What are we getting out of it? I mean it seems more Middle Eastern countries hate us more than like us because our stance with Israel. We give them money and they don’t even listen to us or let us have military bases in their country. What are we getting out of the deal?
First of all, they do listen to us. Israel doesn’t always do what we want, but they listen to us. As far as the benefits of giving money to Israel, I’d recommend Ross and Makovsky’s “Myths, Illusions, and Peace”, which argues, among other things, that the idea of linkage is a myth and that Israel is actually a stabilizing force in the Middle East.
I’m only guessing but …
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The Israeli lobby in this country is both well-funded and focused. Wealth with one focus will always out over wealth with many focuses. (See 4)
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It’s a geographically strategic listening post and the Israelis (in general) share the fruits of Mossad’s intelligence-gathering with us.
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It’s VERY good for business and employment in this country. The US has sold Israel $? billion worth of arms in the last 50 years at the same time arming many of their neighbors.
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And most important, the controversy Israel sparks thruout the Middle East has them fighting among themselves in widespread culture wars rather than focusing all their wealth against US.
We also obligated ourselves to do so under the Camp David accords.
Regards,
Shodan
It goes back farther than that.
Read about the Suez Crisis: Suez Crisis - Wikipedia
Basically, when we decided to become more international in our prowess we wanted a stake in the Middle East and we saw an “in”. And, that “in” was Israel.
eb
They are our friends. They are surrounded by people who don’t think any of the people in the whole country should breathe another lungful of air, so they need a lot of support. It’s good enough for me. I would hope that you would help out your friends when they need you.
The US was on the opposite side of Israel during the Suez crisis, and slapped Israel, Britain and France down.
Another possibility:
- We want to ‘export democracy’ in the world, and Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a recognizable democratically-elected form of government. So we help them out financially.
There are well over a million Arabs living in Israel.
Are you saying Arabs aren’t the US’s friends?
I’ve felt for a long time that this is the biggest reason but doesn’t come up a lot when discussing this question. If we weren’t the ones supplying Israel with military equipment, they’d just buy it from somewhere else or start developing their own technology and export it. Then, instead of buying F-16s from the US, Israel would be building and selling their own type of fighter jets and competing with the United States in the global weapons market.
How much does the US govt. give them, and how much do they spend on US imports? I can’t even begin to evaluate whether this as a serious reason without this information.
You think not?
“Home | Thomson Reuters”]Home | Thomson Reuters
“U.S. journal Defense News reported that Israel’s exports account for 10 percent of global arms sales, making it the 4th-biggest supplier after the United States, Russia and France.”
Not bad for a nation of 7 million people.
Well, you can start here
http://in.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idINN1342151320090113
and here
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3387
and here
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/05/2993