The US-Israel strategic alliance – partnership, not charity

On Jan 8, 2011, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head in Tucson, Arizona. Among the tools first responders reached for was the "Emergency Bandage," a pressure dressing so closely associated with the Israeli military that American troops had nicknamed it the "Israeli bandage." It saved her life.

The deep friendship between America and Israel has saved, and continues to save, American lives. Israel is a friend and an ally in the deepest sense of the word.

AMERICA AND ISRAEL: A COVENANT, NOT A CONTRACT

The U.S. House of Representatives is about to vote on security assistance to Israel, including an amendment from outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to strip that assistance altogether. Policy disagreements may exist, even between closely aligned nations. Yet these should not come at the cost of American lives and regional stability.

The anti-Israel representative, Massie, found himself on the wrong end of the president after Donald Trump endorsed his opponent in his recent GOP primary. The result: Ed Gallrein beat the incumbent Massie as his constituents turned on his increasingly unpopular positions.

Israel's detractors have long framed American support as charity, as a one-way handout to a dependent client state. In doing so, they ignore what the relationship actually is: a reciprocal strategic security and technology partnership, built on shared values, that has paid the United States back many times over.

The current conflict with Iran illustrates this unique relationship. In 1979, the Islamic Republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first called the United States the "Great Satan" — one day after the regime seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, launching the 444-day hostage crisis. Later that year, Khomeini branded Israel the "Little Satan," a deliberate hierarchy casting Israel as an American outpost. Israel is a beacon of Western values in a dark region, and it is that light the regime is eager to extinguish. The decades since have seen American, Israeli and Western bloodshed by the Islamic Republic and its proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis.

Two truths follow. First, believe your enemies when they tell you who they are: when they chant "Death to America," they mean it. Second, what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. Hamas' terror against Israel in the 1990s spilled into New York on 9/11 and beyond. America's enemies are Israel's enemies, and both are fighting for the benefit of civilization as a whole.

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Israel is also not a passive recipient of technology, but a major exporter and co-developer of it — its cyber technology is widely adopted by the U.S. and NATO. The Iron Dome, among the most successful missile-defense systems in operational history, is a joint U.S.-Israeli venture built with American components, alongside David's Sling and Arrow. Israeli innovations in drones, cybersecurity and armor have flowed into American systems as much as American funding has flowed into Israeli ones.

It does not stop there. In 2017, it was reported that top Israeli cyber experts had penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria. That was how the U.S. learned ISIS was working on explosives designed to fool airport X-ray machines by looking exactly like laptop-computer batteries.

In another incident, Iran launched a large-scale drone attack on the Al-Tanf base near the Iraq-Syria border, which housed about 200 U.S. troops. The base was evacuated shortly beforehand, due to early warning from Israeli intelligence. No American casualties were reported. The long and profound Israeli-U.S. intelligence cooperation has saved numerous innocent lives. From the most recent Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump, to that regime’s use of crime syndicates in Australia and Europe to attack Iranian dissidents and other civilian targets, Israel is strategically positioned to be the West’s eyes and ears in a dangerous, volatile region filled with hostile forces to freedom and democracy.

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Nearly every dollar Israel receives is spent on American-made weapons, aircraft and systems. The money doesn't leave the U.S. Treasury so much as flow through it, landing with American manufacturers and supporting jobs in all 50 states. Israel Aerospace Industries alone works with more than 800 American suppliers across 44 states. This isn't charity — it's an alliance that saves lives through shared intelligence, battle-tested defense systems and a military that never asks for U.S. troops to defend it.

That's a partnership between two capable allies, not a welfare arrangement. It is the kind of alliance, on a January morning in Tucson, that puts the right bandage in the right hands at the right time. Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington at the time, called learning of that fact one of the proudest moments of his tenure.

Some partnerships are measured in treaties and dollars. Others are measured in a single life, saved.