to giving Pakistan $$..
