Israel has shared its experiences in fighting terrorism with the U.S. It was the first country that had to plan and execute a long-distance commando raid against terrorists, long before the Navy Seals’ night-time raid, thousands of miles from home, on Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Yoram Ettinger offers more evidence of Israel as a “force multiplier” for the U.S. “Israel’s evolution into a US force multiplier,” JNS, June 20, 2021:
The lessons of the 1976 Entebbe operation — which underscored Israel as a role model for counter-terrorism — were shared with US intelligence and special operations forces.
The Entebbe commando raid, led by Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, on July 4, 1976, freed the Jewish passengers on an Air France plane that had been hijacked to Entebbe by terrorists from the PFLP (Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine). The lessons learned from that first rescue operation of hostages at such a distance – 3553 miles — were shared, as always, with the Americans.
The 1978/79 toppling of the Shah of Iran (“the US policeman of the Gulf”) and the 2003 rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency of Turkey — two countries which were transformed from key US allies to key US adversaries —reflected the inherently transient allegiance of Middle Eastern regimes, unlike the uniquely reliable, effective, and democratic nature of Israel.
The Shah of Iran, our “pillar of stability” – as the naïve Jimmy Carter hailed him at the beginning of 1978 – was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, a fanatical Muslim cleric who hated the United States, Israel, and all Infidels. Overnight, our longtime Iranian ally turned into our mortal enemy. It was the same – though it took a bit more time — when Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power through elections held in Turkey in 2003, and relentlessly undid Kemalist secularism and re-islamized Turkey. He fired tens of thousands of secularists in the army, the judiciary, the universities, the media, and refashioned all those institutions to reflect his insistence on a return to Islam. Erdogan attacked two fellow NATO members – Germany and the Netherlands – as “Nazis” for not allowing his party to campaign among the Turks in both countries; Erdogan also denounced Austria for closing down a few “extremist” mosques and deporting a handful of imams. Inside Turkey, Erdogan has built tens of thousands of new mosques, and greatly expanded the system of state-supported religious schools, the Imam Hatip schools. There were 450 such schools in 2003, with 60,000 pupils .now there are close to 6,000, with more than a million students., Erdogan has made clear that he regards the Infidels of the Western world – including the U.S. – as his enemy. He has said that there might in the future be a war “between the Crescent and the Cross,” leaving no doubt as to which side Turkey would be on. Turkey, like Iran, has gone from friend to enemy in the space of a single regime change. But Israel, which may change governments, remains part of the democratic West, and an unshakeable American ally whoever is in the ruling coalition.
The 1981 Israeli destruction of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Operation Opera — in defiance of fierce US opposition — spared the United States the potential devastation of a nuclear confrontation during the 1991 Gulf War and saved the pro-US oil-producing Arab regimes from the jaws of Saddam Hussein.
The 2007 Israeli destruction of the Syria-North Korea-Iran nuclear reactor spared the region and the globe the potential of a nuclearized civil war in Syria.
Imagine if in 1981 the Israelis had listened to others, including the Americans, and decided not to destroy, in Operation Opera, Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor. During the 1991 Gulf War, would the Iraqis by then have been in a position to threaten a nuclear confrontation? Or if not then, wouldn’t they likely have been in a position to do so in 2003, and stave off the American invasion of Iraq?
In September 2007, in Operation Outside the Box, Israeli bombers struck Syria’s secret nuclear reactor at Al-Kabir in the Deiz ez-Zor region. That ended Syria’s nuclear program; Damascus had been severely shaken by the attack and didn’t dare try to deceive the all-seeing Israelis again. Had the attack not taken place, it is possible that with a nuclear capability Assad’s government would have brought the Syrian civil war to a much quicker and more violent end. During this operation the Israelis used electronic warfare techniques never before employed by any army, including feeding the Syrians a “false sky.” The attack pioneered the use of Israel’s electronic warfare capabilities, as IAF electronic warfare (EW) systems took over Syria’s air defense systems, feeding them a false sky-picture for the entire period of time that the Israeli fighter jets needed to cross Syria, bomb their target and return. Israel of course has shared its EW secrets with the U.S.military.
The 1982 Israeli destruction of 29 Soviet surface-to-air missile batteries operated by Syria — stationed in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and perceived to be impregnable — along with the downing of 82 Soviet Migs [with no loss of any Israeli planes], reinforced Israel’s role as a unique force-multiplier for the United States in the areas of critical intelligence, game-changing battle tactics, and jamming technologies….
Israel in 1982 managed to destroy nearly 30 Soviet surface-to-air missiles and 82 Soviet Migs operated by Syria in Lebanon; again, Israeli advances in gathering intelligence, battle tactics, and new techniques of jamming radar, which led to these spectacular results, were shared with the Americans.
In 1991, Israeli General David Ivry, who had been in charge of the air attacks in the Bekaa Valley in 1982, met a Czech general who had been serving in Moscow in 1982. He told Ivry that the Israeli operation in the Bekaa made the Soviets understand that Western technology was superior to theirs, and that in his view, the blow to the Beqaa Valley SAMs was an impetus to Glasnost and the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Israel is in the forefront of the campaign to hold in check Muslim terrorists. It has fought four wars against the terror group Hamas, and two wars against the terror group Hezbollah, in addition to what the Israelis call “the wars between the wars.” The Jewish state has managed to infiltrate many of these organizations. It has devised new techniques for detecting the underground tunnels dug by both Hamas and Hezbollah, and shared those techniques with the Americans. No other country has done as much to defeat the PLO, the PFLP, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The American security establishment is properly grateful.
Israel has also done more than any other country to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Think only of those acts of derring-do that we do know about: in 2010 Israel created the computer worm Stuxnet, which it introduced into Iranian computers that controlled Iran’s centrifuges used to enrich uranium; those computers were deliberately made to speed up so fast that they destroyed themselves. Between 2010 and 2012, Israel assassinated four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. In 2018, agents of Mossad managed to locate, and spirit away to Israel, Iran’s complete nuclear archive, consisting of 50,000 documents and 163 tapes. In 2020, the Israelis destroyed much of the centrifuge plant at Natanz. In 2021, Mossad agents struck again, destroying most of the new centrifuge plant that Iran had just completed building some 50 meters underground at Natanz. Mossad agents in late 2020 assassinated Iran’s most important nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel has managed with each attack to set back the clock – perhaps by as much, in total, as a year or two – on Iran’s nuclear project. And it is not only Iran’s nuclear project that Israel has targeted. Hardly a month has gone by since mi-2020 without news of a mysterious explosion, somewhere in Iran — at a chemical plant, an oil refinery, a weapons factory, a liquified gas plant, a missile site. Most of these “mysterious exlosions” are not “accidents” at all.
Iran is clearly rattled. The Americans, the Saudis, the Emiratis all are thankful that Israel has taken on a task that no one else has been willing or able, to assume: keeping the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program permanently off-guard, with a series of fiendishly ingenious attacks.
For a few billion dollars a year in military aid from the United States, Israel continues to undermine the most powerful and insidious of Muslim terror groups — Hamas and Hezbollah. It sets back, repeatedly, Iran’s nuclear program. It helps Egypt with its battle against the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of ISIS in the Sinai; it serves as a guarantor of King Abdullah’s continued reign; it keeps Iranian oil shipments from reaching Syria; it keeps Iranian arms stockpiled in Syria from reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon; it shares intelligence on Iran not only with the Americans but with the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia. And every week brings new stories of Israeli advances in weaponry. We’ve all seen how the Iron Dome anti-missile system performed in the recent Gaza war, intercepting 90% of the rockets aimed at Israel, but how many are aware of the Iron Beam laser weapon, a directed-energy weapon air defense system which Israel deployed in 2020. Iron Beam uses a “directed high energy laser beam” to destroy hostile targets at ranges of up to 7 kilometers (4.3 mi). Both these, and many other weapons and weapons systems, from Israel, have been adopted for use by the American military.
Yoram Ettinger has it exactly right: American military aid to Israel should be thought of as an investment. Israel takes that money, and uses it to both buy American weapons and to produce its own, in order to make the Middle East safer not only for itself, but also for its friend and ally the United States. The “investment” in Israel since 1967 ranks right up there, in American history, with Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803 for $15 million ($357 million in 2021 dollars), and with Seward’s buying Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million ($131 million in 2021 dollars), the first and second greatest real estate deals in history. And when it comes to investments in a foreign military by the American government, none has paid such large and steady dividends as the investment made in Israel.
mortimer says
Hugh Fitzgerald revealingly says: “No US ‘investment’ has paid such large and steady dividends as the investment made in Israel.”
I would like to add that “No US investment has COST the US as much … CATASTROPHICALLY and REPEATEDLY … as the investment made in the Pally terrorism movement!” The aid money ends up in the pockets of the terrorists and the corrupt mob leaders.
The US has THROWN its money away by supporting the Pally mobsters (who are true fascists … Islamo-fascists). The Pally mob has almost no redeeming features.
The Pallies use the massive international aid money … not to make all Pallies rich and to create industries … but to enrich the Pally leaders, several of whom do not yet own monster homes in Cyprus, poor things.
There should be a census of Pallies living in diaspora. It is estimated that at least one-third of all Pallies listed as living in the borders of Israel are actually living abroad in Europe and the Americas.
For some strange reason, Pallies who leave the region don’t want to live in yet another Islamic BERZERKISTAN!
gravenimage says
No US ‘investment’ has paid such large and steady dividends as the investment made in Israel
………………
Hear, hear, Hugh Fitzgerald!
Israel is not just a staunch ally, but also a very important one.