Please Stop Saying Israel Is an “Ally” of the United States — It Is Not.
Please Stop Saying Israel Is an “Ally” of the United States — It Is Not.
Israel is not an ally, not even a “strategic asset”. In fact, Israel is a strategic liability, an intelligence adversary and a black hole for US aid money.
Merriam Webster defines the word ally as “a sovereign or state associated with another by treaty or league”.
The United States has many allies, both by treaty (such as South Korea) and by league (such as NATO). Israel, however, is not among them.
In fact, there is no agreement between the US and Israel regarding defense. U.S.-Israel bilateral economic relations are codified in a number of treaties and agreements, including the 1985 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), but there is no treaty in place to deal with defense.
And yet, Americans are convinced that Israel is our “staunchest ally”. Many seem to still believe what Alexander Haig, President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, famously quipped:
“Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.”
But is this true today? Indeed, was it EVER true? When one steps back and examines the facts and the history, one is forced to come up with a very different characterisation of the US-Israeli relationship.
Israel is NOT a military ally
In fact, when it comes to security, the US-Israeli relationship is strictly one-sided. According to the US Department of State:
“The United States’ commitment to Israel’s security is supported by robust defense cooperation and the 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the United States and Israel in 2016. Consistent with the MOU, the United States annually provides $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for cooperative programs for missile defense.”
And what does America get? “Bupkis”.
Israel NEVER fights alongside the US
There is a reason that the US and Israel have not signed a defense treaty: under such a treaty, Israel would be obligated to actually FIGHT alongside the US when the US was threatened.
For example, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 49 countries joined with the US to invade Iraq. The list included the usual NATO allies, but also countries like South Korea, Japan, even Uzbekistan. BUT NO ISRAEL.
This seems very strange, given that it was almost at Netanyahu’s specific request that the US overthrew Saddam Hussein in the first place:
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Netanyahu claimed. “And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
In fact, Netanyahu has never shied away from telling American Presidents — and the US Congress, which countries they need to attack on behalf of Israel. In addition to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Netanyahu was equally strident in his demands that the US remove Muammar Gaddafi, whom he claimed was also working on developing nuclear weapons:
Israel also declined to participate in the US-led bombing campaign against Libya that resulted in the removal and brutal death of Gaddafi.
In fact, Israel has declined to participate in any of the wars that the US has launched at its behest. America is the “Blaster” to Israel’s “Master”, going around the Middle East, starting wars to eliminate Israel’s perceived threats.
Israel attacked the US — and got away with it
Indeed, the only time that US and Israeli forces were engaged together was when Israel launched an attack on a US Navy vessel, the USS Liberty. The Liberty was an American Navy surveillance vessel patrolling the eastern Mediterranean area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters during the Six Day War in 1967.
Over 30 American sailors perished under the fire of Israeli guns and rockets. Recent declassified documents prove that the Israelis knew it was an American ship, but attacked it anyway.
Instead of retaliating, or even protesting, then-President Lyndon Johnson quietly ordered the ship to leave the area, and the incident was officially “memory holed” in Washington.
Israel may well be the only country on earth to have knowingly attacked a US military asset and gotten away with it.
But is this the action of an ally?
Israel will not join NATO
Israel’s reluctance to enter into defense treaties also keeps it from joining NATO, an organisation to which every US ally in the western hemisphere now belongs.
The “official reason” for Israel’s missing NATO membership is given as “geopolitical considerations”, but this is just a lame excuse. Turkey is NATO’s biggest army, and it’s not technically in Europe. Georgia has been offered NATO membership since 2008, and Tbilisi is 500 km further way from Brussels than Tel Aviv is.
No, the reason Israel stays out of NATO is the same reason that Israel shies away from signing ANY mutual defense agreement: it is simply not part of the Israeli ethos to come to the aid of another nation.
That is because Zionist doctrine dictates that Israel must forever and always remain the perennial “victim” — the state that is constantly under attack or threat of attack; the tiny nation surrounded by enemies, one which the US and the Europeans must forever defend — in all ways and everywhere.
As I said above, America’s relationship with Israel is strictly one-sided — especially in military matters: Even though the US provides $3.3 BILLION annually in military aid (the most of any country), Israel cannot be bothered to support the US when that wonderful military hardware is required.
Israel refuses to share its “Iron Dome” technology with the US
One of the most brazen and despicable acts that Israel has done occurred under the first Trump Administration.
The US was trying to integrate Israel’s much-hyped “Iron Dome” technology into its own air defense systems, but the Israelis were not cooperating. According to The Times of Israel:
“A central problem was Israel’s refusal to provide the US military with Iron Dome’s source code, hampering the Americans’ ability to integrate the system into their air defenses.”
Is this how an “ally” acts? When the US providesIsrael $3 billion a year in aid, they cannot be bothered to provide key defence technology to the US. when the US taxpayers almost certainly paid for that technology to be developed in the first place?
Israel SPIES on the United States
One of the most disastrous and high profile spy stories in American history is that of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence analyst for the United States Navy, who was convicted of passing thousands of pages of American intelligence to Israel from June 1984 until he was arrested in November 1985.
Israeli Prime Ministers constantly lobbied for his release, and pressure also came from American Jewish groups who decried his sentence as proof of (you guessed it) “anti-Semitism”.
Pollard was eventually released on parole in 2015 — over the objections of many high ranking US officials, who maintained that “the damage to U.S. national security due to Pollard’s espionage was far more severe, wide-ranging, and enduring than publicly acknowledged”.
A court statement from then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said Pollard did “irrevocable” damage to the U.S. and had provided the Israelis with more than 800 U.S. classified publications and more than 1,000 classified messages and cables.
In fact, Weinberger said it was difficult to conceive a greater harm to national security than what Pollard had caused. He said Pollard “both damaged and destroyed policies and national assets which have taken many years, great effort and enormous national resources to secure.”
Many have observed that Pollard’s release may have been a quid pro quo to obtain Israel’s acceptance of Barack Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA). When pressed on the matter, however, Secretary of State John Kerry denied there was any connection (that’s how you know there was).
Pollard received a pardon from President Trump in 2020. He had become an Israeli citizen while in prison and so he immediately flew to Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu gave him a hero’s welcome!
Trump also pardoned the IDF officer who was Pollard’s “handler”. Aviem Sella, who had escaped to Israel just days before Pollard’s arrest in 1985, was never extradited. He was, however, immediately promoted to Brigadier General upon news of the presidential pardon.
Nice.
The Franklin-AIPAC Affair
In 2005, US Department of Defense official Lawrence Franklin and former AIPAC staffers Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were indicted on multiple charges under the Espionage Act, including “conspiracy to communicate classified information to agents of a foreign government”, which was publicly identified as Israel. Franklin was found to have passed information on the US policy towards Iran to Rosen, who was AIPAC Policy Director, and Weissman, who was a “Senior Iran Analyst” for AIPAC. Franklin pled guilty and received a 12-year term. AIPAC fired the two staffers, and the government dropped all charges against them— without even a plea bargain.
The affair made headlines because it was found that AIPAC was acting as a direct espionage conduit for the State of Israel.
Other Israeli spy rings uncovered
In addition to the Pollard case, there have been other Israeli espionage activities uncovered by the US on its soil.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, in Union City, New Jersey, a group of young Israeli men were seen dancing on top of a van, high-fiving each other and generally celebrating as the Twin Towers burned. They were also filming the disaster. Nearby neighbors were disturbed by the display and called the police.
The NJ police arrested the 5 young men based on their “bizarre behaviour”. They were quickly identified as Israeli citizens, and claimed they were there to “document the event”. All 5 said they worked for Urban Moving Systems, but when the FBI sought to question the owner of that company, Dominik Suter, he fled to Israel just hours before the Feds showed up.
The Jewish weekly The Forward later reported that the FBI had concluded that at least two of the five suspects were Mossad agents, and that Urban Moving Systems, which employed them, was a Mossad front.
In 2002, France’s Le Monde and Britain’s The Guardian both reported that the US had broken up a nationwide Israeli spy ring and arrested 120+ “young Israelis” who were pretending to be art students while “ trying to gain access to sensitive government buildings.” The espionage network was determined to be based in Florida and had been most active in the months leading up to the WTC attacks on September 11, 2001.
Such stories have led to an entire genre of conspiracy theories claiming that Israel, through its US-based spy network, had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, or may have even been involved in planning them. FOX News even did a Special Investigation Report on “The Israeli Spy Ring inside the US Before 9/11”.
Such theories are no doubt the result of the lasting impact of the Pollard and Franklin affairs.
Still, it begs the question: is this how “allies” behave?
Israel is a strategic liability
Far from being “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier”, Israel actually represents a strategic liability and a DANGER to the United States.
It has become painfully obvious — certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union — that America’s interests and values are not the same as those of Israel, and the “unconditional” support that America extends to Israel is only serving to isolate and threaten America’s position in the world.
Perhaps the most blatant — and devastating — example of this danger is found in Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America”, in which he explained why he chose to target the United States and carry out the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Bin Laden blamed the US for the oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel, writing:
“The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”
Bin Laden continued, claiming:
“The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.”
This shedding of blood, he argued, justified the killing of “non-combatant” Americans:
“The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine…This is why the American people cannot be innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us.”
Why Bin Laden’s letter has gone viral since 10/7
Bin Laden’s letter, and his justification for killing civilians, has gone viral since the October 7 attacks in Israel and the start of the Israeli campaign against Gaza. The letter, which is being promoted by young users on TikTok and X, is causing people to “rethink everything”.
One big reason for Bin Laden’s newfound popularity is that the argument Bin Laden makes for killing ordinary American citizens mirrors exactly the statements made by Zionist leaders such as Israeli President Herzog, who declared on October 17:
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”
This is similar to Bin Laden’s argument:
“The American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.”
Support for genocide makes the US a target
Most recently, the US’s close ties to Israel and America’s support for the Zionist regime’s genocide in Gaza have placed the US military in danger all through the Middle East.
The “Axis of Resistance”, a conglomeration of anti-Zionist military and paramilitary forces, has vowed to avenge not just the Palestinians being bombed in Gaza (using US weapons and munitions), but also the high level figures killed in Israel’s (totally illegal) attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1, 2024.
Axis of Resistance and its “unreported war” on the US
Although it is not often reported, US military assets are under regular assault by Axis of Resistance forces in Iraq, Jordan and Syria, as well as in the Red Sea.
ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project keeps tracks of the attacks mounted by the Axis of Resistance, as well as the US counterstrikes. From October 7, 2023 to February 9, 2024, ACLED recorded more than 200 incidents of attacks and attempted attacks on US and Global Coalition forces across the Middle East by members or suspected members of the axis of resistance — a 20 times increase compared to the preceding four-month period.
In the 12 months before the 7 October events, only about 30 similar events had been reported in the region.
Furthermore, there were at least 10 attempts by Ansar Alla (aka Houthis) to directly target US warships in the Red Sea on at least eight occasions, although all attacks were intercepted. This is in addition to at least 37 attacks targeting [US owned] commercial ships in the area as of 2 February.
Israel wants to draw the US into a wider war
As explained above, Israelis — and especially Bibi Netanyahu — has always been adroit at goading the US into attacking whomever Israel perceives as a threat. But the stakes are now much higher.
Netanyahu is now trying to do a Michael Corleone and “settle all the family business” in one big regional war. That is why they are attacking Hezbollah, Yemen, Syria ands Iran. They want to establish themselves as the undisputed power in the Middle East — but they cannot do it alone.
Israel needs the United States to attack Iran, and they are playing a dangerous game of escalation in order to do that.
There is only one solution to keep America safe
There is of course one way to safeguard American interests and American lives. That is to cease all “unconditional” military and financial support to Israel, and begin to act as a TRUE “honest broker” in the region. Israel is now more isolated than ever, and depends on the US and its vassals in the EU for everything. Israel could be pressured to reverse course, to accept a proper 2-state solution, rein in and punish its criminal radical settlers and Religious Zionist fanatics like Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
But this will almost assuredly not happen. Osama Bin Laden was prescient when he summed up the American political system in an audio “Message to the American People” in 2009. He cautioned that despite all the hoopla around the election of Barack Obama, nothing would change.
“…sane people knew that Obama is a weak person who will not be able to stop the war as he had promised… The days will show you that you have changed only faces in the White House. The bitter truth is that the neoconservatives are still a heavy burden on you.”
Alas, when we look at the choices we face for President in 2024, it becomes even more obvious that “only the faces” will change… America’s “unshakable”, bipartisan and utterly disastrous Israel policy will continue because, as Bin Laden observed:
“both our nations are victims of the policies of the White House, which is in fact a hostage in the hands of pressure groups, especially major corporations and the Israeli lobby.”
#End
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Truth!
"....In fact, there is no agreement between the US and Israel regarding defense. U.S.-Israel bilateral economic relations are codified in a number of treaties and agreements, including the 1985 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), but there is no treaty in place to deal with defense...."
There is no publicly known treaty, now.
However, George Galloway as soon as he entered parliament used his parliamentary privilege to all but reveal that there IS a secret defence treaty between the UK (a US vassal state) and Israel.
I'd be willing to bet that the entire NATO has a one-way treaty to serve Israel's needs. Note:
- ALL of them continue to send weapons to Israel despite even local courts like the Dutch ones ordering a cessation of these exports due to the ICJ declaration that Israel is committing Genocide. Yet all of them are still sending Israel weapons: Germany, Sweden, Norway, UK, Germany, all of them. That's not a random happening.
- several of them participated in shielding Israel from the Iranian symbolic retaliatory attack
- In recent months it was revealed the Netherlands has covert troops in Lebanon. Why? I think its the same reason.
Most likely the reason for this secret treaty is that many Arab client states are also in defense treaties with the US, and it would not be palatable for them to be along side Israel in a public treaty.
But if WW III breaks out I assure you there is a shadow NATO in which Israel is their attack dog in the Middle East against Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria etc