More Related Content Similar to TheCaseforMilitaryAidtoIsrael Similar to TheCaseforMilitaryAidtoIsrael (18) 2. The USIsraeli political and military alliance has been one of the more permanent features of
American foreign policy since Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. Even before the creation
of Israel, American foreign policy was fairly sympathetic to the Zionist movement’s goal. This 1
sympathy was not just in the Wilson administration but was also found in the halls of Congress as early
as 1922. The primary manifestation of this is in United States military cooperation with Israel. The 2 3
most visible form of this cooperation has been the annual $3 billion that the American government
gives to Israel for its security. Additional forms of military cooperation come in the form of 4
intelligence sharing between US and Israeli military and civilian intelligence services. 5
Those who are ideological opponents of our close relationship with Israel have two main veins of
argument against this aid. The first is that Israel allegedly acts irresponsibly and even commits war
crimes. A typical form of this argument comes from Dr. Mohammed Khodr who writes, “Israel as it
continues its genocidal war crimes and clear violations of humanitarian and human rights law against
Palestinian civilians, both the Presidents and every Congress are in violation of the very ‘War Crimes
Act’ they passed into law as well as in violation of international law.” The other main criticism is that 6
such a close relationship between Israel and the US opens us up to the threat of retaliatory terrorism.
Thus, the argument goes, we ought to cease our support in order to diminish violent acts from various
Islamic extremist groups. This point is often made by American libertarians such as Benjamin 7
Friedman of the Cato Institute. 8
Do these criticisms have any validity to them? The finding of this research project is that they do
not. While, at first glance, these criticisms seem plausible or even intuitive, the reality is that our
military aid does not go towards war crimes, nor does it reward an irresponsible actor. Furthermore
1
Walworth (1986) 473–83, esp. p. 481; Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust, (Garden
City: Doubleday, 1975), 283.
2
The Arab Israeli Conflict III: Documents, American Society of International Law, ed. John Norton Moore,
ed.,(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), 107–8.
3
Clyde Mark, “Illinois Governor Wants to 'Fumigate' State's Government,” Congressional Research Service, October
17th 2002.
4
Shiril McArthur, “A Conservative Estimate of Total U.S. Aid To Israel: More Than $123 Billion”, Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2011.
5
“USIsrael Strategic Cooperation: Intelligence Cooperation,” Jewish Virtual Library, last modified January 30, 2013.
6
Mohammed Khodr, “Every President and Congress Are Complicit in Israel's 'War Crimes'”, Salem News, May 28th
2011.
7
For the purposes of simplicity; the only term that will be used “Islamic,” though the author recognizes multiplicity of
terms such as salafist, takfirist, jihadist, and Islamist.
8
Benjamin H. Friedman, , “Rand Paul is right about Israel,” Cato Institute. February 8th 2011.
3. there are too many lurking variables to claim that US military aid is the causal factor in provoking
Islamic terrorism against the United States. In addition, it is the analytical conclusion of this paper that
this military relationship also provides major benefits, namely regarding national security.
The first argument against our alliance with Israel is quite simple and has two main premises. The
first is that Israel engages in unethical behavior, in particular war crimes. Thus, US support of Israel
makes our government complicit in Israel’s allegedly illegal behavior. Arguably the most visible
proponent of the first premise has been Richard Falk, a noted professor of international law at Princeton
University. His argument is that, for example, Israeli air strikes within the Gaza Strip are inherently
criminal as they, “....represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as
defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the
requirements of the laws of war.” Similar criticisms have also been repeated by organizations such as 9
Amnesty International, in regards other conflicts Israel finds itself in, such as the war in Lebanon in
2006. 10
This line of argumentation ignores the nuanced and thorny nature of those conflicts. It is silent on
the two major complicating factors in avoiding civilian casualties, mainly the urban density of places
like the Gaza Strip and Palestinian terrorist organizations’ practice of using Arab civilians as human
shields either to dissuade Israel from attacking or acting as a propaganda coup. Experts on the issue,
such as Nathan Thrall, coauthor of an International Crisis Group report on the 2014 Gaza War, noted,
“Hamas deliberately buries the weapons in populated civilian areas hoping that will reduce the chance
that those weapons will be taken out from the air.” This can be especially grievous in places like the 11
Gaza Strip due to the fact over 1.7 million people live in the crowded Arab sector. Critics, like Falk 12
rarely, if ever, address the facts on the ground regarding Israel's counterterrorist campaigns.
In reality, the IDF strenuously attempts to avoid civilian casualties, either by forgoing tactical
surprise, aborting the mission altogether or deterring them by trying those soldiers who break IDF rules
of war. William Saletan has noted that Israel will often give up tactical surprise in air strikes by,
“us[ing] leaflets and phone calls to warn residents to get out beforehand. It also fire[s] flares or
9
Professor Richard Falk, “Israel’s War Crimes,” The Nation. January 12, 2009.
10
Haaretz, August 23rd, 2006, “Amnesty: Israel committed war crimes in Lebanon campaign.”
11
Anne Barnard and Jodi Rudoren, “Israel Says that Hamas Using Civilian Shields, Reviving Debate,” New York
Times. July 23rd, 2014.
12
Barnard and Rudoren, “Israel Says.” 2014.
4. lowimpact mortars (known as a “knock on the roof”) to signal impending strikes...Hamas and other
Palestinian sources confirm that the Israeli military has issued phone warnings to families in the
targeted homes.” This policy is all the more astonishing considering Israel’s enemies; such as the 13
AlAksa Martyrs Brigade, Hezbollah and Hamas, deliberately target civilians and give no such
warnings before their attacks. This policy isn’t simply devoted to minimizing casualties but will even
call off live operations in order to ensure no civilians are killed. In an archetypal aborted mission in
2014, the Israeli Air Force opted not to strike a Hamas launch pad after the pilot pointed out, “There are
people close to our target. It looks like there are people, possibly children in our targeted area.” In fact 14
the United Nations itself admitted in its report on September 7th of last year, that nearly all Arab
civilians who were tragically killed by the IDF during the Gaza war were given ample warning time to
leave the hot combat zone. Those few instances where Israeli soldiers purposefully commit crimes 15
against Arab civilians result in swift court martials, as happened in 2008. While counterterrorist 16
campaigns are often ugly affairs and can result in a disconcerting muddle of fact and fiction, looking at
the whole scope, it is clear that American military aid is not given to a power who routinely or
purposefully violates the rights of civilians in war zones. Notably, Col. Richard Kemper of the British
Army refuted such claims from Falk and others when he found, “I believe that on the basis of
everything that I've seen, that everything the IDF does to protect civilians and to stop the death of
innocent civilians is a great deal more than any other army.” In fact not only are Israel’s critics’ points 17
found to be false, but the exact opposite is true. It can be said, without exaggeration or conditions, that
our military aid to Israel goes to one of the most responsible military actors in the modern world today.
The second argument against our military alliance with Israel is more pragmatic. It has, functionally,
two main premises. The first is that terrorism is currently on the increase. The second is that our
alliance is one of the primary causes of this terror campaign against the US. The conclusion is that if we
ended our support of Israel, we would see a large reduction of violence against Americans. Each of
these premises and their conclusion is either counterfactual or is woefully incomplete in its analysis of
the situation in the Near East.
13
William Saletan, “The Gaza Rules,” Slate. July 9th, 2014.
14
The Algemeiner Journal, "Israeli Air Force Aborts Gaza Airstrike After Spotting Children Near Target." July 11th
2014.
15
The Algemeiner Journal, "Israeli Air Force Aborts Gaza Airstrike." 2014.
16
Haaretz, "IDF soldiers filmed humiliating bound Palestinian face court martial." November 13th 2008.
17
Yedioth Ahronoth, “‘IDF Does More Than Any Other Army To Prevent Civilian Deaths.’” July 24th, 2014.
5. The first claim is that terrorism has been on the rise since the terrorist attacks on September 11th. On
face value, this claim seems to be true. Ekaterina Stepanova, the lead researcher at Russia's Institute of
World Economy and International Relations, found that there was a, "...threefold increase in
terrorism," in the decade after 9/11. Many critics of Israel, for instance Glenn Greenwald of Salon 18
take this increase to mean that the rise in violence must have a causal relationship with our military
alliance. Greenwald argues, “...American support for Israel...increases the risk of terrorist violence
aimed at the U.S...it so plainly does.” However critics like Greenwald misread the statistics and 19
confuse correlation for causation, or assume that there can be, on the whole, only one primary causal
factor.
Combating this falsehood must be a top priority for proIsrael advocates as it seems that even people
such as the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will draw a causal connection
between Israel and antiAmerican Islamic extremist violence. To begin with, while overall violence 20
levels due to terrorism have increased in the decade after 9/11, violence specifically against the United
States has been on the decline. This has occurred on both a macro and micro level. The Heritage
Foundation’s study, Terror Trend: 40 Years’ Data on International and Domestic Terrorism, has found
that, both from 1969 to 2009 and from 2001 onward, there is a steady decrease of terrorist attacks
against the United States. On a macro trend, we’ve witnessed a large decrease since the violence of 21
1987 to 1991, during which there was 635 terrorist attacks against the US. By comparison the deadliest
period since after 9/11 and the commencement of the US global War on Terror, has witnessed a 60%
drop with 221 attacks between 2004 (the post 9/11 outlier) and 2008. This decline has also applied to
domestic terrorist attacks as well, as in 2001 there were 33 domestic terrorist attacks, which then
dropped to single digits after 2006. Peter Bergen, counterterrorism expert, notes that this extends also 22
to attempted domestic terror plots, a trend which continues well after a decade since 2001. When 23
terrorist attacks are sorted into fatal and nonlethal, we see a consistent decline in the amount of
Americans killed by terrorism and the amount of successful fatal attacks listed by the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism since 2001. Meanwhile, the flow 24
18
United Press International, “World Terrorism Will Rise, expert says.” March 23rd 2011,
19
Glenn Greenwald, , “More Cause and Effect in our ever expanding ‘war’,”Salon Magazine. January 7th 2010.
20
Michael Isikoff, "ExFBI director warns that Gaza violence will fuel alQaeda threat." Yahoo News. July 25th, 2014.
21
David B. Muhlhausen and Jena Baker McNeill, "Terror Trends: 40 Years' Data on International and Domestic
Terrorism," Heritage Foundation: Special Reports. May 20th 2011
22
Muhlhausen and McNeill, “Terror Trends,” 2011.
23
Peter Bergen and David Sterman, "Jihadist terrorism in America since 9/11." CNN. September 10th 2013
24
Muhlhausen and McNeill, “Terror Trends,” 2011.
6. of military aid to Israel from the United States has been maintained at a steady rate of roughly $3
billion a year. It is implausible to argue for a primary causal relationship between US military aid and
Islamic terrorist attacks on the United States as there is no linear relationship between the explanatory
and response variables.
However critics like Greenwald will still maintain that individual Islamic terrorists are in fact
motivated by US policy towards the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. For instance he argued that the
Jordanian intelligence double agent, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal alBalawi, blew himself up in a suicide
bombing that killed 7 CIA agents due to events that occurred in Gaza in 2008. Even if we accept 25
Greenwald’s interpretation of the Khost attack in 2010, anecdotes do not reveal a long term trend from
which we can base conclusions. In fact, some of the deadliest terrorist attacks on the United States
occurred as we created more daylight between the US and Israel. Yoram Ettinger, former attache to the
Israeli embassy, has pointed out that, if anything, appeasement towards Palestinians has a possible
linear relationship with more terrorist attacks on the US.
9/11 was planned while President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians the entire store;
the October 12, 2000 murder of seventeen sailors on the USS Cole happened when Israel and the US offered
unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David; the August 27, 1998 blowing up of the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place (257 murdered and over 4,000 injured) while President Clinton
was brutally pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu; the 1995/6 murder of 19 US soldiers in Riyadh and
Khobar Towers, were carried out while Prime Minister Peres implemented unprecedented concessions; the
February 1993 Twin Towers bombing (6 murdered and over 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted
the preOslo talks with the PLO; the December 21, 1988 Pan Am103 (270 murdered) terrorism took place a
few months following the groundbreaking recognition of the PLO by the US; the April/October 1983 murder
of 300 Marines and 58 French soldiers, in the carbombings of the US Embassy and Marines and French
military headquarters in Beirut, occurred while the US military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the
US Administration blasted Israel for its war against the PLO.. 26
In fact Ettinger and others have been making the salient point that Islamic violence against civilians
is caused by far larger social phenomena since, “Islamic terrorism has afflicted the Middle East and the
entire globe including North, Central and South America for fourteen centuries, long before the
eruption of the ArabIsraeli conflict.” In fact, the main cause of Islamic violence has a much simpler, 27
25
Greenwald, “More Cause and Effect.” 2010. It also must be noted that we do not have this based on Balawi’s own
word, but rather his brother’s. Furthermore reports in the Washington Post on January 16th 2010 from Peter Finn and
Joby Warrick have pointed to the possibility that Balawi had become a Jordanian intelligence agent with the intention
to commit jihad from the first, not that he had been radicalized by events in Gaza afterwards.
26
Yoram Ettinger, The Ettinger Report, “Root Causes of Islamic antiUS Terrorism,” January 11, 2012.
27
Ettinger, “Root Causes, 2012.
7. and much more uncomfortable cause. The notion that it is mainly our alliance with Israel causes it is,
“...dangerous nonsense...the real reason for Islamic terrorism has less to do with Israel than the fact that
around the world small groups of men, and they are almost invariably men, feel powerless in cultures
where women have the same rights they do, where people can say and wear what they like and where
democracy, not theocracy, is the universally supported form of government.” The unfortunate truth is 28
that Islamic terrorism is less about one particular policy, but, as history suggests, is more about how
religious reactionaries respond to the changing world around them.
This is exactly what makes Friedman and Greenwald’s solution to Islamic terrorism so foolish. In
reality there is a term for such a policy. It is appeasement. Regrettably this has already been tried by a
variety of nations before; all with dismal disappointment. In 2004, the Spanish government withdrew
their fairly small peacekeeping force in Iraq, less than 2,000 troops. This attempt was met with scorn by
Al Qaeda in 2007, who vowed to continue terrorist attacks on Spain until “AlAndalus” was conquered
by Islamic forces. The clearest example of the fallacy of this logic is when Ariel Sharon’s government 29
attempted to appease radical Islamic elements within the Palestinian movement by withdrawing from
the Gaza Strip and removing Jewish settlements there. 10 years and multiple rounds of violence later,
with great damage to both sides, it is acknowledged widely for the obvious failure it is. Those who 30
call for the end of military to aid to Israel as a solution to our terrorism issues are hopelessly naive at
best and recklessly irresponsible at worst. Not only is there a virtually nonexistent, dubious causal
relationship between our aid and Islamic terrorism, but there are clear and repeated examples that show
that attempts to appease those whose main grievance is democratic liberal governance, are destined to
fail dramatically.
The case for Israeli military aid however is not simply limited to refuting its opponents’ criticisms
but also contains several affirmative reasons why such a policy is mutually beneficial for the United
States and for Israel. For the United States, Israeli aid maintains the balance of power in the region and
provides an incentive for critical strategic military cooperation. To address Israeli concerns, US
military aid to Israel provides the material necessary for Israeli security, which in turn provides a key
refuge for human rights in the region, something that is utterly indispensable.
28
The Australian, “Israel is not the cause of terror,” January 3rd 2009.
29
Soeren Kern, The Brussels Journal, “Spain’s Policy of Appeasing Terrorists Backfires,” April 21st 2007.
30
Daniel Pipes, "The Gaza Withdrawal: A Democracy Killing Itself." USA Today, August 15th, 2005.
8. There is no doubt that stability in the Middle East is absolutely critical to American, and indeed,
world security due to its central location in regards to trade and energy. One of the key ways this could
potentially be achieved is via a lasting solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. In fact this is an
argument implicitly made by Israel’s critics when they attempt to tie US aid to the wider situation in
the Middle East. However those critics seem to be unable to understand that for Israel to make peace
this means, even in the most advantageous of circumstances, they will have to make strategic
concessions and engage in some level of increased vulnerability. Ester Kurz, legislative director for
AIPAC, noted that, “In return for peace, Israel is giving up territory that has tremendous strategic value.
In return... and in order to deter any thoughts of an attack against her, Israel will need significant new
earlywarning and longrange capabilities.” For the Israeli public, these military assurances cannot 31
come simply in the form of vague promises, but rather in physical material in order to assuage their
fears. This negotiating logic is further noted by Patrick Clawson, senior editor of The Middle East
Quarterly, when he pointed out that Israel is less likely to make major security demands of its
negotiating partners, the kind of demands that end peace deals, if it knows it can be compensated for by
the United States. 32
More importantly, US military aid gives Israel a clear qualitative military edge over its neighbors.
Israel pursues this policy due to the fact it is demographically and geographically impossible for Israel
to have either a qualitative military edge or strategic geographic depth it can retreat into like Russia
could. Thus the issue of military aid to Israel isn’t an issue of putting guns into hands of more soldiers
but rather providing, “...more advanced weaponry, training, leadership, and tactics to deter or defeat its
adversaries in the Middle East.” This operates as a massive deterrence to avoid the large conventional 33
ArabIsraeli wars that devastated the region from 1948 to 1973. After yet another Arab defeat in 1973,
largely due to Israeli technological advantage, US military aid increased by 400%, further widening the
gap. As a result, “...no Arab state appears eager to launch a war with Israel.” Iraq and Syria are not 34
only suffering from older equipment, but also are busy with significant internal instability. Jordan and
Egypt are simply not capable of waging war on Israel, nor do they seem, at the moment, inclined to do
so. The Arab realization that it could not win a war with Israel, leading to a cold peace, has allowed the
31
Ester Kurz, "Debate: Continue US Aid to Israel?" Middle East Quarterly. June 2000.
32
Peter Clawson, “Continue US Aid,” 2000.
33
William Wunderle and Andre Briere, "Augmenting Israel's Qualitative Military Edge," Middle East Quarterly.
Winter 2008
34
Wunderle and Briere, “Qualitative Military Edge,” 2008.
9. various Middle Eastern states to coalesce into a loose SunniIsraeli alliance of convenience against
Shi’a Iran, adding to a more stable balance of power.
Some have argued that US military aid is no longer needed to maintain Israeli qualitative military
edge (QME), due to the fact that Israel is a very prosperous country and Israel is now so far ahead of
the Arab states. However these objections ignore two inconvenient truths. The first is that maintaining
this edge often requires sudden infusions of capital or technology that Israel, even with its relatively
successful economy. Even though Israel already spends 10% of its GDP on it’s defense, it has often
found that the upkeep on its QME often went beyond even the ability of current US aid levels to
provide. For example, in 1994, Israel, in order to replace its aging jet fighter fleet, realized that even by
spending $30 million per jet, it still would not have an advanced fighter fleet to potentially reach Iran. 35
This required American aid to fill in the gap. In addition, Americans can often easily forget that the US
also spends quite a lot on military aid to Arab states, for instance Iraq after 2003, Saudi Arabia, Jordan
and Egypt. In 2007 alone, the US gave a $20 billion aid package to Saudi Arabia, much of which
narrowed the chasm between Israeli and Saudi aerial capacity. 36
While opponents of US military aid to Israel focus on the ephemeral benefits of cutting aid
packages, in reality there are very tangible benefits to maintaining it. If peace will be accomplished, it
will be done so by Israel’s risk and thus Israel will have to feel that there is an alternate source of
security that they can fall back on. US military aid acts as this source. Without it, negotiations will
likely continue to go nowhere in the future, leaving the conflict open like a festering sore. If these
opponents truly wanted to see a lasting peace, they would be the foremost proponents of US military
aid. Secondarily, US military aid provides us a critical benefit in the form of increased stability in the
region. By establishing Israeli qualitative military edge, we have helped to create a long period of
peaceful relations, however tentative, between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Whereas previously
conventional ArabIsraeli wars occurred on an average of one per decade from 1948 to 1973, it has
been 42 years since the last conventional ArabIsraeli war. Maintaining this aid package, and thus
Israel’s military superiority, has become doubly critical due to the fragile nature of this Arab peace.
While Morsi’s Islamists have been replaced by elSisi, his regime’s stability, like Mubarak’s before
him, is not a guarantee for Israeli or regional security. As Egyptians are overwhelmingly pessimistic
about the economy and highly polarized about the 2014 coup, it is critical to ensure that Israel can
35
Kurz, “Continue US Aid,” 2000.
36
Wunderle and Briere, “Qualitative Military Edge,” 2008.
10. prepare for the next ArabIsraeli war. If we take into perspective the ongoing crises in Syria and Iraq, 37
slow motion fractionalization in Lebanon, and violence in the Sinai, we cannot assume that this cold
peace will last forever. The United States must play a stabilizing role in maintaining the security of one
of our closest and most stable allies in the region.
On both counts, Greenwald, Falk and company, could not be more wrong. The fact is that our aid to
Israel does not go to a morally irresponsible and violent power who seeks to maximize civilian
casualties but rather to those who go to immense and previously unheard of measures in order to avoid
civilian casualties, often at the expense of their own soldiers’ safety. Furthermore the policy of granting
Islamic terrorists one of their objectives, ending aid to Israel, is clearly dubious. There is no data to
suggest a clear, linear positive relationship between our military aid to Israel and an increase in Islamic
attacks on the US. In fact, as our aid has been steady throughout the years, Islamic terrorist attacks have
been on a steep decline. If anything, the history of attempting to make concessions to the PLO or other
Palestinian organizations has been met with continued Islamic violence on both Israel and the United
States.
Lastly, there are major mutual benefits to US military aid to Israel for all involved; the United
States, Israel and her Arab neighbors. Israel clearly benefits from necessary infusions of capital and
military materiel. Maintaining a qualitative military edge is difficult due to the multiplicity of rivals,
America’s additional military aid packages to Israel’s traditional enemies, and the everchanging nature
of warfare. The United States also clearly benefits. Since the clear establishment of Israeli military
superiority, large scale conventional wars between Israel and neighboring states have decreased,
resulting in less violence and more strategic stability. This is a considerable foreign policy gain for less
than 1% of America’s foreign policy budget, in a highly strategically valuable region. Lastly, the Arab
world also benefits from this Israeli QME. The private and public admission of the Arab world’s
inability to defeat Israel in open combat, both from secular Arab nationalist leaders and traditional
Sunni monarchs, has resulted in an immense decrease in Arab deaths. Instead of focusing so much of
their GDPs on the destruction of the Jewish state, more economic resources and political effort can go
into solving their own domestic issues. If Israel was an easier target, more time and money would be
allocated towards this destructive end.
37
Richard Wike, "Egypt Isn't Stable," Foreign Policy. May 23rd 2014.
